The idea of Welsh food culture may seem like a misnomer to some. But there are a number of ways of preparing, sharing and eating food that have been common to Wales up to the present day. These are now the childhood memories of the older generation in Wales. They all remain living traditions, even if some currently seem to be on their last legs:
Buttermilk dishes
Dymunol, da yw ymenyn,—a chaws,
A chig- purlon enllyn;
Goreu o ddim geir i ddyn,
Lwyth haner o laeth enwyn.
(Cadwgan Fardd, Medi 1885 Y Drych)
‘Butter and cheese are pleasant and good
And meat a hearty food
But best of all for humankind
Half a weight of buttermilk’
This little englyn, published in a mass market Welsh magazine in the 1880s captures several key things; the preponderance of dairy in Welsh cooking, the poetic form used to praise everyday local food, and the love of buttermilk (llaeth enwyn). Poured over new potatoes, put into cakes (when eggs weren’t available), used in puddings and porridges and drunk with a touch of ginger, this byproduct of churning was ubiquitous. It was also – correctly – viewed as having beneficial health effects due to its fermented nature.
Home baking on the griddle
Griddles (gradell) or bakestones (maen/llechfaen) are versatile implements that have been used in Wales for baking in some form since before records began. But they are far from only being useful to make Welsh cakes – a whole range of bakestone cakes, turnovers, pancakes and other baked goods owe their existence to the presence of griddles in Welsh kitchens. And the most important of the bakestone cakes are not in fact sweet at all – oatcakes (bara ceirch).
Sioni Winwns
These Breton onion sellers have been a part of the Welsh food landscape since the early 1820s, with their sweet pink onions a favourite with discerning cooks. Many returned year after year, and though they went to other parts of the British Isles, a disproportionately large number came to Wales. Memories that some seemed to speak Welsh were indeed correct, with the similarities between Welsh and Breton allowing some who might spend 6 months of the year in Llanelli or Porthmadog to pick up the language with ease. The tradition continues, down to the use of bikes to advertise the plaited onions, though the sellers tend now to be Breton language students looking to improve their English, rather than Welsh.
Cockles and other shellfish
Vans would drive around the towns and cities of South Wales selling cockles and other fresh seafood caught along the coast until the early 2000s. Seafood cocktails can still be had as a protein-rich snack from Cardiff market among others. Always a working class food – as was laver bread – the taste for these seafoods has diminished over the past few decades, and the lion’s share of the cockle harvest is now exported to Spain and other countries, where they are enjoyed as a delicacy.
“Te capel”
“Yr oedd y capel wedi ei addarno yn brydferth; a gallesid meddwl wrth fyned i mewn iddo mai i ardd fiodeu yr oedd- yell yn myned. Cafwyd gwledd-de gysurus; ac ym- ddangosai pawb yn llawen a boddlawn.” Baner ac Amserau Cymru, Mehefin 1866; Capel Newydd, Machynlleth
‘The chapel had been beautifully decorated, and you might think as you entered into it that you had come into a flower garden. A comfortable feast-tea was hard, and everyone was merry and content’ (June 1866, Machynlleth)
The tradition of holding a chapel tea-time, with tea and cakes in a vestry or hall after a service, Cymanfa Ganu or other occasion, is one that united people from all parts of Welsh society for a hundred and fifty years. They are social occasions above all, with no alcohol ever served, but a steady contented hum of chatter and the enjoyment of tea and baked goods. Chapel teas, with bone china holding bara brith, are still held in all parts of the country, but now frequented generally only by aging congregations.
In this piece I sketched as much of the story of Welsh market gardening as I think can currently be put together. It struck me that one important, missing resource is a list of known, historic market gardens or nurseries in Walesso that we can start, hopefully, filling in the gaps. So do you know or suspect there used to be a market garden or nursery in your town or area? Please comment below or get in touch here so we can expand the list.
NB. The reason to lump market gardens and nurseries together is that often the same business will be involved both in raising plants for sale and in growing produce – even if they usually have a clear emphasis either side or the other,
List of historic Welsh Market Gardens and Nurseries
Early’s Garden, Cowbridge. Up and running by 1738. Mentioned in Historic Gardens of the Vale of Glamorgan.
Vickers nursery, Holywell. In operation in 1795. Known for cultivating the Cambrian Plum. Mentioned in Early Welsh Nursery Gardeners.
Hindes Nursery, Felindre. Established between cc.1800 and 1808; sold 1852. Nursery of 18 acres that grew to 74 acres, sold trees and woody plants including a wide range of fruit trees and graft wood. Described in Walter Davies’ General View of the Agriculture and Domestic Economy of South Wales, 1815.
