“I started playing guitar at around the age of 12 after becoming hooked on classic rock music. I wanted to be like them! I still love Aerosmith, Whitesnake, Bon Jovi! Started writing songs at 15 and have just done it ever since. Cardiff is a great place to play gigs, but it can be quite cliquey. Having said that I’ve met some great musicians and promoters and have seen some great bands here. It seems to be getting better, but a lot of the alt-country-style bands I love seem to go unappreciated or seem to play Bristol more.”
“I can’t pick a favourite song. There are too many I love! If I had to pick the perfect song for this very moment, it would be ‘Africano‘ by Earth Wind and Fire.”
“The meals that remind me of my childhood are pie and … eggy bread. Pie because we rolled filo with my grandmother on the sofra (low round table) sitting in a lotus posture and eggy bread because it’s the treat we had every Thursday for a meal – little did I know it was my poor working mom’s cheats supper on her 12 hour work days!”
Hello friends. Happy International Womens Day! To celebrate, our friend Kelly Page has written us a We Are Cardiff about the first female professor to be appointed to the (at the time) Cardiff University. Go! Go!
First Female Professor Appointed in the Largest Coal Port in the World
Imagine it is 1904.
You are living and working in Cardiff, the largest coal port in the world.
You are a woman, 40 years young, working as the head of women’s teacher training in the town’s new university.
The university, University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire (now Cardiff University) is only 20 years old. It was founded with 13 staff and 151 students, 15 of who were women (1883).
You are working at one of the first universities in Britain to open its doors to female students and with a residence specifically for women, Aberdare Hall (1885). A hall that is giving women from outside Cardiff the opportunity to attend university (and your training) without the stigma associated with living alone in rented accommodation. A hall, that is the second women’s hall of residence to be built in the UK (the other being at the University College London).
The first page of the address at the opening of Aberdare Hall on “Women and Universities” (1885)
You’ve witnessed Cardiff Arms Park host its first international rugby match, an encounter between Wales and Ireland (1886); and looked on as the world experienced the first modern Olympics in Athens (1896).
The patent for radio communication was awarded just 7 years earlier to Guglielmo Marconi, with the first transmission from Flat Holm to Lavernock Point in South Wales (1897).
Sadly, a few years earlier Queen Victoria died (1901) after a 63 year-long reign. You and your colleagues are now living in the Edwardian era, as Edward VII has the thrown.
As you look around the town, not yet big enough to be officially called a city and years before it becomes the capital of Wales, you watch the hive of activity from the large coal port. You also see construction has started on Main Building (1903), a building that will take another 6 years to partially complete (1909) and define the universities campus.
You’ve taken a keen interest in the national movement for women’s suffrage, lobbying for political reform and militancy pushing for change. You want the right to vote.
Why is this year, 1904 so significant? Why are we here?
1904 is the year you are appointed as Professor of Education. An appointment, that will have you become the first female Professor in Britain and the first female member of the Cardiff Senate.
An appointment made one year before Cardiff is granted city status (1905); 24 years before women 21 years and over can legally vote (1928); and 51 years before Cardiff becomes the Capital of Wales (1955).
Your name is Hester (‘Hettie’) Millicent Mackenzie (nee Hughes), Professor of Education at Cardiff University.
From Bristol, Professor Mackenzie is described as an “enterprising colleague” and “absorbed in university teaching” who with her husband (also a professor at the university) liked to travel. She is a well-known educator and was head of women’s teacher training at the turn of the early 20th century, at what is now known as Cardiff University.
Aberdare Hall, Cardiff University
She is also the author of numerous books and lectures on education. Much of her work focused on the methods for preparing teachers for working in schools across the country and advocated co-educational instruction. She researched Welsh and UK schools and also drew insight from the US and European education systems. In 1894, with co-author Amy Blanche Bramwell, they wrote the title, Training of Teachers in the United States, a title that focused on the co-education in US teacher trainer schools. She also authored Moral Education: The Task of the Teacher (1909); Freedom in Education. An Inquiry into its Meaning, Value, and Condition (1925); and wrote Hegel’s Theory and Practice of Education (date unknown).
