Submitted on behalf of Barbara Roberts, Aberaeron. No need to go far. No further than Aberystwyth, to the Ceredigion Museum at the Coliseum. There was an opportunity to hear some of the stories behind the objects; to handle some of them, and deduce what they were used for; and to marvel at the skills and ingenuity of our predecessors. There were many questions to ask: When was it built? By whom? What for? The objects reflect the life and times of Ceredigion. We heard about J.T. Thomas from Llangeitho moving his family and his cows to London to sell milk fom his wheelbarrow; of John Roderick Rhys winning the crown in the National Eisteddfod for his poem about the depopulation of Mynydd Bach; of the local sea captains who travelled the world. We saw the smithy of David James of Llanwnnen; and a video of the early cinema goers; and landscape paintings of Hafod. It was possible to learn of emigration, of rebellion, of voyages and ship building, and of how the earliest tourists saw our landscape. And there was more: a temporary exhibition from the British Museum showcasing some of their treasures from all over the world and the reaction of six our local artists, the Global Majority to empire and colonialism. And then there was tea and cake in the cafe. Don’t miss our next event. Barbara

My Harbourmaster story began over 50 years ago at Easter 1971 when I asked Major Neville Evans (later to become my father in law) for a bar job over the summer holidays. He asked if I knew how to make a Snowball! Yes, I replied advocaat, lemonade and of course brandy. I got the job! After I’d finished my finals at college, I came down early summer to start my bar job before I took up my new teaching post in London in September. I stayed with my aunt and uncle in Alban Square (Ceri and Dai Griffiths). It was a busy summer – Aberaeron still played holiday host to the Wakes Weeks in the Midlands and the Miners’ Fortnight in South Wales. The wall running along the Quay outside the Harbourmaster became the ‘longest bar in Wales’ according to David and his father, Neville Evans. I spent a great deal of time serving behind the bar, collecting glasses and empty food plates from people who decided lunch on the longest bar in Wales just had to be done! L-R: David & Sian Evans (on horse) outside HM 1970/71, Horses & Hounds outside HM 1970/71, Neville & Hilda Evans behind the HM Bar 1971. All too soon September arrived and I returned to London and the excitement of my new teaching post in North London. I knew I’d come back to Aberaeron to visit my relatives at some point in the future but never thought the Harbourmaster would become my home. 1973 saw me back in Alban Square recuperating after a bad car accident and David and I went out for dinner and a year later saw us married in Holy Trinity church with the Wedding breakfast in the Feathers and an evening bunfight in the Harbourmaster! At the end of the school term in July 1974 I moved into the Harbourmaster – my new home. There were seven bedrooms in the Harbourmaster together with a large Residents’ Lounge on the first floor overlooking the harbour. The attic which can be identified today by the small window in the eaves at the front of the building, consisted of two rooms. The Harbourmaster had been built around 1807 as the premises for the actual first harbour master of the new port of Aberaeron. The window in the eaves was (so the story goes) one of his look out points to check on the comings and goings on the dock side. The building later became the Red Lion Hotel and then its name was changed to the Harbourmaster Hotel just before my in-laws, Neville and Hilda Evans, bought it in 1970. There was a window inserted on the side wall of the building at the attic level which offered a glorious sea view. It was impossible to get furniture up to the attic (which became a mini flat for David and me) as the stairs narrowed considerably and there was not enough headroom to get a sofa up. So the side attic window was taken out; a pulley and hoist was erected and the said sofa made its way up the side wall, through the window space and the window put back! L-R: Rebuilding the back of the HM 1970/71 (x2), Rebuilding the porch 1970/71, Nearing completion, Work complete (1971), Neville, Sandra & Owain Evans 1977. People often asked if the building was haunted. It had had its fair share of tragedies over the years. In the 1960’s, the then landlord, Joe Woodcock had taken his dog plus the dog belonging to one of the hotel residents for a late night walk. The dogs found their way back but Mr Woodcock sadly didn’t; it was thought he’d fallen into the harbour. Another story told to me was that someone staying at the hotel in what was then Room 7, had taken his own life there. I slept in that room for many years and at no time felt uncomfortable or uneasy. Indeed, the building and its wonderful staircase usually gave me a warm and comfortable feeling. But there was one occasion in early 1976 when I did hear strange noises. I was alone in the attic flat one Sunday evening. David and his parents had gone to the Yacht Club but I was tired and pregnant and had decided not to go. Something disturbed me and I opened the door to the flat but then couldn’t hear anything. I just put the noises down to the sounds that an old building often makes. We later found that the back window in the bar had been jemmied open and the large Bell’s Whisky bottle which people put change into for the RNLI had been stolen. That was the strange noises I’d heard, not anything of the supernatural! We saw all manner of natural mishaps from the beer cellar being flooded and many bottles of wine and spirits floating around the basement. Alcwyn Jenkins paddling a small dinghy around to the side door to collect his wife Mary who’d been working in our restaurant. The tremendous snow of January 1982 cutting Aberaeron off from the outside world for a couple of weeks. Waking up on the first day of that snow storm convinced that the children would be going to school but then opening the side door to be met with a wall of snow standing at around 6 foot tall! L-R: Dray service 1979, Snow which lasted 2 weeks Jan 1982 (x2), Lifeboat bringing provisions into the harbour. Wyn Crustyn (the baker) had run out of bread flour due to the snow storm (Jan 1982). The Harbourmaster became a summer focal point for so many people; the starting point of the Summer Carnival; the Adamant Band playing its way up the Quay. The games of Spoof they played in the bar (I still don’t know the rules – even if there are any!). The traditional songs resounding through the downstairs of the building. The voluntary firemen coming in for a pint after their training session. Aberaeron Ladies Circle having their dinner meetings there every month. The Winter Dinner Clubs held every month. Thursday evenings with the riders and horses which came down from Gilfach for a drink on the Quay. The people who worked with us. The friendships that were made there last till today. My three children spent their formative years there; the building was their playground – how they survived that staircase as toddlers is amazing! It was our home until April 1982 and we left it with heavy hearts but knowing it was the right time to do so.

