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This town in West Wales has a history going back over 900 years. | 0:00:02 | 0:00:06 | |
Over the centuries, it's known good times and bad, boom times and bust. | 0:00:06 | 0:00:11 | |
Nowadays, it's a thriving market place, | 0:00:11 | 0:00:14 | |
proving that you can't keep a good town down. | 0:00:14 | 0:00:16 | |
It's the place where the Welsh defeated the Norman invaders. | 0:00:16 | 0:00:20 | |
It was once Wales' busiest port | 0:00:20 | 0:00:23 | |
and had some intriguing ladies of the night. | 0:00:23 | 0:00:26 | |
It's a town of horses and of power boats. | 0:00:26 | 0:00:29 | |
It has nothing to do with knitwear and a lot to do with jeans. | 0:00:29 | 0:00:33 | |
This is the story of Cardigan. | 0:00:33 | 0:00:35 | |
Today, Cardigan has a population of about 4,000 | 0:00:54 | 0:00:58 | |
and is the hub of this part of rural Ceredigion. | 0:00:58 | 0:01:01 | |
In Welsh, it's called Aberteifi, | 0:01:01 | 0:01:03 | |
and the River Teifi runs peacefully alongside the town, | 0:01:03 | 0:01:06 | |
giving it much of its character. | 0:01:06 | 0:01:08 | |
In the centre of town is this - Cardigan Castle - | 0:01:10 | 0:01:14 | |
closed to the public now and propped up by these rather ugly girders. | 0:01:14 | 0:01:19 | |
It doesn't look much, | 0:01:19 | 0:01:20 | |
but wind back nine centuries and this was a very important place. | 0:01:20 | 0:01:24 | |
Cardigan was at the sharp end of the Norman invasion of Wales. | 0:01:28 | 0:01:31 | |
As a crossing place for the Teifi, it was a prized location, | 0:01:31 | 0:01:36 | |
fought over for decades and often changing hands. | 0:01:36 | 0:01:40 | |
There were an awful lot of battles here because it was the front line, | 0:01:40 | 0:01:43 | |
the frontier town, basically. | 0:01:43 | 0:01:46 | |
Because you had the Welsh very strong to the north in Ceredigion, | 0:01:46 | 0:01:49 | |
the Normans very strong in Pembrokeshire to the south, | 0:01:49 | 0:01:52 | |
and whoever controlled Cardigan controlled the frontier. | 0:01:52 | 0:01:55 | |
Finally, it was Welsh warrior Rhys ap Gruffydd | 0:01:55 | 0:01:58 | |
who sent the Normans packing. | 0:01:58 | 0:02:00 | |
In 1165, he captured their wooden castle, | 0:02:00 | 0:02:03 | |
burnt it to the ground and set about building his own. | 0:02:03 | 0:02:07 | |
What makes this castle a bit special is this. Stone. | 0:02:07 | 0:02:11 | |
The Normans had started building them to last | 0:02:11 | 0:02:13 | |
but this is the first home build - | 0:02:13 | 0:02:16 | |
a stone castle built by the Welsh to resist those Normans. | 0:02:16 | 0:02:19 | |
To mark his victory, in the winter of 1176, Rhys held a festival. | 0:02:20 | 0:02:24 | |
He invited poets and musicians from all over Britain | 0:02:24 | 0:02:28 | |
to Cardigan Castle to compete. | 0:02:28 | 0:02:30 | |
It's the first ever Eisteddfod and it all started here in Cardigan. | 0:02:30 | 0:02:35 | |
It was announced a year beforehand, like the modern Eisteddfod. | 0:02:35 | 0:02:39 | |
You had two principal competitions. One in music, one in poetry. | 0:02:39 | 0:02:42 | |
The most significant thing was the setting up of chairs for the victors | 0:02:42 | 0:02:47 | |
because unlike nowadays when we take chairs for granted, | 0:02:47 | 0:02:50 | |
the chair was a great symbol of power. | 0:02:50 | 0:02:52 | |
Only the prince or the bishop had a chair. | 0:02:52 | 0:02:55 | |
So to give a bard a chair, you know... This was a great honour. | 0:02:55 | 0:02:58 | |
And in a moment of 12th-century political correctness, | 0:02:58 | 0:03:02 | |
the chair for the poetry prize went to North Wales | 0:03:02 | 0:03:05 | |
and the winner for music came from the south. | 0:03:05 | 0:03:08 | |
Shrewd politician, that Lord Rhys. | 0:03:08 | 0:03:10 | |
And here it is, the first Eisteddfod. | 0:03:10 | 0:03:13 | |
This interpretation was painted by Cardigan's most famous artist, | 0:03:13 | 0:03:16 | |
Aneurin Jones, and his son Meirion. | 0:03:16 | 0:03:19 | |
They painted it as part of the celebrations | 0:03:19 | 0:03:22 | |
to mark the town's 900th anniversary. | 0:03:22 | 0:03:24 | |
There's the bard being chaired with the Lord Rhys looking on. | 0:03:24 | 0:03:27 | |
Aneurin Jones used the faces of townspeople today | 0:03:27 | 0:03:31 | |
to portray their forebears. | 0:03:31 | 0:03:33 | |