Professor Mackenzie was a supporter of the suffragette movement in Wales and one of the founders of the Cardiff branch, four years after her appointment as Professor (1908). The first branch in Wales of the movement to win the vote for women was founded in Llandudno in 1907. This was followed by branches in Rhyl and Cardiff (1908); and Anglesey and Bangor (1912).
In the 1918 General Election women were nominated as Parliamentary candidates for the first time. There were seventeen women candidates in Britain, but only one stood for a Welsh constituency, namely Prof. Mackenzie (Labour) for the University of Wales seat. She was unsuccessful.
Progress on women’s votes was slow. Enfranchised women over the age of thirty, provided they were local government electors, or the wives of local government electors, was awarded the vote 14 years after her appointment as professor (1918), three year after she had retired from her academic duties (1915). Women over 21 years old were granted the right to vote 24 years after her appointment (1928), 14 years before her death.
Having made a significant contribution in her work to Education; women in University life and the movement for equal voting rights, Professor Mackenzie died in Brockweir, near Chepstow on 10 December 1942.
To Millicent Hettie Mackenzie (nee Hughes) (1863-1942), I dedicate this #WOWWales tribute.
Professor Mackenzie, #WOWWales colleague, mentor and friend.
We Are Cardiff photographer Jon Pountney publishes ‘Cardiff before Cardiff’
During the 1970s and early ’80s, hundreds of prints and negatives of Cardiff were taken by the photographer Keith S. Robertson.
These were left forgotten in drawers in an artist’s studio in the city, with the photographer being told that his years of work had been burned and destroyed.
However, exactly two years ago the photographs were finally recovered by another photographer, Jon Pountney, who realised their value immediately.
The result of his restorative work on the photographs, and the reaction generated from the people portrayed or who have seen them, is published this week by Y Lolfa in a new book called Cardiff before Cardiff.
Jon Pountney
“I discovered the prints and negatives whilst renovating Warwick Hall, a building in the Gabalfa area of Cardiff, and was instantly struck by the quality of the prints,” explains Jon Pountney.
“The pictures were amazing; ordinary people going about their day, looking as if they could step off the page… What was very striking was the rich vein of community, smiles, winks and laughter.
“A couple of these pictures were stamped ‘Keith S. Robertson’, but that was all. So I created a new blog, called Cardiff before Cardiff, and shared a few photos on the website in an effort to learn more about this photographer. They were seen by a journalist, who subsequently put a number of the prints in a newspaper. The response was immense, and resulted in me being able to reunite Keith with his photographs once more.”
In Cardiff before Cardiff, Robertson’s powerful black and white images show the people and streets of Splott and other areas of Cardiff during the 1970s and the early ’80s, and Pountney’s work revisits some of those same areas today, showing how little has changed, and vice versa.
“Ever since I found those photos, I’ve been shooting Cardiff in a response to Keith’s work,” adds Jon. “It’s inspired me to step out into the streets of Cardiff and make the work I’ve always wanted to do. In this new book, my pictures appear side by side with Keith’s, and I couldn’t be prouder.”
Alun Gibbard
The book’s author, Alun Gibbard says, “What has breathed life into Cardiff before Cardiff is the response of the city’s people. On seeing the black and white images in the press, on the blog and Facebook, people began to respond. Someone would recognise themselves in a photograph, or their father, mother or child. Some saw photographs of their family for the first time.”
Jon Pountney and Alun Gibbard will be signing copies of Cardiff before Cardiff in the city’s WHSmith on Thursday, 20th of December between 4 and 5pm. YourCardiff has also published an interview with Jon today.