Another heads-up to locals about an upcoming event arranged by those lovely people from the Friends of Memorial Hall. Further to the blurb in the poster, Huw's working biography as a marine biogeographer is available for reading on the British Antarctic Survey website (link below). https://www.bas.ac.uk/profile/hjg/ It makes interesting reading and includes links to polar-related projects, publications, blogs, etc. Below is an excerpt from his biography: I am a marine biogeographer with an interest in the Polar Regions and completed a PhD in Southern Ocean marine biogeography with the British Antarctic Survey and Open University. I mostly study the animals that live at the bottom of the sea around Antarctica and the Arctic. I also study the potential effects of marine protected areas, climate change, human impacts and pollution on these unique ecosystems. I have worked for the British Antarctic Survey since the year 2000 and have participated in several expeditions to Antarctica and the Arctic , studying everything from the intertidal to the deep sea. Looks like an interesting talk for natural history fans ... that's pretty much everyone :) Please wrap up warm as it's now officially autumn ... brrr! Enjoy, Steve

Despite the recent dearth of good fishing around Cardigan Bay, two of our long standing Cymdeithas trustees (and other townsfolk) were recently snagged by the UK media, grilled with questions about local seafaring traditions, then released back to the wilds of Aberaeron to fight another day. Apologies for the unashamed click-bait but this is a just a quick heads-up to advise readers that Cymdeithas president Elinor Gwilym and Cymdeithas publicity officer Phill Davies were interviewed by BBC Radio 4 about the Aberaeron Mackerel Fiesta and, more generally, how other maritime activities have shaped the local community. The content is due to be aired on Thursday 12th September at 3pm on the BBC Radio 4 Open Country programme. The 30 minute episode will also be repeated on Saturday 14th September at 6.07am. For anyone missing these live broadcasts the programme will be made available for catch-up listening on the BBC Sounds app on mobile phones and tablets. A summary of the programme content is provided below as well as a link to the BBC Radio 4 website which provides complete information about this episode. Aberaeron's Mackerel Festival: Open Country Jon Gower is in Aberaeron, Ceredigion, to explore how mackerel (and other fish) have shaped the people and landscape. Jon joins the pretty harbour town’s annual mackerel festival, where the humble mackerel is given thanks at the end of its season with a funeral procession, complete with wailing widows, a blessing from a local reverend and, most years, a sunset cremation on the beach. Here, Jon meets local townsfolk to hear how fishing connects the generations far back in their families and how livelihoods, mackerel populations and the landscape of this town are changing with the climate crisis. He also hears from Phill Smith and Elinor Gwilym, from the Cymdeithas Aberaeron Society, who talk about how the charming aesthetic of the town is influenced by its connection to fishing, with the colourful harbour houses originally built for sea captains. Producer: Eliza Lomas for BBC Audio, Bristol https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0022swv Great to see further publicity for Aberaeron and many thanks to all who organise and support the Mackerel Fiesta! Regards, Steve

We all love seeing the carnival Queen and her attendants at the annual carnival. More recently we have had a king too. The cover picture shows this year's float with our current queen; Beca Lewis Jones and her attendants. But do we know who the queens and their attendants have been over the years? We have some photos from the past in the photo gallery on this site but often they are unnamed or we don't have the date. Rhodri Jones has begun to develop a list and has kindly shared it with CAS. This is what he has so far: Wouldn't it be good to have a complete record. Can you help us add to it by filling in the blanks and providing information from earlier years too? Can you identify any of the people in our photos in the carnival section or the year they were taken? Do you have any other photos you could share with us. The photo below is of Ann Jones ( "Ann Pen Cei") one of the early Carnival Queens. Do you know the date?  Let's try and get as full a record as possible.