James Evans’ Nursery, Felindre. 8 acres; over the fence from Hindes and in operation by 1815. Mentioned by Davies, 1815.
Charles Price’s Nursery, Llechryd. Contemporaneous with the above Teifi valley operations. Mentioned in Rooted in History.
Llandaff. Flourishing market gardens supplying valleys towns, Cardiff and even Bristol. Mentioned by Walter Davies, 1815.
Bodorgan. Reference in Gardeners’ Chronicle to nursery there in 1850 and 1892.
Murton Farm, Gower. Market Garden, established 1864 and still going, in area formerly known as the ‘Garden of Swansea’.
Treseders’ Nursery, Pwll-coch, Cardiff. Established by 1868.
Llysonnen Market Nursery, Carms. Near Meidrim. Described in Gardeners’ Chronicle in 1895 as a ‘market nursery’ growing amongst other things roses, chrysanthemums, peaches and tomatoes, with two tons of tomatoes sent off weekly in midsummer. It employed 35 gardeners.
A.J. Williams, Bee Hive Nursery Llangefni. Sold seed potatoes, tomato and cucumber plants, bedding plants and seed. Advert in Welsh Coast Pioneer, March 1903
Aberystwyth, ‘market gardening is an old industry in and around Aberystwyth’, 4th Jan 1900. Where were these gardens?
References
David, P., Rooted in History,
Lloyd, T., “Early Welsh Nursery Gardeners”, Bulletin of the Welsh Historic Gardens Trust, Autumn 2000
Davies, W., General View of the Agriculture and Domestic Economy of South Wales, 1815.
This series of posts is exploring Welsh food culture, as it developed from the time of the earliest written records through to the 20th century. Much has changed in the last 50 years, so that only vestiges now remain of ways of growing, preparing and sharing food that had previously united much of the country in shared dishes and culinary cultures. The last post explored the tale of Sioni Winwns, onion growers from north-western Brittany who came to sell their sweet onions to Welsh housewives from the 1820s. This set me thinking of vegetable growing in Wales at the time….
The most iconic of Welsh dishes, cawl, depends above all on vegetables. Leek, swede, carrot and potatoes may be unromantic (by dint of sheer familiarity: they are exotic enough viewed through Filipino or Yemeni eyes), but they also have long tradition behind them in Wales. Cultivating gardens, growing and using veg are a neglected part of Welsh food culture that deserve much more attention than they have traditionally received. Victorian Welsh society, to pick up the thread of Sioni Winwns’ early visits to Wales, was known for industry and for its distinct nonconformist chapel culture. Wales was a core part of the British Empire, and from the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 onwards, cheap imports of food flooded into the country, altering and perhaps distorting the market for native-grown produce. Nevertheless, Wales had a long-established tradition of vegetable cultivation, both for culinary and medicinal use, which from the 18th century until after the Second World War allowed a small native industry of market gardeners and nurseries to flourish (see list here of Welsh market gardens and nurseries)
Market gardening in England only started to become an established branch of agriculture from the 1650s, after a period of steady growth in vegetable consumption over the previous century, and the realization that in years of poor harvests a plentiful supply of vegetables could mean the difference between survival and starvation.[1] Records are too scanty to ascertain when the first market gardens appeared in Wales during this period. The earliest market garden in Wales that I can find mention of is Early’s Garden in Cowbridge, in a passing reference in 1738. But the culture of vegetable growing was already long-established in Wales by the time of the broader horticultural renaissance of the late 17th century.
The roots of growing vegetables in small plots for consumption in the home or on the estate almost certainly lie before our earliest written records, as both archaeological and linguistic evidence and Roman-era documents suggest. By the time of the laws of Hywel Dda, which remained in force in the country until the Acts of Union with England in 1536, vegetable cultivation in Wales was widespread enough to necessitate specific regulation. These include provisions for farmers to fence fields and gardens, and leeks – along with cabbages – are one of the few crops singled out for mention by name. Linguistic evidence in Middle Welsh supports this picture, with the now archaic word ‘lluarth’ – meaning vegetable garden – appearing frequently in medieval texts, along with ‘gardd fresych’ for cabbage garden. Alongside this cultivation of vegetables for the kitchen, there was clearly a strong native tradition of plant cultivation for various uses encapsulated in the records of the physicians of Myddfai who first appeared in the 13th century and whose tradition continued in various forms for some four hundred years. The notable feature of their writing, as opposed to other medieval collections of herbal lore, is their focus on native species of plant rather than only those known to classical writers in the Mediterranean basin. All of this suggests a culture that was familiar with plant cultivation and the different uses that could be made of garden plants – a picture I paint further in the opening chapter of Apples of Wales.
