The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales (RCAHMW; ; ), established in 1908, is a Welsh Government sponsored body concerned with some aspects of the archaeological, architectural and historic environment of Wales. It is based in Aberystwyth.
The RCAHMW maintains and curates the National Monuments Record of Wales (NMRW), an archive with an online platform called Coflein. Professor Nancy Edwards is Chair of the Commissioners.
Mission statement The Royal Commission has a national role in the management of the archaeological, built and maritime heritage of Wales, as an originator, curator and supplier of information for individual, corporate and governmental decision-makers, researchers and the general public. To this end it: Surveys, interprets and records the man-made environment of Wales Compiles, maintains and curates the National Monuments Record of Wales Promotes an understanding of this information by all appropriate means
The Royal Commission is committed to close partnership working with other organisations in Wales, in particular Cadw and the Welsh Archaeological Trusts.
History In 1882 Sir John Lubbock pioneered the Ancient Monuments Protection Act 1882. This Act, concerned principally with prehistoric monuments rather than with later, medieval structures, encouraged owners to voluntarily transfer important sites into the safekeeping of Her Majesty's Commissioners of Works. It also discouraged the public from damaging monuments by threatening to impose stiff penalties.
The first Schedule of monuments resulted from a nationwide inquiry among interested local antiquarian societies. In order to add monuments to this Schedule, the First Inspector of Ancient Monuments, General Pitt-Rivers, travelled the British Isles examining the known sites, and searching for new ones. Unfortunately, only limited information was available to him and his helpers about the nature, location and condition of many monuments, and there was no easy way to assess the potential national significance or value of any given site.
In Wales, there were only three monuments on the first Schedule. These were Plas Newydd megalith, Anglesey; Arthur's Quoit, Gower, Glamorgan; and the megalith at Pentre Ifan, Pembrokeshire.
By the turn of the century it was becoming clear that a census of archaeological sites was needed, so that a selection of the best could be put forward for Statutory Protection. Consequently, by 1908 the administrative frameworks were in place to establish individual Royal Commissions on Ancient Monuments separately in Scotland, England and Wales. Significantly, their original remit was to encompass not only Historic Monuments, but also Constructions.
On 10 August 1908 a Royal Commission was authorised and appointed by King Edward VII to "make an inventory of the Ancient and Historical Monuments and Constructions connected with or illustrative of the contemporary culture, civilisation and conditions of life of the people in Wales and Monmouthshire from the earliest times, and to specify those which seem most worthy of preservation". This last injunction was the most urgent purpose of the Commission in the eyes of the legislators, but the inventory was its essential preliminary. The protection of significant sites under the Ancient Monuments Act of Queen Victoria's reign had been severely hampered by a basic lack of knowledge of the country's stock of monuments. So it was felt that an independent and official body was needed to prepare a reliable inventory from which examples could be selected and recommended for statutory protection.
This need was not peculiar to Wales, and in 1908 identical Royal Commissions were established for Scotland and England too.
Commissioners The early commissioners were distinguished men (there was no woman) who were notable figures in Welsh cultural life, each with a distinctive contribution to make to the task ahead. Their involvement in such long-established scholarly institutions as the Cambrian Archaeological Association and the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion proved invaluable to the Royal Commission from the beginning.
For the first four decades of its existence it was based, like other Royal Commissions, in London, which allowed easy access to the British Museum, the Public Record Office and the Cymmrodorion Society, which also had its headquarters in the capital.
The Royal Commission's first chairman was Sir John Rhŷs (died 1915), philologist and professor of Celtic at Oxford University. He oversaw the publication of the first four inventory volumes, which appeared in quick succession: for Montgomeryshire (1911), Flintshire (1912), Radnorshire (1913) and Denbighshire (1914). The second chairman (until his death in 1934) was Sir Vincent Evans. By profession an accountant and journalist, he was a friend of Welsh politicians and a stalwart of eisteddfodau and the Cymmrodorion.
The early commissioners, included Edward Anwyl (died 1914), another philologist, professor of Welsh and Comparative Philology at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth. Griffith Hartwell Jones (died 1944) was an Anglican clergyman living in Surrey but also chairman of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion. Robert Hughes was a former lord mayor of Cardiff, which had recently been created a city. Henry Owen, a lawyer, was a notable Pembrokeshire historian and another leading light of the Cymmrodorion. J. A. (later Sir Joseph) Bradney, who was the pre-eminent historian of Monmouthshire, was appointed a commissioner during the Great War, when he was also a lieutenant-colonel in the militia. The last of these early commissioners to be appointed (in 1920) was John Morris-Jones, poet and professor of Welsh in the University College of North Wales, Bangor.
