The Chartist Scarecrows

The Chartist Scarecrows

The Chartist movement was the first mass movement driven by the working classes. It grew following the failure of the 1832 Reform Act to extend the vote beyond those owning property.

The Newport Rising was the last large-scale armed rising in Wales, by Chartists whose demands included democracy and the right to vote with a secret ballot.

The Chartist Scarecrows

Our November meeting is Ray Stroud’s talk The Chartist Scarecrows: South Wales and the Millbank Penitentiary, 1839 -1848. Ray was one of the curators of an exhibition, held at Newport Museum and Art Gallery last year, on the art, past and present, that represented the Chartist Uprising.

The leaders of the Uprising were John Frost, Zephaniah Williams, and William Jones but Ray’s talk will concentrate on the lives of the five lesser-known Welsh Chartists involved, who were initially sentenced to death, later commuted to five years in the Millbank Penitentiary.

Everybody is welcome to the talk at Earlsdon Park Village Hall at 7.30pm on Friday 15th November.

Details

  • Earlsdon Park Village Hall. 7.30pm on Friday 15th November.
  • Admission £7 (Cambrian Society Members £6).
  • Pay on the door.

Pagan Beneath the Surface: Welsh Sacred Wells

Our first talk of the 2024-25 year is Pagan Beneath the Surface: Welsh Sacred Wells, in which Mike Farnworth traces the tradition of sacred wells from Roman and pre-Roman times to the present day, showing how Celtic pagan sites were taken over by the church and dedicated to saints, and how, at the same time the folk traditions at these wells continued largely unchanged. Some superstitious rituals still continued when people came to spas to “take the waters”.

Everybody is welcome to the talk at Earlsdon Park Village Hall at 7.30pm on Friday 20th September.

Cambrian Society Members £5, non-members £6. Pay on the door.

Behind The Legend

Picture of a young Richard Burton

Historian and biographer Angela V John is the author of The Actors’ Crucible: Port Talbot and the Making of Burton, Hopkins, Sheen and All the Others, which examines how and why this industrial town became a place of stars as well as steel. For the Cambrian Society’s November meeting she will be concentrating on just one of these big names. Her illustrated talk, Behind the Legend: Port Talbot and the Making of Richard Burton will explore the early life of the Welsh town’s most famous export. It will focus on the young Richard Jenkins before he changed his name and became famous and will provide a refreshing challenge to the usual rags to riches story.

Everybody is welcome to the talk at Earlsdon Park Village Hall at 7.30pm on Friday 24th November.

Cambrian Society Members £5.
Non-members £6.
Pay on the door.
More details: 024 7671 1397.

History Grounded

History Grounded

For the second event of the Cambrian Society’s programme, Dr Elin Jones will give us her illustrated talk Hanes yn y Tir: History Grounded – a Visual History of Wales from the Cromlech to the Senedd.

In early 2022 her book History Grounded, a children’s history book (though not exclusively for children!) was provided to all schools in Wales by the Welsh Government in time for the 2022/2023 academic year. It’s a beautifully produced hardback, copiously illustrated, and it’s also available in a Welsh language edition. So different from the history books of old, it’s been called a gamechanger.

We hope to see a large crowd at this talk which will cover 5000 years of history.
The talk will be preceded at 7pm by the Society’s AGM.

Details:
7.30pm on Friday 13th October.
Earlsdon Park Village Hall.
Admission £6 (Cambrian Society Members £5).
Pay on the door.

More information: info@coventrycambrian.co.uk

Elvis “Live”

Elvis tries again. 

Last year the Cambrian Society’s first event of the season was cancelled because it fell in the mourning period for Queen Elizabeth II. Nothing daunted, we’re trying again. At 7.30pm on Friday 15th September Wynne Roberts BEM will be give us his show Elvis “Live” at Earlsdon Park Village Hall.

Wynne works near Bangor, where he is the Chaplain at its regional hospital, Ysbyty Gwynedd.

His Elvis other-life started after a performance at the Porthcawl Elvis Festival – maybe, the largest Elvis Festival in the world. “I went up on stage and sang ‘You Gave Me a Mountain’ and the whole place went ballistic.”

In the last nine years, Wynne and ‘Elvis’ have raised more than £250,000 for charity and, having gained the attention of audiences far and wide, in 2019 he was awarded the British Empire Medal by the Queen for his charitable services.

This will be a ticketed event with tickets, at £7, available from Cambrian Society committee members, or 024 7671 1397.

All the proceeds will go to Wynne’s charity for the night, the British Heart Foundation.

An Arabian Odyssey: from Flintshire to the Land of the Pharaohs

Our first event of the New Year is a talk by Sheila Woolf, a well-known speaker in Coventry and Warwickshire who has about 20 illustrated talks to her name.

For us, she will be telling the story of one of her Welsh ancestors, Edward Baldwin Evans.

In the 1880s, Evans, the son of a Rhuddlan schoolmaster, found himself at the centre of international business and politics following the opening of the Suez Canal.  Recruited to military intelligence in Egypt and the Sudan, he played a key role until finally meeting a tragic fate.

His story, told through his own diary, and letters to family in Warwickshire, is now largely forgotten except for a magnificent memorial in Rhuddlan churchyard.

The Welsh Chapel Bilingual Carol Service

On Sunday 18th December at 2.30pm, we will be going to the Welsh Chapel Bilingual Carol Service – congregational carols, readings and some musical interludes.  As always, after the service you are invited for a cup of tea, a piece of cake and a chat.

This is the second year that we will be at the new venue – the clean, warm, light and airy Radford & Holbrooks Methodist Church.  It’s at 5 Rupert Road, (off Beake Avenue). CV6 3AZ and it has good parking at the side of the church. 

Directions:  As you come out of town on the Radford Road (B4098), after about a mile, take the right hand turn on to Beake Avenue, signposted Holbrooks.  After .7 mile you will see the church on the right.  Turn down Rupert Road.  There is car parking at the front of the church and at the rear.  We hope to see you there.