Blogs

Elaine Dacey, who now lives in Sheffield, was raised in the village of Pantyscallog near Merthyr Tydfil in the 1950s.  Most of her ancestors lived and worked in Pantyscallog, Penydarren, Dowlais and Merthyr in the 19^th and 20^thC, but her grandfather Albert Crandon, like many other Welshmen over the years, ventured further afield to look for work and for a while he and his young family lived in America. Here, we share Elaine Dacey’s memories of her family and life in Pantyscallog, and also her grandfather’s great adventure in America in the 1920s and 1930s.

In this blog, Reina van der Wiel (Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales) and Catalena Angele (People's Collection Wales) discuss how and why the Archif Cof | Memory Archive was established on the People's Collection Wales website and its importance of facilitating reminiscence work with people living with dementia.

Here, our guest blogger Graham Tudor Emmanuel talks about his father's legacy and the large photographic collection that has been deposited with the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales. 500 digital items from the Vernon David Emmanuel Collection will be available soon on People’s Collection Wales and will include images of chapels and churches in Carmarthenshire as well as various industrial sites in south Wales. Already published from the collection are 100 fantastic images depicting life in and around Usk, Monmouthshire in the Edwardian era, .

In this latest blog, our guest blogger, Deanna Groome talks about their family’s Photoscoot Project which was inspired by a copy of the Borough Guide for Machynlleth, published originally in 1911, and describes how she and her mother, Audrey, decided to undertake their most recent local history project in the popular seaside town of Aberystwyth during the Spring 2020 lockdown.