The story of Lord Rhys and Cardigan Castle has a rather sad ending. | 0:03:33 | 0:03:37 | |
After his death, his two sons fell out over their inheritance | 0:03:37 | 0:03:42 | |
and the castle was sold to the Normans for a pittance. | 0:03:42 | 0:03:46 | |
Kids, eh? You give them everything and what they do? | 0:03:46 | 0:03:49 | |
They give it away. | 0:03:49 | 0:03:52 | |
After the castle, the mediaeval building in Cardigan | 0:03:53 | 0:03:57 | |
is the church of St Mary's, which dates from the 13th century. | 0:03:57 | 0:04:00 | |
It lies near where the Normans built a priory | 0:04:00 | 0:04:04 | |
but the location of the church has a more intriguing origin | 0:04:04 | 0:04:07 | |
and that comes from the story of a miracle. | 0:04:07 | 0:04:10 | |
It is said that a statue of Mary with her son on her lap | 0:04:12 | 0:04:16 | |
and a candle burning in her right hand, | 0:04:16 | 0:04:19 | |
was found on the banks of the Teifi. | 0:04:19 | 0:04:21 | |
The people decided to bring it to the parish church. | 0:04:23 | 0:04:26 | |
Three or four times they brought it there, but each time | 0:04:26 | 0:04:29 | |
they found it miraculously back where they originally saw it. | 0:04:29 | 0:04:34 | |
So they gave up and decided to build the church on that spot. | 0:04:34 | 0:04:38 | |
That's why St Mary's exists now. | 0:04:38 | 0:04:41 | |
The candle on the statue was said never to have gone out | 0:04:42 | 0:04:45 | |
and so Cardigan became a key site for pilgrimage in Wales. | 0:04:45 | 0:04:48 | |
Sadly, the statue itself was destroyed during the Reformation | 0:04:48 | 0:04:52 | |
but like the miracle, it refused to go away. | 0:04:52 | 0:04:55 | |
A new statue was made, and in 1986, in front of 4,500 people, | 0:04:56 | 0:05:02 | |
it was inaugurated as the National Catholic Shrine for Wales. | 0:05:02 | 0:05:06 | |
With the loss of its original shrine | 0:05:08 | 0:05:10 | |
and with the castle no longer so important, | 0:05:10 | 0:05:13 | |
Cardigan became a bit of a backwater. | 0:05:13 | 0:05:15 | |
Here it is in 1610. This was made by the famous map-maker, John Speed. | 0:05:15 | 0:05:20 | |
You can see here, the high street | 0:05:20 | 0:05:24 | |
and the castle still recognisable. | 0:05:24 | 0:05:27 | |
But what's striking is just how small the town was. | 0:05:27 | 0:05:30 | |
Over the next 200 years, though, Cardigan was to change dramatically, | 0:05:30 | 0:05:34 | |
not because of what's here, | 0:05:34 | 0:05:36 | |
but because of what's at the bottom of the map. The river. | 0:05:36 | 0:05:39 | |
The Teifi has always been Cardigan's lifeblood, | 0:05:41 | 0:05:44 | |
a tidal river rich in fish and salmon. | 0:05:44 | 0:05:46 | |
The Benedictine monks who arrived with the Normans | 0:05:46 | 0:05:49 | |
had introduced a French form of salmon netting called seine fishing. | 0:05:49 | 0:05:53 | |
It continued right up until the 1970s. | 0:05:53 | 0:05:57 | |
In the 18th century, Cardigan started to grow as a major port. | 0:06:00 | 0:06:04 | |
Ships from the town took goods like herring, slate, | 0:06:04 | 0:06:07 | |
lead and wool around the British coast across to Ireland and France. | 0:06:07 | 0:06:11 | |
And there was human cargo as well. | 0:06:13 | 0:06:15 | |
For Welsh people emigrating to North America, Cardigan was their last sight of home. | 0:06:15 | 0:06:20 | |
By the early 19th century, Cardigan was the largest Welsh port, | 0:06:20 | 0:06:25 | |
far bigger than Cardiff, Newport or Swansea. | 0:06:25 | 0:06:27 | |
The growth of Cardigan as a port | 0:06:31 | 0:06:33 | |
led to its emergence as a major shipbuilding centre. | 0:06:33 | 0:06:37 | |
This is the Netpool area, | 0:06:37 | 0:06:39 | |
where once they made the wooden ships, the ocean-going sloops. | 0:06:39 | 0:06:42 | |
It's all changed now. It's a car park. | 0:06:42 | 0:06:45 | |
But once, this would have been alive with the sounds of industry. | 0:06:45 | 0:06:49 | |
There were once seven shipyards along the Teifi | 0:06:51 | 0:06:54 | |
but now, there's only one small boatyard which carries on the tradition. | 0:06:54 | 0:06:58 | |
Swallow Boats build award-winning yachts | 0:06:58 | 0:07:01 | |
but Cardigan's most popular craft in the 19th century | 0:07:01 | 0:07:04 | |
was a single-masted vessel called a sloop. | 0:07:04 | 0:07:08 | |
Sloops were the sort of white vans of their time. | 0:07:08 | 0:07:11 | |
They took stuff from A to B to C. | 0:07:11 | 0:07:13 | |
