J. Geraint Jenkins

Until recently the country craftsman was an essential member of every rural community. His livelihood was generated by carrying on traditions which started more than a thousand years ago. Traditional Country Craftsmen provides a valuable history for anyone interested in the skills and crafts of bygone years. Photographs and line drawings enhance the text, bringing many country skills and crafts to life and provide the reader with an engaging and charming history of this aspect of country life. Traditional Country Craftsmen covers everything from 'Woodland Craftsmen', 'Metal and Straw Crafts' through to 'Stone and Clay Crafts' and 'Textile Crafts' and provides the reader with a fascinating account of rural skills.

It is said that during the 1970s a new museum was opened somewhere in Britain every fortnight; the number of heritage centres, preserved industrial sites, town trails and historic houses open to the public proliferated because they provided a semblance of solidity in an era when our landscapes and townscapes were rapidly changing. Getting Yesterday Right: Interpreting the Identity of Wales examines the growth of historically orientated institutions in Wales. The preservation, conservation and interpretation of historical sites, buildings and artefacts are of great importance, but has the conservation movement and our preoccupation with the past gone too far? Are we attempting to preserve too much without giving enough thought to the lasting value of the things preserved? These are just some of the questions raised in this new edition of a classic text.

For centuries the coastal communities of Wales have based their economy on the rich harvest of the sea and river estuaries. The picture in the second half of the twentieth century is rapidly changing. The Inshore Fishermen of Wales is fully illustrated and provides the first full scale survey of Welsh Coastal Fishermen and looks at the traditional Welsh fishing methods which, due to technological developments, are quickly disappearing. This highly detailed book also identifies the wealth of fish found around the Welsh coast. The Inshore Fishermen of Wales is brought to life through an interesting collection of photographs which reveal the men and women whose livelihoods depended on the catch. This is a book not only for historians and fishing enthusiasts but for anyone interested in the maritime heritage of Wales.

The key to the study of rural Wales is the living past, for many features of the culture and social life of Welsh country people are of great antiquity. The pattern of settlement brought into being by the medieval system of inheritance is still recognizable in the scattered farms typical of many districts today, and its impress on the customs and character of the remoter uplands persists, not least in the hospitality and kindness offered to strangers. The necessarily self-sufficient nature of dispersed hamlets and villages resulted in many variations in the type and design of farm implements, adapted to particular local needs, and especially of vehicles used for transport on the steeply sloping fields and pastures. Sleds, wheeled sleds, long carts and 'gambos', ranging from a few timbers roughly put together by the farmer to the craftsman-made output of wheelwright and blacksmith are here fully described and illustrated. Domestic crafts using local materials and rural industries such as woollen manufacture and leather working dependent on farm produce have many features distinctively Welsh; so too have the cottages and farmhouses and their furnishings, and the way of life reflected in the customs and beliefs that have not entirely vanished from the countryside.

This work argues that the heritage of Wales is being exploited and cheapened by the creation of tourist "experiences" which trade on nostalgia. It calls for integrity and authenticity in the interpretation of Welsh heritage, emphasizing the need for careful selection of sites and artefacts. The text is essentially a survey from which implications not only for the development of museums and interpretative centres in Wales but also for other parts of the United Kingdom. It should be of interest to all those who work in the "heritage industry", to their public and to anyone concernbed about the way in which the past is being presented.