Wales Feed 1o2w54

2011-02-04T09:05:47+00:00

It's a sad fact that the good, old fashioned public house was, for many years, far less public than most of us ever imagined.

Many Welsh pubs used to have 'Men Only' bars

Half of the population of Britain was actually banned from many of these establishments, purely on the grounds of gender, and of the other half a large proportion was excluded from certain parts of the building because of social class.

For a long time many Welsh pubs had 'Men Only' bars. Until as late as the 1970s women, if they came to the pub at all, were usually sat in the snug or the lounge.

They rarely entered the hallowed portals of the bar and their men folk - very few women ventured into the pub alone - would bring them drinks as the evening progressed. The men remained, resolutely, standing at the bar.

It had not always been like this. In the Victorian era you would often find women in public houses but these were not always the kind of girl you would be happy to take home to your mother!

Pubs like The Eagle in Cardiff - later, perhaps appropriately, re-named The Spread Eagle - doubled as brothels and many establishments were actually run by women. When you study the various directories of Welsh towns and villages in the 1880s and 1890s you find that, maybe, 40 or even 50% of them had women landlords.

There were famous characters in most Welsh towns, drunkards who regularly appeared in court on charges of being drunk and disorderly. Many of these were women and some, like Ellen Sweeney of Swansea had over 150 convictions. No sign of discrimination by gender there, then!

In the smaller towns and rural areas, however, the taboo against women in pubs remained firm and constant. Pubs often had a small hatch, perhaps at the rear of the building, where women might come to fill up a bottle or a jug but they rarely went inside.

Only as the swinging '60s progressed and the greater freedom of the Women's Lib movement began to smash down some of the prejudices of society did things really start to change.

There was also, for many years, a very clear social divide in the pubs. Working men used the bar; the 'better class of person' - the town doctor, solicitor or police sergeant - drank in the snug or lounge. And never the twain would meet.

Of course there was a charge of two pence extra on all drinks bought in the lounge but, for most of the middle or even upper classes, that seemed to be preferable than drinking with your workers or servants.

Sometimes the working men in the bar had to face yet another form of discrimination. Many pubs expressly forbade the wearing of working clothes. Others allowed it in the early evening, for men on their way home from work, but if they wanted a drink after 9pm they had to be properly attired in jackets, shirts and tros.

These days there is no sense of discrimination in our pubs. The law of the land would not allow it and, anyway, attitudes have changed out of all recognition.

The public house has evolved along with the rest of society and if it wants to survive it will have to continue to change, many times.

If you want to hear more about pubs in Wales tune in to Past Master on Sunday 6 February, 5.30pm on BBC Radio Wales, when Phil Carradice explores this unique British tradition.

Read Phil's earlier blog on the death of the British pub.

2011-01-28T14:18:00+00:00

It's a sad fact that upwards of 30 public houses are closing down every week in Britain.

Other countries might have their taverns, beer halls or bars but the humble British pub has always been something of an institution, an establishment unique to this country.

Every town or village once had one and the public house was, for many years, the social centre of community life. All that, however, is changing as people now buy cheaper alcohol in supermarkets and are more than happy to sit and drink at home. The cosy chat around the pub fire or bar counter are rapidly becoming things of the past.

It might seem as if the pub has been around for thousands of years but, in fact, the public house as we know it is not as ancient as we sometimes think. As far as Wales is concerned purpose-built pubs only came into being in the last 300 or so years.

Inns, for the comfort of needy travellers, had been around for some time - Chaucer's pilgrims in The Canterbury Tales began their journey from just such an establishment and there were many examples in Wales. But pubs? These were a different species.

The public house, a place just to drink and talk, arrived in Wales in the early 1700s. To begin with they were beer houses, the name summing up their origins.

Quite simply people opened up their houses and sold beer in their front rooms or parlours. In rural areas these beer houses might be located in farm houses - in towns they were just as likely to be terraced properties, surrounded on both sides by the dwellings of ordinary men and women.

To begin with these places had no bar counter - such refinements did not come into being until the middle of the 19th century.

The beer (and it was, normally, just beer that was sold) was stored in the pantry and was fetched to your seat or, if you were lucky, to your table by the landlady or landlord, being poured from a jug directly into your glass. Most of these early pubs or beer dens had only one room, with chairs typically set around an inglenook fire or lined along the walls.

These early pubs were well used and provided valuable income for the owners. In many cases they were run by women, the men continuing to work on the farm or foundry during the day and either lending a hand at night or simply sitting and partaking in the entertainment.

It was very much a working class clientèle as the upper echelons of society would either use well-established inns or drink in the comfort of their own homes. But for men coming home from the pit, quarry or steel works these public houses provided much-needed refreshment after a working day that would probably kill or maim most people in this day and age.

Beer was also safe to drink. It was, for the most part, relatively clean and unlikely to carry disease. And that was more than could be said about the water in Welsh towns or villages until well into the 20th century.

