Glyndyfrdwy – Amgueddfa Corwen Museum

Wonderful news for Corwen Museum.

Corwen Museum — Sat, 29 Jan 2022 14:26:13 +0000

We have just heard that we have been awarded a New Stories New Audiences Grant from AIM (Association of Independent Museums) and the National Lottery Heritage Fund. 13 other small independent museums in UK received a similar award and Corwen Museum was the only one in Wales.

The Aim website describes the project as below:

The project will share the origin story of the village of Glyndyfrdwy through a range of immersive experiences and events that will tell stories, past and present, and cultivate a new audience for Corwen Museum and local communities. The project will shine a light on the lesser-known heritage of the Moel Fferna quarry and how workers and families transformed a landscape, formed a community of interesting characters and will ask what we might learn from this story today.

The project will be based in the museum at Corwen, opening Easter Saturday 16^th April 2022, and also outside at Glyndyfrdwy where an audio trail, available on mobile phones, will guide people on a walk up the valley to various sites of the former slate workings. We are delighted to be working with the Glyndyfrdwy WI and the Village Hall Committee to bring the various threads of this project together.

At present we are researching the stories of the slate workings, the slateworkers and the community of Glyndyfrdwy. If you are interested in helping as a volunteer with this or the design and building of the exhibitions we would love to hear from you. Go to the Contacts page and leave a message.

Following in the footsteps of the Glyndyfrdwy Slateworkers

The Museum has now closed for the Winter

Corwen Museum — Wed, 29 Sep 2021 09:10:46 +0000

The Museum has now closed for our annual Winter work on the production of our new exhibitions for 2022. Our new themes will be on the story of Glyndyfrdwy, the Moel Fferna Slate Quarry and Mine and the local slate workers. If you have artefacts, photographs or documents relating to these we would love to hear from you, or if you want to volunteer to help with research or the design and installation of the displays. Please contact us on our website – www.corwenmuseum.org.uk.

Glyndyfrdwy girl wins prestigious singing award. (Find this story in the Glyndyfrdwy folder in the Museum)

Corwen Museum — Thu, 07 May 2020 14:26:55 +0000

Barbara Robinson was born in Birmingham on 26 March 1936. When she was 3, Barbara and her parents Thomas and Edith Robinson (nee Carter) moved first to Bryn Bach and then to Plas Y Glyn, Glyndyfrdwy. Barbara loved to play outdoors and especially playing house on top of Garth Hill with the children who lived next door. Barbara attended the school in Bala and later was the postwoman in Glyndyfrdwy. As the postwoman, Barbara could be heard singing all around the village as she delivered the mail. Theirs was a house of music, with Barbara playing the piano and teaching the local children. Mrs Robinson was a dance and singing teacher and taught not just the local children but others who came from as far as Llangollen and Corwen. Each year a pantomime was put on by the children – the Robinsons also had a flagpole on the lawn of Plas Y Glyn and Mrs Robinson used this to teach everyone the Maypole dance and also Morris Dancing. Barbara’s grandparents, Thomas and Ann Carter (nee Gough), also lived in the village and she has fond memories of them and her Uncle Tom. After her grandmother’s death in 1941, Thomas Carter came to live with the family. In 1956 Barbara won the prestigious Kathleen Ferrier Award – the first person to do so. In doing so Barbara beat Janet Baker into second place – Janet Baker is one of the greatest mezzo-sopranos of the last seventy years. The Contest was in London in front of an audience of 3,500, which included the Duchess of Gloucester. Barbara sang her way to success with “Che Faro” from Gluck’s Opera “Orpheus”. Sir Arthur Bliss, Master of the Queen’s Music who was chairman of the judges said that Miss Robinson had a potentially great contralto voice. Her prize was musical training in England or abroad worth £1,000. Barbara chose to go to Germany where she had singing lessons from a German musician. It was the first time she had been abroad. On the day of the competition, Barbara’s grandfather who did not have a television, went to watch the programme on the next-door neighbours TV. The Kathleen Ferrier Memorial Scholarship Fund was set up in 1953 in memory of Kathleen Ferrier (Professional Singer) who died of cancer aged 41. The Memorial Fund was set up by several influential conductors including Sir John Barbirolli, Bruno Walter and Sir Malcolm Sargent. When Barbara was accepted into the Manchester College of Music everyone in the village chipped in to buy her a leather suitcase. Barbara met her future husband Leonard Davies in Manchester and they married in Glyndyfrdwy in 1957. Barbara stepped back from her singing career after the birth of her first daughter, but the two girls were sung to sleep with operas not nursery rhymes either from Barbara rehearsing or from an old 78 which unfortunately was scratched due to overplaying! Barbara continued to sing and would often come back to the area to perform. In the 1950s she performed with the Bala Girl’s Grammar School in a production of “The Creation”. In May 1987, she performed at St Thomas’s Church, Glyndyfrdwy with local Mezzo-soprano and conductor Ann Atkinson, Alun Jones and Robert Hoare. Barbara is currently living in a Care Home in Henley on Thames but has always spoken fondly about her time in Glyndyfrdwy. Her daughter who was in touch with the local community has been very moved by the stories and memories of her Mum and will have lots of things to talk to her about when she is next able to see her. The musical tradition continues in Nannie Babs’ honour with granddaughter Rebecca opening her own musical theatre and dance school.