Welsh Journals

The Royal Commission on Ancient and Historical Monuments in Wales published in 1975, as its contribution to European Architectural Heritage Year, Peter Smith's truly magisterial study of Welsh domestic architecture, Houses of the Welsh Countryside (H.M.S.O. Pp. 604, with 188 line drawings, 51 maps and 108 photographic illustrations. £ 25.00). In an extensive introductory section, Mr. Smith traces the development of Welsh domestic building from the later medieval period to the coming of the industrial age. All major house types-medieval hall houses, the farmhouses of the Tudor and Stuart period, the gentry homes of the Renaissance, the small-holders' and quarrymen's cottages of the eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries-are discussed with equal depth and sensitivity, not only in terms of plan and construction but also of their historical and geographical relation to the society of which they formed a part. However, the enduring value of this lavish work lies elsewhere- in the superb array of line drawings (with perspective and cutaway drawings as well as the more conventional plans and sections); in the highly detailed distribution maps, with full lists of different architectural features to be found in the different parts of Wales together with complete OS grid references; in the extraordinarily illuminating and handsomely produced photographs; and in the magnificent series of indexes. This is a book for the specialist rather than for the lay enthusiast in pursuit of 'the spirit of the age'. It focusses on the technicalities of house construction rather than on styles of architecture (though the impact of Nash's visitations to Cardiganshire is not ignored). It is animated by the spirit of Peate rather than of Pevsner. Even so, this is an extraordinary achievement of precise fieldwork and scholarship. It lends force to Mr. Smith's final plea that the domestic architecture of past generations should be preserved by planners and surveyors to adorn the material culture of their successors. The apparently high cost of this book should be totally disregarded, for such a work is surelv bevond nrice. In P. E. Razzell and R. W. Wainwright (eds.), The Victorian Working Class (Frank Cass, 1973. Pp. 338. £ 6.50), are printed lengthy extracts from the Morning Chronicle's investigation of working-class life in England and Wales in 1849, a survey suggested to the newspaper by the great Mayhew himself. The book sheds fascinating light upon the moral, intellectual, material and physical condition of the poor. It describes in depth the domestic, workshop and factory forms of production, and the working people who contributed to them. Included are four excerpts covering social and economic conditions in the ironworks and collieries of the Merthyr district, together with three further letters on the characteristics of the towns of Merthyr Tydfil and Dowlais. The accounts of the Irish colony of Merthyr and of the vigorous religious life of the chapels (stimulated anew by the cholera epidemic) are particularly dramatic, and provide valuable primary evidence of the urban growth of the 'Samaria of south Wales'.