Writing Welsh History

Abstract

This is the first book to explore how the history of Wales and the Welsh has been written over the past fifteen hundred years. By analysing and contextualizing a wide range of historical writing, from Gildas in the sixth century to recent global approaches, it opens new perspectives both on the history of Wales and on understandings of Wales and the Welsh—and thus on the use of the past to articulate national and other identities. The book’s broad chronological scope serves to highlight important continuities in interpretations of Welsh history. One enduring preoccupation is Wales’s place in Britain. Down to the twentieth century it was widely held that the Welsh were an ancient people descended from the original inhabitants of Britain whose history in its fullest sense ended with Edward I’s conquest of Wales in 1282–4, their history thereafter being regarded as an attentuated appendix. However, the book shows that such master narratives, based on medieval sources and focused primarily on the period down to 1282, were part of a much larger and more varied historiographical landscape. Over the past century the thematic and chronological range of Welsh history writing has expanded significantly, notably in the unprecedented attention given to the modern period, reflecting broader trends in an increasingly internationalized historical profession as well as the influence of social, economic, and political developments in Wales and elsewhere.

Problems and Technical Issues in the Diagnosis, Conservation, and Rehabilitation of Structures of Historical Wooden Buildings with a Focus on Wooden Historic Buildings in Poland

“…These are usually churches. The oldest fully preserved monument is a palisaded church in the English town of Greenstead in the county of Essex, dating from the 9th to the 11th century [16]. In Scandinavia, in Western Europe (England, France, and Germany), and also in Eastern Europe [16] (such as in Karpacz in Poland), churches [17], multi-storied townhouses, residential buildings, and rural buildings of frame and post-plank construction were built at that time.…”

“…The oldest fully preserved monument is a palisaded church in the English town of Greenstead in the county of Essex, dating from the 9th to the 11th century [16]. In Scandinavia, in Western Europe (England, France, and Germany), and also in Eastern Europe [16] (such as in Karpacz in Poland), churches [17], multi-storied townhouses, residential buildings, and rural buildings of frame and post-plank construction were built at that time. In the more recent period, wooden structures in central and western Europe were enriched with new ornamental details, but their development was reduced due to fire restrictions in larger estates.…”

“…It was mainly timber construction used for residential purposes (e.g., the palace in Kolomenskoye in the 17th century), defense (the defense complex in Tobolsk in the 17th century), and religious purposes (especially Orthodox churches-characterized by an extraordinary richness of forms and spatial arrangements). Since the mid-19th century, new solutions for wooden construction have been sought primarily in North America, with plank-frame structures as a starting point [16]. In the second half of the nineteenth century, European countries were characterized by a need to revive native architectural traditions.…”