By the middle years of the 19th century towns in Wales boasted huge numbers of public houses. By 1840, even a relatively small place like Caernarfon had no fewer than two inns, two hotels, five spirit dealers and 27 taverns or beer houses.

The town of Monmouth had the staggering (perhaps literally!) ratio of one pub for every 85 people while in the ship building community of Pembroke Dock there were over 200 drinking dens.

Newport had an amazing 390 pubs, inns and beer houses - at a time when the town's population was less than a third of today's.

Just like the long-established inns, after a while the pubs began to acquire names for themselves. In many cases these names were linked to the signs that hung outside their doors.
To display a sign advertising their wares had been a legal requirement for anyone who sold alcohol since Roman days - names such as the Bush or Ivy Bush can certainly be traced back to this era.

Places like The Royal Oak or the King's Arms soon became commonplace while after the Crimean War, as soldiers began to return home, pubs began to adopt names such as The Alma or Odessa. Other names, such as the famous Cow and Snuffers in Cardiff, elude explanation.

The story of the public house - particularly in Wales - cannot be separated from the Temperance Movement. Despite the fact that, in the early days, many religious groups used the pubs and taverns as meeting houses, during the Victorian age the ers of "temperance" gained ground, railing about drunkenness and portraying the pubs as "gateways to Hell."

Women's Temperance Union (courtesy of Conwy Archive Service)

Perhaps the crowning glory of the Temperance Movement came in 1881 when the Sunday Closing Act was ed. It might have seemed to be a victory for the ers of Temperance but, in fact, the Act led to a century or more of ingenious law breaking as would-be Sunday drinkers continuously found loopholes in the law.

The simplest way of getting around the Act was to leave the back door open but there were also more sophisticated ways of buying a drink on Sundays. For a long while, for example, anyone travelling seven miles or more could claim a drink in another town - although quite how people were able to prove or disprove that fact remains a little unclear.

Late Victorian and Edwardian Wales produced some staggeringly beautiful pub buildings. And many of them still remain. The Golden Cross in Cardiff, the Waterloo in Newport and The Ivy Bush in Pontardawe are just three superb examples, survivors of an institution once found in many working class communities.

However, with pub closures taking place right across the country, the future of all our public houses has to be in question. The pub remains part of our heritage, envied by visitors and tourists the world over. As someone once said about the local corner shop - use it or lose it.

Phil Carradice explores the hidden history of Wales' ancient beer houses, inns and taverns in this week's episode of Past Master on Sunday 30 January, 5.30pm on BBC Radio Wales.

2011-01-21T13:02:02+00:00

In the year 1847 the British government commissioned a report into the state of education in Wales.

Not, in itself, such a momentous event, but when the remit of the report was widened to include a study of the morals of the Welsh people it resulted in a furore that still rumbles on to this very day.

Never can a civil service document have excited such ion as the 1847 Report of the Commissioners of Enquiry into the State of Education in Wales (780kb pdf file).

Blue books

The report, known throughout Wales as the Treason of the Blue Books (all government reports being bound in blue covers), was the result of a motion put forward a year earlier by William Williams, the Welsh MP for Coventry.

He was particularly concerned about the lack of opportunity for poor children in his homeland to gain knowledge of the English language.

Kay-Shuttleworth, secretary to the Council on Education, wrote the of reference for the Enquiry in October 1846 and it is clear, right from the beginning, that education was only one of the government's concerns. From the 1820s to the late 1840s Wales had appeared to be the centre of major discontentment.

In the 1820s there had been serious disturbances in Tredegar and Merthyr while in Ceridigion there had been a virtual war over the issue of land enclosures.

From 1839 to the mid 1840s the the Rebecca Riots caused mayhem across mid and south Wales while in 1939 the Chartist march on Newport provoked huge worry and concerns in government circles. Clearly Wales needed to be looked at in some detail and to English officials and civil servants it seemed highly likely that, in the far west, sedition was being planned - in the Welsh language.

There is no doubt that education for poor children in Wales was inadequate - it was also inadequate in England!

There was desperate requirement for quality education for all, education that would, the government felt - long before the commissioners reported back - be predominantly in the English language. And central to this was the need to provide trained teachers.

The trouble came when the extra clause was slipped into the of reference, to look at the morals and behaviour of the Welsh people. Quite why this was inserted is not clear - certainly it could have little impact on the educational element of the report who could and would educate their charges efficiently.

Since the predominance of Welsh was one of the main reasons for the report it would have been reasonable to expect the commissioners appointed to oversee the inspections to have a knowledge of the Welsh tongue. Not so. Commissioners Lingen, Simons and Vaughan Johnson spoke no Welsh, were not even educationalists and, importantly, had no experience of the type of fervent non-conformity to be found in Wales.

