St. Fagans

"Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if they were going to be dead by midnight. Extend to them all the care, kindness and understanding you can muster, and do it with no thought of any reward. Your life will never be the same again."
Og Mandino

A visit to St Fagans National Museum of History near Cardiff, in search of some stock photos for my presentation in just over a week's time. The theme is Spirit of the Place and I wanted some shots to illustrate typical buildings - peoples' homes - through time in this area, from the nineteenth century and earlier. The Museum has a wonderful selection of reconstructed buildings dating back to the sixteenth century, and of course there are still 13th century churches still standing - where my 2 x great grandparents married in 1840.

The photo is of Rhyd-y-car Terrace, from Merthyr, built about 1800 by one of the ironmasters to house his workers and re-erected at St. Fagan's in 1987. At the end of the street of houses is a communal oven (the one shown is from Georgetown, Tredegar) which the street shared, each house being allocated a day on which they could use it. The water pump is also something of a luxury for a time when clean water supplies often came from a communal well. The Cholera Cemetery between Tredegar and Rhymney is full of people who fell victim to the poor sanitation and living conditions of the time.