Consequently, although direct evidence for the establishment of market gardens in Wales during the 16th and 17th centuries is slim, there clearly existed a body of knowledge within Welsh culture for plant cultivation that was already widespread. Linguistic evidence also supports the view that market gardening as an occupation grew in Wales at around the same time as it did in southern England, with the terms ‘gardd fagu’ (plant nursery) and ‘gardd lysiau’ both making numerous appearances during this period for the first time.
By the late eighteenth century we are on much firmer ground. Walter Davies (Gwallter Mechain) mentions several nurseries and market garden enterprises in his reports into agriculture in South Wales published in the 1810s, and he makes no suggestion that most of these were newcomers on the scene. According to his report, the most important centre of market gardening in the Cardiff area, for instance, had become Llandaff:
‘The kitchen-gardens of the market-men at Llandaff, near Cardiff, are numerous and productive ; supplying the most convenient parts of South Wales, and in a certain proportion the Bristol market, with vegetables : such a group of gardens for the accommodation of the public, we have not noticed elsewhere within the district. To enumerate the several articles of the first-rate gardens, would be to write in part a botanical dictionary : the crops of a farmer’s- garden consist of the vegetables most appropriate to his table, viz. early potatoes, yellow turnips, early and winter cabbages, greens, varieties of pease and beans, carrots, onions, and other alliaceous plants, and varieties of salads; to which some add brocoli, cauliflowers, asparagus, seakale, rhubarb.’
The range of vegetables listed here is by Davies’ own admission only a part of what was known and grown. The presence of asparagus and salads on his list may go some way to dispelling some tired notions of historic Welsh fare. More telling still in this context are his remarks that ‘such a group of gardens’ are not seen elsewhere in the district, implying that although the Llandaff market gardens were exceptional in their extensiveness, that nevertheless single market gardens existed in other parts of South Wales, not to mention private garden and orchard plots. In the Teifi valley Felindre nursery was described as the ‘largest in the district’, operating on 18 acres. Over the fence, a competitor worked an 8 acre nursery. Nurseries and market gardens are not identical categories, but there is reason to believe that many businesses had a hand in both.
Welsh tithe map. Data exists for the use of almost every plot of land on these maps in the 1830s or 1840s, providing an invaluable resource for our picture of farming and food at the time.
The 1836-1850 Welsh tithe maps confirm the general picture, with small plots of land labelled ‘garden’ around various Welsh towns, including Aberystwyth, Carmarthen and Cardiff. Some of the plots so labelled are located some distance away from the nearest house or cottage, implying by this point a small amount of vegetable production on a field scale. These maps deserve further study, but provide strong evidence for the spread of the burgeoning Welsh horticultural industry during the early decades of the 19th century, confirmed by a 1877 government report on land use across the UK. Here the acreage of Welsh market gardens was put at cc. 446 acres with another 367 acres of nursery grounds – compared to some 12,000 acres in England.[2] Market gardens are defined in this report as “land used by the gardeners for growth of vegetables and other garden produce, and as market gardeners are generally alive to the possibility of obtaining quick returns, and securing the most rapid succession of crops in, on, and above ground, the land so classed supports a considerable sprinkling of trees, and repays its cultivators by the variety of its fruit, root, and surface crops.”
In other words, a full range of garden crops were grown in these gardens, including leaves and fruit. The report goes on to note that Wales “has little over 3000 acres in orchards and market gardens put together; or considerably less than may be found in the large county of York” – which was at the time a few thousand square kilometres smaller in area than Wales. Of all the Welsh counties, however, only Anglesey is singled out for having no orchards[3] and Radnor alone as having no market gardens.[4] (Interestingly, Wales had significantly more acreage of land under orchard – 2619 – than Scotland, while Scottish market gardens come to 2939 acres, dwarfing Wales’ coverage).