A number of assistant commissioners were appointed and, by and large, these were the men who toured the schools, towns and villages. The questions they asked, the ages of literature (usually the Bible) they required children to read and the problems that were meant to worked out in the head of each child were framed in English - many of the school teachers had difficulty understanding them, let alone their pupils.

While the non-conformist Sunday Schools - where education was offered in Welsh - were, in the main, praised in the report, the ordinary day schools were certainly not. It was hardly surprising when pupils were expected to work out subtraction problems such as "Take 1799 from 2471," in their heads, with an answer expected within a few seconds. And the condition of the schools themselves was under equal scrutiny:

"The school is held in the mistresses house. I shall never forget the hot sickening smell which struck me on opening the door of that low, dark room in which 30 girls and 20 boys were huddled together."

But there were other issues of concern for the commissioners. They had also been charged with making a study of the moral state of the country and it was a task they were happy to carry out.

When looking at the morals of the nation the Anglican vicars, many of whom felt isolated and apart from the parish in which they lived, were quite content to help out with comments that were little more than a little condemnatory:

It is difficult... to describe in proper the state of the common people of Wales in the intercourse of the sexes. I believe the proportion of illegitimate children to the population in Anglesey, with only one exception, and that is also in Wales, exceeds that in any other county in the kingdom."

When the report was published it was scathing and sweeping in its findings. Welsh children were poorly educated, poorly taught and had little or no understanding of the English language. They were ignorant, dirty and badly motivated.

Welsh women were not just lax in their morals - many of them being late home from chapel meetings! - they were also non-conformist lax. To reinforce the power of the established church and to make English the required mode of teaching and expression in schools is the main thrust of the report.

Howls of protest were to be expected - and they duly came. Yet the sobriquet "Treason of the Blue Books" did not come into popular usage until seven years later when Robert Jones Derfel wrote a play called Brad y Llyfrau Gleision, or, in English, The Treason of the Blue Books. Derfel's play opens in Hell where the Devil decides that the Welsh people are too good and are becoming more godly by the hour thanks to the influence of non-conformity. He promptly hatches a plan to bring down this pure and godly people.

The play has shaped the opinions of many, even at this late stage. Many people believe the findings of the enquiry had been more or less decided before the commissioners even began their work. One thing is clear, however. The report gives us a fascinating snapshot of life in the 1840s and for a brief while, at least, it did manage to put education high on the political agenda.

Ultimately, however, the Treason of the Blue Books helped to create a view, a rather smirking and disrespectful view, of Welsh morals that has lasted until the 21st century. Publication of The Report of the Commissioners of Enquiry remains one of the most important moments in Welsh history, and it is questionable whether or not the Welsh language has yet managed to break free from the disapproval of the commissioners.

Phil Carradice investigates how Victorian Wales was scandalised by a government report into its schools and sexual morals in Blue Books and Red Faces on this week's episode of Past Master on Sunday 23 January at 5.30pm.

2011-01-14T14:23:26+00:00

There has always been something of a debate about the Anglo-Zulu Wars of 1879, particularly with regard to the numbers of Welsh soldiers involved in the Battle of Isandlwana and at the defense of Rorke's Drift.

Battlefield at Isandlwana. Photo by Trudy Carradice.

Often legend and romance have taken over from reality. If you have ever watched the film Zulu, for example, you could be excused for thinking that the action at Rorke's Drift was carried out by a Welsh male voice choir led by Stanley Baker, Michael Caine and Ivor Emmanuel!

Arguments have ranged widely across the spectrum - there were few Welsh soldiers present; the British regiments were predominantly Welsh based. And so on.

From looking at the regimental rolls it is clear that a Welsh-based regiment bore the brunt of the fighting, particularly at Rorke's Drift, and from the letters and statements of many of the soldiers themselves it is equally apparent that the events on the African veldt in 1879 would come back to haunt the men for many years to come.

It was a war that should never have been fought. The British government had little stomach for a fight with the Zulu tribes. Britain was already engaged in costly campaigns in Afghanistan and the thought of further expense in South Africa was not one to be taken lightly.

However, s out in South Africa, particularly the new British High Commissioner Sir Bartle Frere, saw the Zulus as a threat to British control and determined on war in order to create a federation of states rather like the one in Canada.

For their part, the Zulus had no reason to allow their traditional homelands - areas rich in coal and other minerals - to be taken from them.

The Zulu king, Cetshwayo, was presented with a deliberately harsh ultimatum - lay down your arms by 12 January 1879 or face invasion. The concept of "the warrior" was central to Zulu culture and Bartle Frere knew that the ultimatum could only be ignored.

On 12 January, the very day it expired, Lord Chelmsford took his column across the Buffalo River into Zululand. Prominent in the column of marching men was the 24th Regiment of Foot.

At the time of the Anglo-Zulu War, the 24th Regiment was known as the Warwickshires, the area from which they had originated, but by 1879 their home base was at Brecon and within a few years the regiment would change its name to The South Wales Borderers.

