“We hold the stories of people.” That’s a line to grab my attention.
I love a good story, but the number of them contained within Gwent Archives’ home inside a stunning Grade II listed building on the old steelworks site in Ebbw Vale sounds overwhelming.
If all the shelves inside the large (temperature-controlled) storage rooms were laid out in a straight line, they would stretch from Cwmbran Library to the Star Inn in Mamhilad*.
Thankfully, the staff at Gwent Archives are on hand to help visitors make sense of what’s available.
Rhi Phillips, the community engagement archivist at Gwent Archives, met me earlier this week and took me on a behind-the-scenes tour. She kindly laid out a few Cwmbran documents on one of the tables in the research room.
One was an album of photos showing the Greenmeadow estate just after it was built. New towns were, well, a new thing, so the Government and various organisations behind them wanted to document their progress and growth.
There were lots of pictures of children having fun on the unusual concrete play areas dotted around the estate – a real moment in time captured by camera.
I asked Rhi to tell me why it’s worthwhile to visit the centre in Ebbw Vale.
‘We hold the history of the county’
She said: “I think people should make the trip up here to Ebbw Vale because we hold the history of the county, but it’s not just those high-level records, such as the council [documents] and things.
“We hold the stories of people. We hold, you know those baptisms, those marriages, those burial records, those major life events of people, but then we also hold people’s personal letters, people’s personal diaries.
“We hold records that will tell you about the people that have had to go into the workhouse because they’ve hit hard times.
“It’s very much about the stories about people, like a local community. That’s why I think people should come up to us and should really embrace the archives to find out more about their family history and their local area.”
Expert staff at Gwent Archives
It’s not like a library or museum where you can pop along on the off-chance of finding something you need. Well, you can go there when it’s open, but to get the most out of the free service, you should use the expertise of the staff before you plan to visit.
Rhi said: “I always recommend people email initially. You can contact us at [email protected] and basically if you drop us an email tell us what you’re looking for, what information you’re trying to find out, what we’ll do then is we’ll have a look through our collections and we can tell you that we’ve got these catalogues you might want to have a look at.
“We might recommend specific documents for you to have a look at, and we will give you a document reference and description. If we don’t have anything that we hold that would be of interest, then we could point you in the direction of other sort of archive services or say local museums or other organisations that could help.
“Once we’ve sent you all that information, you could just let us know then, ‘I want to come to the research room on this date at this time’. We’ll then ask you to sign up for an archives card at home.”
“It’s like an archive version of a library card. Once you’ve done that, when you come to us then, bring some ID with you, so something with your name, address and signature. We will verify your archives card, and then what we’ll do is we’ll point you in the direction of where your documents are waiting for you, and your things will be there.
“You are welcome to pop in, but it [booking documents to view in advance] saves your time.
‘We give you a starting point’
“We help get you started on your research. We can give you a starting point and then help you on your way when you’re on site.”
If you live in Cwmbran, are interested in Cwmbran, or have a fascination with new towns, this is the place to while away a few hours.
Rhi said: “We hold the records for the Cwmbran Development Corporation. We have all of the administrative records for the Corporation from when it was established in 1948, all the way up to the late 1980s.
“We have everything from all of their minutes and there you know compulsory purchase orders, buying up the land to go and build the town, but then we also have things like these fabulous photo albums that are not only document the building of the site, but they also they also show some of the local communities and the housing.
“So we’ve got some lovely ones for Llanyrafon, Greenmeadow, for Coed Eva. They all sort of show housing, they show the retail units so it’s a really, really lovely sort of photographic collection as well. It’s not just paper-based.
“We’ve got three ‘strong rooms’ [where the physical documents are stored] and all and across those we have about five miles worth of shelving. We have enough space for the next sort of 20 years thereabouts. Our collection start from about 1200-1250 and our youngest record is about 2022, I believe.
“Those will range from your older parchment-based Latin written documents that are deeds and leases, all the way through to early photographs, letters and diaries , administrative records to increasing amounts of digital records that were now taken as well.
“So it’s a really wide sort of variety of records that we have. So there’s something for everyone basically.”
‘Strict temperature range’
I had a look inside one of the ‘strong rooms’ and saw aisle after aisle of thousands of pieces of information. These rooms are kept within a strict temperature range.
When items are requested, they are first moved to another room to avoid any sudden temperature shifts, which could damage them, when they are finally laid out in the research room.
They have support from a small team of volunteers who help out with this vital task.
One officer was busy preparing a pile of documents from the late Newport West MP Paul Flynn. She was going through hundreds of pages of paper with staples and clips that all needed to be removed before they move to the next stage of the process.
* Random point of interest to choose but I just used Google Maps straight line tool- fact check: it was actually 4.98 miles to this pub.