And what to see? The National Museum has intentionally shied away from any stereotypical view of “Welsh life.” You’ll find a Neolithic timber circle and an Iron Age village (both re-created from actual archeological sites), stone farm houses, churches, stores, terrace houses, a huge 1916 Workmen’s Institute from Caerphilly, even aluminum-built prefabs from 1948. A working bakery produces and sells bread; a general store (with a fascinating back story) is stocked with early 20th-century items; a turnpike tollhouse is furnished as it would have been during the Rebecca Riots and a blacksmith works his forge.

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For me at least, the most interesting exhibit was an entire terrace of row houses from the rough coal-mining city of Merthyr Tydfil a few dozen miles to the north. Now more than two centuries old, these six cottages have been furnished to show how coal miners lived throughout this period: 1805, 1855, 1925, 1955 and 1985 (when the museum moved the terrace). In front of each cottage stretches its garden complete with outbuildings, again carefully reconstructed for its period. It demonstrates how a half-dozen generations of working people adapted to exactly the same building structure as standards of living rose. If there is a museum that presents more visual interest and sheer enlightenment in a single exhibit, I have yet to visit it.

By all means, add to your schedule whatever building is being reassembled and restored at the time of your visit. At the time of my visit, crafters were working on 13th-century St. Teilo’s church, recently moved from Llandeilo Tal-y-bont. The church had been re-erected, and restoration experts were carefully re-creating its interior as it had appeared at the end of the Roman Catholic period. Painter Ffleur Kelly was testing period pigments before applying them to the wood panels of the loft; unlike the pallid interiors of the later Protestant period, this medieval church was awash in bright colors, its walls and woods covered in bright illustrations of biblical themes. In another room, Welsh woodcarver Ray Smith bent over his work with complete stillness, only his hands moving.

St. Fagans is one of seven campuses of the Wales National Museum, now emerging as the Smithsonian of Europe with its wide range of interests spread over numerous large and sophisticated buildings (as well as its free admission). The National Museum has five complexes in the Cardiff area; apart from St. Fagans and the original museum in Cardiff, the National Waterfront Museum celebrates Wales’ maritime heritage, and the Big Pit National Coal Museum allows you to go underground in an actual deep coal mine, while the extensive Roman remains at Caerleon, with their Arthurian links, make up the National Roman Legion Museum. Elsewhere in Wales, the National Wool Museum sits in countryside east of Cardigan, and the National Slate Museum preserves an enormous open pit quarry in the shadow of Mount Snowdon.

This article by Jim Hargan was originally published in the September 2007 issue of British Heritage Magazine. For more great articles, subscribe to British Heritage magazine today!

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