Each town like Cardigan would have had a boat building area, | 0:07:15 | 0:07:20 | |
which was Netpool in Cardigan, as well as typical warehouses | 0:07:20 | 0:07:24 | |
where the merchants kept their stuff as they came in. | 0:07:24 | 0:07:27 | |
If there were four ships built in one year, | 0:07:27 | 0:07:30 | |
you can guarantee that another four were in build at the same time. | 0:07:30 | 0:07:34 | |
They were quite substantial chunks and they must have taken up a lot of room on the foreshore. | 0:07:34 | 0:07:39 | |
'The shipbuilders didn't use plans, so how did they design their boats?' | 0:07:39 | 0:07:44 | |
This is a half model. | 0:07:44 | 0:07:47 | |
A typical sort of half model that a builder wood carve before he built. | 0:07:47 | 0:07:53 | |
He'd probably take it to his customer and say, "What do you think of this?" | 0:07:53 | 0:07:58 | |
When the customer would say, "Yeah, I'll go for that," | 0:07:58 | 0:08:00 | |
he'd then saw it up, like that, | 0:08:00 | 0:08:02 | |
and make up the frames and things like that | 0:08:02 | 0:08:04 | |
in accordance with the model. | 0:08:04 | 0:08:06 | |
By the early 19th century, Cardigan was a bustling port | 0:08:09 | 0:08:12 | |
with over 1,000 men employed in the shipyards. | 0:08:12 | 0:08:15 | |
This activity centred on the area of town called the Mwldan, | 0:08:15 | 0:08:19 | |
named after the stream that runs through it. | 0:08:19 | 0:08:22 | |
There are still signs of the industry that once thrived there. | 0:08:22 | 0:08:25 | |
If you look up, you can see the clues of the shipbuilding past. | 0:08:25 | 0:08:30 | |
You can see these little pulleys up here, | 0:08:30 | 0:08:33 | |
you can see the doors for the sail lofts | 0:08:33 | 0:08:36 | |
and the warehouses further down. | 0:08:36 | 0:08:38 | |
In the 1850s, there were several blacksmiths here, | 0:08:38 | 0:08:43 | |
but there were two who specialised only in anchors and chains. | 0:08:43 | 0:08:47 | |
There were three pulley block makers to hoist those huge sales. | 0:08:47 | 0:08:52 | |
There were three sail-makers and three rope-makers. | 0:08:52 | 0:08:55 | |
It was such an important port and such an important shipbuilding town. | 0:08:55 | 0:09:01 | |
Like other notorious maritime quarters, | 0:09:01 | 0:09:04 | |
the Mwldan had a reputation. | 0:09:04 | 0:09:06 | |
There were nearly 70 pubs and all sorts of nocturnal goings-on. | 0:09:06 | 0:09:10 | |
Could you tell me what the Ystlumod y Nos were? | 0:09:10 | 0:09:14 | |
Ah, yes. The Night Bats. | 0:09:14 | 0:09:17 | |
They were, apparently, the middle-class ladies | 0:09:20 | 0:09:23 | |
just from the street above who would come down to the Mwldan. | 0:09:23 | 0:09:27 | |
They would sneak down here to meet their lower-class lovers | 0:09:27 | 0:09:31 | |
and I imagine they wore long cloaks with big hoods | 0:09:31 | 0:09:34 | |
to try to conceal their identities. | 0:09:34 | 0:09:37 | |
But as they were scurrying around these alleyways for their assignations, | 0:09:37 | 0:09:42 | |
their cloaks would billow and presumably they would look like bats. | 0:09:42 | 0:09:46 | |
What these ladies' husbands thought, nobody knows. | 0:09:48 | 0:09:51 | |
But perhaps they were preoccupied with their business dealings. | 0:09:51 | 0:09:55 | |
With Cardigan's port booming, | 0:09:55 | 0:09:56 | |
the town itself grew as a commercial centre. | 0:09:56 | 0:09:59 | |
A weekly market has been held in Cardigan since the mid-12th century. | 0:10:06 | 0:10:11 | |
The rich Teifi Valley is up there, the sea is down there. | 0:10:11 | 0:10:16 | |
Goods, produce, livestock poured in. | 0:10:16 | 0:10:18 | |
The writer Daniel Defoe - Robinson Crusoe - noted that, | 0:10:18 | 0:10:22 | |
"The whole of the county of Cardigan is said to be so full of cattle | 0:10:22 | 0:10:27 | |
"that 'tis the nursery, the breeding place for the whole of England." | 0:10:27 | 0:10:31 | |
And it is sold on 87, sold at 87. | 0:10:31 | 0:10:35 | |
The clearest sign of Cardigan's wealth and status in the mid-19th century | 0:10:37 | 0:10:42 | |
was the opening of the town's guildhall in 1857. | 0:10:42 | 0:10:45 | |
For its day, this was cutting-edge architecture, | 0:10:45 | 0:10:48 | |
built in the latest Gothic style. | 0:10:48 | 0:10:50 | |
It's still a striking building today. | 0:10:50 | 0:10:52 | |
It became a focus for all the town's civic events | 0:10:53 | 0:10:57 | |
