Cylchgronau Cymru

Chwiliwch trwy dros 450 o deitlau a 1.2 miliwn o dudalennau

The photographs are typical of the high standard maintained by the Gwynedd Archives Service. They are drawn from the Lister Collection, details of which appear in the Journal, which hopes to collect information on similar collections and help towards their preservation. Despite the Journal's title, the emphasis in this first issue is, perhaps inevitably, on Gwynedd. Future contributors must redress the balance and widen the scope to include other Welsh counties and fulfil the editors' intentions, but all interested in the history of Wales and in maritime history must wish the new venture well. P. K. CRIMMIN Royal Holloway College, London THE HISTORY OF Llantrisant. By Dillwyn Lewis. Starling Press, Risca, 1975. Pp. 144. £ 1.75. The reorganisation of local government in Wales in 1974 has prompted the publication of a number of histories of individual towns and districts, not least by The Starling Press. The History of Llantrisant, by Dillwyn Lewis, had its origins in a booklet which appeared in 1966, but it is now much expanded and more profusely illustrated than its parent. This is a work of local piety and patriotism for the local reader who is curious about the historical associations of his district or whose emotions are tugged by nostalgia; it is less a book for the professional historian who seeks to record and explain the development of the medieval Glamorgan borough of Llantrisant and the industrialisation of its surrounding area. Hence, it describes the physical changes of the past 150 years, the town's outstanding personalities, and some local reflection of wider events. As a result, it becomes something of a compendium of assorted, undigested lore and fact about Llantrisant and those neighbouring communities of Talbot Green, Pontyclun, Miskin, Talygarn and Beddau which grew up later. Nevertheless, by picking his way through the mass, the reader is able to gather sprigs of information from which to construct an intelligible picture of Llantrisant's life in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, at least. Excerpts from parish registers and vestry books, court leet records and school reports, bring ordinary folk to the fore: their poverty, hardly relieved by local charities; mining conditions, producing nick-names for the coal levels like 'Strip and at it' and 'Bug and flea'; ill-clad voters in the 1928 election, venturing to the polls only after dark; and the first workhouse in Glamorgan opened in 1784. That the book is intended to be a proud memorial of Llantrisant's past is reflected in the faded, stylised photographs of local worthies- policemen, clergy, councillors, brass bands and soccer teams-but a few gems are present too, notably the toll cottages built in 1785, and Llantrisant's fair day at the beginning of the twentieth century, with cattle nosing their way into the front gardens of the old cobbled streets. Administratively, the corporation of Llantrisant was abolished in 1883, the R.D.C. in 1974. The area is now part of the larger Borough of Taff-Ely. RALPH A. GRIFFITHS Swansea