by The Curious Scribbler.
I learnt on the Welsh News on Sunday that the graffiti on the wall beside to A487 just north of Llanrhystud has been vandalised once again, so I took a detour there today. Imagine my surprise to find that the new daubing ‘Elvis’ and a heart has already disappeared, to be replaced by the original message. It has become quite a tourist attraction. As I pulled into the adjoining layby I found another pilgrim like myself already bent on photography!
Passers by are stopping to admire the freshly repainted wall.
A quick search of Facebook reveals that a newly formed group styling themselves Welsh Independence Memes for Angry Welsh Teens lost no time in obliterating the substitution, toiling through the night to reinstate the old message.
The self appointed custodians of Welsh history
How much more satisfactory than a ponderous debate with the Authorities as to how and with whose money the restitution should be made! It is evocative of the original creation of the memorial, by a young Welsh Nationalist student at Aberystwyth University in the 1960s. It is a less known fact that that original young artist was one Meic Stevens, who died recently, having risen to the heights of Professor of Welsh Writing in English at The University of Glamorgan, a prolific author and Editor of The New Companion to Welsh Literature!
Meic’s artwork was prompted by the flooding of the village of Capel Celyn to create the Tryweryn Reservoir in 1965. I can think of no better aide-memoir than a little snippet of British Film Institute video which records the last event at Capel Curig School and the last wedding, in 1963 at its chapel, while the earthmovers create a great scar in the background. Everyone in their best clothes, the ladies in their hats and heels, little girls in their summer dresses, boys in in their blazers and ties. It evokes a distant past.
As the years passed the wall crumbled at one end, and the H disappeared entirely. One could still draw in and post a letter there, though that opportunity has gone today.
An earlier morph of the graffiti
It was touched up from time to time but it is in the present century that there have been successive attacks on the roadside memorial. In 2010 it was partially painted over to display an blobby ambiguous tag. In 2013 MP Mark Williams posed in front if it wearing an expression of grim concern. The perpetrators thought the obliterated letter W and the smiley face an amusing joke.
MP Mark Williams condemned the new graffiti in 2013
The wall was repainted in 2013 with the original message.
The next addition was at least more politically relevant ” Remember Aberfan was appended and this remained for several years.
More recently the lettering was redone, in green rather than the original white, perhaps to emphasize the Welsh colours.
Last weekend’s morph was perhaps the least creative. The new daub seems superfluous – we already have the well known Elvis rock at Eisteddfa Gurig. A second ‘Elvis’ lacks the historical relevance of the first, which was a corruption of the electioneering notice for Councillor Elis. One wonders exactly what the author of thinking of.
The Cofiwch Dryweryn wall as it appeared on 1 of February 2019, but was promptly obliterated.
The dynamism of the repainting team, slaving by lamplight on a very chilly night is heartening. Plaid Cymru Westminster Leader and MP for Dwyfor Meirionnydd Liz Saville Roberts has joined the fray with a worthy statement:
‘The Cofiwch Dryweryn Memorial is a symbolic and poignant reminder of why Welsh land; Welsh culture & Welsh communities cannot be allowed to be so drastically undervalued ever again’
Only in Wales could a piece of Banksy artwork be subject to such publicly-funded protection whilst an unrivalled marker of our nation’s political struggle for self-determination is left open to asinine damage.’
‘The Welsh Government must now act, acknowledge the history of the nation it purports to serve and afford this emblem the recognition and protection it rightly deserves.’
But is physical protection really the way forward? The immediate independent action to repaint the memorial is surely far more dynamic history than is putting up a fence! Though I suppose a video camera could reveal, to the embarrassment of many, the full range of activities to which a roadside layby can be put.
There seem few references to the real reason for the drowning of the village of Capel Celyn – that Liverpool City Corporation was selling water for industrial use to 24 other authorities.
During the decade preceding the building if Tryweryn, the city’s population was actually decreasing so this was commercial greed, pure and simple, and although 35 of our 36 MPs voted against it, a law was passed in Westminster to allow this plan to proceed.
Thank you for adding this to re-iterate why Treweryn should be remembered. What is heartening that young people (whose own parents had probably not been born at the time of the flooding!) do know, and think it is worth preserving the memory!
As someone who helped repaint the wall after a graffiti incident in 2010, the main issue in terms of physical protection is from the elements more than anything. That is to say, the wall is shrinking year by year and desperately needs to be stabilised. This could take the form of a supporting wall to the rear, repointing and/or perhaps even the insertion of metal rods.
I stopped recently at the wall outside Llanrhystud, and was disappointed to find that the wall had been rebuilt and the whole atmosphere of the place destroyed.
One can hope it will soften with time, but it does look too tidy at present, and no longer seems like a ruined building. The painting on the inner wall is also more more obtrusive than when it was overgrown.