and for 150 years has been the site of Cardigan's indoor market. | 0:10:57 | 0:11:01 | |
But there was much more to it than that. | 0:11:01 | 0:11:03 | |
Mervyn Pearce has been a stallholder here for 35 years | 0:11:04 | 0:11:08 | |
and knows all about its history. | 0:11:08 | 0:11:10 | |
It was a very important building. | 0:11:10 | 0:11:13 | |
It wasn't just a market place or town hall or anything, | 0:11:13 | 0:11:17 | |
it was the whole lot in one. | 0:11:17 | 0:11:20 | |
It was a whole complex of various aspect. | 0:11:20 | 0:11:22 | |
You had a grammar school, you had the divinity library, | 0:11:22 | 0:11:26 | |
you had a mechanics institute, you had this hall. | 0:11:26 | 0:11:29 | |
It was a very unusual building to be put up in Britain. | 0:11:29 | 0:11:33 | |
I love the notion of the merchants shouting and selling, | 0:11:33 | 0:11:37 | |
and the mechanics banging away, and in the divinity library they're going, "Sh!" | 0:11:37 | 0:11:42 | |
I can just imagine it! | 0:11:42 | 0:11:44 | |
There's one more thing that catches the eye at the guildhall. | 0:11:47 | 0:11:50 | |
Can't miss it, really! | 0:11:50 | 0:11:52 | |
It's this. This is the Unicorn, an Imperial Russian cannon. | 0:11:52 | 0:11:56 | |
The thing is, it's come to the wrong address. | 0:11:56 | 0:11:59 | |
It was sent as a gift to Lord Cardigan, | 0:11:59 | 0:12:02 | |
leader of the brave but ill-fated Charge of the Light Brigade | 0:12:02 | 0:12:06 | |
in the Crimean War. | 0:12:06 | 0:12:08 | |
The only thing was, though Lord Cardigan had the title of Cardigan, | 0:12:08 | 0:12:11 | |
he didn't have any lands in the area to go with it. | 0:12:11 | 0:12:15 | |
The charger of the Light Brigade never rode into this town. | 0:12:15 | 0:12:18 | |
So, wrong address. | 0:12:18 | 0:12:20 | |
Mind you, it would have cost a fortune to post it on. | 0:12:20 | 0:12:23 | |
While we're at it, the cardigan, the jumper with the buttons up the front, | 0:12:25 | 0:12:30 | |
is named not after the town but after that Lord Cardigan again. | 0:12:30 | 0:12:35 | |
Mind you, this one is from the town, made by people from here | 0:12:35 | 0:12:39 | |
to mark the 900th anniversary. | 0:12:39 | 0:12:42 | |
It's the history of Cardigan in wool. | 0:12:42 | 0:12:44 | |
Much of Cardigan was built during the mid-19th century, | 0:12:48 | 0:12:52 | |
using slate from the quarries at Cilgerran and brick from the town's brickworks. | 0:12:52 | 0:12:57 | |
It's still full of splendid buildings today, | 0:12:57 | 0:13:00 | |
such as the Mount Zion Baptist chapel of 1878. | 0:13:00 | 0:13:04 | |
Grand though it is, it's actually an overspill chapel for the Bethania chapel round the corner | 0:13:04 | 0:13:09 | |
that couldn't fit in the crowds who wanted to attend. | 0:13:09 | 0:13:12 | |
But one unremarkable building from Victorian Cardigan | 0:13:12 | 0:13:16 | |
has hidden its previous use. | 0:13:16 | 0:13:18 | |
The Highbury Hotel is today one of the town's B&Bs. | 0:13:21 | 0:13:25 | |
But in the 19th century it was Cardigan's jail. | 0:13:25 | 0:13:28 | |
Designed by Regency architect John Nash, | 0:13:28 | 0:13:31 | |
the punishment meted out there could be brutal. | 0:13:31 | 0:13:34 | |
Thomas Price and John Evans were hanged here right here in front of the jail | 0:13:34 | 0:13:39 | |
on Easter Monday 1822, in public. | 0:13:39 | 0:13:42 | |
And there's an even greater deterrent. | 0:13:42 | 0:13:45 | |
In line with the Murder Act of 1752, | 0:13:45 | 0:13:48 | |
they were dissected and anatomised by surgeons in public. | 0:13:48 | 0:13:53 | |
Those were the days when they liked to look inside the criminal mind, literally. | 0:13:53 | 0:13:58 | |
For most, Victorian Cardigan was busy and prosperous. | 0:14:02 | 0:14:06 | |
The railway had arrived in 1886, | 0:14:06 | 0:14:09 | |
joining the town with the main line to London. | 0:14:09 | 0:14:11 | |
But it also rang the death knell for Cardigan as a port. | 0:14:11 | 0:14:14 | |
The maritime trade had already started to decline, | 0:14:17 | 0:14:20 | |
as the new larger steamships struggled to navigate the Teifi. | 0:14:20 | 0:14:23 | |
Crucially, the railway transported goods to market in London | 0:14:23 | 0:14:26 | |
much more quickly than by boat | 0:14:26 | 0:14:28 | |
and Cardigan's port was consigned to history. | 0:14:28 | 0:14:32 | |
'The Mwldan, once the beating heart of the maritime quarter, | 0:14:34 | 0:14:37 | |