About 30% of the regiment was Welsh, the 24th regularly recruiting in Breconshire, Radnorshire and Monmouthshire. Soldiers were even recruited from places like Caernarfon.

Using his native Welsh tongue, Private Owen Ellis wrote to his parents in North Wales on the eve of the campaign:

"The 2nd Battalion of the 24th arrived here about 4 o'clock on Sunday afternoon and the 1st Battalion welcomed them by treating them to bread, tea and meat - - - If Cetshwayo does not come to we will demand his lands, kill his people as they cross our path and burn all his kraals or villages."

A few weeks later Owen was to write his last ever letter, on 19 January 1879:

"It is now Sunday afternoon, just after dinner, and I am sitting on a small box to write you these few lines. We are moving off at 6am tomorrow. I only wishes [sic] they would finish this row so that I might go to some town and see something else besides grassland. Dear father, perhaps I shall have to go a long time after this without writing, so don't be worried if you don't hear from me."

Owen Ellis was one of over 1,300 soldiers massacred by the Zulu impi at the Battle of Isandlwana on 22 January.

There were many reasons for the defeat - Chelmsford had split his force, taking half of them away to search for the Zulu army; nobody knew where the Zulus actually were; no effective defensive line had been created; the front line of soldiers was too extended and too far away from ammunition.

Whatever the reasons it was one of the worst defeats ever suffered by British colonial troops and many of the dead were young Welshmen. And we should never forget, of course, that close on 4,000 Zulus also died in the battle.

When Lord Chelmsford and his half of the invasion force returned to Isandlwana they were met by an horrific sight, as Private William Meredith of Pontypool noted in a letter to his brother:

"I could describe the battlefield to you - the sooner I get it off my mind the better. Over a thousand white men lying on the field, cut to pieces and stripped naked. Even the little boys that we had in the band, they were hung up and opened like sheep. These are the Pontypool boys that got killed in battle: Alf Farr, Dick Treverton and Charley Long."

For some of the men the sight was just too horrible. Some, like Henry Moses, also of Pontypool, began to reflect on their future and on what had brought them to this:

"I know what soldiering is now. We are in fear every night and have had to fight the Zulus. Dear father and sisters and brothers, goodbye. We may never meet again. I repent the day that I took the shilling."

Hospital at Rorke's Drift. Photo by Trudy Carradice.

The Zulus next target was the hospital base at Rorke's Drift. The story of the heroic defence is too well known to require re-telling here. The action took place over the night of 22/23 January, approximately 4,000 Zulu warriors attacking the hospital and mission station that was defended by just over 100 men. And it is clear that a large number of these defenders were Welshmen.

It was a desperate struggle that saw nearly 500 Zulu casualties for the loss of just 17 soldiers of the 24th Foot.

As Private Henry Hook was to later write to his mother in Monmouth:

"Every man fought dearly for his life. We were all determined to sell our lives like soldiers and to keep up the credit of our regiment."

The result of the battle was a victory for the 24th and several of the Welsh soldiers, men who survived the action, now lie buried in their native soil.

John Fielding, who won the Victoria Cross for his bravery that night (one of 11 won during the battle), is buried at Llantarnam. He had enlisted under the name John Williams as he was technically under age and his parents did not approve of him taking the Queen's shilling.

John Fielding lived to a ripe old age, dying in 1932, but others, like Robert Jones, another VC winner, suffered from headaches and nightmares for the rest of his life:

"I found a crowd (of Zulus) in front of the hospital and coming into our doorway. We crossed our bayonets and as fast as they came up to the doorway we bayoneted them until the doorway was nearly filled with dead and wounded Zulus. I had three assegi wounds."

Unable to cope with the stresses and strains of life after Rorke's Drift, at the age of 41 Robert Jones gave up the struggle and killed himself.

The Battles of Isandlwana and Rorke's Drift are a story of carnage and bravery - on both sides. If you want to hear more about the events listen to Past Master on Sunday 16 January at 5.30pm.

2011-01-06T10:01:08+00:00

The summer of 1715. The Old Pretender is about to land with his army in Scotland, rallying ers of the Stuart cause to his flag. George I and the whole Hanoverian dynasty appear to be resting on the edge of disaster. Discontent is rife everywhere and in the north Wales town of Wrexham, as the summer progresses, more and more signs of anti-Hanoverian anger are to be seen.

Rioters break windows in the 'dissenting chapels' (dissenters being fervent ers of the new regime) and crack open more than a few heads as they roam, unchecked and unhindered, through the streets of the town. Jacobite songs are roared out and for several weeks the place is almost besieged by mob violence.

For most of us, when we think about the Jacobite rebellions we think of that 1715 landing of James and, usually, of the more famous rebellion of 1745 when, for several months, James' son, Bonnie Prince Charlie, held the whole country in the palm of his hand. However, thanks to the romantic novels of people like Sir Walter Scott we tend to associate Jacobitism only with Scotland. Not so. In these difficult and dangerous years, Wales, too, was a hotbed of Jacobite fever.

