Monday and Tuesday of this week was our Wales trip! Our first stop was an old coal mine that was converted into a museum after it shut down. Back when coal was used as a major source of power, there were coal mines all over Wales, and they say that Welsh coal was the best in the world. Here is the buildings around the coal mine, and the town below.
This particular mine was a shaft mine, and we actually got to go down and tour the tunnels. Here we are all geared up with our hard hats and head lights!
These are the carts, or drams, that were used to carry coal underground. Each dram carried about one ton of coal.
The tunnels were surprisingly wet. And very very dark. Men, women, and children worked 12 hour shifts down in the tunnel, though laws were later passed against women and children working in mines. However, before the laws, children were often employed to open and close the large wooden doors in the mine, standing by themselves with only a cheese sandwich in their pocket for 12 hours, in complete darkness except for when one of the carts came by. You can understand why they decided to pass laws about it.Another interesting fact: before electric pulley cables were installed, carts were pulled by horses. The horses would be taken down at 4 years of age, and would remain in the mine for the next 8 years of their life, after which they would be turned out to pasture. They came to the surface for one 2 week vacation in the summer each year. Apparently, the horses were knew when it was time to go back down, and when the men came to take them back, they would find the horses lying on their sides in the field pretending to be dead. The horses would have to be enticed with sugar or apples in order to get them back down the mine.
After the mine, we went to St. Fagan's National History Museum in Wales. It's a big out door museum, with buildings saved from all over Wales, brought the the museum, and reconstructed. So they have all sorts of cool farmhouses, a saddlery, a blacksmith, a pottery, a Celtic village, bee houses, a pigsty, a woolen mill, a general store, and various other things.
This is the "castle and gardens". It's actually just a cool house built on the grounds where a castle used to be. But the gardens are cool.
Here are the bells in the servants quarters. There's a bell pull rope in all of the main rooms, and it runs down here, so the servants could see where they were wanted.
Aside from being really funny, this sign is also a good example of the fact that every sign we saw in Wales was written first in Welsh, and then in English. We did learn some Welsh while we were there, from one of the miners. Some sort of toast with the idea of drinking to your health.
Still part of the gardens, they have a very cool sequence of walkways and stairs down to the river side.
A pretty stream, but mostly I think the anachronistic statues are funny in a history museum.
The reddest farm house you will ever see in your life.
Bee hives!
A reconstructed Celtic home. These are completely full of smoke.
After we left Wales, our next stop was Tintern Abbey. It's most famous because William Wordsworth wrote a well-known poem here. But it's fairly representative of many abbeys that were destroyed during the dissolution of the monasteries. After Henry VIII broke from the Catholic church, he had a lot of the churches sacked for their gold and jewels. Many times, the roofs were stripped off and melted down for their valuable lead.
The first thing I noticed when I got off the bus was actually not the abbey, but the beautiful trees on the hillside, which you can see part of in this picture. Green, red, yellow, and purple. It looks just like a painting.
This should give you a feel for the interior architecture.
Me reading Wordsworth's poem, Tintern Abbey
My favorite part of our stop at Tintern Abbey was actually when a group started singing hymns in an open grassy area in the middle of the abbey. The singing naturally drew the rest of us towards it, and pretty soon the whole program was standing in a circle in the middle of the abbey ruins singing. We really sound very good when we sing, and many can sing the harmonies, and occasionally descants to the hymns. It was very fitting, since it was originally built as a place of religious worship.Next we went to Ledbury, a little English town. Here are a couple views of the streets. You'll notice a remarkable amount of Tudor style houses. That's the black and white timber frame design, as featured in the clock tower building on the left side of this picture.
This remarkable little building built on steps is on the site of the town market. Historically, as well as at present, vendors would set up underneath and sell their wares.
Officially, this was our church history trip. So we made a stop at the Benbow farm. In the early days of the Mormon church in Britain, Wilford Woodruff, who served as a missionary there, was invited to the home of John Benbow by his brother William Benbow. John Benbow was part of a community seeking religious truth. There's a funny story about Woodruff's early preaching. Hearing of the American missionary and his remarkable message, 600 people turned up to hear Wilford preach, while only 15 showed up for the local ministers sermon. Irritated, the minister asked to sheriff to go down to the meeting and arrest the American missionary. The sheriff went to the meeting, and told Wilford he had a warrant for his arrest for preaching. Wilford replied that he had a license for preaching, but if the sheriff would wait, Wilford would speak to him afterwards. The sheriff sat down to wait. Afterwards, he went back to the minister and informed him that he would not arrest Wilford, as he had just preached the only true sermon the sheriff had ever heard in his life, and he had just applied for baptism. The minister then sent to of the officers of his church to go find out what was going on. They also listened to Wilford's message, and applied for baptism. The minister didn't send anyone else after that.Herefordshire, where the Benbow's were located, turned out to be very receptive to the message of the restored gospel, and hundreds were baptized. Of the community of religious truth seekers which the Benbows were part of, all but one were baptized. The Benbows and their relations played an important role in the early church. Being a rather wealthy family, two of the women of family gave large sums of money for the printing of a hymnal and the Book of Mormon in Great Britain. And when the Benbows emigrated to the United States, they payed not only for themselves, but for 50 other members. Below is the Benbow farm.
And the pond that Wilford cleared out, where many of the members were baptized.
We climbed Herefordshire Beacon, in the Malvern Hills. This is where the land was dedicated for missionary work. Woodruff was fond of climbing up here to pray and ponder, and brought Brigham Young and Willard Richards up once for a council meeting.
This is what we look like traveling around the English countryside!
The Gadfield Elm meeting house, which was used in the early days of the church.
You can only get in if you're a Mormon, and here's how they make sure. On the door you will see a keypad, and on the window two signs. The one on the left welcomes you to the chapel, and the one on the right asks a series of questions that you have to be Mormon to know the answers to. The answers are the code for the door.
So the question is, are you a real Mormon?
Me preaching :D
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