In the 1790s, the ironmasters of Merthyr Tydfil decided to build themselves a canal to bring their goods to market quicker, and on a larger scale than was previously possible along the turnpike. Their target markets were abroad, and they needed a port where they could transfer their goods from the canal barges onto ships to carried out into the wider world. Land surveys determined that the easiest route for this canal was south down the valleys past Pontypridd to the coastal plains beyond, where the River Taff flowed into the Bristol Channel. Cardiff at the time was a small town clinging to the shadow of its ruined castle, neither capital city nor important port. It lay on the route on this little canal, and more importantly to the south had miles of abundant saltmarsh – the perfect place for the ironmasters to build their seaport.
The canal was the Glamorganshire Canal, and the sea port of the ironmasters became known as Sea Lock Pond.
Although the canal continued to operate through to the end of 1951 (in increasing states of disrepair), new industry soon meant that new transport methods were needed. Iron and tin quickly gave way to coal as the main export of the valleys, and during the 1800s and early 1900s five private railroads sprang up to compete for the business of bringing this black gold down to the massive docks that were built to the east of Sea Lock Pond to try and meet the demand.
Cardiff grew rich, prosperous and influential as the middleman in all of this trade. The profits to be had from the coal trade were immense for the time (did you know that the world’s first £1 million deal was done in Cardiff’s Coal Exchange?) and they paid for many of Cardiff’s wonderful parks and its magnificent Civic Centre, and much more besides.
Without this trade, the Cardiff we all know and love today would be a very different – and probably much smaller – place. And yet, the debt Cardiff owes to this industrial history seems to be largely unknown to the good folks of Cardiff, and it’s one that is seldom clearly acknowledged whenever there is an historical exhibition put on in the city centre.
Perhaps the reason why is because this story doesn’t have a happy ending – not for the valleys anyway.
By the 1960s, most of this trade had ceased, having been in decline since the 1930s, and the docks closed down. Over the next 30 years, as the coal mines of the valleys were declared unprofitable and also closed down, the towns and villages of the valleys sank into a deep decline that they have yet to recover from.
It wasn’t just the coal mining that went. None of the industry that lined this industrial corridor at its height exists today. The Merthyr iron forges, the world’s two largest tinworks, the many deep coal mines, the chainworks factory, the chemical works, the bakeries, the power station, and much more besides … every last one of them has closed. Little has come in to replace them.
Today, Merthyr Tydfil is normally mentioned in the media because of its terrible unemployment rates and benefits culture, and things aren’t much better in many of the former coalmining towns and villages that dotted the canal’s route. The valleys had a very small population before the mines came along, and although the mines are long gone, the people have stayed in the places they have made their homes in. It’s difficult to see how their fortunes will drastically improve in my remaining lifetime, as the days of mass employment in heavy industry show no sign of imminent return.
Cardiff too fell on hard times for several decades, but thanks in part to the influx of European funds to transform the former docks into Cardiff Bay, and the money that has been attracted by the setting up of the Welsh Assembly Government, Cardiff’s fortunes have turned out quite different from the valleys. Indeed, Cardiff instead is competing to be one of the top shopping destinations in the whole UK, and its council has announced ambitious plans for a new business district to further boost the local economy.
I’m originally from Yorkshire, a proud area that makes a point of teaching all of its children its major history, which dates back to Roman times. You have a proud and unique history too, and I’d urge you to put it proudly on display before it becomes lost and forgotten.
If you want to learn more about this industrial history, then I highly recommend reading the excellent two-volume set “The Glamorganshire and Aberdare Canal”, by Stephen Rowson and Ian L. Wright, available from Black Dwarf Lightmoor. You can also see some of my own writings about this at my Merthyr Road photography project.
Stuart is an amateur photographer who was first struck by the ruins of South Wales’ industrial past back in 2007 as he commuted past them every day to and from work. Over the last five years, he’s been slowly exploring and blogging about a history that he’s worried has already been forgotten. You can find his work at his blog.
