Book review: Man, Myth and Museum

Aled Singleton

In this finely balanced book Eurwyn Wiliam provides a detailed account of Iorwerth Peate’s life (1901-1982), with a focus on establishing the museum at St Fagans. It makes a deliberate choice of each chapter focusing on certain themes connected to Peate’s life, such as establishing the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff, country craftsmen, the Welsh house and a folk museum for Wales.

To be clear this is not a chronological biographical account of Peate’s life. Wiliam’s approach helps to structure the chapters and stresses the important contexts of the times in which lived. This choice makes the book interesting to the general reader in the ways that I discuss here, but it also has some downsides.

The man

Peate came from a line of craftspeople and was raised in Llanbryn-Mair, a Welsh-speaking rural area of mid Wales. He went to grammar school, then studied at Aberystwyth University and moved to Cardiff in 1926 to work at the relatively new National Museum of Wales. Scholarship of Welsh architecture and culture was important throughout his life and is a significant focus on this book. As a renowned scholar of related fields, the author himself provides an important critique of Peate’s place within his field.

Wiliam’s analysis is detailed and nuanced and deserves a review in its own right. As such I consider some elements which will interest people interested more broadly in Wales and life in the twentieth century.

A body of knowledge

This book goes explains the development of knowledge concerning buildings in Wales, such as the pursuit of the long house, and Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales itself. We understand that archaeology and objects were important features of the original museum (established by charter in 1907) and that the first outpost beyond the Cathays Park building in Cardiff was the Roman Legion Museum in Caerleon.

Indeed, this book explains how the folk history element had to fight for a place within archaeology before gaining its own museum at St Fagans after 1946. It is critical to note that what is now the National Museum of History has become the most visited tourism attraction in Wales.

Sharing Welsh identity

Through the book there are references to the pioneering folk museums in Scandinavia and in Ireland which inspired St Fagans. As well as the buildings and the research, we understand that these precursors inspired Peate’s cultural (and political) mission of folk history as a way of sharing and promoting Welsh identity.

Williams is careful to explain that Peate’s idea of Wales derived from a time of widespread Welsh speaking and a place before the industry changed the country. Peate is shown to have been heavily involved in the Eisteddfod and for writing poetry. His wider networks both in Wales and internationally helped to make the case for the museum itself which we have inherited.

Public asset

The story of the National Museum details the minutiae of the decisions made about this public asset. For example, we learn how people sometimes got appointed without interview and how men with titles such as Wing-Commander and Lord were on the committee which would establish St Fagans.

It is revealed that the Museum had to ask the Treasury in London for capital and revenue funding to gain extra staff. The Treasury appears to be very parsimonious and obsessed by detail at times.

For example, they did not pay for any of the buildings which were reconstructed at the site. This money came from the Pilgrim Trust, local government, from public appeals and other income generation. It is important to remember that visitors were charged to enter, rather than this being a free museum.

Battles

The first few chapters reveal a lot about Peate’s professional life, including battles with the director of the National Museum Cyril Fox (who became a knight of the realm during his tenure) and being (temporarily) removed from his job during World War II for being a pacifist.

Towards the end of the book, we get some reflections from other leading thinkers in Wales. Whilst there are many people who had forged strong alliances with Peate, others are critical of his refusal to bring the history of Wales through the industrial revolution and beyond into the equation.  It is important that museums such as Big Pit and St Fagans itself now embrace this important part of our history. They have very much moved beyond the objects.

The myth

From my reading the ‘myth’ element from this book’s title is not getting a more intimate or rounded understanding of Peate as a human being. We know that he was fiercely principled and determined in his work, but we do not find out much about his wife, child or family life.

Though a 1971 portrait features on the cover, alongside two earlier photos of him in the middle of this volume, we don’t get a feeling for his mannerisms, whether he enjoyed a light ale from the St Fagans restaurant or took a brisk walk about the grounds.

Potentially this lacking is due to limited material and the protagonist himself not revealing a great deal. However, the author plays to his strengths as a former curator of buildings at St Fagans means. The middle chapters focus on disciplines such as architecture and Welsh folk history. Of note, other more personal insights can be found from Catrin Stevens’s biography of Peate.

In summary, this is a finely balanced, well-researched and clearly-written book which tells an important story about Wales in the twentieth century.

Man, Myth and Museum: Iorwerth C. Peate and the making of the Welsh Folk Museum by Eurwyn Wiliam is published by University of Wales Press. It is available from all good bookshops.