'bore the brunt of the decline. | 0:14:37 | 0:14:39 | |
'In the early 20th century, | 0:14:39 | 0:14:41 | |
'the poorly-built houses turned into slums, | 0:14:41 | 0:14:44 | |
'with poverty and disease rife. | 0:14:44 | 0:14:46 | |
'One of the last people to remember the town at this time | 0:14:46 | 0:14:50 | |
'is 92-year-old Donald Davies who grew up here in the 1920s.' | 0:14:50 | 0:14:53 | |
-Cardigan looks very respectable. -Oh, yes. | 0:14:55 | 0:14:58 | |
But just over the back... What was the Mwldan like? | 0:14:58 | 0:15:02 | |
Was it concentrated? | 0:15:02 | 0:15:05 | |
As I said, desolate in many places. | 0:15:05 | 0:15:08 | |
The industries that had been there, all that had been left to go, | 0:15:08 | 0:15:12 | |
and it was now desolate. | 0:15:12 | 0:15:13 | |
-It's quite a sad place. -Yes, and really the children... | 0:15:15 | 0:15:20 | |
could not afford things, for example. | 0:15:20 | 0:15:23 | |
You see, they were the ones who used to have soup kitchens. | 0:15:23 | 0:15:27 | |
There would be a soup kitchen in school. | 0:15:28 | 0:15:31 | |
The teacher would turn round and say, | 0:15:31 | 0:15:33 | |
"There'll be a soup kitchen tomorrow and Tuesday." | 0:15:33 | 0:15:35 | |
They'd be the children that were there. | 0:15:35 | 0:15:37 | |
Do you remember the children of the Mwldan? Did you mix at school? | 0:15:37 | 0:15:41 | |
In fact, they were favourites of mine, | 0:15:41 | 0:15:44 | |
because we played a lot together and you always had fun with them. | 0:15:44 | 0:15:49 | |
They could make something enjoyable out of nothing. | 0:15:49 | 0:15:55 | |
The slums of the Mwldan were finally demolished in 1937. | 0:15:55 | 0:15:59 | |
But the town continued to prosper as the principle market for the area. | 0:15:59 | 0:16:04 | |
This old home movie footage dates from the 1930s | 0:16:04 | 0:16:07 | |
and shows Cardigan busy as ever, | 0:16:07 | 0:16:09 | |
although now with cars taking over from horses on the high street. | 0:16:09 | 0:16:14 | |
During the middle of the 20th century, the town remained | 0:16:14 | 0:16:17 | |
remarkably unchanged, although many mourned the loss of the railway, | 0:16:17 | 0:16:21 | |
the much loved Cardi Bach service, | 0:16:21 | 0:16:24 | |
which was closed by Dr Beeching in 1963. | 0:16:24 | 0:16:28 | |
In the 1960s, Cardigan became popular as a holiday destination | 0:16:29 | 0:16:34 | |
and although the influx of tourists put pressure on the Welsh language in the area, | 0:16:34 | 0:16:37 | |
it still remained very strong. | 0:16:37 | 0:16:40 | |
Local farmer and poet Dic Jones | 0:16:40 | 0:16:43 | |
became an important character in the town's life | 0:16:43 | 0:16:45 | |
and one of a new generation of Welsh-speaking celebrities. | 0:16:45 | 0:16:49 | |
He could also write a poem for any occasion. | 0:16:49 | 0:16:53 | |
I well remember the time when I was up before the local magistrates | 0:16:53 | 0:16:57 | |
for having forgotten to renew my television licence, | 0:16:57 | 0:17:01 | |
of all things. | 0:17:01 | 0:17:03 | |
And I thought it might help me, | 0:17:03 | 0:17:06 | |
help my case, if I presented it in verse form, you see. | 0:17:06 | 0:17:10 | |
And I wrote an English poem, | 0:17:10 | 0:17:13 | |
a dastardly thing to do, but, still, it has to be done sometimes. | 0:17:13 | 0:17:18 | |
"I try not to lie a lot. | 0:17:18 | 0:17:20 | |
"No skilled excuse will I parrot to con the court, I cannot. | 0:17:20 | 0:17:25 | |
"So forgive as I forgot." | 0:17:25 | 0:17:27 | |
Dic Jones died in 2009 | 0:17:28 | 0:17:31 | |
but another Cardigan poet has followed in his footsteps. | 0:17:31 | 0:17:34 | |
A oes heddwch? | 0:17:34 | 0:17:35 | |
Ceri Wyn Jones also won the Eisteddfod chair | 0:17:35 | 0:17:38 | |
and has become the new wordsmith for the town. | 0:17:38 | 0:17:41 | |
The traditional view of a poet is very often of someone remote, | 0:17:41 | 0:17:45 | |
detached from reality in some way, | 0:17:45 | 0:17:49 | |
someone who's into abstract philosophising about life. | 0:17:49 | 0:17:53 | |
But Dic lived real life. | 0:17:53 | 0:17:54 | |
He worked the soil, he worked with the animals, | 0:17:54 | 0:17:58 | |
he was an integral part of his own community. | 0:17:58 | 0:18:02 | |
He celebrated people's birthdays. | 0:18:02 | 0:18:04 | |
He wrote poems in condolence. | 0:18:04 | 0:18:07 | |
