The Cambrian Archaeological Association () was founded in 1846 to examine, preserve and illustrate the ancient monuments and remains of the history, language, manners, customs, arts and industries of Wales and the Welsh Marches and to educate the public in such matters. The association's activities include sponsoring lectures, field visits, and study tours; as well as publishing its journal, Archaeologia Cambrensis, and monographs. It also provides grants to support research and publications.M. Stephens, The New Companion to the Literature of Wales (University of Wales Press, 1998), p. 68.
Activities
Meetings and lectures The association holds two meetings each year, a week in mid-summer and an autumn weekend, visiting sites and monuments in all parts of Wales and, on occasions, in England, Scotland, Ireland and abroad. Easter conferences with lectures on matters of current concern in history and archaeology are held on a bi-annual basis. It arranges a lecture in the Welsh language each year at the National Eisteddfod.D. Moore, "Cambrian Meetings 1847–1997: A Society's Contribution to the Changing Archaeological Scene", Archaeologia Cambrensis, Vol 147, 3–55
Research grants and education awards Research grants are awarded annually and are normally in the region of £500-£2000. In 2012 an award was made to Dr Toby Driver and Dr Jeffrey Davies for post-excavation work on their excavations at the Abermagwr Roman villa, Ceredigion. The Blodwen Jerman Schools Prize is awarded annually to a Welsh school for their promotion of Archaeology and History within the School. The G. T. Clark Prizes are awarded every five years for the most distinguished published contributions to the study of the archaeology and history of Wales and The Marches. There are five categories: Prehistory, Roman, Early Medieval, Medieval and Post-Medieval.D Moore, Archaeologia Cambrensis, Vol 147, (1998), pp. 296–7 provides a list of recipients between 1946 and 1997.
Publications Apart from the journal Archaeologia Cambrensis, the association has a long tradition of publishing supplementary volumes on Welsh History and Archaeology. A most ambitious project was the publication in 1888 of a facsimile edition of Thomas Dineley's Progress of...Henry ..Duke of Beaufort (Lord President of the council in Wales and Lord Warden of the Marches) Thorough Wales in 1684.The project was arranged by R. W. Banks, the Treasurer of the association, who supplied the introductory preface to the work. It was published in London by Blades, East and Blades in 1818R. W. D. Fenn, "R. W. Banks and the Cambrian Archaeological Association", Archaeologia Cambrensis, vol. 154 (2005), 2007, pp. 1–16. More recently the association has published between 1978 and 1998, in conjunction with Cadw, an important series of monographs on excavations in Wales. In 2013 it published a Festschrift, Reflections on the Past, on the theme of British prehistory and archaeology, to mark the longstanding contribution made by the prehistorian Frances Lynch to the work of the association. pp. 452–66. Other important publications by the association include:
Sir Stephen Glynne (edited and transcribed by Archdeacon D. R. Thomas), Notes on the Older Churches in the Four Welsh Dioceses, 1903. These notes were made by the first president of the Cambrians between 1824 and 1874 and are particularly important as they describe many of the churches in Wales before they were altered by Victorian restorers. Rev John Skinner, Ten Days' Tour through the Isle of Anglesea December 1802, 1908. Skinner was a Somerset parson who travelled extensively throughout the British Isles recording archaeological monuments. Most of his manuscripts are now held by the Society of Antiquaries Edward Lhuyd, Parochialia, 3 parts, 1909–1911. Richard Fenton (ed. John Fisher), Tours in Wales (1804–1813), 1917. The publication of Richard Fenton's diaries in Cardiff Public Library, which describe Fenton's extensive travels within Wales, often accompanied by Sir Richard Colt-Hoare Edward Yardley (ed. Francis Green), Menavia Sacra, 1927. A description of the Diocese of St David's by Edward Yardley who was Archdeacon of Cardigan, 1739–1769.
History
Antecedents and founding years, 1846–1855 The Cambrian Archaeological Society was founded at a time when a sense of Welsh national identity was increasingly asserting itself. It was also at the moment that the dominance of the Antiquarian and Welsh learned societies centred in London were on the wane.Emrys Jones ed. (2001) The Welsh in London, 1500–2000, Cardiff: UWP, pp. 69–74 There were two earlier learned Welsh Cultural societies in London; the Cymmrodorion founded in 1751http://www.cymmrodorion.org/our-history: Prof Prys Morgan, “A Brief History of the Cymmrodorion”- this society was the successor to an earlier society, ‘The Most Honorable and Loyal Society of Antient Britons’, which had been founded in 1715 and the Cymreigyddion (who conducted all their business in the Welsh language) founded in 1770.R. T. Jenkins and Helen M. Ramage ‘A History of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion and the Gwyneddigion and Cymreigyddion Societies (1751-1951), Y Cymmrodor Vol 50 The Cymmrodorion had ceased to meet in 1843, although it was re-established in 1873, while the Cymreigyddion disappeared completely in the 1850s. The premier English antiquarian society, the Society of Antiquaries of London, which had received its royal charter in 1745, was also in an impoverished state, having virtually bankrupted itself as the result of publishing ventures.Joan Evans"A History of the Society of Antiquaries", Oxford, 1956, 258–60 In Scotland the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland had been established in Edinburgh in 1780, while in Ireland the Royal Irish Academy, established in 1786, had its own Antiquities Section, and in 1890 the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland had been formed from the Kilkenny Archaeological Society.
