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The Royal Commission was set up in 1908, based on the far-sighted recognition that Wales needed a record of its historic buildings and archaeology to sit alongside the collections of the National Library of Wales and the National Museum (both founded in 1907). In the last 115 years, the core duties of the Royal Commission, set out in our Royal Warrant, have stood the test of time remarkably well. In essence, we are required to ‘provide for the survey and recording of ancient and historical monuments and constructions connected with, or illustrative of, the contemporary culture, civilisation, and conditions of the life of the people in Wales from the earliest times’.
The Commission was renowned in the past for undertaking comprehensive pan-Wales surveys of a building- or monument-type, resulting in major works of reference that were then used as the basis for listing and scheduling decisions, as well as feeding into historic environment records and the planning system. These were very demanding projects, requiring substantial resources and often taking – literally – a lifetime to produce. Today, with far fewer staff and much-reduced budgets, Commission staff have had to be much nimbler in delivering the Royal Warrant, with a strong emphasis on working in partnership with other people or organisations.
In addition, RCAHMW now places much more emphasis on the second part of our mandate: ‘the life of the people’. Today, we are just as concerned with the social history of the structures we record, as we are with the physical buildings and monuments. Increasingly, we seek to record the ways in which people interact with buildings and landscapes; the meanings, values, and memories that they associate with them; and the ways in which these have evolved over time.
A good example of both principles – partnership and the human story – is the support we gave to David Gwyn in his pioneering research that led to the Commission’s award-winning book Welsh Slate: archaeology and history of an industry (2015; see also CA 306 and 379). This not only described the quarries and factories, the transport systems and settlements, the extant machinery, and the technological processes that led to Welsh domination of the international slate trade for 100 years, it paid equal attention to the heritage of the slate communities: the politics, the self-improvement ethos, the poetry and song, and the religious practices. It also highlighted the crucial role of slate workers in keeping the Welsh language alive – this was, as David emphasised, the only industry in the UK that was conducted almost entirely in a language other than English.
When we came to launch David’s book, past and present powerfully intersected. The National Trust offered the use of Penrhyn Castle as a venue: a 19th-century neo-Norman edifice which was built by the wealthy family that owned the majority of the slate mines in north-west Wales. We invited John Ogwen (an actor whose roles included in Doctor Who in 1985) to read extracts from the book in Welsh and English, but he was initially unwilling, because people in north Wales still associate the castle with tyrannical behaviour and the Penrhyn Lockout of 1900 to 1903. This holds the record for being Britain’s longest-lasting industrial dispute, in which, rather than negotiate over pay and conditions with the slate-workers, Lord Penrhyn and his agent locked the gates of the Penrhyn Quarry, depriving some 2,800 men of their wages for three years (see ‘Sherds’, CA 354).
In retaliation, the people of north Wales have since boycotted the castle, vowing never to visit, even though it has been in the ownership of the National Trust since 1951. In the end, John decided to ask his son – the next generation – whether he should break the taboo. The answer was ‘of course: Lord Penrhyn is long gone and the castle is our heritage now’. John therefore agreed not only to help launch the book, but he also went on Welsh- and English-language TV to spread the message that it was time for the community to ‘invade the castle and take it back for ourselves’. The National Trust has subsequently integrated the story of the Lockout into its presentation of the castle, along with the acknowledgement that Lord Penrhyn’s wealth was derived from sugar plantations in Jamaica that used enslaved labour.
Since then, Penrhyn Castle has become not just a locally significant heritage asset, it is also now one component of the extensive Slate Landscape of North-west Wales, which was given World Heritage status as a cultural landscape in 2021 (see CA 379). David’s unsurpassed knowledge of the slate industry, combined with the expertise of Commission staff (and the stunning pictures taken by RCAHMW’s aerial photographer Toby Driver), resulted in the two-volume dossier of evidence that played a major role in persuading UNESCO’s inspectors of the merits of the application.
The Commission is currently working with partners such as Cyngor Gwynedd (Gwynedd Council) and Cadw to survey the heritage assets in the World Heritage Site, many of which remain under-recorded (not least the underground workings that constitute such a large but invisible element). We are working, too, to promote slate-heritage tourism to generate economic benefit for local businesses and the community.
A panoply of projects
Boosting tourism is also an objective of our Pendinas project, this time in partnership with Dyfed Archaeological Trust, and partly funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Cadw (see CA 383). The idea for the initiative arose from members of Penparcau Community Forum, who came to the Commission wanting to know more about the hillfort that is such a dominant feature of their village. Because the hillfort is a Site of Special Scientific Interest as well as a scheduled monument, we have been able to combine archaeological excavation and geophysical and drone survey with bracken- and gorse-clearing to improve the site for the rare plants, birds, small mammals, insects, and other invertebrates that have a home on the hilltop. By running open days, guided walks, storytelling sessions, and art classes, we are raising the profile of the monument as a visitor attraction.
