Preparing for the Global Citizenship Mini Challenge
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KS4 NATIONAl/FOUNDATION WELSH BaccaLAUREATE Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales Preparing for the Global Citizenship Mini Challenge SOURCE PACK We can learn a lot about the issue of Sustainability and the Woollen Industry by studying Welsh history as well as examples from the modern world. Study these sources about sustainability and the woollen industry past and present. The sources will help you to understand how and why wool came to be so significant a part of Welsh history and why it is still important. You can explore wool as a sustainable product and sustainability in the woollen industry generally. If you would like to know more why not visit the National Wool Museum in Dre-fach Felindre, West Wales. You can also research the industry on websites such as Historic UK. More can be found on the Welsh woollen industry research page of Amgueddfa Cymru’s website. ) M O C . ISSUE: Living sustainably CK TO S HUTTER FOCUS: Wool as a sustainable product S Tor88/ K : VI E MAG I ( The history of the woollen industry in Wales SOURCE 1: The National Wool Museum at Dre-fach Felindre, West Wales SOURCE 1: The National Wool Museum at Dre-fach Felindre, West Wales Cambrian Mills and the village of Dre-fach Felindre are national coal and steel industries. With a drop in demand for wool and heritage sites. Launched as the Museum of the Welsh Woollen textiles the mill’s fortunes declined. In 1965 the mill (with 30 Industry in 1976, the mill reopened in March 2004 as the employees) was put up for sale and in 1976 Amgueddfa Cymru National Wool Museum following a two-year, £2 million refit converted part of the mill into a museum. In 1984 Cambrian partly funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund. Mills finally closed and Amgueddfa Cymru took control of the whole site. Once the centre of a thriving industry in this area, The National Wool Museum tells the story of wool in Wales. this mill manufactured woollen cloth, blankets and items of Historically and into the 19th century, the production and clothing that were sold across the world. processing of wool surpassed even coal as the most important of Wales’s industries. The Teifi Valley was the centre of the West The photographs below show the mill before and after a Wales woollen industry. devastating fire in 1919. The fire destroyed parts of the building and damaged important machinery including the spinning David Lewis erected Cambrian Mills on the site of a former machine and several of the looms. The spinning machine runs small water-powered weaving workshop in 1902. The new mill the whole length of this building and would originally have been was to supply the need for woollen cloth for working men in the one of two, occupying the whole of the first floor. MGUEDDFa Cymru) MGUEDDFa A HS: P (PhoTOGRA A photo of Cambrian Mills following the fire in 1919 The National Wool Museum following its redevelopment in March 2004 SOURCE 2: The cottage or domestic industry Before factories, the manufacture of products like textiles was done at home, usually in small cottages. This was known as the cottage or domestic industry. Everything was done on a small scale and was slow and laborious. TION WALES C LES COLLE P CASGLIAD Y WERIN CYMRU CASGLIAD PEO SOURCE 3: Fulling The woollen industry was one of the first, alongside corn mills, This carried on into the early twentieth century when to harness water to power machinery. The first mechanised chemicals replaced fuller’s earth and urine. The mechanised process of the woollen industry was fulling, used since machine was known as fulling stocks. medieval times. Fulling is a step in woollen cloth making that involves the cleansing of cloth (particularly wool) to eliminate The photograph below shows fulling stocks used at oils, dirt, and other impurities, and making it thicker. Pontardulais in 1936. Originally, fulling was carried out by pounding the woollen cloth with the fuller’s feet, hands or a club in a tub of warm water, urine and fuller’s earth. A man would go round the village in the morning collecting urine and paying a penny a bucket for MGUEDDFa Cymru) MGUEDDFa A it. This gave rise to the saying H: P ‘spending a penny.’ (PhoTOGRA SOURCE 4: The factory system When the population began to grow quickly after 1750, there (known as the Spinning Jenny) was a particularly important was a need for more cloth to be produced. The cottage or development because it was too big to be used in the home domestic system could not meet this demand because the and needed water to power it. From this point onwards hand spinning wheels and looms were too slow. This inspired spinning was usually done in mills (factories). These mills the invention of new machines, which were much quicker and housed the new machines and, as machines were driven by able to produce far more. Richard Arkwright’s water frame water, were built by the sides of fast-flowing streams. Historical photographs from the People’s Collection Wales TION WALES TION WALES C C LES COLLE LES COLLE P P CASGLIAD Y WERIN CYMRU CASGLIAD PEO Y WERIN CYMRU CASGLIAD PEO An old water-driven Welsh woollen mill at Pen-Y-Groes, north Wales Penmachno Woollen Mill, Betws-y-Coed, Caernarfonshire, opened in 1839 and closed in the1990s SOURCE 4 continued A book about the history of Carmarthenshire noted: There was a rapid increase in the number of factories, and between 1860 and 1900 about 21 factories appeared in ‘In 1850, the power loom was invented; as a result of this new the two parishes of Llangeler and Penboyr alone. It was this invention and that of the new fulling machine, the industry period which saw the change from the domestic to the factory flourished until the end of the century as never before. system in Carmarthenshire.’ Historical photographs from the People’s Collection Wales TION WALES C TION WALES C LES COLLE P LES COLLE P CASGLIAD Y WERIN CYMRU CASGLIAD PEO CASGLIAD Y WERIN CYMRU CASGLIAD PEO Workers at Sarn Mellteyrn wool factory, c.1885 Woollen mill workers at Llanidloes, 1890s SOURCE 5: Welsh wool and the Great War On Saturday 19 September 1914, in a typically stirring and patriotic speech, Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George set out his vision for a Welsh army corps. The Corps was to have fought alongside - but be distinct from - the English army, have Welsh-speaking officers and, most importantly of all, it should have had its own highly identifiable uniform of homespun Welsh Grey or Brethyn Llwyd cloth. On the face of it the plan was a disaster, with 13 Welsh mills contracted to produce the Brethyn Llwyd cloth, and each coming up with their own shade of grey. As Mark Lucas, curator at the National Wool Museum, explained, ‘Brethyn Llwyd was made from the wool of black sheep, which was much more scarce than wool from a white sheep. So mills were each forced to experiment with their own compositions and manufacturing processes.’ It all led to shambolic shortages and delays in getting ENEDLAETHOL CYMRU IBRARY OF WALES G uniforms to Welsh regiments. In fact, the uniforms produced L for the 11th Battalion Welsh Regiment by outfitters Messrs’ ATIONAL ATIONAL LYFRGELL LYFRGELL Jotham of Cardiff were so brown that it led to the unit L N becoming nicknamed The Chocolate Soldiers. SOURCE 5 continued SOURCE 6: Extracts from a Wales Online report on London Supply problems hit the project from the outset, and fewer Fashion Week, 27 March 2013 than 9,000 Brethyn Llwyd uniforms were ever produced for the 50,000 Welsh volunteers. By May 1915 cost-cutting meant Lloyd George’s unique Welsh Army Corps became Theirs is a historic brand associated with luxurious Welsh wool part of the regular British Army, with the Welsh Grey colours blankets and hers is a fashion line more used to dressing having never made it into battle. pop stars in leather. Welsh designer Jayne Pierson has joined forces with Melin Tregwynt on a collection merging old In spite of all this the historian Dr Robin Barlow of techniques with new ideas, and it’s just been unveiled after Aberystwyth University thinks the idea did have important months of planning at London Fashion Week. benefits for the war effort: ‘The decision to use Brethyn Llwyd did allow the Welsh Army Corps to claim the distinctiveness The autumn/winter collection features some 30 looks, the of a special uniform, produced in Wales, for Welsh soldiers. result of two new woollen fabrics created with the company Perhaps most importantly, it provided a great boost to which has a working mill on a site in Pembrokeshire dating recruitment. Indeed, by the end of 1915 more than 50,000 back to the 17th century. Welshmen had volunteered for what was to become the 38th (Welsh) Division.’ Jayne was invited to the Castlemorris whitewashed mill and even worked a loom – a first time experience for the designer who dresses singers like La Roux and Diana Vickers. ‘They actually set me up on a loom so I had a hand in the process,’ she recalls. ‘I’d never seen how wool was actually made before. Normally I just order the fabric and it turns up in the post.’ SOURCE 6 continued The creative process has also made her reconnect with a Welsh culture she wants to see enjoy a revival. She says: ‘I’m not a textile person although I work in textiles – when I design a fabric it’s done on Photoshop.