Welsh Ladies at tea

LA ladies in fact although I don't think you'd find them dressed this way nowadays.

Someone dropped this into the heritage centre and I had a look while I was doing my stint there.
Included were nine recipes for Bara Brith (speckled bread = fruit cake) and 14 for Pice ar y Maen (cakes on the stone = Welsh cakes), each one doubtless brought, or sent,  by someone's grandmother.

This recipe book dates from the 1980s, a century after the Welsh Church was founded in LA.  and the decade in which the old building received a seismic retrofit to render it safe in an earthquake. However it didn't survive the dwindling of the congregation that saw it closed in 2012. The building itself survives as a multi-faith centre.

Did Welsh women really wear these stovepipe hats in California? Unlikely, unless a few had managed to bring them across the plains and through the Rockies by wagon train.

Did they even wear them in Wales, really? There's been some debate about that over the years but there's a very interesting exploration of the subject here which concludes they probably did, and may have actually adopted the tall hat from male attire. 

"In the 1800s, girls who worked in the mines dressed in boys' clothing, including trousers, to be able to crawl through the mines while the infamous Rebecca Riots saw men dressed in women's clothing in violent protest, and  Welsh women were mistaken as British military at the Battle of Fishguard. The Hat itself is in many ways is an androgynous item, its smooth black and angular features are much closer to many typical male items of dress such as a suit and top-hat, then much traditional female attire. Its angular features often sit juxtaposed with the frilly and lacy white cap underneath. This is perhaps partly why it makes for such an interesting subject for many queer artists today."


Hmm, interesting! I don't know what these LAdies would think though.