Tuesday, 15 August 2017
Y Gwir yn Erbyn y Byd
I have become interested in the non-human world and how this can inform the way I see landscape. This is a way of collapsing the polarity of country and city and seeing the world as a continuum of experience. It is also a way of imagining other worlds that are inclusive of all life.
The video was captured by penny d. jones. The performance was a live affair and penny kindly videoed the event as a record rather than the video being an artwork. The music is by Andrew Strong and is an arrangement of a traditional Morris tune Ilbury Hill.
Reading List
Anne Rainsbury, Curator Chepstow Museum:
John Barrell, "The Dark Side of the Landscape: The Rural Poor in English Painting 1730-1840" (Cambridge University Press, 1980)
Ann Bermingham "Landscape and Ideology: The English Rustic Tradition, 1740-1860" (University of California Press, 1986)
Stephen Copley and Peter Garside editors "The Politics of the Picturesque" (Cambridge University Press1994/2010)
Something I found in Cardiff Library
MS 3.337 John Byng - Tour of South Wales (1787)
Dr. Madeleine Gray
Richard Warner, A Walk Through Wales in 1797
E. D. Clarke, A tour through the south of England, Wales, and part of Ireland Made during the Summer of 1791
Malcom Andrews, The Search for the Picturesque: Landscape Aesthetics and Tourism in Britain, 1760-1800
Residency at Tintern 2016
Thematic approaches could involve:
• an exploration of the history of heritage at Tintern Abbey that focuses on the original medieval ruins and Cistercian history
• a philosophical examination of how antiquarians viewed the past or how we view the past in the twenty-first century
• an exploration of the theme of ‘time, people and place’. (Cadw/Arts Coucil Wales 2015)
As you will have seen, if you read through the posts above, Tintern Abbey was occupied by the Cistercian monks for four hundred years. In taking the Abbey archeology back to this period all the subsequent history has been removed and little reference is made to the continuous habitation of the site over the time since its dissolution in 1536. In the 1970s the last dwelling within the site was purchased, demolished and erased.
My interest in the site was first piqued when I read Gilpin's book about his trip down the River Wye (see subsequent posts) where he describes people living in the ruins and acting as unofficial tour guides. I talked with the Anne Rainsbury, curator of Chepstow Museum, who very kindly gave me a reading list and suggested other people I might like to contact. From talking to Dr. Madeleine Gray and Dr. David R.Howell (here they are looking at one of the gravestones within the abbey church)
I learnt that of the contiuous habitation of Tintern Abbey.
It seems likely that the Picturesque visitors (including Gilpin) who came in the eighteenth century exaggerated the poverty of the people living in the abbey since this increased the picturesque frisson of meeting them. The visitors assessment of the poverty of the inhabitants of Tintern might also reflect the class outlook of the visitors. Whilst this is the beginning of modern tourism this was not mass tourism but the leisure activity of the leisured classes. This does not mean that there were no beggars. It is possible that people who had maybe migrated there for work were unable to claim relief from the parish as Tintern would not have been the parish they were born in and so amongst the cottagers there may have been some who were destitute through age or industrial injury.
The first person to live there was the mother of Henry Somerset, Earl of Worcester until she moved to properties in the south of England. Once she left the buildings were rented out to people who lived and worked in the area, in the charcoal burning, lime kilns, iron works and brass foundry (established 1538 within the walls of the abbey). Stone was quarried from the site to build these factories and further cottages.
It's perhaps clear that I was less interested in the Cistercian History. This needs little explication since it is so obvious on the site, although perhaps the political implications are less obvious. The Cistercian monks lived in a world where they were separated by class, language and geneology from those surrounding them. All the work was done by the lay-brothers who were local gentry and peasants. They wouldn't have eaten together or talked or had commerce. Their purpose, beyond their religious vocation was to extend the power of the Norman overlord at Chepstow (William fitzOsbern and later William Marshal and Richard de Clare).
• an exploration of the history of heritage at Tintern Abbey that focuses on the original medieval ruins and Cistercian history
• a philosophical examination of how antiquarians viewed the past or how we view the past in the twenty-first century
• an exploration of the theme of ‘time, people and place’. (Cadw/Arts Coucil Wales 2015)
As you will have seen, if you read through the posts above, Tintern Abbey was occupied by the Cistercian monks for four hundred years. In taking the Abbey archeology back to this period all the subsequent history has been removed and little reference is made to the continuous habitation of the site over the time since its dissolution in 1536. In the 1970s the last dwelling within the site was purchased, demolished and erased.
My interest in the site was first piqued when I read Gilpin's book about his trip down the River Wye (see subsequent posts) where he describes people living in the ruins and acting as unofficial tour guides. I talked with the Anne Rainsbury, curator of Chepstow Museum, who very kindly gave me a reading list and suggested other people I might like to contact. From talking to Dr. Madeleine Gray and Dr. David R.Howell (here they are looking at one of the gravestones within the abbey church)
It seems likely that the Picturesque visitors (including Gilpin) who came in the eighteenth century exaggerated the poverty of the people living in the abbey since this increased the picturesque frisson of meeting them. The visitors assessment of the poverty of the inhabitants of Tintern might also reflect the class outlook of the visitors. Whilst this is the beginning of modern tourism this was not mass tourism but the leisure activity of the leisured classes. This does not mean that there were no beggars. It is possible that people who had maybe migrated there for work were unable to claim relief from the parish as Tintern would not have been the parish they were born in and so amongst the cottagers there may have been some who were destitute through age or industrial injury.
The first person to live there was the mother of Henry Somerset, Earl of Worcester until she moved to properties in the south of England. Once she left the buildings were rented out to people who lived and worked in the area, in the charcoal burning, lime kilns, iron works and brass foundry (established 1538 within the walls of the abbey). Stone was quarried from the site to build these factories and further cottages.
It's perhaps clear that I was less interested in the Cistercian History. This needs little explication since it is so obvious on the site, although perhaps the political implications are less obvious. The Cistercian monks lived in a world where they were separated by class, language and geneology from those surrounding them. All the work was done by the lay-brothers who were local gentry and peasants. They wouldn't have eaten together or talked or had commerce. Their purpose, beyond their religious vocation was to extend the power of the Norman overlord at Chepstow (William fitzOsbern and later William Marshal and Richard de Clare).
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