Jacobitism had its origins in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 when the Catholic King James II fled before an invasion by William of Orange. Desperately unpopular, James had seemed secure enough while he had no heir but after a visit to the Catholic shrine at Holywell in north Wales, where he supposedly prayed for a son, his wife suddenly conceived. The thought of another Catholic monarch was too much for a now staunchly protestant Britain and James had to go.

James had his ers, however, and once the last of the Stuart monarchs, Queen Anne, died in 1714 many expected there to be something of a restoration with Anne's half brother James, the Old Pretender, returning to take the throne. Instead, his claims were ignored and George, the German speaking Elector of Hanover, became king. Jacobite ers immediately began to plot, plan and prey for a restoration of the Stuart monarchy.

The riots in Wrexham were probably orchestrated by Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, the most powerful and prestigious of all Welsh landowners and squires. He was a member of a secret political club known as the Cycle of the White Rose, an organisation that had been founded on the birthday of the Old Pretender in 1710.

It was called The Cycle Club because, quite simply, its met in turn at each others houses. They would dine, sing Jacobite songs, toast 'The King Across the Water' and probably engage in secret rituals that, ultimately, meant very little - just a group of 'boys' having a good time.

The amazing thing about the of Cycle Club is that, despite its potentially treasonable purpose, they kept minutes of their meetings and even had special glasses made from which they would drink their toasts - the National Museum in Cardiff actually owns several examples!

The club might sound like a vehicle or an excuse for romantic, landowning gentry to eat, drink and be safely treasonable but, potentially at least, it was a very powerful base for men such as Sir Watkin Williams Wynn. Every significant landowner within a ten mile radius of Wrexham was a member of the Cycle Club.

The difference between the Jacobites of Wales and Scotland, however, was that when the Old Pretender did finally arrive, those north of the border quickly took up arms in . Welsh Jacobites sat silently by, meeting to drink and talk treason but not to actually to perform it - which was probably just as well, for them, as both rebellions ended in utter disaster.

Outbreaks of violence like the Wrexham riots were a rare occurrence. Despite the fact that the disturbances went on well into 1716, Sir Watkin never revealed his hand and, as a result, he was never caught up in the aftermath of the failed rebellion. And the Cycle Club? It continued to meet, usually in the Eagles Hotel in the middle of Wrexham, for the next 150 years, a more than merry dining club - but one spiced with a fair degree of treason.

The Cycle Club was not the only secret Jacobite organisation to exist in Wales. In Montgomeryshire there was a group known as 'The 27' while at Talgarth in 1727 a meeting of local Jacobite sympathisers actually ended up with having to appear before a local magistrate to explain their actions.

In Pembrokeshire a Jacobite group known as The Sea Sergeants continued to meet until 1762. There were 24 sergeants in this group which may well have had connections with freemasonry and with smuggling - always a popular pastime in the far west of Wales. Their symbol was a dolphin set within a star but as they d their meetings in the local paper their commitment to the revolutionary cause has to be questioned.

When Charles Edward Stuart, the Young Pretender, landed in Scotland in 1745 (without the expected French army to back him up) Sir Watkin Williams Wynn and his friends were cautious not to commit themselves. They would rise, they decided, but only if there was a strong French army to ensure success. Bonnie Prince Charlie expected the Welsh Jacobites to come out in but, in the end, Sir Watkin and his cronies did what they did best: they added another verse to their favourite drinking song.

One Welshman was made of sterner stuff. This was David Morgan from Penygraig outside Quakers Yard. ionate about the Jacobite cause, he obtained a captain's commission in the army of the Young Pretender but was captured and executed for treason. It was a grisly death, hanging, drawing and quartering, and then his head displayed on Temple Bar in London.

Given the possibility of an end like that it's hardly surprising that most Welsh Jacobites covered their tracks most effectively. They never tired of ceremony and symbolism, as shown in their secret societies with their special rituals and toasting glasses. But solid deeds? They had only to think of the terrible end of David Morgan to put them off that. Much safer to keep their sympathies to themselves and enjoy a few glasses of wine with convivial companions.

Find out more about Welsh Jacobites on The Past Master, the BBC Wales history programme, broadcast on Sunday 9 January 2011 at 5.30pm.

2011-01-04T09:08:59+00:00

Wales is certainly not lacking when it comes to stories and tales of kings or great warriors. From the mythological heroes of the Mabinogion, where legend mixes easily with reality, to genuine historical figures like the Lord Rhys or Llywelyn the Great, there are so many to choose from. Yet one of the greatest is ed, not so much for his prowess as a warrior but from the laws and statutes he commissioned and put into practice in a time of peace and security.

That man was Hywel Dda, Hywel the Good as he might be called in English. And it could be argued that his laws and reforms, laid down in the mid-10th century, have had more effect than those of any Welsh ruler, before or afterwards.