Against this background the British Archaeological Association was founded in 1844, and was followed rapidly by a breakaway group, the Royal Archaeological Institute, which pioneered a model of holding annual meetings or congresses in various parts of the British Isles and producing an annual journal (published in quarterly parts). This was the model adopted by Cambrian Archaeological Association for Wales and the Marches.
The driving figure in the establishment of the Cambrian Archaeological Association was the Rev. Harry Longueville JonesLongueville Jones took his name from inheriting the Longueville estates in Shropshire. Sir Ben Bowen Thomas "Arch Camb" 127, apparently erroneously says that his mother came from the French Longueville family, which seems most unlikely as her maiden name was Stephen who was supported by the celticist the Rev John Williams. Rather than form a society directly, Longueville Jones produced a 'manifesto' -On the study and preservation of national antiquities- calling on interested people to join and form an association.Archaeologia Cambrensis, vol 1. Longueville Jones at this date was living at Beaumaris in Anglesey. Between 1834 and 1842 he lived in Paris, where he worked for the English language publisher Galignani and edited several editions of Galignani's Paris Guide. He worked with leading literary figures including William Thackeray. The ideas he put forward owed much to current developments in France, which followed the appointment in 1834 of the French novelist Prosper Mérimée as the first Inspector-General of Monuments Historiques.André Fermigier, Mérimée et l'inspection des monuments historiques, dans Pierre Nora (dir.), Les lieux de mémoire, vol. 1, Paris: Gallimard Quarto, 1997, p. 1599-1614. Longueville was also a talented artist and his work was used to illustrate early volumes of Archaeologia Cambrensis.
Early years 1847–1855
The first annual meeting of the Cambrian Archaeological Society was held at Aberystwyth between 7 and 10 September 1847, and the first president was Sir Stephen Richard Glynne. By the time of the second annual meeting at Caernarvon it was claimed that the membership had grown to 350. Initially the association was well supported by members of the Welsh Manuscripts Society. In 1849 Harry Longueville Jones resigned as joint general secretary on his appointment to the Civil Service position in the Privy Council office as Inspector for National Schools in Wales. This appointment was a result of the uproar that had been created by the publication of the 1847 Welsh Blue Book on Education. Jones remained a very active member of the association and resumed as editor of Archaeologia Cambrensis in 1855. He was succeeded as joint general secretary by the Rev Basil Jones, later to become Bishop of St David's.
Many scholars and academics were involved in the work of the association at this time. These included G. T. Clark, the manager of Dowlais Ironworks for Lady Charlotte Guest, who was to become a leading authority on British Castles.James B Ll.(ed) G.T Clark : Scholar Ironmaster in the Victorian Age. University of Wales Press, Cardiff. 1998. Clark's first article to be published in Archaeologia Cambrensis in 1853 was on Kidwelly Castle. It was accompanied by plans and drawings by a Mrs Trehearne engraved by John Henry le Keux. Another figure was the youthful Edward Augustus Freeman,http://archives.li.man.ac.uk/ead/html/gb133eaf-p1.shtml#id4243334, This is an extensive catalogue of writing and drawings by Freeman held by the John Rylands Library, Manchester. It includes 446 drawings of Welsh architecture and extensive correspondence with Sir Stephen Glynne and other members of the Cambrians. later celebrated as a medieval historian, and, from 1884, Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford. Freeman submitted a series of articles on church architecture in Wales and on the domestic architecture of Pembrokeshire. Also in this group was John Obadiah Westwood, a notable Oxford entomologist, whose studies of inscribed and sculptured stones of the post Roman period was to provide a systematic approach to the subject. The Cambrian Archaeological Association was to sponsor the publication of Westwood's Lapidarium Walliæ: the early Inscribed and Sculptured Stones of Wales in 1876–1879."Moore" pg 28 A final key figure was Rev Cardale Babington, who came from Ludlow in Shropshire. Professor of Botany at Cambridge, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1851. Babington was also interested in archaeology, and joined the General Committee of the association in 1855: he was to chair the committee until 1882.
In the 1850s a schism developed among the membership of the Cambrians. John Williams, who had been to Jesus College, Oxford, and whose sympathies lay with the Tractarians (or Oxford Movement), belonged to an older school of celticism, which wished to promote the authenticity of the writings of Iolo Morganwg. Williams did not fit in with the members of the association, whose primary interests were in Welsh architecture and archaeology. The association was also in a poor state financially as there had been a failure to collect subscriptions. Williams resigned as general secretary and Editor late in 1853Archaeologia Cambrensis, vol. 5, 1854, p. 71 and he was followed by other joint secretary the Rev Basil Jones who resigned at the Summer Meeting at Ruthin. The published list of members now shows that membership had shrunk to 163. Williams, following his resignation created an alternative society, the Cambrian Institute, publishers of the Cambrian Journal, which Williams edited until his death in 1863, when the Institute faded away.Lloyd, p. 14.
The re-constituted association: 1856–1880s