There were therefore market gardens in almost all the counties of Wales by this point, though detailed information on where precisely these were found and what they grew is sadly lacking. After Walter Davies’ report mentioned above I know of no other account that mentions the crops grown in Welsh market gardens, or even the specific location of most of these growing sites. Partly this is to do with the well-noted fact that the railways enabled the industrial towns and cities of south-eastern Wales to be supplied by the Evesham horticulture industry, which was first established in the 17th century and benefited from economies of scale and a good climate for horticulture.[5]Welsh market gardens and nurseries continued to play an important part, however, in supplying some of the population’s dietary needs through the latter decades of the 19th century and well into the 20th century, becoming a familiar part of the landscape or townscape in many areas. As The Welsh Gazette notes on Jan 4th 1900: ‘market gardening is an old industry in and around Aberystwyth, and I don’t assume to teach old growers, who have learnt by experience the best methods and the best things to grow for profit. There appears to be a steadily growing demand for all kinds of garden produce, and the prospects for market gardeners in the district are good…’
Here we arrive back at the nub of the matter, insofar as this series of posts is concerned: in 1900 as in Hywel Dda’s time, Wales was home to a widespread, if slightly underdeveloped, culture of vegetable growing. Market gardening requires skill and practice, and is best learnt by imitation. It also requires a market, and at least between the late 18th century (though possibly earlier) and the early 20th century, there was a ready market for its produce across Wales. This, in short, is an important aspect of Welsh food culture as it adapted to early modernity. The extent of its neglect is shown in the fact that, to my knowledge, this short piece is the only study ever published in any language on the topic. I would be delighted to be corrected….
[1] Thirsk, Food in Early Modern England, pp. 59, 102
[2] Important to note here that England covers an area six times larger than Wales geographically – 21,000 km2 vs 130,000km2. If the same proportion of Welsh land were under market gardens as in England at the time this would have amounted to 2000 acres.
[3] Unlikely as orchards were known to exist at this point at Plas Newydd house and other estates – but the total acreage must therefore have been minimal)
[5] However, the old conker that vegetable growing didn’t fully take off in Wales because the climate and soils are simply unsuitable is misleading. The Vale of Glamorgan, Monmouthshire and most of South Pembrokeshire have very suitable climates for horticulture and rich soils, as do significant parts of the lowland NE, and the comparative lack of development has more to do with human factors than biophysical restraints.
This series of posts is exploring Welsh food culture, as it developed from the time of the earliest written records through to the 20th century. Much has changed in the last 50 years, so that only vestiges now remain of ways of growing, preparing and sharing food that had previously united much of the country in a shared dishes and culinary cultures. But though the past may be a foreign country, it contains much that is of interest, and perhaps of value…
It’s a fine early autumn day in Llantwit as I cycle the final approach into town in September 2010. People are milling around the string of small shops and a couple of older women are stood chatting to a man whose bike is leaning against a lamppost. I lock up my own bike and amble over; he is indeed wearing a striped shirt and his bike is laden with strings of onions. I’m delighted, and greet him in French. He’s a student from Britanny; yes, he’s been here a few weeks – there’s a small team of them with a base in Cardiff selling in the towns round about. This is one of the modern Sioni Winwns, selling Breton onions in Wales in an unbroken tradition extending back to the 1820s.[1]
I buy a string of onions from him, and present them to Mam when I get home that afternoon. She’s delighted; she hadn’t seen any Sionis in Cardiff yet that year, but the onions are so much better than the ones you get in the shops – sweeter, and they keep better. She remembers a previous generation of Sionis as a fixture of the Pontypridd streetscape in the 1970s. That generation was not composed of students, partly spending their time in Wales in order to improve their English. In fact, there were generations of Sionis selling in Wales who not only didn’t speak English, but were hardly able to get by in French either: these were bilingual Breton-Welsh market farmers, whose market just happened to be located several hundred miles of sea travel away.
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Sioni Winwns/ Ar Joniged/ Onion Johnnies: the name originally refers to a group of small, peasant farmers from a handful of villages in the Rosko/ Santec area of northern Brittany who sold their local onions in Britain, starting in 1828. The soil and climate of this particular part of Brittany are well-suited to vegetable growing, and the local farmers had the advantage of a notably sweet, pink variety of onion, originally brought over by monks from Portugal. In the context of Breton poverty in post-Napoleonic France, with a rapidly industrialising UK (and Wales at the very forefront of this), there was a clear economic incentive to test the market overseas, even if this meant months away from home for the farmers. The timing worked in terms of the onion season – sown in February, harvested in July, leaving August – January as the selling season in Britain.
The gamble paid off, and as the UK further loosened import restrictions on food through the 1840s, the door was opened to the Sionis to make the most of this burgeoning market. By 1860 there were 200 Sionis making the journey over to sell in Britain; by 1887 this number had grown to 700 and at the high watermark in 1931, there were 1500. And although these Johnnies found their way to towns and cities everywhere from Plymouth to Shetland, there was always a disproportionately large number of them in Wales; and the tradition of selling in Wales continued longer than anywhere else, with the Cardiff team continuing through the 80s and 90s as other areas fell by the wayside.