Stuart was photographed at the Melingriffith Water Pump in Whitchurch by Jon Poutney
We Are Cardiff: Open House mixed media exhibition at Made In Roath Festival
Saturday 13 and Sunday 14 October, 11am – 4pm
13 Boverton Street, Roath, Cardiff
We Are Cardiff (Best Blog in Wales 2012!) is a community project that invites residents of the city to tell their stories of living in the city. This year at Made in Roath, We Are Cardiff will present an exhibition of Roath stories and portrait photography in the intimate setting of a family home! Come by and meet the characters who make up this vibrant part of the capital of Wales.
Not sure if we mentioned it or not, but we’re curating a stage at this year’s musical orgasmia – SWN FESTIVAL! In the run up to the festival, we’re going to be running short profiles on each of the lovely people performing on our stage. Today, we’d like to introduce you to Mister Ffred Jones.
Q. Can you describe yourself as a performer? What can people expect? A. Ummm people can expect some serious finger picking! Plus a lot more bluegrass inspired banjo tunes, gonna be promoting some of my new material, really excited!
Q. Describe the music scene in Cardiff for us A. The scene in Cardiff is pretty good and vibrant, especially when you consider the economic climate, people aren’t coming out so much but it’s not stopping people playing which is pretty cool.
Q. What’s your favourite thing to do in Cardiff? A. Favorite thing to do in Cardiff, hit New York deli for seriously killer sandwich after sound check.
Q. Give us the lowdown on Swn Festival for you. A. I’ve actually performed at SWN a few times over the years. I opened for Benjamin Francis Leftwich last year which was awesome! Then I went and met Ben Howard after his set in Clwb Ifor Bach, that was pretty cool. Really looking forward to Among Brothers, awesome band.
Q. If people want to check out your stuff online, where can they do that? A. People can find me at www.ffredjones.co.uk hopefully doing a website revamp soon, with loads new media and loads of free music!
I grew up in the Vale of Glamorgan, Penarth to be exact, and although it was a great place to grow up in, as I got older I started to feel disconnected, and longed to live somewhere else. When I finished school at sixteen, I decided to skip sixth form and head straight to Coleg Glan Hafren. I still – to this day – believe this was one of the best decisions I have ever made. It got me out into the world and gave me a chance to make new friends. In fact, it was at Glan Hafren that I made friends for life. All my friends there grew up and lived in Cardiff, and most of them still do.
After college, many of them went off to university and I stayed around to work, do some travelling and generally trying to figure out what I wanted to do. At some point, I needed to start making some decisions and one I really needed to make was the choice to go to university. I knew that economically it would make sense to study in Cardiff, I had job security and all my friends were here, so I moved to Roath and went back to college. Then at the grand old age of 23 (believe me, when the majority of your classmates are 18, 23 feels really old) I started university and never looked back.
Now, I am about to embark on my third and final year, I had one more decision to make – do I stay here after university? Or do I sail off into the sunset and see where the wind takes me? It was a tough decision, but I have spent my first 25 years of life here, so I think it is time to sail for a bit. However, I needed to remind myself of what Cardiff has given me over the years, and I wanted to create something that could represent that.
So this led me to creating a project that I could really connect with. I spent a few weeks going over ideas and came up with the Cardiff Food Project. I wanted this to be a blog that offered people a chance to find a new market or a new little corner of Cardiff they may have never knew existed. Through the blog, I have found new places and opportunities, and it has changed the way I think about food, photography and of course, Cardiff.
I’ve learned so much in the two months I’ve been running it, and I know I still have a lot more to learn. It has provided me with the confidence to try my hand at new things. I have set up a supper club, and am working on a new photography and travel website, and I hope to continue my writing. I have also become more aware of what is going in and around Cardiff and my local area. It has opened up my world to new possibilities and new connections, and really the only thing I have to thank for that is Cardiff.
