Welsh Boys' Clothes
Figure 1.--This working class boy is unidentified, but the photograph was taken in Aberdare. A grammar school opened in Aberdare in 1896, but given the way the boy was dressed, he probably did not attend. The image is undated, but we would guess dates to the 1910s. English boys of similar social strata dressed similarly. We are not precisely sure what this Welsh boy is wearing. We had thought that it was a knitted sweater, but note the destinct vertical pattern in the material. One HBC reader believes that these are corduroy wales rather than a knit pattern. Image courtesy of the MD collection.
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Wales is one of the constiuent countries of the United Kingdom. HBC has not yet , however, created separated pages on Wales as we have done for Ireland and Scotland. This is primarily because we have been unable to detect any noticeable difference in Welsh boys and English boys' clothing. We have not noted any destinctive Welsh styles for contemporary boys clothing. This was because Wales was conquuered by the English in the 12th and 13th centuries and Welsh political independence largely extinguished. The imposing Norman castles encircling Wales seem a momument to the totality of the English onslaught, although the Welsh view them differently. The conquest of Ireland and Scotland was much more recent and never as thorough as the subgegation of Wales. Interestingly, the Welsh appear to have held on to their language more successfully than the Irish and Scottish, suggesting a cultural resistance to English rule. As a result, we have not noted the kinds of destinctive garments and cultural destinctiveness as is the case for Ireland and Scotland. We have found some information about Christmas in Wales. There are of course destinctive Welsh folk costumes, epecially for girls and women. An English reader writes, "Wales did not develop distinctive clothing styles. They just about held on to their language and now teach it in schools." Pitty the poor school boy that has to learn Welsh spellings.
Wales is one of the constiuent countries of the United Kingdom. HBC has not, however, created separated pages on Wales as we have done for Ireland and Scotland. This was because Wales was conquuered by the English in the 12th and 13th centuries and Welsh political independence largely extinguished. The imposing Norman castles encircling Wales are a momument to the totality of the English onslaught. A Welsh reader points out, however, "The castles are more of a testimony to Welsh resistance than anything else." Wales was the first of the constinuent parts of the United Kingdom to unite with England with the Act of Union (1536 and 43).
The earliest population of Wales as the rest of Britain appaer to have been of non-Caucasic ancesty. They were absorbed or displaced by the Celts,for centuries the dominant civilization in Europe north of Greece and Rome. The Gaelic Celts were probably the first to populate Britain. Wales and other areas of Britain were was also occupied by the Cymric and Brythonic Celts. By the time the Romans first appeared (55 BC), the Welsh tribes were a mixture of the primitive native Iberians and invading Celts and referred to themselves as Cymry.
The Romans after a protracted struggle finally subjected the Welsh during the rule of Emperor Vespasian. During three centuries, the Romans largely Romanized the Celtic period of Britain. Here the historical evidence is limited and there were likely considerable regional differences. After the withdrawl of the Romans, Britain was invaded by Anglo-Saxon tribes. Romanized Celts moved west fleeing the Anglo-Saxons. Some moved into Cornwall and even Britanity accross the Channel. Others moved north into Scotland. Still others sought refuge in the rugged Welsh mointains and gradually merged with resident Celts there. The rugged territory helped the Celts maintain their independence in several Welsh principalities, including Gwynedd, Gwent, Dyved, and Powys. It is at this time that the legends of King Arthur begin to appear and involve the resistance of the Romized Celts to the Germanic Anglo-Saxons. The question arizes as who were the true Britains. As the Saxons gradualy prevailed except in the extrenes western areas like Cornwall and Wales, they came to see themselves as the trur Britons and the Welsh as foreigners. The term Welsh is actually a name given the Welsh meaning essentially foreigners. Wales was conquuered by the English in the 12th and 13th centuries and Welsh political independence largely extinguished. The imposing Norman castles encircling Wales are a momument to the totality of the English onslaught. The conquest of Ireland and Scotland was much more recent and never as thorough as the subgegation of Wales. Interestingly, the Welsh appear to have held on to their language more successfully than the Irish and Scottish, suggesting a cultural resistance to English rule. Of course the fact that Wales was closer to England than Scotland and Ireland made the Welsh more vulnerable.
The conquest of Ireland and Scotland was much more recent and never as thorough as the subgegation of Wales. As a result, we have not noted the kinds of destinctive garments and cultural destinctiveness as is the case for Ireland and Scotland. We have not noted any destinctive Welsh styles for contemporary boys clothing. An English reader writes, "Wales did not develop distinctive clothing styles." A Welsh reader writes, "Of course Wales has its own historical tradition in clothing, and I would suggest that you first of all start your research in the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth and then in the archives of St Fagan's museum of Welsh life in Cardiff." As a tourist visting Wales, I was unable to detectb any real differences between English and Welsh clothing, but would be interested here in any information readers may have. One Welsh reader writes, "I cannot disagree with any of the claims on clothing since it is a matter very unknown to me, and in fact, given the way pupils were
forced to do things the English way I feel it's likely their clothes would have been similar." [Aaron]
Our Welsh garment section at this time is very limited. The items that we have found confirm our initial assessment that Welsh boy by the 19th century commonly wore essentially the same garments as worn by English boys of comparble social class. We would be interested in any insights that our
Welsh readers may be able to offer. We do not have very many Welsh images, but will add the ones we find here.
