Monmouthshire Antiquarian Association Blog

‘Black, white and amber’: Newport in the cartoons of J. M. Staniforth I have been working on the career of Joseph Morewood Staniforth (‘JMS’) (1863-1921) for some years, and have published a number of journal articles and book chapters on him and his cartoons, including an Oxford Dictionary National Biography entry. Staniforth was, essentially, a Cardiffian, born in Gloucester in 1863 but growing up from a young age in Cardiff, and living there until his move to Devon in 1919. Leaving school aged fifteen, he became a printer’s apprentice with the Western Mail before going on to a highly successful career as an illustrator and a cartoonist. His cartoons appeared in the Evening Express , Western Mail , and in the British Sunday newspaper the News of the World , and he drew many series of picture postcards, as well as contributing illustrations for a variety of political pamphlets, magazines, and memoirs (including The Wit and Wisdom of Lord Tredegar ( 1911) Western Mail i...

From its foundation in 1847, one of the important activities of the Monmouthshire Antiquarian Association has been its visits to sites of archaeological, historical and architectural interest.   Spring 2020 has seen an historical ‘lockdown’, preventing travel beyond the absolute necessary and preventing meetings as groups.   Not surprisingly, virtual solutions have been rapidly mastered and, for many, are now mainstream ways of keeping in touch with the wider world.   In this spirit, Association member, Mark Lewis, has suggested a ‘virtual visit’ option for the Monmouthshire Antiquarian Association as a stopgap until better times return. Mark has chosen Sudbrook for his ‘virtual visit’, scanning images of Holy Trinity Chapel that he took in the mid-1980s; before its bell-cote fell to the ground.   The use of historical images makes this ‘visit’ virtual temporally as well as physically, and we invite other members to trawl their own photographic archives and forwar...

Who was Girolamo Bardoletti?  John Wootton, 'Lamprey( a Racehorse)' 1723. oil on canvas, NMW A 600 The Morgan family of Tredegar were aristocrats who were keen to be noted as keeping up with the fashions of their day. A painting by artist John Wootton (1682-1764) shows Sir William Morgan’s picture of his racehorse Lamprey at Newmarket. It is on loan from National Museum Wales to The National Trust, Tredegar House. There is an identical painting by John Wootton held by the Yale Center for British Art and it is signed and dated 1723.  A rac e horse was an important acquisition but in the corner of the painting stands a black servant. Such servants had a decorative role in 18th century Britain as they were seen as exotic and were something to be displayed.    A section of the painting provided by NMW. Possibly one of the group would have been Sir William Morgan So what do we know about the black man standing in the margins of the painting? Mi...

  Gwent’s Unknown Warrior - Little Sir Thomas Morgan, the Great Soldier by Jeremy Knight Portrait -an engraving from a portrait by C.W. Bampfylde       Arguably the greatest soldier that Monmouthshire has produced, Major General Sir Thomas Morgan (1604-1679) is largely forgotten in his native county, partly because, in the opinion of many, he fought on the wrong side. Accounts of the epic siege of Raglan Castle focus, for several reasons, on its defence by the Marquis of Worcester and ignore the embarrassing fact that until the arrival of Sir Thomas Fairfax with the New Model Army (the first time that the red coats that became synonymous with the British army were seen in the county), the siege was conducted by two Monmouthshire gentlemen, Thomas Morgan of Llangattock Lingoed and Sir Trevor Williams of Llangybi. Yet Morgan had a distinguished military career in the Thirty Years War and under the Commonwealth, went on to play a significant part in ...