Wales part two

Time to try to play catch-up on my blog, now that I'm back in London...

Luckily my first full day in Wales had a fairly laid-back itinerary. At noon I was supposed to go to the Llanishen church (Llanishen was a little town, that's now a suburb of Cardiff) to photograph/film. This gave me a little more than an hour to wander up from my hostell to Cardiff Castle. It seemed very small and quaint after seeing places like the Tower of London, but it was still quite interesting.


I didn't have much time there, because I knew it would take some time to find the Llanishen church. In 1761 I had some ancestors get married here, so my mom wanted me to film/photograph it. I bumbled all over the area, and finally stumbled onto it a little bit before noon. At noon the church let out, and the Reverand invited me in. I expected him to be able to show me around, but he was incredibly busy. Luckily a lady (I think her position was church warden, or something) was very kind, and told me everything I needed to know. She had a ton of information on the area.

I told her I was there because of a wedding that happened in 1761, and she said "Oh, well, would you like to go back and look it up in the church archives?" Would I! They only had xeroxs of the original papers, because the city came and took all the originals. But, I managed to find their copy of the original church record of the marriage, which nobody in our family has ever seen. This was very significant for a few reasons, most notably because we surmised that they had been illiterate, yet they had signed their own names. Unfortunately, they wouldn't allow me to photograph it, but we hope to be able to get a copy from the city.

She also told me that in 1761, only a small section of the church had been built, and the rest was added on later. We hadn't known this before. So, I took lots of pictures and videos, thanked her, and headed to my next destination. A little farther north is the city/area/county (whatever they call it) of Rhondda (pronounced Rhontha). This was a coal mining town, and I was there to go to the Rhondda Heritage Park, which had a great tour of the old coal mine. We were trying to get as munch info on Welsh coal mining as possible, since nearly all of my Welsh ancestors were either coal miners or farmers. I took the tour, and filmed the whole thing, which was quite interesting. It was guided by an old coal miner, that had actually worked at that mine before they closed it in the 80s.

After that, I made my way back into Cardiff. I went to the local internet cafe and called home to tell them of my findings, then went back to the hostel to go to bed early. Tomorrow looked to be rediculously busy.