Hywel Dda was the son of Rhodri Mawr, another great Welsh prince who, during his period in power at the end of the ninth century, managed to unite large parts of the country under his dynamic and thrusting leadership. As a result of this the Saxon incursions into Wales were restricted for many years. While Rhodri's efforts kept the Norsemen at bay, the modern-day country of England began to take shape as the various kingdoms across Offa's Dyke gradually developed and merged into something like a unified state.

In Wales, it was a different matter. Everything was fine while Rhodri was alive but once he died, his lands were divided amongst his six sons, as custom demanded. Unable to stand alone, most of these Welsh territories or kingdoms soon declared homage to the English kings and, theoretically at least, the Welsh people became subjects of the English monarchy.

Hywel Dda became king of Seisyllwg - roughly speaking the modern day counties of Ceredigion and Carmarthen - in the year 900. Through a marriage alliance he quickly acquired the area known as Dyfed and this, along with his original possessions, created the kingdom of Deheubarth. Hywel did not stop there and, in time, seized Gwynedd and Powys so that until his death in 949 a huge portion of Wales was once more united under a single ruler.

With his kingdom secure from raiding Saxons - and from the power of England - Hywel set about reforming or at least codifying the customs and practices from the various regions of Wales and turning them into a single law. These were the famous Cyfraith Hywel Dda, the Laws of Hywel Dda.

The traditional story is that Hywel called representatives from all his cantrefs to a convention, held at one of his hunting lodges. This was Ty Gwyn in Whitland. The date of the meeting remains a little unclear although it probably took place over the Lent period sometime in the late 940s. The meeting lasted for six weeks while the laws were proposed, discussed and then set down. The old laws were studied, the useful ones retained and the inappropriate ones discarded. And, of course, new ones were written.

How true that story is, remains a matter of conjecture. The earliest existing copies of Hywel's Laws date from the twelfth century, 200 years later. They are copies of the original documents, 80 manuscripts in Latin and Welsh - and two of them, Gwentian Brut and Brut Ieuan, might even have been copied or written as late as the 18th century. Certainly all of the Laws, as they are seen today, contain additions made many years after Hywel's death.

Despite these reservations the Laws, as we know them, do contain much material that was written during Hywel's reign. And many of them are extremely enlightened. According to the Laws marriage was considered an agreement, not a holy sacrament and divorce was permitted by common consent. Precedence was to be given to a woman's claim in any case of rape.

There was to be no punishment for theft - provided the sole purpose of the offence was to stay alive. Under these Laws compensation for the victim was felt to be far more important than any possible or potential punishment of the offender. Illegitimate children received exactly the same rights as legitimate sons and daughters. There were many more, covering the whole range of Welsh life and society.

There is no doubt that the Laws of Hywel Dda were insightful and enlightened. Quite how much Hywel had to do with their compilation will never be known but he was a well-read and intelligent man and so it is quite likely that he had more than a little involvement. He was on good with Alfred the Great, the king of Wessex, and inspired by Alfred's example, Hywel had undertaken a pilgrimage to Rome long before he began codifying Welsh Laws. This was no petty Prince, concerned only with his own local glory. This was a man of vision and integrity.

After Hywel's death in 949 Wales quickly fell back into being a disparate and warring state, threatened by the growing power of the Saxons on the one hand and by the gathering might of England on the other. The one thing that did remain, however, was the series of Laws that the king had brought into use.

Hywel Dda's Laws were enforced in Wales for several centuries. Not until Henry VIII ed the Acts of Union in the 16th century did they finally disappear. They are ed, now, as a series of legal documents that provided justice and comion for all. Modern day enthusiasts or historians can visit the Hywel Dda Heritage Centre in Whitland where extracts and examples have been mounted on slate and stone. It is a fitting tribute for one of Wales' most renowned rulers.

2010-12-30T11:48:13+00:00

Of all the great characters in Welsh history - and there are many - none is more unusual, more fascinating and more downright bizarre than Evan Morgan, the last Viscount Tredegar.

Evan succeeded to the title in 1934 but by then his reputation for outlandish behaviour had been well established. Born in 1893, by the beginning of the First World War Evan Morgan was abroad in society. Over the next 30 years he created the myth of wildness and extravagance that has lasted until today.

A poor poet and painter, he was nevertheless adviser on art to the Royal Family. He dabbled on the artistic fringes of society and Queen Mary referred to him as her favourite bohemian. He was also something of a favourite with Lloyd George and was a great influence on Brendan Bracken, Churchill's right hand man. Those were the more acceptable sides to his character and behaviour.

At his palatial Tredegar House, just on the edge of Newport, he kept a menagerie of wild animals, including a boxing kangaroo and whole flocks of birds that easily and effortlessly did his bidding. More often than not the animals lived inside the house rather than outside. His friends included writers like Aldous Huxley and GK Chesterton, artists such as Augustus John and, above all, the great 'black magician' Aleister Crowley.