Literary Lampeter was the venue for our June trip. We spent a fascinating afternoon in the university's special collections archive. We learned about the origins of the collection and were privileged to be able to turn the pages of these historic documents, some of which dated back to the 1300s. A number of historic documents and images of Aberaeron had also been specially selected for us to view. For those of you who were unable to join us, there is an open day on 28th September 2024 - see the link at the bottom of the article that follows. Thanks to Ruth Gooding, Special Collections Librarian, for hosting the event and for providing the information below: The University of Wales Trinity Saint David (UWTSD) Special Collections contain 35,000 volumes, almost all donated to St David’s College, Lampeter, before 1850.  The college was founded by Thomas Burgess, bishop of St Davids from 1803 to 1825. Welsh speakers, without the resources to attend Oxford or Cambridge, were to be given a good education, equipping them for the Anglican priesthood.  The first of UWTSD’s three major collections is Burgess’ own working library.  Its greatest treasures include a 13th century manuscript of the Latin Bible, copied by a lame monk, G. de Fécamp, and a copy of the Golden Legend, a medieval book of saints’ lives, printed in 1498 by William Caxton’s successor Wynkyn de Worde. The second collection was donated by a retired East India Company surgeon, Thomas Phillips. Phillips gave 22,000 volumes in sixty consignments, dispatching them from London by sea to Carmarthen, and then overland to Lampeter.  They included two 15th century Books of Hours, and most of Lampeter’s 69 incunables, (volumes printed in or before 1500). There is a fascinating assortment of early atlases, travellers’ writings, architects’ volumes, botanicals, medical books, and much, much else. The third collection consists of 9,000 17th and 18th century tracts and pamphlets, amassed by three generations of the Bowdler family. These cheaply produced items, designed to be ephemeral, give a fascinating picture of life from the civil wars of the 1640s onwards. As well as a great deal of religion, the subjects covered include astrology, witchcraft, the South Sea Bubble, 17th century conspiracy theories and the evils of coffee drinking! Special Collections will be taking part in CADW’s annual heritage festival, Open Doors. We will be displaying some of our treasures on the afternoon of Saturday 28 September, 12 noon to 4 pm . There are more details on the CADW www site at https://cadw.gov.wales/open-doors-roderic-bowen-library-and-archives-uwtsd

Congratulations from Cymdeithas! On 4th July, Professor Jane Aaron was announced as the winner of the Creative Non-Fiction Award in the Wales Book of the Year 2024 Competition. For those of you who attended her talk on Cranogwen in February I am sure you will all heartily agree that this is absolutely well deserved. And many of us are also looking forward to the English Version of the book which Jane is working on now. Our local Welsh heroine has long deserved more publicity and Jane is thankfully doing so much to address this.

An Englishman in South Wales: Please go to digital stories in the Heritage section of this website to see the fascinating short film about artist George Chapman, produced in 1960 as part of the Monitor series of documentaries. You will see scenes of Aberaeron and George's then home at Pier Cottage, hear his voice, see his influences, learn about how his fascination for the valleys and its people developed and see the techniques he used in his work. Thank you to George's granddaughter, Natalie Chapman, for sharing this video with us.

A public consultation is underway to move our library from County Hall. John Morgan Howell (pictured below) would be turning in his grave! Usually referred to as J.M.H., he was  Portland House’s most famous resident. This local business man did so much for Aberaeron. He was a liberal politician, journalist and poet, precentor, deacon & choirmaster at Tabernacle chapel, magistrate, JP, school and college governor,  director of the railway, member of the board of governors for the poor, philanthropist, advocate for social reform and most important for us today a patron of the arts. In 1880 he founded a literary and debating society for Aberaeron and was able to secure a room for the meetings in the then Town Hall (now County Hall.) Meetings took the form of a musical item and then short debates in either English or Welsh. Three years later in 1883, J.M.H. was prominent in creating Aberaeron's first public library here too. Based in the same room, it initially had 220 books, most of which were donations. For a 1 shilling a year membership fee you could borrow one book a week. In 1885 the number of loans reached 1,142 and the stock was now 625 books. J.M.H. was Secretary of the library, debating society and the Assembly Room. He would have been delighted at how well the library is now used and that it is free for all. He most certainly would not have wanted the library moved from the centre of town where it is accessible to all and he would have wanted everyone to have their say on this issue. Please do not lose this opportunity and do respond to the consultation questionnaire. https://forms.office.com/pages/responsepage.aspx?id=uYWs-IYvNU2Fwnkevin1iPsH7veKBZxNpmrxsqf9EQVUOFVEVU80SEVaRTE0SDc1TU04MExOR0taRy4u If you do not wish to do this on-line, hard copies of the form are available in the library itself.

