History
The Carmarthenshire Antiquarian Society was founded in 1905 at a time when there was little in the way of authoritative history about Carmarthenshire in published form. The Society was central in co-ordinating the collection and dissemination of all manner of historical and archaeological material. Through its well-attended field days members were able to see and hear about field monuments, and reports of these were published in The Welshman. These were so popular that our journal - the Transactions was established. Artefacts were also collected, and it was soon decided that the Society should have its own museum to hold these and the books and manuscripts that came flooding in from all corners of the County.
From 1905 to the early 1920s the Society amassed so much material that its museum became second only in size to the National Museum of Wales. It is clear that by the mid-1920s this by now priceless collection was ill housed in the Society's ‘Rooms’ in Quay Street. In 1920 Lord Kilsant had given the Society property in Bridge Street (including part of the Castle). However, by 1929 things had come to a crisis point due to shortage of space, poor storage and then dry rot set in. In December 1929 Sir Cyril Fox scathingly criticised the Society for continuing to gather material when its resources were inadequate. Fox hoped that the County Council would contribute. E. V. Collier, long-standing member was also ‘Director’ though this period and he and George Eyre Evans were active in increasing the collections. Number 5 Quay Street had been used rent free since 1920 and then the Society bought it for £400.
Four years later they bought No. 4 and thus doubled the storage and display area of the Museum. During the 1930s the collections of books, MS and artefact continued to grow placing increasing strain on storage and exhibition space. In November 1939, George Eyre Evans, one of the founding members, a long serving Secretary, and indefatigable collector and Curator of the Museum, died. Yet before his death the Society had already been in discussions with Carmarthenshire County Council with a view to the transfer of the Museum into public ownership.
Thus in November 1940 the Society conveyed 4 and 5 Quay Street, 9 Bridge Street and all the objects, books and MSS for the sum of £800 to Carmarthenshire County Council. A brief (and wholly inadequate) catalogue included in the transfer gives some indication of the sheer vastness and range of the collections - Early Christian Memorials, objects of Folk Culture, glass and china pottery, much of it from Llanelli, quantities of love spoons, samplers, paintings, pictures and 60 cases of stuffed animals. The Society’s collection of early Bibles was immense, including editions of 1611 and Y Beibl Cysegr Lan of 1620.
The Society had provided much of the raw material and to some extent a synthesis for a better understanding of the development of the area from early times through to the modern era. The Transactions were continuously published and no doubt were invaluable to the authors of the Royal Commission Inventory (1917); and the County History, produced under the capable editorship of Sir John Lloyd in the 1930s. Field days continued to be popular and an important avenue for providing members with information about the County’s antiquities, and landowners with information about the importance of sites on their land.
Under the County Council the Museum at best can be said to have remained stable. The Society maintained a presence on its management committee (a condition under the transfer agreement). The war years were however a difficult period for the Society: It is clear that V. E. Collier and George Eyre Evans were sadly missed, and despite the stalwart efforts of officers like E. G. Bowen and Sir Grismond Philipps, it was not possible to build up membership from the then very small base. The immediate post-war period was not conducive to rebuilding the Antiquarian Society in its former celebrated form. County ‘Society’ had changed and many of the old guard had long since passed away.
During the war years the dwindling membership became detached from knowledge of the wonderful collection that it been assembled between 1905 and 1939. Was it surprising then that it had lost interest in what it had created? It was a council member, J. F. (Fred) Jones, who became the Curator in the 1950s and held the reins of both the museum and Society through almost two decades that saw a stagnation in membership. J. F. Jones was no mean antiquary and scholar, but he was idiosyncratic and made enemies as well as friends. It must be recognised that he was working in isolation for a County Council that put little into the upkeep, let alone development of the museum. Coupled with this was the fact that the Society no longer owned the Museum. Poorly managed and with inadequate storage facilities, many manuscripts and books became dispersed and ill cared for. Dry rot was rampant and destroyed delicate objects like stuffed animals. During his tenure as Curator J. F. Jones kept no records of accessions (or returns of loans), nor indeed items destroyed through poor storage. Even allowing for the isolation within which he was working, posterity will perhaps judge this omission as indefensible. The consequence today is that it has proved impossible to trace many very valuable items and books that are now missing.