Known as 'the Black Monk', Evan was an expert in the occult and even built himself a 'magik room' - the spelling was deliberate - at Tredegar House. Crowley visited him many times, and declared the room the best equipped he had ever seen. Crowley, known throughout Europe as the 'Great Beast', took part in many weird and perhaps terrifying rituals at Tredegar Park and christened Evan 'adept of adepts'. Sometimes those rituals frightened even Crowley.

During the Second World War Evan was a high ranking officer in MI8, his particular responsibility being the monitoring of carrier pigeons. When he foolishly and carelessly let slip the departmental secrets - to two girl guides, would you believe - Evan was court martialled and was lucky to get away without a term of imprisonment, or even the firing squad.

In retaliation Evan Morgan called Aleister Crowley to Tredegar House to take part in a cursing ritual on his commanding officer. Whatever Evan said or did it frightened Crowley so much that he left before the process was complete. And, amazingly, Evan's CO soon contracted some mysterious illness and nearly died!

Despite his openly acknowledged homosexuality Evan was twice married, to actress Lois Sturt and to the Russian Princess Olga Dolgorouky. Neither marriage was a success and Evan continued to flaunt and entertain his male lovers in hotel bedrooms across Europe.

As if that was not enough, he was able to put his obsession with the occult on hold for a short period while he converted to Catholicism, becoming Chamberlain to Popes Benedict XV and Pius XI. He went to study at the English College in Rome - although the amount of studying he did was limited in the extreme - and was soon a well known figure around Rome, driving through the city in a Rolls Royce that had a portable altar in the back.

The stories of Evan Morgan's behaviour are legend but perhaps the most mysterious and intriguing episode in his life came in 1932. That year he was invited to a small private dinner and meeting at a restaurant in Bad Wiesse, just outside Munich. Nothing unusual in that, you might say - except that you then look at the other guests. They included Rudolph Hess, the deputy of what was fast becoming the most significant political party in , right wing British artist Sir Francis Rose, Ernst Rohm - head of Hitler's SA or Brownshirts - and his deputy Edmund Heines.

What was discussed at the meeting will never be known but all of the diners were ferociously right wing in their politics. Many of them were gay and a large number were fascinated by the occult. This was the period just before Hitler came to power and it would not be stretching things too far to suggest that the emergent Nazi party was trying to find out how things were run in Britain, perhaps by courting one of the wealthiest aristocrats in the country.

Evan Morgan continued to maintain distant links with the Nazis. Some years later Herman Göring was on the Isle of Capri for a meeting with Italian dictator Mussolini. In the room next door was Evan Morgan. Evan's parrot, a bird that used to sit obediently on his shoulder as he walked around, apparently bit Goring on the nose - much to the displeasure of the portly German.

During the war, after he had parachuted into Britain in an attempt to end the conflict, Rudolph Hess was imprisoned at Abergavenny, not too many miles distant from Tredegar House. If Hess and Evan knew each other - however slightly - they would surely have met. Hess might even have come to Tredegar House as he was given a fair degree of freedom and latitude to journey around eastern Wales. Was Evan Morgan one of the people Hess was hoping to use as an intermediary in his bid to end hostilities? It is a fascinating speculation.

Unfortunately, it will remain just speculation. Like so much that went on in his life, we will never know what was really going on in the mind of Evan Morgan. He remains one of Wales' greatest and most memorable eccentrics.

Listen to the story of Evan Morgan and that meeting in Munich on The Past Master, the BBC Wales history programme, broadcast on Sunday 2 January 2011 at 5.30pm.

2010-08-13T11:51:43+00:00

There's another chance to listen to Past Master on BBC Radio Wales over the coming weeks.

Presenter and BBC Wales History blogger, Phil Carradice delves into the famous and not-so-famous happenings and events in the history of Wales.

Listen again online as Phil explores the remarkable life of Welsh based cinematic pioneer William Haggar. A showman, singer, actor and filmmaker, he ran both a travelling cinema (bioscope) and travelling theatre before opening his permanent cinemas.

You can read Phil's earlier blog on the William Haggar as well as some of the great memories of Haggars cinema in Pembroke that people have commented on the blog. Feel free to add your own memories.

Phil Carradice and former employees of Haggar's Cinema in Pembroke

If you'd like to find out more about Welsh film history visit the BBC Wales Arts website.

Past Master is next broadcast on Monday 16 August at 6.30pm on BBC Radio Wales when Phil tells the story of Ralph Hancock, a Cardiff insurance clerk who created fabulous roof gardens in 1930s New York and London. Early birds can also catch the programme on Wednesday 18 August at 5.30am.

Feel free to comment! If you want to have your say, on this or any other BBC blog, you will need to sign in to your BBC iD . If you don't have a BBC iD , you can here - it'll allow you to contribute to a range of BBC sites and services using a single .

