# St Fagans National History Museum



## editor (Dec 29, 2007)

We paid another visit to this fantastic open air museum yesterday and checked out some of the new exhibits including the prefab house and the church (pics coming soon). http://www.museumwales.ac.uk/en/stfagans/

Along with the Big Pit, Wales can now boast two of the finest museums in the UK.

And both absolutely free too.

'Nuff respect.


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## cesare (Dec 29, 2007)

God I haven't been there in years. Fucking acest place. Is the wee tannery still there?


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## editor (Dec 29, 2007)

Some good pics here:
http://www.blasdale.com/pictures/2007/Cardiff/museum/index.html


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## cesare (Dec 29, 2007)

There it is!!!

http://www.blasdale.com/pictures/2007/Cardiff/museum/slides/IMG_3697.html


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## fogbat (Dec 29, 2007)

Is the pic in the OP of that street where each house is from a later time period than the previous one?


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## cesare (Dec 29, 2007)

And here! The smelly bit  

http://www.blasdale.com/pictures/2007/Cardiff/museum/slides/IMG_3699.html


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## editor (Dec 29, 2007)

fogbat said:
			
		

> Is the pic in the OP of that street where each house is from a later time period than the previous one?


Yep.  It's ace!

And I learnt that they all have have a 'coffin hole' (a set of loose floorboards with a removable beam) built in the roof of each house so that they could lower a coffin down from upstairs.


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## Belushi (Dec 29, 2007)

My Dad would take us once a year when we were kids, its a great day out. I must go again next time I'm in Wales.


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## quimcunx (Dec 29, 2007)

I want to go there.


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## fogbat (Dec 29, 2007)

You should - tis excellent.

Boring as fuck if it's your school trip every fucking year, mind.


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## 1927 (Dec 29, 2007)

Papingo said:
			
		

> I want to go there.



It would make an ace place for an Urban day out in the summer. Only thing it lacks is a pub, but there is a good one right outside the gate!


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## Karac (Dec 29, 2007)

Tis good-went there a few years ago and there were loads of schoolkids dressed up in "things they used to wear a hundred years ago" and actors playing the parts of teachers and miners etc-it was all quite surreal.
Plus its free and the grounds are quite spectacular even if you just want a walk around


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## lewislewis (Dec 30, 2007)

I heard somewhere that it is the most visited tourist attraction in Wales, don't know if that's true but I love the place- must return, I think in summer 2008.

Also it's right in the heart of Plaid territory, which is nice : p


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## editor (Dec 30, 2007)

There's some pics up here: http://www.urban75.org/photos/wales/st-fagans-museum.html


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## nightowl (Dec 30, 2007)

editor said:
			
		

> Along with the [URL="http://www.urban75.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=129006"]Big Pit[/URL], Wales can now boast two of the finest museums in the UK.[/QUOTE]
> 
> i'd include the national museum and say three of the finest. the art collection is fantastic and the evolution of wales exhibit is pretty good too. i remember the excitement when they first opened the latter. everyone was talking about it. had a pretty close call in the art galleries once though. turned my back on my then four-year-old nephew for a few seconds and then spotted him heading towards one of the monets with a pencil :eek: caught him in time though


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## Strumpet (Dec 30, 2007)

fogbat said:
			
		

> You should - tis excellent.


It SO is!  




			
				fogbat said:
			
		

> Boring as fuck if it's your school trip every fucking year, mind.


That's the only draw back BUT I have a soft spot for this place...and the Big Pit  We take all our overseas visitors to these places. They love them.


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## davesgcr (Dec 31, 2007)

The excellent Miners Institute is a "must do" 

the added interest of the more recent buildings is praiseworthy indeed !!!!


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## LilMissHissyFit (Dec 31, 2007)

Karac said:
			
		

> Tis good-went there a few years ago and there were loads of schoolkids dressed up in "things they used to wear a hundred years ago" and actors playing the parts of teachers and miners etc-it was all quite surreal.
> Plus its free and the grounds are quite spectacular even if you just want a walk around



They do that in Year 2. My kids did it. It was a nightmare finding the costume 

We love it my kids spend hours there and never tire of it.


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## cybertect (Jan 3, 2008)

editor said:
			
		

>



The very first week of my architecture course at Cardiff in 1985 was spent doing a measured drawings of various buildings round St. Fagans. I got to do the Rhyd-y-car cottages, which were most of the way through their rebuilding process at the time - the walls and roofs were up, but the interiors hadn't been done yet.



Studying the buildings at St. Fagans made an excellent introduction to how buildings are put together, their uses of local materials and how they have different strategies for thermal performance and orientation. Lessons that stuck all the way through the rest of the course. 

The next two parts of the the term were designing a small house on a free site at St. Fagans using the principles we'd learnt from the vernacular buildings we'd looked at and then an energy self-sufficient youth hostel near Neath.

It left me with an enduring appreciation of how very smart so much traditional architecture is, and how wet South Wales can get in the early Autumn 

e2a: I still do doodles of Llainfadyn Cottage when I'm bored in meetings at work


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## CalmerChameleon (Jan 3, 2008)

I went there on a school trip when I was at primary school - it was great! Am I remembering wrongly or were there some pigs there?


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## Belushi (Jan 3, 2008)

> the national museum and say three of the finest. the art collection is fantastic



The latgest collection of impressionist painitngs outside of France I believe.


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## Ben Bore (Jan 4, 2008)

My first 'proper' (ish) job was a part-time museum assistant at Sain Ffagan.  I worked 11am till 4pm 6 days on 2 days off.  It was just before the place became free entry and was dead quiet in the winter.  I read loads of books, had some sly smokes and just kept the fires going while covering the full timers lunch and afternoon breaks.  Loved it.


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## fogbat (Jan 4, 2008)

imaginationdead said:
			
		

> I went there on a school trip when I was at primary school - it was great! Am I remembering wrongly or were there some pigs there?



I'm sure there was a small farm somewhere on there.

Or we just got lost and wandered through a small farm


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## editor (Sep 1, 2009)

I paid another visit a few weeks back and checked out all the indoor galleries I missed last time. 

They've got a great pop culture exhibition there, and after we've finished stuffing our faces with lovely Welsh cakes, we had a look around the Celtic village. 





















http://www.urban75.org/photos/wales/st-fagans-museum-wales.html


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