Our most ambitious partnership project to-date, though, has been CHERISH (Climate, Heritage, and Environments of Reefs, Islands, and Headlands), a six-year, European Union-funded undertaking led by the Royal Commission in partnership with the Discovery Programme: Centre for Archaeology and Innovation Ireland, Aberystwyth University’s Department of Geography, and the Earth Sciences and Geological Survey, Ireland. Begun in 2017, the project’s key objective was to increase understanding of the impacts (past, present, and near-future) of extreme weather events on the cultural heritage of the Irish Sea basin (see CA 324).
This work enabled us to employ innovative techniques to discover, assess, map, and monitor heritage assets on land and beneath the sea, as well as to observe what was happening to them over the course of the project (2017-2023). The four partners learned a huge amount from each other – not least how to distinguish between archaeological and ‘natural’ features as we cleaned up and recorded sections of newly eroded cliff-face alongside soil scientists from Aberystwyth University – all while suspended from firmly anchored ropes. We discovered, too, that the threat to coastal heritage did not just come from rising sea levels and wave erosion: increased rainfall was in some cases washing archaeological sites over the cliff edge and into the sea.
One of the sites that we targeted for further investigation was the hillfort at Dinas Dinlle, south of Caernarfon, which is being eroded at the rate of up to 2m a year. Using CHERISH project funds and grants from Cadw, the National Trust, and the Llyˆn Peninsula Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, we were able to run a community excavation with professional supervision provided by Gwynedd Archaeological Trust. This led to the discovery of a huge roundhouse, 43ft (13m) wide with walls 8ft (2.5m) thick, buried under 3ft (1m) of sand which is thought to have blown there during a sandstorm in AD 1330 (see CA 356, 391, and 403). Almost as much excitement was generated by the discovery of antique golf balls – a legacy of the use of the hilltop as a golf course a century ago – which attracted offers from collectors around the world hoping to buy them from us.
Another excavation funded by CHERISH was directed by DigVentures and undertaken by volunteers who worked very close to the sheer edges of the cliffs at the rapidly eroding Caerfai Promontory Fort in Pembrokeshire (see CA 400). This project succeeded in its aims of establishing the depth and extent of surviving archaeological resources, retrieving dating evidence for the fort, and examining the construction methods used to create the ramparts, as well as helping to pin down their chronology. One outcome was a vivid digital recreation of the appearance of the site in its prehistoric heyday, around 50 BC. Produced with the help of artists from Wessex Archaeology, it shows the defensive ramparts, deep ditches, and towered gateways that once protected this Iron Age site, with an interior filled with roundhouses and workshops where copper ore – mined from the sea cliffs below – was processed.
A funding lottery
The UK’s exit from the European Union has cut off this very valuable source of additional funding for our work. The Commission is no longer able to lead EU-funded projects and must rely on research institutions in EU-member countries asking us to partner with them. The CHERISH project established a strong and enduring relationship with our Irish partners, which we hope will lead to further projects in the future.
The National Lottery Heritage Fund, however, continues to be an important source of additional funding for the Commission’s work, especially in community engagement. An NLHF grant enabled the Commission, Cadw, and the four Welsh Archaeological Trusts to undertake a pioneering youth-engagement project, called ‘Unloved Heritage?’ (see ‘Sherds’, CA 353). The question mark was deliberate – we wanted to find out whether heritage was loved and valued by young people; if so, what did they value as heritage, and how would they like to record it for posterity?
The Commission formed a group who styled themselves as the CHYPs (the Ceredigion Heritage Youth Panel). They were fascinated by unconventional and overlooked aspects of heritage – especially Ceredigion’s many abandoned mines. With the help of the Cambrian Mines Trust and the Welsh Mines Preservation Trust, we explored workings above and below ground, which led to an ambitious project to excavate and record the remains of an upland lead-processing site near Bont-goch.
The owner of the nearby mine-manager’s house also gave permission for the CHYPs to record the building and its contents prior to its restoration. The house was a veritable time capsule, full of objects left behind when the last inhabitant moved out in 1956: furniture, clothing, kitchen equipment, diaries, and newspapers. The CHYPs catalogued and photographed everything to museum standards, then mounted an exhibition of artefacts from the farmhouse at the Aberystwyth Arts Centre during 2021, accompanied by a 72-page book that they wrote and illustrated: The Story of a House on a Hill.
From mines to military matters, an earlier NLHF-funded project enabled the Royal Commission to commemorate the forgotten U-boat war that took place around the Welsh Coast in the latter stages of the First World War. This time our partners were Bangor University, the Nautical Archaeology Society, and some 20 maritime museums and community groups across Wales. The project used the latest sonar-scanning and imaging techniques to reveal underwater wrecks from the Great War, and the Nautical Archaeology Society also ran two maritime field schools: one to record the 100-year-old wreck of the SS Leysian at Abercastle, the other to record the wreck of the Cartagena, a steam trawler built to search for mines around the Welsh coast, which now lies 6 miles off the coast at Traeth Bychan, Anglesey.
Among the many outcomes from the project was the rediscovery of the 105-year-old grave of the Nigerian seaman John Myers – one of many heroic sailors who lost their lives during the First World War when their ships were torpedoed by enemy submarines. John Myers is buried in the cemetery at Milford Haven. When we revealed his story, Simon Hancock, the curator of Haverfordwest Town Museum, set up a community fund for donations to pay for a headstone recording Myers’ bravery and his life of service.
