I don’t think I am being big headed when I say we do it all at Cyfarwydd, archaeology and history whether it is local, global, oral or family. We are passionate about Celts, Romans, Chartists and Non-conformist preachers and everything before during and after. You name it and we have either done it, doing it or if you give us enough of a heads up, we will do it! So I thought my first blog as part of the team would be on something I know quite a bit about practically and historically and that’s the pub. I recently completed my MA Dissertation from the University of South Wales. It was a study on pubs drinking and temperance in Southern Monmouthshire between 1890 and 1910.
When I tell people this I get one of the following remarks;
1. If you want any help with research…………
2. But nothing historical happens in pubs!
OK, Archduke Franz Ferdinand wasn’t shot over a pint of cider at the Red Lion and Martin Luther King Junior didn’t give the ‘I have a dream’ speech at the lounge in the White Hart. I am being flippant but even at a casual glance at the history books we can see Catholic plotter Guy Fawkes met up with his co-conspirators in the Duck and Drake at the Strand in London and closer to home those wonderful Chartists popped into the Upper Cock at Croesyceiliog and the Welsh Cock in Pontyminster on the way to that fateful meeting outside another place where you used to be able to get drunk, the Westgate Hotel.
But I prefer to look at this in another way. The event in the pub or the pub itself doesn’t have to have global historical significance because above all they are part of OUR history, for many they are places where things happen to us. They are the centres of friendships, of clubs and teams, of christenings, wedding receptions and sadly wakes.
Modern society is winning the war on the pub especially when there are a number of them closing every week. We should be worried at their passing as much as we would a church, a castle, a workingmans club or stately home. The stories, the good, bad and ugly are there to be told and what is Cyfarwydd for, if not the keepers and tellers of these stories.