Brecon Museum II

Many apologies for the delay in this post.  It has been an odd week - another viewing, which mopped up all but a few hours of the past 5 days - and yet more problems with the broadband and the phone line (which was extremely crackly).  I couldn't load photos for love or money, which was very frustrating.

Oh, and the viewing?  Well, I'm not holding my breath.  Two ladies who run a spiritual retreat - one very tuned-in to the house (and said how fortunate we were to live here) but was also heard to mutter perhaps it wasn't for them.  (Not surprising as she stuck her head up the leaking inglenook as there was a wet spot beneath it I could not disguise . . .)  I spent the week being very stressed out because there were two obvious areas of damp on walls - temporary, since lime walls breath in and then expel any damp by drawing it out again WHEN it finally stops raining.  One wall is the old gypsum plaster and that doesn't breath like lime plaster does.

Anyway, today Tam and I are off to Newton House (where I used to volunteer) at Dinefwr Park in Llandeilo where there is a day of talks about old houses, lime, and letting them breath and we hope to find a replacement for our dear friend Steve who did all the lime work and much of the restoration on our house.  He has now retired, bless him, and out of the area so we will miss him turning up on the doorstep with his metal detector or a jar of honey from his bees.

So, back to Brecon museum, starting with this fabulous old hand-made and hand embroidered smock.  I have always had a really soft spot for such things - SO Thomas Hardy, and a real link with our agricultural past.

This was part of a panorama of the beautiful scenery around Brecon - the Brecon Beacons in sight here.

A Great Wheel, a design which lingered on in Wales.  Originally invented in the 14th C, it was also called a Walking Wheel as the spinner would stand up to work it.  As the treadle wheel, a later invention, was more expensive, the Great Wheel was used well into the 19th C here in Wales.

Tally sticks - simple square batons of wood marked with crosses to count livestock (usually sheep, especially here in Wales).  Beside them is a fagging hook  which held the corn for it to be cut with the sickle.  I used to have one which was a more simple wooden stick (one which had a natural bend to it).  Inside that is a reproduction Ox Shoe.

If I remember rightly, this hefty iron bucket came from a coal mine.

Various dairy implements for the production of butter.  I love the pretty hand-carved sycamore butter  stamps and have a couple myself.  Metal skimmers to the right (though these look like French ones to me), Scotch "hands" or butter pats to shape the pat of butter, and hand-made wooden bowls too.

Another part of the same display with a milking stool and a metal skimmer to the front.  The bowl with holes would have been used to drain the whey from the butter and then the water when it was washed to remove any remaining whey.

Part of an exhibition about Adolina Patty, the famous opera singer who lived at Craig-y-Nos Castle between Brecon and Neath.  (The Home Rule for Hay flyer is associated with the self-appointed "King of Hay", the late Richard Booth, who was responsible for turning the town into the "town of books".

This looks like a Mamgu Shawl - one worn by a nursing mother to keep her warm when she breast fed her baby in the still of the night.

Right, I will get this posted before the internet plays up again.  One more post about Brecon Museum to come.