He wrote poems that pulled people's legs. | 0:18:07 | 0:18:11 | |
It was part of the... | 0:18:11 | 0:18:13 | |
almost the part of the vocation of the poet in this area. | 0:18:13 | 0:18:16 | |
It still is. A poet isn't remote, | 0:18:16 | 0:18:19 | |
he's part of his community, almost like a biographer of that community. | 0:18:19 | 0:18:24 | |
And for that community, 1976 was a special year indeed, | 0:18:25 | 0:18:29 | |
when the National Eisteddfod returned to Cardigan | 0:18:29 | 0:18:32 | |
800 years after Lord Rhys created it there. | 0:18:32 | 0:18:35 | |
With the baking hot weather of that memorable summer, | 0:18:35 | 0:18:38 | |
the Eisteddfod was a huge success. | 0:18:38 | 0:18:42 | |
The Cardigan Eisteddfod became Eisteddfod y Llwch - | 0:18:42 | 0:18:45 | |
the Eisteddfod of the Dust! | 0:18:45 | 0:18:47 | |
And it was true. | 0:18:47 | 0:18:49 | |
Everywhere was parched, the whole country was parched, | 0:18:49 | 0:18:53 | |
but the Eisteddfod field in Penlan was nearer brown that it was yellow. | 0:18:53 | 0:18:57 | |
Everyone, the whole community, would have been drawn into that. | 0:18:57 | 0:19:00 | |
But in the 35 years since the Eisteddfod, | 0:19:02 | 0:19:04 | |
how has the Welsh language fared in the town? | 0:19:04 | 0:19:07 | |
The last census showed about 73% of Cardigan's population | 0:19:07 | 0:19:11 | |
able to speak Welsh. | 0:19:11 | 0:19:13 | |
But there are still fears for the future. | 0:19:13 | 0:19:16 | |
In terms of visibility and access, | 0:19:16 | 0:19:19 | |
the Welsh language seems never to have had it so good. | 0:19:19 | 0:19:23 | |
Signage throughout the town, | 0:19:23 | 0:19:26 | |
access to all kinds of events in both languages. | 0:19:26 | 0:19:31 | |
But there seems to be less Welsh being spoken. | 0:19:31 | 0:19:34 | |
Sadly, it's still true to say, however, | 0:19:34 | 0:19:37 | |
that English and Welsh speakers could, if they chose, | 0:19:37 | 0:19:41 | |
live parallel lives here. | 0:19:41 | 0:19:43 | |
It's so complex. | 0:19:43 | 0:19:45 | |
You can't put your finger on one thing that's preventing it, | 0:19:45 | 0:19:49 | |
which is why so many of us are anxious to make sure | 0:19:49 | 0:19:53 | |
it doesn't disappear as an issue either. | 0:19:53 | 0:19:55 | |
We have to keep on reminding people. | 0:19:55 | 0:19:57 | |
Even as the town changed, some traditions were upheld. | 0:20:05 | 0:20:08 | |
This is the Winter Fair, held every year on the 10th of November | 0:20:08 | 0:20:13 | |
and going back centuries. | 0:20:13 | 0:20:15 | |
Originally this was the date and the place | 0:20:15 | 0:20:17 | |
where you hired servants and maids. | 0:20:17 | 0:20:20 | |
Not too many of them around nowadays. | 0:20:21 | 0:20:24 | |
In the spring is another traditional fair, Barley Saturday, | 0:20:24 | 0:20:28 | |
always held on the first Saturday after the last Friday in April. | 0:20:28 | 0:20:31 | |
Got that? | 0:20:31 | 0:20:33 | |
It's so called because that's when barley, the last crop, was sown. | 0:20:33 | 0:20:37 | |
But it was also the day stallions were paraded through the streets of the town | 0:20:37 | 0:20:42 | |
to be selected by farmers to breed with mares. | 0:20:42 | 0:20:45 | |
Revived in the 1960s, it's still going strong, | 0:20:45 | 0:20:47 | |
and along with the Winter Fair, is one of the highlights of the town's year. | 0:20:47 | 0:20:52 | |
'He's beginning to get up on the near side. Last Suspect has won it!' | 0:20:52 | 0:20:56 | |
In 1985, one horseman became a hero in Cardigan. | 0:20:56 | 0:20:59 | |
Local jockey Hywel Davies won the Grand National that year, | 0:20:59 | 0:21:03 | |
a 50-1 outsider, on his horse, Last Suspect. | 0:21:03 | 0:21:07 | |
The bookies took a hammering and Hywel returned home in triumph. | 0:21:07 | 0:21:10 | |
O, 'na sioc! I'm...I'm...brilliant! | 0:21:12 | 0:21:16 | |
But he wasn't the only sporting champion to come from the town. | 0:21:16 | 0:21:20 | |
Once, the fastest thing on the Teifi was a coracle race. | 0:21:20 | 0:21:23 | |
Come on, number 10! | 0:21:23 | 0:21:25 | |
But in the 1980s, there was a new sound on the river. | 0:21:25 | 0:21:29 | |
MUSIC: "My Favourite Game" by The Cardigans | 0:21:29 | 0:21:32 | |
Jonathan Jones is a Cardigan lad with a need for speed. | 0:21:35 | 0:21:39 | |
Working out of a local boatyard, he became British powerboat champion | 0:21:39 | 0:21:43 | |