None of these men were practising archaeologist by the later definition of the term. Two other commissioners, however, included W. E. Llewellyn Morgan, who was on the army retired list, had spent several decades penning field descriptions of monuments; those which he made for the Royal Commission, drawing on his earlier notes, were sufficiently respected to be included in the Pembrokeshire inventory (1925).
Finally, Robert Carr Bosanquet (died 1935) was professor of Classical Archaeology at the University of Liverpool.
The day-to-day work of the new Commission required specialist staff, and its first secretary was Edward Owen. Between 1908 and 1928 he did much to establish the Commission on sound and respected foundations. A reputable historian of Anglesey origins, he was trained as a lawyer and had served, like many a British civil servant, in the India Office, where he supervised the military store accounts and prepared statistical statements for India. As overall editor of the inventories, he was at pains to extend his knowledge beyond his own expertise in medieval and later manuscripts. His scholarship was widely admired by the Cymmrodorion and the Carmarthenshire Antiquarian Society among others. He was also closely involved with the University of Liverpool, where he became reader in Welsh Medieval Antiquities (1921) during his time as the Commission's secretary.
Owen's staff included his assistant in 1908, Edward Thomas, was a fine writer and observer of the landscape but he found the Commission's work uncongenial (he regarded himself "a fish out of water") and resigned to concentrate on literature. Thomas proved to be one of Britain's finest war poets, but in 1917 he was killed in action at Arras. Three other of the early staff made greater contributions to the Commission. George Eyre Evans's life (1857–1939) spanned the formative years of modern archaeology. As a prolific antiquary with many publications to his name before he joined the Commission, he was most closely associated with Carmarthenshire, particularly the county museum and the antiquarian society. Alfred Neobard Palmer (1847–1915) was appointed in 1910 as a "temporary assistant inspector of Ancient Monuments" for six months, at 15s. a day with a guinea for subsistence and travelling. Palmer suffered ill health, and his appointment was an act of kindness by Edward Owen, who had earlier secured him a government pension in recognition of his historical researches. A chemist by profession, Palmer turned himself into a local historian, particularly of Wrexham, where the local studies library is named after him.
Ivor Mervyn Pritchard, an architect employed by HM Office of Works and Public Buildings, made a long lasting contribution. His services were loaned to the Commission to make plans and drawings for the inventories and he seems to have been responsible for much of the photography. The wash drawing of St Asaph Cathedral that is the frontispiece of the Flintshire volume is by Pritchard, and his plans and pen-and-ink drawings can be seen in the inventories for Denbighshire (1914), Carmarthenshire (1917) and Merioneth (1921).
First inventories Following the publication of the first inventories (of Montgomeryshire and Flintshire in 1911–12),the Commission's work was praised in Parliament for its quality and value for money; but the Great War naturally slowed things down. Edward Owen, now unpaid, managed to keep the work going and the Carmarthenshire volume was published at the height of the war in 1917. At the same time, and although he was in his sixties, Owen was anxious to contribute to the war effort through a position in the newly-formed statistics department of the War Office, but he was turned down. For a brief period after the war Owen ran the Commission from his home in Wrexham, until new offices could be found in London. During his visits to the capital he took to sleeping in the office to carry out the work expected of him, which earned a mild rebuke from the Chief Commissioner of Works.
The future of the Royal Commission was in some doubt during the years of austerity, when the Office of Works considered a purge of Royal Commissions. This prompted the chairman, Vincent Evans, to urge Owen to publish the Merioneth volume as soon as possible, and when it appeared in 1921 Evans shrewdly sent a copy to the Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, who responded by congratulating the commissioners for "doing a real public service". The Commission's continuance was not questioned again for nearly seventy years. Nevertheless, financial cutbacks delayed the appearance of the Pembrokeshire inventory, and the Commission itself did not meet formally for two and a half years.
The fundamental nature of the inventories was bound to lead the Commission into other areas concerned with the historic sites and monuments it was recording, and this has characterised the Commission throughout its life. As early as 1916 Owen was allowed to make representations to the town clerk of Chepstow about the proposed destruction of a stretch of medieval town wall, and in 1926 the Commission was represented on the committees running the excavations at the Roman fort at Kanovium (Caerhun). Owen himself was in constant demand to give talks to national and local societies, and a steady stream of requests for information came in – for example on the Roman fort at Tomen-y-mur, Whitland Abbey, stone circles, place names and, especially, genealogy.
During the mid-1920s developments in professional archaeology exerted growing pressure for change in the approaches, methodology and structure of the Royal Commission. While the Commission had fulfilled its role of identifying monuments worthy of preservation, the volume on Pembrokeshire (1925) attracted criticism for its dearth of original fieldwork and its failure to keep up with advances in architectural recording and interpretation.