In 2023, Welsh Government made some additional funds available for projects connected with the Anti-racist Wales Action Plan, and we successfully bid for a grant for our Welsh Asian Heritage project, which is designed to address the deficit in our understanding of the many diverse communities in Wales whose heritage has so far not been adequately acknowledged in the public record.
We have chosen to focus on the heritage of those 1,700 Asians who were expelled from Uganda in 1972, and who came to the Tonfanau resettlement camp, a former army base in Gwynedd. Many of them chose to settle in Wales, and we set out with the aim of recording the places in Wales that help to define the resulting Welsh Asian heritage (homes, places of worship, shops, businesses, social spaces, and significant landscapes). This acclaimed project has the potential to be the first of many celebrating the contribution of diaspora communities to the social, economic, and cultural life of the nation.
Co-creation is at the heart of the project, and we have established a series of monthly seminars that will provide a platform for wider debate around equality, migration, resilience, identity, culture, and heritage, addressed by leading academics, writers, social workers, activists, and policy-makers – perhaps not traditional territory for a heritage organisation, but it underlines our increasing emphasis on putting people back into the heritage story rather than the conventional emphasis on buildings, monuments, and landscapes.
Determined in their duties
None of this work means that we are neglecting our core Royal Warrant duties, and members of our survey team are busy recording heritage at risk – mainly buildings that are facing total or partial demolition. In recent years, we have focused on historic schools that are being replaced by new buildings that are considered to be more sustainable, on 20th-century architecture (such as the now-demolished BBC studios in Llandaff), and on the increasing number of places of worship that are being sold, emptied of their historic furnishings, and redeveloped. Only occasionally are we involved in reversing such damage but, in one such instance, we are currently working with the Foundation for Jewish Heritage to reconstruct the original appearance of the former synagogue in Merthyr Tydfil and to convert it into a heritage centre presenting the centuries-old history of the Jewish community of Wales (see CA 376).
Again, partnership is vital to this work. The Commission’s primary role is to provide the evidence about the historic environment that underpins decision-making by Cadw, Welsh Government, and local authority planners. If, as a result of planning decisions, there is the need for an archaeological assessment or a building record, that work is carried out by independent heritage contractors or the Welsh Archaeological Trusts (soon to be merged to form Heneb: the Trust for Welsh Archaeology).
To support this work, we are in the process of preparing technical guidance on digital survey (for example, laser-scanning and the use of drones) to encourage the use of these techniques and ensure that local authority conservation officers are aware of the full range of options available to them for requiring developers to pay for recording work to listed buildings, in the same way that they would have to pay to mitigate the impact on archaeology.
The number of listed buildings in Wales that are subject to development every year far exceeds the Commission’s capacity to record them all, and Heneb and commercial contractors are well placed to carry out this work. Their records are then added to the local Historic Environment Record (otherwise known as the HER, a database containing all the information about archaeological sites within a particular local authority region), which Heneb curates, joining the millions of building-, monument-, and landscape-records in the National Monuments Record of Wales, which is in our care. Access to the NMRW is via our online catalogue called Coflein, while Heneb’s portal, called Archwilio, provides access to the HERs.
Coflein gives a top-level description of the records in the NMRW, so those who want to go deeper into the records can use our online enquiries service or visit our Library and Search Room, which is housed in Aberystwyth within the National Library of Wales. To make it even easier to find historic environment information, we are pioneering an approach called Deep Mapping, in which maps dating back as far as the 16th century are superimposed on the Ordnance Survey base map, showing change and continuity in the landscape over time. Links to all kinds of records – photographs, survey drawings, written sources – are also embedded into the map, so that you can select a polygon and see everything known about the history and archaeology of that part of the landscape. The approach has won an award for innovative use of map data from the Ordnance Survey, and we are currently seeking funds to turn this into a Historical Atlas covering all of Wales.
These maps draw on our historic place-names lists, too, to show the names by which any and every part of the landscape has been known in the past – field names, as well as buildings and settlements. The use made of our place-names list by local authorities for naming new streets, as well as housing, industrial, and retail estates, is another example of the real-world value of the work that we do. In our annual reports, our lectures and events, and in reporting our delivery against a demanding set of key performance indicators, we constantly have to demonstrate our relevance and value for money, and the contribution we make to Welsh Government priorities, such as health and wellbeing, community cohesion, education, tourism, planning, and regeneration.
That we can hold our heads high and demonstrate outstanding achievement and value for money is down to a team of 30 creative and motivated professionals. We have shrunk to that level from 54 staff in 2013 because flat budgets and rising costs have led to posts being frozen and leavers not being replaced. This year (from April) we face a budget-cut of such magnitude that we will have to reduce the size of the team even further, and our capacity to continue with many elements of our work will be severely constrained. The next stage in the Commission’s long history is enveloped in uncertainty, but we will try to work out a collective solution with our colleagues in Cadw and Heneb that is in the best interests of the historic environment and the people of Wales.
All images: RCAHMW © Crown copyright, unless otherwise stated
