ABERTILLERY & DISTRICT MUSEUM SOCIETY

NEWSLETTER July 2006

Museum News    Not a great deal to report but there is action behind the scenes as we finalise contract details.  Meantime Don has had yet more little problems to deal with, such as a collapsed ceiling in the gents toilet after a hose on the floor above was left running.

Aberbeeg Hospital Fete  A fine and enjoyable day and the Museum stall raised £39 for the Hospital League of Friends so thanks to all those who helped in various ways.

Aberfest  It was a beautiful day on 24^th June for the town’s Aberfest.  Abertillery came alive with bands and children folk dancing.  A really good day!  The Museum stall raised £62 for museum funds.

Six Bells Fete  The Museum will be having a stall at the Six Bells Fete on Saturday 8^th July.  If anyone has any bric a brac or items for a Lucky Dip please bring them into the Museum.

Wanted – curtains or sheets  Can I please make an appeal for covers for the Museum archive store – curtains or sheets.  The store has been thoroughly cleaned but as you can appreciate dust is still settling.  Peggy Bearcroft

June Numbers

1. No.14           Jeanette Fowler            £25

2. No.124         Dennis Rowles             £10      

3. No.29           Verley Phillips              £5

www.cwmtillery.com

You will find the Newsletter here if you miss collecting your copy at the monthly lecture or Museum but it’s also an excellent site for local news, events, history and much more.

Fund raising June - £241

We were very grateful to Newport History Society for their donation of £40 received after their visit to our Museum.

Diary Dates

Saturday  8^th July – Six Bells Fete

Wednesday 6^th September 2006 –George Hudson – Railway King in Victorian times by John Long

Wednesday 4^th October 2006 – Scenes of Switzerland by Harry Vagg

The lectures are usually held at Abertillery Comprehensive School and start at 7.00pm. Entry is £1 and the public are most welcome. News of coffee mornings and other events can be found on the notice board at the Museum.

Lecture Programme  Those of us who have been to Roger Morgan’s lively lectures were expecting him to turn up in period costume with dire tales of the penal system.  Instead, Roger told us how he came to be custodian of Caerleon Amphitheatre and, later, Chepstow Castle.  We were given a potted history of the castle, liberally sprinkled with anecdotes, and were all sorry when his talk came to an end.  Roger Morgan is always a popular speaker and is sure to be back before long.

Memorial Notice Board  A new notice board has recently been put up in the Museum entrance.  This notice board was paid for by Margaret Herbert in memory of her late husband Martin Herbert.  A plaque bears the following inscription:

            “In loving memory of Martin James Herbert J.P. former local businessman and Vice President of the Museum”

New helper   We are always pleased when we have a new volunteer in the Museum especially when it is a young person.  Gail Ashworth has for some time given up Saturday mornings to enter documentation on the computer.  Now Gail’s daughter Sophie, having finished her exams, is helping during the school holidays.  Young people are the Museum’s future and we hope more youngsters will become involved in the years ahead.

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ABERTILLERY & DISTRICT MUSEUM SOCIETY

Contact Names
Mrs Peggy Bearcroft,       Chairperson                   01495 213806
Mr DonBearcroft,       Curator                                   01495 213806 
Mr Ron Selway,         Vice Chairman                       01495 215775
Mr Trevor Cook Secretary- c/o Museum               01495 211140
Mrs Margaret Cook  Assistant Secretary
Mr Bernard Jones, Treasurer                                    01495 213185  
Mrs Enid Dean, Fund raising Secretary                  01495 212880 
Mrs M Gilson, Schools Liaison                                01495 212413    
Mrs M Selway, Programme Sec                                01495 211960
Mr Roy Pickford, Social Events Sec                        01495 213377
Mr Bernard Hill, Asst Curator                                   01495 212864 
Mrs Jen Price (Newsletter)                                         01633 482851

Museum opening times

The Museum is open to the public, free of charge:

Monday - Thurs 10am - 1pm     2pm - 4pm

Friday                 10am - 1pm

Saturday             10am - 1pm

Museum phone number 01495 211140. Visitors and volunteers are always welcome so please call in as often as you like.