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2010-03-25T09:31:08+00:00

"The term witch has meant many things to many people over the years," says Dr Kathleen Olsen of the University of Wales, Bangor. "But for most of the Middle Ages the word really meant the local healer, someone who made poultices and medicines and perhaps had charms or spells for healing cattle and other farm animals."

Be that as it may, the powers of darkness certainly had an appeal to some people. When, in the early years of the sixteenth century, Tangwlyst ferch Glyn was accused by the Bishop of St David's of living in sin, she fashioned a figure of the Bishop and called down a curse upon him. The Bishop fell ill but the affair fizzled out - the only known instance of a poppet doll being made and used in Wales.

Tangwlyst was lucky, a few years later witchcraft was a matter for the State. A statute in 1563 made witchcraft a capital offence and from that point on more and more people were called out as witches. Often this was little more than a handy way of labelling some unfortunate woman who was different from everybody else - or, sometimes, as a way of exacting revenge when the wise man or wise woman failed to cure an ache or heal a hurt animal.

"Witchcraft comes into the historical record in 1594," comments historian Richard Suggett, "when Gwen ferch Ellis from Bettws is indicted and subsequently executed for witchcraft. It's the first recorded instance of what, I suppose, you can call black witchcraft. She was a healer but for some reason she was persuaded by another woman, called Jane Conway, to leave a charm at Gloddaeth, the home of Sir Thomas Mostyn, a sworn enemy of Jane Conway."

Gwen was convicted of murder by witchcraft and duly hung. There were many other accusations of witchcraft - but proving them was another matter. Most of the women spent brief periods in prison before being released when the case against them collapsed. The National History Museum at St Fagans has a fascinating collection of witch related artefacts - including a bottle that is filled with pins.

"It would have contained urine," says Lisa Tallis of the museum, "urine from the victim. The idea of the pins was to cause the witch, who had put on the curse, to suffer excruciating pain and thereby break the spell." The laws against witches were repealed in 1736 but the very name witch still has the power to cause a shiver of apprehension and fear in many people - particularly on dark winter nights when the powers of darkness might just be wandering abroad!

Learn more about Welsh witches on Past Master, Sunday 28 March, 2pm, BBC Radio Wales
Do you have any local tales of witches? We'd love to hear from you. Leave a comment below.

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2010-03-19T15:35:45+00:00

"He was a brilliant student," says historian Patrick Wright. "He got a 1st in French at Cambridge and taught himself Russian. When he left University he worked as a journalist and as Secretary to Lloyd George.

He visited regularly but Russia, where his mother had once lived, was where he really wanted to go." In the late 1920s this was not possible - it was barely 10 years since the Communists had killed the Czar and relations between western powers and the Soviet Union were, to say the least, frosty.

However, in 1930 a diplomatic thaw gave Gareth his chance and over the next four years he made three visits to the Soviet Union. What he saw horrified him.

With his knowledge of Russian, Gareth was able to get off the beaten path and look at people and places no other westerner possibly could. He roamed the country, met the people and saw for himself that Stalin's wonderful "new world," particularly in the Ukraine, was very far from ideal. Murder, mass deportation, burning of farms, deprivation of essential food and medical aid, Gareth Jones witnessed it all.

On his return he wrote about the conditions of the Ukraine, where the persecution of the people eventually resulted in ten million deaths - state directed genocide on a massive scale.

Stalin and his government were not best pleased and banned him from the country. Even many western journalists howled him down. Men like Pulitzer Prize winner Walter Duranty, desperate to maintain his good relations with the Soviet Union, wrote "There is no death from starvation in the Ukraine - but there is widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition."

Gareth Jones did not back down in the face of this criticism. He was determined that the world should hear about the famine that had taken, and would continue to take, so many lives. And his journalistic career continued unabated. He went to America and was a spectator to the great Depression. Then he travelled to report on events in where he actually flew in the same plane as Adolf Hitler.

"If this aeroplane should crash," he wrote, "the whole history of Europe would be changed. For a few feet away sits Adolf Hitler, Chancellor of and leader of the most volcanic nationalist awakening the world has ever seen - - - He does not look impressive. His handshake was firm, but his large outstanding eyes seemed emotionless as he greeted me."

Sadly, Gareth himself did not have long left to live. His curiosity in world events next took him to China.

He travelled to Inner Mongolia. And here, on the eve of his 30th birthday, he was captured by bandits and killed.

Gareth Jones. (Image provided by www.margaretcolley.co.uk)

It was a troubled time in this part of the world and there is no doubt that Chinese leaders knew what Gareth had uncovered in Russia. Whether or not his death was politically motivated will probably never be known - and if it was, who or what was the moving force behind the murder?

The story of Gareth Jones is told on Past Master, Sunday 21 March, 2pm, BBC Radio Wales.
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