Holidays
We have found some information about Christmas in Wales.
Folk Costumes
There are of course destinctive Welsh folk costumes, epecially for girls and women. As is the case in most countries, women tend to wear folk costumes more than men. Also the general pattern is for boys to wear simply smaller versions of men's costumes. Generally speaking there are rarely destinctive garments for boys. We suspect that this is the case in Wales, but have not yet collected any information on Welsh folk costume. Welsh folk costume seems to have almost disappeared in the 19th century when efforts were made to preserve it. The most common image of Welsh "national" dress appaears to be a woman in a red cloak and tall black hat. This appears to have been based on 19th century styles. Commonly women wear a striped flannel petticoat under a flannel open-fronted bedgown, with an apron, shawl and kerchief or cap. For some unknown reason, the hats generally worn were the same as hats worn by men at the period. The tall "chimney" hat for women did not appear until the late 1840s and seems to be based on an amalgamation of men's top hats and a form of high hat worn during the Regency period (1790-1820) in rural areas. Information on men's folk costumes is much less available. A HBC reader visiting Wales writes, "I am interested in folk travel and always look out for interesting postcards on my travels. In Wales there were quite a few nice post cards with women's folk costumes, but I couldn't find comparable cards for men and boys." There does not appear to be any destictive image for men that stands out in the public mind like that for women. And we know of no destinctibe boys' folk costume. Hopefully our Welsh readers can provide some insight here.
Wales was conquered by the Normans in the 12-13th century before the developmnt of the British education system. Thus education developed in Wales along the same pattern as in England. Schooling was a luxury in the Middle Ages reserved for a privlidged few. What schooling was to be had, was conducted by the Church and until Henry VIII and the Reformation would have been conducted in Latin as was the case throughout the Christain world. After the Reformation schools began to be established in England that were secular in nature. Many of the great English public schools were established at this time and the language of instruction was English. Only a small part of the population, however, actually went to any form of school. We are unsure about the language of instruction in Welsh schools established in the 16th-18th centuries. As they would have been established in the cities where English influence was greatest, they may have been conducted in English, but we have no actual information at this time. During the 18th century, John Griffiths set up many Sunday schools in Wales to teach the Welsh how to read and write in Welsh, bringing mass literacy to Wales, something not seen in England until the late 19th century. A Welsh reader writes, "The Welsh Sunday schools in the 18th century came about after noncomformity and the chapels began to dominate Welsh life (the chapels did dominate Welsh life right up until the middle of the 20th century) with their firebrand preaching. The literacy (in Welsh, not English) in Wales led to many Welsh books being printed and many households owning their own Bibles." [Morgan] With the advent of state-financed public education, the inroads of the English language into Wales increased. As far as we know, all of the state financed schools like National Schools conducted classes in English and insisted that only English be spoken. We note in the 20th century little difference between English and Welsh schools and school uniform. We do have details on one Welsh school, Cowbridge Grammar School which dates back to 1607. A Welsh reader writes, "Since the 1950s Welsh language education (and that is education through the medium of Welsh, not just teaching the Welsh language to pupils) has become evermore popular." [Morgan]
Activities
We have not developed information on Welsh boys' activies such as choir, dance, music, religion, sports, and others. We would be interested in any information on such activities that HBC readers may have. Perhaps no art form is more associated with Wales more than choral singing. We have developed some information on the St. Wolo Cathedral Choir. We also have some information on traditional Welsh dancing.
Language
Language is a key element in national culture. After the Norman conquest in the 12th century, English gradually replaced the Welsh language, but the process was very slow. The English onslaught on Wales is far from total. While Ireland and Scotland lost their language, to all purposes, because of the English invasion, Wales retained its language against all the odds. Indeed, cultually speaking, Wales has managed to preserve its identity far more than either Ireland or Scotland. [Morgan] Historians believe that as late as the 16th Century, 95 percent of the Welsh in the principality spoke only Welsh and this proportion was nearly as high in the Borders (the area of Wales ruled by Westminster). By the 19th century Welsh was still spoken, but primarily in increasingly isolated pockets of the country. The census of 2001 revealed that roughly 20 percent of the Welsh speak Welsh, although I am not sure how well and to what extent it is actually used in everyday life. We do not know what the language of instruction was in the Middle Ages. As most early schools were in urban centers, we suspect that schools may have been taught in English even in Medieval Wales. The coming of state education in the 19th century had an especially serious impact on the welsh lanuage. The language of instruction was English and even speaking in Welsh was discouraged and children might be punished for doing so. We do note, however, that the Aberdare Grammar School which opened in 1896 offered Welsh as an elective subject.