A rebirth developed as a result of a number of factors which came together in the 1960s. An awakening interest in the past, especially in archaeology, coincided with local excavations lead by a young and enthusiastic Dr Barri Jones of Manchester University. His excavations in Carmarthen provided supporting evidence for his assertion that Carmarthen was not just a Roman Fort, but a civitas capital with its own walls, distinct from the fort. The Society’s membership started to climb dramatically after a shake-up of officers with the election of a new Council. Field days took on a fresh dimension, with much interest being shown in Roman sites. J. F. Jones had already discovered the important marching camp at Arosfa Garreg (which was not far from the already known overlapping camps at Y Pigwn). In addition the confirmation of the fact that Carmarthen’s amphitheatre was proved, after survey work, provided a further focus for the archaeological dimension to the Society’s interest. The Transactions had made way for the Carmarthenshire Antiquary from 1940 and by 1969 Barri Jones was able to publish interim results from his 1968 excavations. By 1970 more reports and the results of work at the Roman mines at Dolau Cothi appeared.
To mark the new millennium, the Society decided to undertake an ambitious project to make an archive of 20th century reminiscences of Carmarthenshire folk. The project was co-ordinated by Eiluned Rees who went on to edit the publication Carmarthenshire Memories of the Twentieth Century. It contains nearly 130 contributions from ordinary people recording a very wide variety of extraordinary activities, events, occupations and trades spanning much of the 20th century. Other types of publication to meet the demands of the digital age was Glenys Bridges’ CD database of Maps of Mapbooks for Carmarthenshire estates launched in 2005. The Antiquary continues to be the main vehicle for the publication of members’ research interests, the changing subject matter reflecting changing attitudes and interests of members in the 21st century.
GEORGE EYRE EVANS 1857-1939
ONE OF OUR FOUNDING FATHERS
Reprinted from the Carmarthen Antiquary, Vol. 1 Part 1 (1941), pp.5-10.
The following (edited) essay was written at the time of his death in 1940.
His passing closes a chapter in the history of the Society and a new one is about to begin. When he died on November 9th, 1939, there were very few indeed of the foundation members of the Society still living, but as long as Mr. Evans remained with us the Carmarthenshire Antiquarian Society was very much as it had been throughout the thirty odd years of its existence. In so many ways Mr. Evans was the Society - no one could think of the Museum, the Field Days, or the Council Meetings without him. The Society's whole being centred in this picturesque figure. His passing causes an unmistakable break between the past and the future.
As is frequently the case he did not have the privilege to be born in the neighbourhood to which he devoted the labours of his lifetime. Colyton Parsonage in Devon is far removed from Carmarthenshire or Cardiganshire, but it is to his parents that we must turn if we are to obtain the secret of his many and varied interests.
His mother was the daughter of Captain George Eyre Powell, R.N., of Colyton, whose father had served on Nelson's flagship. His father the Reverend David Lewis Evans was a scholar of many attainments. For years he held the picturesque title of Professor of Hebrew and Mathematics at the Presbyterian College, Carmarthen. As an Unitarian minister, David Lewis Evans held advanced views in politics and religion, views that were by no means popular or acceptable in the ordinary orthodox atmosphere of a Victorian county family. But Professor Evans knew and took a justifiable pride in the great contributions that this small, but exceedingly able, religious body had made to the advancement of science and to social studies in the England of the Industrial Revolution.
Before entering Liverpool University, his early education was shared between the then strongly conservative classical traditions of Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School at Carmarthen, and the much more advanced' training he received at the famous academy of Gwilym Marles in the Unitarian atmosphere of Teifiside. He was destined for the Unitarian ministry and actually held pastorates at Whitchurch and Aberystwyth, but his interests in the present seem to have been equally balanced by his interests in the past. Many years before the Carmarthenshire Antiquarian Society had been founded he had published a long list of valuable material - the titles of which indicate the major currents of his interests including: Vestiges of Protestant Dissent (1897), Colytonia : A chapter in the History of Devon (1898); Four volumes of Antiquarian Notes published between 1898 and 1906. The House of Peterwell: An Old Time Story (1900), Aberystwyth and its Court Leet, 1690-1900 (1902), Cardiganshire: A Personal Survey of some of its Antiquities, Chapels, Churches, Fonts, Plates and Registers (1903), Lampeter (1905), Lloyd Letters I754-I796 edited with notes (1908).
It was in 1906 that Mr. Evans became the secretary of the then newly formed Carmarthenshire Antiquarian Society and Field Club and at the same time the creation of a county museum became his great ambition. Shortly afterwards we find him busy helping to form a similar society in the neighbouring county of Cardigan. In 1919 he was elected a member of the Court of Governors of the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, and two years later on to the Council of the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff, and in 1924 on to the Council of the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth.