Here is our summer newsletter with details of all of our forthcoming events.

The sea was rough and we took as much sleep as we could as we knew there would be many sleepless nights later on. I was a Telegraphist on the HMS Kingsmill. As we approached the French coast we could see large clouds of smoke, shells from the big warships out at sea were passing over the ships. We were the Headquarters Landing ship responsible for lading the Green Howards on Gold Beach. As we neared the beach there was pandemonium, landing craft being blown up, machine guns and small arms fire, an awful din. Bodies, everywhere in the sea. The troops had been terribly seasick before going ashore. We could see lots of Germans running back over the sand dunes. Very luckily our ship was not hit but our Headquarters Ship on Sword Beach I heard was blown up. I heard the din as I was below deck working on the Radio, passing and taking messages from our boys who had been put ashore to set up a station. It could have been me, but again I was lucky as I didn’t go ashore until the second day. The messages we took were instructions from the Beach Master (R.N), reports on killed and wounded, reinforcements required etc. Boats of wounded were frantically coming off the beach seeking a bigger boat to take them back to the troop transports out at sea. We were off Arromanches, a major on our ship was sniped as soon as he put his foot ashore. They say there were women snipers on the church steeple. The first day was the worst. We were dive bombed several times but escaped. I believe we were attacked by e-boats in the night, as I heard a lot of shouting and guns. Some mines passed very close to our stern I was told. I did see a row of cottages containing Germans being blown sky high by what was called ‘L.C. (Landing craft) Rockets’ which could get very close. We had some sleep the second day when we were put back in seagoing watches – 4 hours off & on. After a fortnight the Navy had completed the landings and we returned to Plymouth, disbanding and returned to barracks. On the last day I did go into Arromanches village. No sign of anyone as I believe the population were in the cellars. Even in these circumstances some of our boys Made efforts to see if there were any girls about! The beach was covered in guns, machine gun bullets, broken down land craft, lorries etc. This briefly was my experience, We sailed back to Plymouth Barracks where we were sent on 14 days leave. We retuned and were immediately drafted out to the Pacific to take on the Japs. That’s another story. Gwilym Morgan March 1995 Elinor Gwilym (With thanks to Margaret Bevan Gwilym’s niece who gave me Gwilym’s story and photograph)

A General Election has been called! So let’s think about the secret ballot, something we take for granted today. Being able to vote in secret by placing an ‘X' on a ballot paper next to the name of our choice has not, however, always been our right. Though long campaigned for by groups such as the Chartists, the first general election using a secret ballot was not until 1874. The image above is of the ballot box used in the first ever secret ballot in Britain in 1872, a local election in Pontefract. Before the Ballot Act of 1872, those who were eligible to vote had to declare their choice in public, a system open to bribery and intimidation. Employers and landowners were able to influence the vote, putting pressure on their employees and tenants in advance and then checking on how they were casting their votes on election day. One of the people to fall foul of this system was Benjamin (Bensha) Evans then tenant farmer of Llety Shon, Aberarth, part of the Monachty estate, and later the first owner of Portland House. In his Aberaeron guide, W.J. Lewis states that: “An ardent Liberal, Bensha was forced to leave the farm of which he was tenant, Llety Shon, because he refused to accede to his landlord’s request to vote Tory. In Aberaeron he set up a slate and timber business which supplied the needs of builders and others as far afield as Llandeilo, Tregaron and even Crickhowell. Many of his goods were purchased in Bristol and brought to Aberaeron chiefly in small smacks which took 3 to 6 weeks to complete the voyage.” The Mynachty Estate, not only served notice on Bensha’s tenancy but apparently also subsequently boycotted his slate and timber business. In spite of this, the business must have thrived, as, by the early 1850s, he had the resources to build Portland House where he lived for the rest of his life. In her blog below, historical fiction writer, S.E. Morgan, writes of another local man who fell victim to an election eviction: the Reverend Gwilym Marles, grandfather of Dylan Thomas: https://semorganhistoricalfiction.wordpress.com/2020/10/28/gwilym-marles-poet-preacher-and-protester-the-eviction-scandal-76/