before taking the world title in 1986. | 0:21:43 | 0:21:46 | |
'Jonathan still lives and builds powerboats in Cardigan | 0:21:48 | 0:21:51 | |
'and I persuaded him to take me out on the river.' | 0:21:51 | 0:21:54 | |
For old time's sake, Jonathan? | 0:21:54 | 0:21:56 | |
-CHEERING AND APPLAUSE -Here we are. The homecoming. Do you remember it? | 0:22:02 | 0:22:05 | |
Yes, I remember it like it was yesterday. | 0:22:05 | 0:22:08 | |
It was a great day. Very enjoyable. | 0:22:08 | 0:22:11 | |
Stopping at the town hall for the presentation. Terrific crowd. | 0:22:11 | 0:22:17 | |
A lot of local people. | 0:22:17 | 0:22:19 | |
A lot of fellow competitors. It was a wonderful day. | 0:22:19 | 0:22:22 | |
And it was only the first of four. Four times world champion. | 0:22:28 | 0:22:31 | |
Yes, yeah. I was... '86 was the first time and '89, '91 and '98. Yes. | 0:22:31 | 0:22:36 | |
Powerboat racing has been good to me. | 0:22:36 | 0:22:39 | |
MUSIC: "Jeans On" by David Dundas | 0:22:39 | 0:22:43 | |
Jeans and Cardigan, what's the connection? | 0:22:45 | 0:22:48 | |
Well, a strange but true fact is that between the 1970s and 1990s, | 0:22:48 | 0:22:52 | |
millions of Britain's denim-clad teenagers | 0:22:52 | 0:22:55 | |
wore jeans made in the town. | 0:22:55 | 0:22:57 | |
At its height, the Dewhirst clothing factory | 0:22:57 | 0:23:00 | |
was turning out 35,000 pairs of jeans a week. | 0:23:00 | 0:23:03 | |
That's almost two million pairs a year. | 0:23:03 | 0:23:06 | |
It was Cardigan's biggest employer and had a strong community spirit. | 0:23:06 | 0:23:12 | |
We were like a family there. | 0:23:12 | 0:23:14 | |
There was about 400 people working there | 0:23:14 | 0:23:17 | |
so it was one big happy family. | 0:23:17 | 0:23:20 | |
But in 2002, disaster struck when the factory was closed, | 0:23:23 | 0:23:26 | |
with 400 jobs going out of a population of just 4,000. | 0:23:26 | 0:23:29 | |
When the factory closed, it affected, you know, a family, | 0:23:31 | 0:23:35 | |
where you'd have husband and wife working or mother and daughter. | 0:23:35 | 0:23:40 | |
So it did... When it closed, it was quite a sad time. | 0:23:40 | 0:23:46 | |
It was just a very dark cloud that came over | 0:23:46 | 0:23:49 | |
and it was very sad to see the day of it closing. | 0:23:49 | 0:23:52 | |
But Cardigan's denim dream hasn't gone for ever. | 0:23:52 | 0:23:55 | |
A new company is starting up | 0:23:55 | 0:23:57 | |
and employing former Dewhirst workers like Elin Evans. | 0:23:57 | 0:24:00 | |
-It's in the -jeans, -you know. | 0:24:00 | 0:24:02 | |
The story is about the town that used to make jeans | 0:24:02 | 0:24:05 | |
and actually would love to make jeans again. | 0:24:05 | 0:24:07 | |
It's a human interest story, | 0:24:07 | 0:24:10 | |
especially for me, because I live here, | 0:24:10 | 0:24:12 | |
and I really love the town, and I believe, | 0:24:12 | 0:24:15 | |
with ideas and with craftsmanship, | 0:24:15 | 0:24:18 | |
we can actually go and build a global company here. | 0:24:18 | 0:24:21 | |
Albeit, it might be a small global company. | 0:24:21 | 0:24:24 | |
But there's a romantic notion where, actually, | 0:24:24 | 0:24:27 | |
we can be great. I'm sort of very proud to be Welsh | 0:24:27 | 0:24:30 | |
and I'm very proud of the town. | 0:24:30 | 0:24:32 | |
But I love ideas, and we can go and take on the best. | 0:24:32 | 0:24:35 | |
It's lovely to think we're going to be making jeans back here | 0:24:35 | 0:24:41 | |
and get Cardigan back on the map of jeans-making. | 0:24:41 | 0:24:44 | |
If a lot had changed in Cardigan, one thing remained frozen in time. | 0:24:49 | 0:24:54 | |
Cardigan Castle and this Georgian townhouse in its grounds | 0:24:54 | 0:24:57 | |
were privately owned, and for decades, | 0:24:57 | 0:25:00 | |
all this was closed to the public. | 0:25:00 | 0:25:03 | |
It became a huge controversy in the town as the buildings | 0:25:03 | 0:25:06 | |
were increasingly overgrown and in danger of collapse. | 0:25:06 | 0:25:09 | |
The owner thought her home was her castle. | 0:25:09 | 0:25:13 | |
She was Cardigan's own Miss Havesham - | 0:25:13 | 0:25:15 | |
Barbara Wood, an eccentric Englishwoman | 0:25:15 | 0:25:18 | |
who battled for years with the local authorities. | 0:25:18 | 0:25:21 | |
Cardigan Borough Council are trying to terrorise a woman owner | 0:25:21 | 0:25:25 | |
whom they know owns the most valuable property in the town. | 0:25:25 | 0:25:29 | |