Local Voices

“Emergency Ward 10”

A party from Blaenau Gwent recently went on a coach trip to Germany.  Our overnight stop was at Ghent and after dinner one of the ladies complained of a bad foot.  Apparently she had twisted her foot on the steps of the coach earlier in the day but thought it would get better by resting it while on the ‘bus.  It hadn’t improved and she could not put her foot to the ground.  On board there was a qualified nurse and an ambulance man who, after examination, decided she needed to go to hospital.  We joked about it, one saying “Don’t worry we’ll pick you up on the way back”.  Another said he had a rusty saw in his bag.  Anyway, the ambulance duly arrived with blue lights flashing and instead of a wheelchair she was given the full works and went on a stretcher.  Poor lady, she had broken a bone in her foot and spent her holiday in a wheelchair.  She was brilliant about it all, and good fun to be with.

On our return journey another lady was taken ill with repiratory difficulty and by the time we got to Calais she was really poorly.  Again our qualified medics came to the scene and decided she needed to go to hospital.  She was taken there by ambulance and hospitalised overnight when she was given all the works needed to enable her to return to the coach next morning and continue her journey home.

So, a good tip is to take qualified medical companions when you go on holidays.

“Other Museums”

On the same trip to Germany we visited a couple of museums.  One was at Speyer and was a really hi-tech museum.  It had simulated scary aeroplane flights and submarine adventures.  It really was a state of the art museum and must have cost a fortune to set up.

Another, more modest museum was at Oberhausen/Rheinhausen.  It had been started in 1986 and was a postal museum.  It exhibited post boxes from various parts of the world, postmen’s uniforms, postage stamps etc.  It was very enjoyable.  I thought of Abertillery and District Museum struggling like this mail museum to preserve relics of the past. These specialised museums have a great role to play in preserving the past but I think that in our own ‘people’s museum’ there is something to interest everyone.

The Roving Reporter

History of Garden Gnomes  Gnomes have been part of German folklore since the early 1400s.  The first recorded garden gnome was produced in Graeferoda, Thuringia, Germany in the 1800s.  They were generally made of clay or terracotta and were painted in bright colours.  They were highly collectable and most were beautifully made works of art.  In 1874 the British eccentric Sir Charles Isham brought some terractotta gnomes to England from Nuremberg, Germany.  Only one of the gnomes, Lampy, has survived; he is just 6 inches tall and is insured for £1million.  By 1872 August Heissner and Phillip Griebel were turning out gnomes in large quantities and several more gnome manufacturers sprang up around the town.  Thuringia became known as the gnome capital of Europe.

When war broke out in Europe in the late 1930s the manufacturers closed their businesses to concentrate on other things and the next twenty years passed without any significant gnome production.

The 1960s saw several manufacturers making mass produced plastic gnomes.  They were highly coloured, badly painted and cheap.  The days of the quality garden gnome had long gone and their plastic substitutes acquired a rather ‘tacky’ image.  It is said that by the 1990s there were over 5 million garden gnomes in Britain but that the figure had dropped to 3.8 million some ten years later. 

Gnomes are banned from the Chelsea Flower Show.  What a state of affairs considering their illustrious past.  What would Lampy say about it all?   Source: www.gnomeland.co.uk

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ABERTILLERY & DISTRICT MUSEUM SOCIETY

Glass Paperweights Those hemispherical pieces of glass which contain, embedded in them, brightly coloured canes, flowers, portraits, fruit etc, are wonderful items to look at and hold.  The finest of them are the work of superlative craftsmen and represent the glass maker’s craft at its best.  The Glynn Vivian Art Gallery in Swansea has a particularly fine collection.

They were made of flint or lead glass which is heavy in weight and like crystal in appearance.  In the molten state it remained plastic and capable of being blown or moulded for a considerable time.  By adding different metallic salts, glass of various colours could also be produced.

The antique paperweights at the Glynn Vivian were first made in Britain and France in 1845 when designs and patterns, derived from glass rods, were enclosed in solid masses of flint glass and used as desk ornaments. Paperweights were also incorporated into the manufacture of other articles such as scent bottles, ink stands, vases, door knobs, etc., and these articles were usually mounted on a paperweight base.

The period of finest manufacture was between 1846 and 1860 but their manufacture has continued until the present day.  Paperweights are made in factories in Britain, America, France and many other European countries, though many consider that the French paperweights are the finest in terms of craftsmanship.  The main French factories were at St Louis, Clichy, and Baccarat, and quite often the initials of the factory and the date of manufacture were incorporated in the paperweight design.  The most important English factories were at Bristol, Stourbridge, Nailsea and Whitefriars (London) and some of these were also dated.

The significant collection at the Glynn Vivian was gifted to the Museum in 1953 by Mr Earnest Evans.