The building up of a museum is no easy matter. Exactly how each object was collected is probably a story all of its own. Mr. Evans' graciousness of manner and effectiveness in speech worked wonders in public and in private. He was always a welcome guest at the homes of the county families and he seldom left without persuading his hosts that such and such an article or such and such a document was of public interest and should be housed henceforth 'on long loan 'at the county museum. At the other end of the scale these same powers would persuade the ploughman on the hills or the coracle fisherman by the river's bank to give to the museum a specimen of their anciently designed implement or craft. So the museum's doors were left widely open. The great need was to receive, but reception ultimately obscured the need for a balanced display of the life of the county in past ages - that is, a display where the life of the gentry could be studied alongside that of the village craftsman and peasant, and where the treasures of church and state balanced those of the publican and poacher. Another very important point should be borne in mind in attempting to assess the contents of the county museum (on which Mr. Eyre Evans spent truely affectionate care, paying it daily visits when he was not away from home) and that is that it was built up in the years when prehistory, archaeology, folk-lore and folk-culture were sciences in their infancy. It was a period when the scientific treatment of these subjects was slowly beginning to emerge out of amateur handling.. Single handed he had to pronounce judgement on objects of all sorts - prehistoric pottery, medieval armour, academic robes, old glass, china, manuscripts, furniture, and one might even add on 'ships and shoes and sealing wax." Nevertheless, Eyre Evans did a great service, creating a popular interest in the remains of the past. They created the public that helped to make possible great national institutions such as the National Museum and the National Library. Mr. Evans saw clearly that the true purpose of a local museum was to create public interest. With admirable foresight he encouraged parties of school children, led by their schoolmasters, to visit the museum and by his lecturettes and demonstrations presented to them vivid and concrete pictures of the ways of life of their ancestors. His knowledge was always at the disposal of enquirers, however young, however old, or of whatever rank socially or academically. In truth, he seemed called upon 'to make all knowledge his province."
At the period when the building up of the Carmarthenshire and Cardiganshire societies and the county -museum at Carmarthen were engaging his attention he was called upon to undertake another allied task. His love for the open air and for walking were apparent at a very early date and most early photographs of him show him in. walking habit clutching his famous thumb-stick. He was in his element as a field archaeologist, although this must not be taken to mean that he had ever been associated with any scientific excavation. But no-one could have been more appropriately selected to be the Inspecting Officer of the Royal Commission on Ancient Monuments in Wales and Monmouthshire. The work of the Royal Commission led him to visit in person almost every ancient monument or site in the Principality - a record that anyone could be well proud of. He retained this post until 1928, during which period seven volumes (each being an inventory of the antiquities of an individual county) were published by the authority of His Majesty's Stationery Office. The Carmarthenshire volume is among the seven. It is well known that Mr. Eyre Evans was mainly responsible for their contents.
Mr. Evans (as has been made abundantly clear above) that he was no narrow specialist, or no partisan. It is this balanced view of local history that has made the direction of our Transactions in the past so outstandingly successful and the credit for it goes entirely to Mr. Evans. One of the greatest living authorities on the history of religious life in Wales has recently written, 'No student of Carmarthenshire history is likely to ignore the Transactions of the Carmarthenshire Antiquarian Society and Field Club which (unlike the general run of' antiquarian 'journals) gives ample space to Nonconformist history and prints copious extracts from original sources." In the light of what has been said about Mr. Evans' early days we are able to appreciate this compliment all the more.
Mr. Evans continued with unabated zeal to organize and carry through the Society's Field Days until the year of his death. All the time the Transactions continued to have his most enthusiastic support and his articles, reports and notes remained a constant feature throughout the years. As we have seen he continued to attend more and more public and administrative meetings, while as an indication of his remarkable youth it should be recalled that he joined the Boy Scout movement at the age of 67! He participated in all the joys of youth and the open air and soon became County Scout Commissioner for Carmarthenshire and in 1928 became deputy Scout Commissioner for Wales. His services to the town and county of Carmarthen were manifold and reached into many and varied spheres, and in recognition of it all he was received with due ceremony by the Mayor and Corporation on July 22nd, 1937, as a Freeman of the Ancient Borough of Carmarthen, an honour he so richly deserved and one he valued so greatly.
The end came suddenly in his 82nd year when he was still in full harness. His life had been a pleasant one, free from the ordinary cares of this world; a life spent in the service of others and one lived to the full. When he was 32 he had written about his 'Happy Hours of Work and Worship', if he had chosen to do so he could have re-issued this book under the same title when he was 82. In many ways, however, he had outlived his age, and in his closing years was a picturesque figure surviving from an era of peace and leisure into the gloom that had gathered around our speed-loving mechanical life which he so thoroughly detested. As was most fitting, his cremated remains were placed near those of his father, from whom he had inherited so much, in the burial ground of Alltyblacca Unitarian Chapel, which lies near the river Teifi between the counties of Cardigan and Carmarthen - those parts of Wales whose distant past he had striven so hard to illuminate.
