Treftadaeth Cymru
- Lleoedd
- Teithiau a Llwybrau
- Ar Draws Amser
- Themâu
- Oriel
- Trysorau Cudd I
- Treftadaeth Byd Cymru
- Archaeoleg y Môr yng Nghymru
- Trysorau Cudd II
Anna Wigley
CARREG CENNEN
A young boy rushes at the gate
with a plastic sword and whoops of war.
On all sides the castle walls
shake fists of stone, and crows
crowd the air with triumphant jeers.
This is the boy's own dream,
an ancient home he now reclaims
with raised arms and sword shaken.
He charges imaginary foes
in the courtyard where gentle parents pace,
alert to the traps of ditches and stairs,
the lure of window-slits
that give onto plummeting air.
The boy towers over everything
except the jet plane -
that crow-faced black machine -
that screams above him now,
and suddenly shrinks his castle
to a toy, a breakable thing.
Frank Olding
CALAN MAI
O'u cistiau rhag eu cystudd,
Yn ifanc, yn anufudd,
Yn anhydrin o waedrudd,
Daw haid o'r hen eneidiau
I ryngu rhaib yr angau
A diarddel hel a hau.
Dôn’t yn ddraenllwyn, yn llwynog,
Yn flys tân, yn gân y gog,
Yn gariad anhrugaqrog,
Yn drachwant ar ei anterth,
Yn arswyd o nwyd a nerth,
I adfer calan prydferth.
Henebion Diwydiannol a Llenorion.
Untitled by Gee Williams
You could get a poem out, no problem.
Beauty gives itself up in feet and lines, into folios that open in your hands. Slate's like that. Slate will cleave for you: this is only one of its magical properties. Arrive here, however ill-equipped, it can make the clumsy adept. The untrained is suddenly a craftsman. Look, a straight edge! The material's other trick is that, with a bit of extra care, it will fracture along the grain. Look a right angle now! And it will perform alliteratively, again and again.
Over the decades stanza breaks have happened, so natural and graceful that they might have chosen themselves. These are what you're expecting, the polished terraces, tier upon tier. Accomodating as ever, slate has laid down pavements for the procession of its acolytes. Marble and limestone you can use for the god-images but to win them means you wade in ankle-bashing rubble. Only slate smoothes the way for its own pillaging.
All this is close observation. Stand back, your subject becomes epic. Here we have an international classic. If someone - a guide, a local - says you could see it from space, you'll probably believe. You'll think only an asteroid can make a better hole. Penrhyn was once the largest slate working in the world, Dinorwic the second. Their slate was the hardest. Of course. Before you run on, though, hover over the pause button. Snag on the word working. Put "can make a craftsman of the clumsy" into the stocks with it. Then count the stresses of the five years it took to learn the lethal trade - the cutting and dressing, the blasting - and the famous strike that lasted for three. Weave in the hunger and the horror.
A visit: the slithering litter, an abundance of rejected product, makes you want to search out and then select an artefact. Possible uses crowd in. You will take it home. My souvenir, a perfect box, cigarette-pack sized, sits on my shelves now. Picked up. Unputdownable. Made? Or a chance gobbet of metamorphic perfection? Either way it's A Present From - no purpose, except to be held, heavy and cold. Its influence is unhelpful. Spit on me, it commands. I do, oftener than is healthy. With a finger I smear the surface to deepest cyan. Enjoy, blank-minded, waiting for the powder-grey's return.
You could get a poem out of here. Easy.
Don't.
Crumlin Viaduct by Mike Jenkins
As though on a pier, it seems as if the top-hatted gentlemen are browsing there: fishing for views down valley. Though mountains, not the sea, make a solid horizon.
But these are Thomas Kennard and his men, surveying before the sleepers were laid. His vision spanned the valleys, Ebbw and Kenton. Iron girders, metallic mesh of triangles interlocked and timber beams trussed and stretched.
Imagine those celebrations that June 1st, 1857; the beer-booths and fairs, loud cheers and cannons when it was opened: “so full of youth and bloom” as a balladeer would have it, a hymn to the viaduct. A cathedral for the Industrial Revolution, bringing passengers closer to the heavens, but not too close they wagered. Though the legendary train-driver “Mad Jack” must have feared the worst as he took that first passage across, drinking all day to make himself bold enough to face eternity, going “full speed to meet it”. In his rumbling steam train it must have seemed like a walk on high-wire.
He survived, of course, and everyone after, as passengers criss-crossed the Valleys two hundred feet above. The whole village of Crumlin grew beneath it like an offspring, taking names from the viaduct and its engineer: chapel, library, school and housing. A community wrought by rail, with steam its cloud-covering.
Ten spans across and the tallest on these Isles. From a face of coal to a face of iron, at a place where the railways joined. Its decorated balustrade like an ornate wall of a promenade. A web, never fragile, cast by all those workmen who spidered and toiled to catch the times of train and trade.
Those men in black, like posts fixed along its platform, could never have envisaged a film set, the thrills of Arabesque with Peck and Loren; could never have foreseen the axe of Beeching splitting timbers one by one, dismantling stanchions, leaving only stumps on the hillsides. A track through cumulus: only one in all Wales. Gone.
Crumlin at the valley’s base, left without purpose. Like coal, slate, granite, lead and limestone: reminders of an empire on signs which offer no consolation. Descendants of “Mad Jack” steaming towards oblivion in a stolen car.
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