… is an ARCW project, funded by the Pilgrim Trust under the National Cataloguing Grants Programme and CyMAL, to highlight Wales’ industrial past by cataloguing some of its valuable business collections. There are two Archivists working on this project: Stacy Capner is based at Swansea University cataloguing collections from South Wales, and myself at NLW, cataloguing mainly North Wales business archives.
As you can imagine, most of our time is spent sorting through boxes of minute books, financial accounts, plans, ledgers and correspondence, trying to understand the nature of each business.
Three of the collections I have worked on are based around the Slate Industry in North Wales: Inigo Jones Ltd, Groeslon, and Davies Brothers, Slate Merchants, Porthmadog (both at Gwynedd Archives); and the Jonathan Davies, Porthmadog, Papers (NLW), the slate merchant, quarry owner and J.P. These collections should work well alongside Gwynedd Archives’ Slatesite.
I have also catalogued: Wrexham Lager Beer Co. Ltd, the brewery that brought us ‘Ace of Clubs’, ‘Skol’, ‘XXXX’ and ‘Wrexham Lager’ (Wrexham Archives); additional papers of Coppack Bros and Co., Connah’s Quay, ship-owning and chandlery business (Flintshire Record Office); and my final collection, Waddle Engineering and Fan Co. Ltd, Llanelli, manufacturers of industrial fans for collieries (Carmarthenshire Archives Service), which is due for completion by the end of August.
The South Wales collections are: South Wales Transport Collection, Cardiff Incorporated Chamber of Commerce, Powell Duffryn Ltd., Vivian and Sons (Yorkshire Imperial Metals) and the Emlyn Colliery and Brickworks Co.
Regular updates on the project are posted on the Powering the World blog.
Robert Evans
Project Archivist