December 2024 Newsletter | Abertillery And Dist

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NEWSLETTER Merry Christmas December 2024

What’s On at The Met this month

5th – 8th Dec Pantomime time – Aladdin £14.75

13th to 15th Dec 1.30pm & 7 pm £15

19th Dec Merry Christmas Everyone 7pm £10

For these and more visit:

https://awenboxoffice.com/the-met/whats-on

Tel 01495 533195

Museum Opening Times

The Museum is open to the public, free of charge:

Thursday* to Saturday 10am – 1pm

Contact us

Museum phone number 01495 211140

Email: abertillerymuseum@btconnect.com

Web: www.abertilleryanddistrictmuseum.org.uk

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/abertillerymuseum

Contact Names

Mr G Murphy Curator

Mrs P. Bearcroft Deputy Curator

Mrs E. Ewers Chair

Mrs J. Price Secretary

Mrs K. Pratley Treasurer

Mrs S. Murphy Newsletter

Vice Presidents (Annual Subscription £25)

Rev Roy Watson

Mrs Carol Brooks

Mrs Margaret Cook

Mr John Cavaciuti

Mrs Margaret Herbert

Mr Ross Leadbeater

Ms Michele Dack

The museum will close 1 pm on Saturday 21st December and will re-open 10.00am Thursday 9th January 2025

November 100 Club

This month’s prize numbers were drawn by members Anne Thomas and Wendy Jones and the lucky winners are:-

No. 97 Jen Price £20

No. 88 Mathew Price £10

If you would like to join our 100 club and be in with a chance of winning, it costs just £1 a month. Ask at the museum for further details.

Annual Membership Reminder

If you have not yet renewed your annual membership please do so as we rely on your support to stay open. The fee is just £8 for standard membership and £25 for Vice Presidents and if you are a taxpayer, please come in and sign a Gift Aid declaration (if you have not already done so) so that we can claim another 25p for each pound given at no extra cost to you. Membership will entitle you to a free hot drink in our café each month and for under 16s there is our junior membership for £4 for the year which will include a free treasure hunt each month.

Annual General Meeting

Our AGM held last month saw very few changes other than Mrs Jen Price has resigned as secretary though she will remain on committee. We thank her for all her hard work over the years especially for her work on the policy documents needed for our accreditation. Without her expertise we would not have attained accreditation. We are also pleased to welcome two new committee members, Ms Kay Galloway and Mrs Joy Filer.

Condolences

I am sad to report that long-standing museum supporter, Mrs Sylvia Matthews, has sadly died at the age of 95. Our thoughts are with Sylvia’s family and friends at this sad time.

Lady Rhondda

Lady Rhondda, or Margaret Haig-Thomas as she was then, was born in 1833 in London but was raised in Newport at Llanwern House by her parents David Alfred Thomas, 1st Viscount of Rhondda, and Sybil Haig. At the age of 19 Margaret went to Oxford University to study history but abandoned the course after just two terms. Instead she went to work for her father at his Consolidated Cambrian company in Cardiff where she earned £1000 a year which was a significant salary for the time.

At the age of 25 Margaret joined the WSPU (Women’s Social & Political Union) and became the secretary of the Newport branch. It was at this time that she became a suffragette and saw her take part in protests alongside Emmeline Pankhurst, the leader of the suffragette movement. As a result of her attempting to set fire to a Royal Mail letterbox, she spent a period in prison where, like other suffragettes she went on hunger strike.

With the outbreak of war in 1914, WSPU abandoned its goal of suffrage and Margaret went with her father to the USA to help secure a supply of munitions for the British armed forces. It was while returning to Britain in 1915 that the ship they were on, the RMS Lusitania, was sunk by German torpedoes and although she and her father survived, she suffered hypothermia from clinging to a piece of driftwood before being rescued from the water by an Irish trawler. Once she had recovered Margaret helped find homes for Belgium refugees in Monmouthshire as well as working for the government by helping to persuade women to help the war effort by taking up jobs, especially in agriculture where they became known as the ‘Land Girls’.

On the 3rd July 1918, Margaret’s father died. When he had been offered the title of Viscount Rhondda by King George V, he accepted on the condition that he could pass the title on to his daughter whom he had always treated as an equal from a very young age and so Margaret became Lady Rhondda and tried to claim her seat in the House of Lords. Had she succeeded she would have been the first and only lady in the house however her claim was rejected.

She spent the remainder of her life fighting for the right of women to sit in the House of Lords, supported by Lord Astor, whose wife Nancy, was the first lady member of the House of Commons. In 1958 the Life Peerages Act became law allowing women peers in the House of Lords for the first time however it came too late for Margaret who had passed away earlier that same year.

On Thursday 26th September 2024, a bronze monument of Lady Rhondda, sculpted by artist Jane Robbins, was erected on the eastern side of the Millennium bridge in Newport City centre.