Language policies changed in the 20th century. There is today an effort to teach Welsh in the schools. A HBC reader wrrites, "They just about held on to their language and now teach it in schools." Looking at the length of some Welsh words, pitty the poor school boy that has to learn Welsh spellings. Here a Welsh reader takes issue, "Unlike English, Welsh is a phonetic language and is therefore very easy to spell. English is generally regarded worldwide as one of the most difficult languages to spell as it is a mixture of many other languages. The irony of 'Pitty the poor school boy that has to learn Welsh spellings' is hilarious, but I feel that this might have been an accident on your behalf?!" Another Welsh reader agrees, "First the 'pity the poor schoolboy' statement shows an utter lack of knowledge about the language. The quote you added from a Welsh contributor is correct. Even though from the outside the unfamiliar letters of 'ch' 'dd' 'll' 'ff' 'ng''ph' 'rh' 'th' combined with the lack of the English letters 'j' 'k' 'q' 'x' 'z' and 'v' makes it looks complicated, this is not the case. Once you become accustomed to the new letters, and the fact that 'w' and 'y' are vowels in Welsh, it's very easy to follow. It's purely phonetic, unlike English which has devoloped over the centuries into a complicated mass of exeptions and anomalies." [Aaron] Another Welsh reader writes, "As for the Welsh language, I'll have you know that it is far from dead, and the 2001 census showed that the number of speakers had risen dramatically from 500,000 to 575,000, with nearly 800,000 people claiming to understand some Welsh. Although there has been a general decline, Welsh continues to be the main language of west and north-west Wales, and is currently seeing a huge increase in the rest of the country as Welsh language education has expanded rapily in those areas which lost the language. Welsh is a living language, spoken between friends, family, in all sections of the community still, and is therefore a very living language. In my county of Gwynedd, around 70 percent of the people can and do speak Welsh." [Morgan]
Media
Movies
Wales does not have a major film industry that we know of. In such matters Wales has kargely been absorbed into the larger English economy. Several films have been made about Wales. Perhaps the best known is the American film "How Green in My Valley" (1941) about the sons of a Welsh coal miner. It was based on the novel by Robert Lewellyn. A Welsh reader, however, writes, "It may surpsise you to know that Wales does have a film industry - for a country of less than 3 million people this is no mean feat - for example, the Welsh language film "Solomon a Gaenor" was nominated for an Oscar in 1999." [Fflur] Another reader mentions the film the Welsh-language film "Hedd Wyn", which was nominated for an Oscar in 1993 (or thereabouts). A Welsh reader poibts out, "For the most obvious reason (only around half a million talking the language) blockbuster Welsh films are rare! However as has been pointed out to you "Solomon and Gaenor" and "Hedd Wyn" have both been internationally acclaimed." [Aaron]
Television
Wales also has its own Welsh-language TV station, S4C, which broadcasts many Welsh films. A Welsh reader writes, "Success is more obvious at television level. S4C, the Welsh channel 4, gives Welsh TV companies an unprecedented chance to flaunt their talent. The channels main soap is the second longest running in Britain (I believe Coronation Street to be the first) and the subtitled Sunday omnibus brings in extraordinary numbers of English satelite viewers. Finally the Welsh programme 'Sgorio', a weekly round up of Spanish, Italian and German football was the basis for starting Football Italia on Channel 4 and is watched not only over Wales but in many parts of England too." [Aaron]
Individual Accounts
We have few individual accounts from Welsh boys at this time. We do have a biography of Anthony Hopkins. We also found information on Stanley Davies, a buggle boy with a Welsh regiment.
Sources
Aaron, Guto. E-mail message, July 17, 2003.
Fflur, Mari. E-mail message, July 17, 2003.
Morgan, Jason. E-mail message, July 17, 2003.
Richards, Alan. E-mail message, August 8, 2003.
HBC
Related Chronolgy Pages in the Boys' Historical Web Site
[The 1880s]
[The 1890s]
[The 1900s]
[The 1910s]
[The 1920s]
[The 1930s]
[The 1940s]
[The 1930s]
[The 1940s]
[The 1950s]
[The 1960s]
[The 1970s]
[The 1980s]
Related Style Pages in the Boys' Historical Web Site
[Long pants suits]
[Knicker suits]
[Kneepants]
[Short pants suits]
[Socks]
[Eton suits]
[Jacket and trousers]
[Blazer]
[School sandals]
[Flat caps]
[Sailor suits]
[Pinafores]
[Long stockings]
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Created: January 30, 2003
Last updated: 12:35 AM 7/17/2007