If you’ve visited Castell Coch in recent years, you’ll have seen the fantastic exhibit that tells the story of this wonderful building. We spoke to Glyn Parry-Jones, who designed and installed it.
It’s hard to believe that the exhibit is nearly 30 years old! Glyn explained that the exhibit was created in 1987 and that it was originally in the lower ground floor of the Kitchen Tower. “It was designed in an ostentatious style which reflected the arts and crafts movement and the surface patterns designed by William Burgess for his wallpaper”, he added.
This article was originally published on Tongwynlais.com in December 2014. The exhibit has now been replaced.
Glyn attributes part of the reason for the long life of the display to the quality of the joinery, which was made by D. Davies & Son of Penarth. Glyn has enjoyed a good working relationship with them over the past 30 years and created high quality structures for most of Cadw’s monuments. He said, “In many instances some of the exhibitions have had to suffer damp and wet conditions and in certain cases have had to rely on natural lighting, so the quality of the joinery and the joints were an important facet in the design.”
The script for Castell Coch was written by Peter Humphries (now retired), who was the Interpretations Manager at Cadw at the time. “Peter was a valuable source of information for all the monuments in Wales and the information was well catalogued and presented by him at all times and a resource which has now been lost to Cadw”, Glyn noted.