You can read more on this story using the links below:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Haig_Thomas,_2nd_Viscountess_Rhondda

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd11x401v15o

https://monumentalwelshwomen.com/lady-rhondda

Sally Murphy

Snuff

I expect most of our readers know what snuff is but have you ever tried it? I suspect not. Until I started looking on-line for some information I hadn't realised you can get moist snuff as well as dry snuff. It seems that moist snuff is placed in your mouth, usually against your cheek, dry snuff is sniffed up the nose. Both sound pretty revolting but what is snuff? Snuff is finely ground tobacco and so it contains nicotine the same as cigarettes. It used to be popular with some miners to give them their nicotine hit whilst underground where, of course, smoking a cigarette was out of the question.

My father was a heavy smoker but said he simply never fancied a cigarette anyway while underground as striking a light for a cigarette was something you simply

wouldn't ever contemplate. He wasn't a snuff user but enough local miners were for our museum to have a splendid collection of them in one of the mining cases.

Now, let's get back to the history of snuff. Snuff was first introduced to Europe from the Americas in the late 15th century. Initially it was considered medicinal and it seems the word nicotine originated from John Nicot who recommended its use to the French Queen Catherine de Medici as a cure for headaches.

However, nicotine soon became a recreational substance and snuff sniffing took off. It was regarded as a very 'refined' activity, practised only by those with sufficient means to purchase the stuff and they then, in turn, splashed out on some very fancy snuff boxes to store and carry their snuff. Snuff boxes from these times were usually highly ornamented and often given as gifts, the boxes being embellished with delicate silverwork, enamelling or jewelled.

I have seen examples of these fancy snuff boxes which contrast so vividly with the robust and down to earth snuff boxes used by our local miners but this autumn I came across something I had never seen before – snuff bottles. The Museum of Art in Hong Kong has a magnificent collection of small, delicate bottles used for holding snuff. Most are decorated with detailed miniature paintings and, most fascinating of all, some of these bottles have been painted from the inside used a bamboo hook to hold the brush.

The bottle opening is minute so this type of painting was a real skill. Needless to say, only the most wealthy could afford to commission such precious works of art and they were often given as gifts to important personages. The use of bottles rather than boxes seems to have been an Asian practice and one which was most common in China. The bottles were made mostly from glass but also from other materials including porcelain and ivory. The stopper usually incorporated a small spoon for scooping out the snuff.

Snuff went out of fashion as cigars and cigarettes gained in popularity but, should you want, you can still buy snuff. Having read the harm its use can cause, I definitely wouldn't recommend that you try it. What I would recommend is that you come along to the museum and look at our collection of snuff boxes. We don't have any snuff bottles in our collection, but here is a photo I took while admiring the collection in the Hong Kong Museum of Art. by Jen Price

THE SNOWMAN

I'm writing this in mid-November and there is snow on the ground. Do you remember that short sharp spell of unusually cold weather and the snow that accompanied it? There was just enough snow, if you were high enough, for snowballs and snowmen. That got me thinking about the origins of building a snowman.

I was soon off to the internet which gave me the following information. It is reported that one of the first records of a snowman was from China (they get a lot of snow in the north of the country) in the 7th century. However, the earliest actual image of a snowman dates from the 14th century and is held in the National Library at The Hague in the Netherlands. Due to copyright issues I am unable to reproduce the photo here, however it can be viewed using this link:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b5/Koninklijke_Bibliotheek_Book_of_Hours_snowman_illustration.jpg

Just to carry on with the facts and figures, the earliest known photograph of a snowman dates to around 1853 and it was taken in Wales by a lady called Mary Dillwyn, a pioneering photographer; the photograph is held at the National Library of Wales.

During the Middle Ages it seems that building a snowman was a popular activity, and one practised by adults as well as children. At the age of 19, Michelangelo was commissioned to build a snowman in the courtyard of a property owned by the ruler of Florence after an unusually heavy fall of snow in 1494.

That seems to have been unusual but then it looks as if snowman building became more popular; presumably that was nothing to do with Michelangelo's snowman but wouldn't it be fascinating to find out what it looked like? Outdoor galleries were set up to display snowmen and interpretations to snowmen – those may or may not be true. Some people thought they were pagan symbols as they pre-dated Christianity, some thought they represented wicked people, some thought the figures made of white snow represented purity. You can clearly attach whatever significance you want. My opinion is that they are simply good fun!

Jen Price

The Golden Cobra

Last month saw the launch of an animated television series set in Ebbw Vale. The sitcom is the work of three friends Adam Llewellyn, Tom Rees and James Prygodzicz and is based on their shared experience of growing up in the south Wales valleys.

The three lads, who have been friends for years, began by making an animated series called The Vale which they aired on YouTube and soon they had a cult following in Ebbw Vale thanks to a competition they ran whereby they invited people to share the show in return for being drawn and put into an episode.

The series came to the attention of BBC Wales and they were invited to make a new series for the BBC. The Golden Cobra refers to the name of the Indian takeaway run by the Abassi family and it is available to watch now on the BBC iPlayer using the link below:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0021r5c

And you can read more on this story using the link below:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvg5073mmlmo

Sally Murphy