The coloured canes or sections were made by dipping the end of the blow tube into a pot of molten glass in order to gather up some of it.  The workman then rolled it on his ‘marver’ (table made of marble or cast iron) to give an even or regular shape to this glass.  When it reached the desired size, it was picked up on a solid metal rod or ‘pontil rod’, the blow tube was broken off, and then the molten glass was fashioned into shape with tongs, shears and spatula.  The shaped glass was then dipped into different coloured glass, say red, then blue and so on, thus picking up different coloured layers of glass.  It was shaped and “marvelled” all the time, to form a variety of designs.

When the glass reached a certain thickness, an assistant picked up the loose end on his pontil rod.  Then the workman and his assistant walked rapidly apart in order to stretch the glass in order to stretch the glass into a long thin rod, the diameter of which was only a few millimetres.  This rod was cut into thousands of thin sections or slices, all of which would show a fine design on cross section.  By ringing the changes on this basic process, many different patterns could be produced.  By more complicated methods more elaborate canes could be made such as those containing tiny silhouettes of dogs, monkeys, pigeon, deer etc.

The slices or sections were sorted into trays and, when desired, were lifted out with tweezers and placed on a base or cushion to form a design.  The base could be opaque or clear, coloured or colourless, and in some cases might have a network of opaque, white or coloured strands (known as latticiono) forming a kind of filigree background.

The design on its cushion or base was then enclosed in successive layers of flint glass to form a dome of crystal which was ground down and polished to make a hemispherical mass.  In the finished paperweight the design was thus rendered clearly visible and greatly magnified.

Source: City & County of Swansea

Gwent County History Association

You will all probably know that Volume 1 of the County History was published last year.  It has received excellent reviews and work is well under way on the other Volumes with Volume 2 anticipated to be published by the University of Wales Press towards the end of this year.  The Association is still busy fund-raising and looking for new members – individual subscriptions cost £5.  Money is needed on an ongoing basis to fund the preparation and publication of the County history.  Fund raising events include a tour of two churches at and near Llandegfedd on Wednesday 19^th July at 7.00pm, price £2.  Park at the upper car park of the Farmers Arms and walk down to the church.  Later this month, on Saturday 29 July at 6.0pm at Veddw House Garden in Devauden a garden party has been arranged, price £15.  The event will include music, a buffet and a chance to visit the stunning gardens.

More information from the secretary, Mrs Gwenllian Jones Tel 01633 894338

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The Plimsoll Line  Those of you who are tuning in to Radio 4 about mid-morning may have heard the story of how the Plimsoll line came into being and the man who gave it his name.

Samuel Plimsoll was born in Bristol in 1824.  He became involved in shipping coal and was soon one of the country’s leading experts on this trade.  Research carried out in the course of conducting research into two books and his own personal experience of surviving a storm at sea raised his awareness of the dangers faced by sailors, and their powerlessness at the hands of ruthless shipowners, especially with an indifferent government and lack of regulation.  Plimsoll took up the cause of the ordinary seamen but his involvement was not welcomed in all quarters and he was, for example, the subject of vicious cartoons in Punch.

Plimsoll resolved to become a Member of Parliament to press his cause and was elected as MP for Derby in 1868.  He immediately began to campaign for government legislation to protect shipping and in 1873 he produced a book entitled “Our Seamen” setting out evidence about the scale of the problem, including that nearly 1000 sailors a year were being drowned on ships around British shores.

Plimsoll was especially critical of the legislation then in place which obliged seamen to go to sea and complete a voyage once they had signed a contract and often before they had seen a ship.  Refusal to set to sea because a ship was felt to be unseaworthy was no protection against the imprisonment or fines that faced sailors who broke their contracts.

Shipowners had powerful allies in Parliament and the introduction of legislation restricting their freedom was vigorously resisted.  However, Plimsoll persisted and in 1875 Prime Minister Disraeli was persuaded to support an Unseaworthy Vessels Bill.

Plimsoll managed to persuade Parliament to amend the 1871 Merchant Shipping Act so as to provide for the marking of a line on a ship’s sides that would disappear below the water line if the ship was overloaded.  A further amendment in 1877 imposed a limit on the weight of cargo that vessels could carry, and set out rules for the engagement of seamen and their accommodation on board ship.

Plimsoll retired from Parliament in 1880 but carried on campaigning for reform and published a book in 1890 which exposed the cruelty and dangers of cattle shipping.  He died in 1898.