That's the situation. And they've cooked up this plot. | 0:25:29 | 0:25:33 | |
After years of holding out, she finally sold it to the county council in 2003 | 0:25:33 | 0:25:37 | |
and died in a nursing home in 2009. | 0:25:37 | 0:25:42 | |
Inside the castle was a house lost in time. | 0:25:46 | 0:25:49 | |
For local archivist Sian Collins, entering solved a childhood mystery. | 0:25:49 | 0:25:56 | |
When I was a child I always wanted to get inside the castle | 0:25:56 | 0:25:58 | |
because all you could see were the walls. | 0:25:58 | 0:26:00 | |
I wasn't really aware of this house. I didn't know exactly where it was | 0:26:00 | 0:26:04 | |
within the walls or what it looked like. | 0:26:04 | 0:26:06 | |
I just knew that an elderly lady lived there | 0:26:06 | 0:26:08 | |
and it wasn't in a very good condition. | 0:26:08 | 0:26:10 | |
Barbara Wood's family had bought the Georgian townhouse in the 1940s | 0:26:10 | 0:26:14 | |
but soon found it beyond their means and struggled to pay the bills. | 0:26:14 | 0:26:18 | |
They did try their best to keep up appearances, though. | 0:26:18 | 0:26:22 | |
This stepladder here impresses many people. | 0:26:22 | 0:26:25 | |
We have Harrods written on it | 0:26:25 | 0:26:27 | |
so we're assuming it was bought from Harrods | 0:26:27 | 0:26:30 | |
but they could have just painted it on themselves | 0:26:30 | 0:26:32 | |
to impress the neighbours. | 0:26:32 | 0:26:34 | |
-Social climbing. -THEY LAUGH | 0:26:34 | 0:26:38 | |
Since the death of Miss Wood, the castle and its grounds | 0:26:43 | 0:26:46 | |
are finally going to be reopened to the public. | 0:26:46 | 0:26:50 | |
After years of campaigning, a band of local historians | 0:26:50 | 0:26:52 | |
and enthusiasts have now raised a massive £10 million | 0:26:52 | 0:26:55 | |
from the Lottery, Europe and the Welsh Government | 0:26:55 | 0:26:58 | |
to restore the buildings and give the town a new heart. | 0:26:58 | 0:27:02 | |
It's the biggest restoration award in Wales | 0:27:02 | 0:27:05 | |
and one of the organisers, Jann Tucker, | 0:27:05 | 0:27:08 | |
gave me a sneak preview of their plans. | 0:27:08 | 0:27:11 | |
This looks very exotic. | 0:27:11 | 0:27:13 | |
This looks very space-agey. | 0:27:13 | 0:27:15 | |
-What's going on here? -It is. That's going to be the Eisteddfod garden. | 0:27:15 | 0:27:18 | |
That's in the daytime when it's really nice and lovely | 0:27:18 | 0:27:22 | |
and the sun is shining. | 0:27:22 | 0:27:24 | |
But if the rain does come, | 0:27:24 | 0:27:26 | |
the idea is somebody comes around and presses a button. | 0:27:26 | 0:27:30 | |
-Centre Court, Wimbledon. -Absolutely. | 0:27:30 | 0:27:33 | |
Inside the house, there'll be Welsh learning for adults. | 0:27:33 | 0:27:37 | |
Also we're hoping to use this site as well to do masterclasses here. | 0:27:37 | 0:27:43 | |
You can sing, play the harp, make jam. You know, anything like that. | 0:27:43 | 0:27:48 | |
We can have courses like that going on in here | 0:27:48 | 0:27:50 | |
which will also be providing people coming into the town | 0:27:50 | 0:27:54 | |
through the winter, not just the summer. | 0:27:54 | 0:27:56 | |
It is a decaying site and yet this is what it could be, | 0:27:56 | 0:27:59 | |
this is what it will be. | 0:27:59 | 0:28:01 | |
Have you had a reaction from the town? | 0:28:01 | 0:28:03 | |
We've had a very good reaction from the town. | 0:28:03 | 0:28:05 | |
The majority of people you speak to can't wait | 0:28:05 | 0:28:08 | |
to see something happening here. | 0:28:08 | 0:28:10 | |
When the stanchions from the outside get taken away, | 0:28:10 | 0:28:12 | |
then I think they will realise that something is happening | 0:28:12 | 0:28:16 | |
and they will be very pleased. | 0:28:16 | 0:28:18 | |
Over the centuries, | 0:28:22 | 0:28:24 | |
Cardigan has seen the tides of history ebb and flow. | 0:28:24 | 0:28:28 | |
Industries have come and gone. | 0:28:28 | 0:28:31 | |
What now? | 0:28:31 | 0:28:33 | |
Well, maybe the castle symbolises the town. | 0:28:33 | 0:28:36 | |
There it is, a bit battered and bruised, | 0:28:36 | 0:28:38 | |
but work is due to start here in 2012. | 0:28:38 | 0:28:41 | |
And there's the lesson - | 0:28:41 | 0:28:43 | |
using the past to build something brand new for the future. | 0:28:43 | 0:28:46 | |
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd | 0:28:55 | 0:28:58 |