I still have plans to head off in other directions, plans to work and live in different parts of the world. However, no matter where I go, Cardiff will always be home.
Lauren Mahoney is currently an event management student, often dodging the ‘typical’ students of the Roath area on her way to work. When she is not doing any of those three things, Lauren is working hard on her blog cffoodproject.blogspot.co.uk and her new travel and photography website (not yet launched) and getting involved in as many food, travel and photography projects as she can.
Lauren was photographed at Gelynis Farm by Ffion Matthews
Not sure if we mentioned it or not, (have we? HAVE WE?) but we’re curating a stage at this year’s Cardiff-based musical cornucopia – SWN FESTIVAL! In the run up to the festival, we’re going to be running short profiles on each of the lovely people performing on our stage. Today, we’d like to introduce you to Laurence Made Me Cry (aka Jo Whitby). Jo has been involved with We Are Cardiff before (she’s like our resident songstress!) – and you can read the entry she wrote for the site here.
Q. You’re playing the We Are Cardiff stage this year! Can you describe your music / your sound please? What can people expect? A. I’m very excited to play the We Are Cardiff stage, so great to be a part of it. My music has developed into something quite different in recent months. The EP I released last year was pretty much all acoustic based lo-fi folk music but since working on my new album I’ve started to explore more of my musical influences. I guess you could call it electonica-folk-pop? Something like that! My performance will still be very much acoustic based but I will definitely mix in a few of the more electronic tracks. That’s what laptops are for!
Q. Describe the music scene in Cardiff for us A. As Cardiff is a relatively small capital it’s quite easy to follow what’s going on in the music scene. There are plenty of venues hosting music events every day of the week so loads of opportunities to see the local bands and musicians. Most of the Cardiff-based acts and promoters are really friendly so it’s quite easy to build up a great network of folks you know you can rely on.
Q. Any local bands/artists/producers you’d tip for people to check out? A. It goes without saying that you should all check out two of my album collaborators Alone and Dementio13 both of which create the most awesome electronica. For some folk loveliness I would definitely check out Horizon, Scriber and Albatross Archive. Then there’s Inc.A of course who are fab live.
Q. What’s your favourite thing to do in Cardiff? (music related or otherwise) A. My favourite thing to do in Cardiff is to take a walk from my house, through Wellfield Road then up for a slow stroll around Roath Park making sure I come back via a coffee shop. Simple pleasures.
Q. Have you ever played Swn Festival before? Have you got any good Swn memories? And… who are you most looking forward to seeing at Swn Festival this year? A. I’ve not played Swn before and this will be my first festival performance as a solo artist which is terrifying but also quite special. I’ve rarely been in a financial position to attend the festival and when I had the opportunity my body had the audacity to become sick. There are so many acts I want to see! My current ‘must see’ list includes Pulled Apart By Horses, Trwbador, Jewellers, Alone (if we’re not clashing) and Ratotosk. I’m really looking forward to making some new discoveries too!
Q. If people want to check out your stuff online, where can they do that? A. You can find lots of info and music on my website: http://laurencemademecry.com or if you’d rather access all the sounds in one click: http://soundcloud.com/lmmcmusic
Well well. We’ve only gone and released the third trailer for our film: We Are Cardiff – Portrait of a City! Watch below:
Looking pretty nice, eh? Thanks to Sweet Baboo for letting us use his lovely music.
To follow the progress of our film, visit the Portrait of a City blog. We’re still looking for people to invest in the film! You can give us anything from £3 upwards – and you get great rewards like hugs, t-shirts and posters in return! Visit our film fundraising page for more information.
There have been a whole bunch of lovely film-related things about our fine city of Cardiff online recently. Some of these are older too. Here are some of the pick of the bunch:
I love watching music videos and short films and spotting Cardiff locations. What are your favourites? Have we missed any out? Leave us links to ones you liked watching and perhaps we’ll do another Cardiff on film roundup post soon…
We Are Cardiff 