Sionis in their Porthmadog storehouse in the 1950s (image in public domain)
For the Sionis, Wales was a natural destination. Partly this is to do with language, and partly with the market they found there for their product (though the two things are not unrelated). Broad swathes of both Brittany and Wales were monolingual Breton- and Welsh-speaking until the Second World War, and the two languages are closely related though not quite to the point of mutual intelligibility. The myth of Sionis selling their onions in Breton to housewives who replied in Welsh doesn’t quite hold true, but the similarity between the languages allowed the Bretons to pick up functional Welsh within weeks, and complete fluency often within a season or two of visiting.[2] As sellers usually returned to the same area year after year, they picked up the Welsh dialect of their patch, be that Llanelli, Newcastle Emlyn, Porthmadog or even London, thanks the Ceredigion milk-sellers who had settled there.
And the market they found was a ready one, thanks to Welsh housewives’ good nose for an onion. Wales had experienced early and rapid industrialisation, with significant population growth through the 19th century, and it also had peasant cooking traditions that made great use of the onion family of vegetables, whose main guardians and cooks were housewives. Onions are part of the allium family of vegetables, whose close relative the leek has been associated with Welsh cooking – for good reason – since the early Middle Ages. The thing about onions (and leeks for that matter) is that they aren’t an essential part of anyone’s diet, but they add depth of flavour to almost any cooked dish, and particularly soups and stews. Urban and rural poverty didn’t affect the fact that onions were readily available at the market everywhere in Wales, and were commonly grown in back gardens with leeks.[3] But the Rosko pink onion, with its fine flavour and good keeping qualities was markedly superior to the onions grown in miners’ gardens and farmers’ veg patches in Wales, and to those available at market stalls. The ready market that Sionis found in Welsh mining towns and rural farm holdings alike testify to the miners’ and farmers’ wives good taste, and their recognition of a quality vegetable, worth spending money on, when they saw one.
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So this story, as much as it is about Breton cuisine, is a tale of Welsh food culture. As sellers returned year by year to their patch, cycling even to remote farmhouses on their onion-laden bikes, they became an established part of the food landscape, and their arrival was expected and anticipated. My own Mam was surely echoing what generations of Welsh mothers had told their children through on many an autumn Saturday when she’d tell me ‘gwna’n siwr bod ti’n cael winwns gan Sioni os weli di un!’ (Make sure you get onions from Sioni if you see one).
‘Ta ta tan mis Awst nesa’; ‘Goodbye till next August’ (or September, October, November) went the refrain as a Sioni left a farmhouse or village after a successful sale. This BBC video from the 1970s – staged though it is – gives a good feel for the familiarity and exoticness of the Sionis in Wales in that period. Part of the furniture and the usual seasonal rhythm of life right down to the local dialect of Welsh, but also ineluctably foreign with distinctive clothes, a Breton twang and an unknown hinterland of family and society awaiting them at home in Brittany.
Until the last of them retired in the 1990s, a good many of the Sionis earned most of their income from their work selling onions in Britain. They spent decades travelling back and forth seasonally between Brittany and Great Britain, with a familiar ‘home’ in their seasonal selling base (usually an old warehouse or shop where they slept with their onions) and a home and family in Brittany. If Brexit puts paid to the Sionis’ trade in Wales, it will have sadly managed to kill off a tradition that survived two world wars and lasted over a hundred and eighty years, linking two countries and food cultures by means of an onion.
[1] The tradition stopped only for the Second World War, and was in fact given special dispensation by the French government to recommence at the end of the war.
This series of posts will explore Welsh food culture, as it developed from the time of the earliest written records through to the 20th century. Much has changed in the last 50 years, so that only vestiges now remain of ways of growing, preparing and sharing food that had previously united much of the country in a shared dishes and culinary cultures. But though the past may be a foreign country, it contains much that is of interest, and perhaps of value…
Early spring – March – in Wales is accompanied by a slow, gentle uptick in temperature and noticeably stronger daylight. By mid-month, one of the most important days in the annual calendar had arrived: Ffair Garon on the 15th, and the right time to sow oats. With the field ploughed and ready, the oats were broadcast, and slowly grew through the lengthening days for a crucial harvest as summer turned to autumn. Because oats can lay claim to being the most important of all Welsh crops – and ingredients – until the second half of the 20th century. Around the oat an entire culture grew.
Modern rolled oats – not the same as the oatmeal traditionally used
Oats are enjoying a bit of a renaissance today. The health benefits of oats are being widely lauded, with this once staid and old-fashioned peasant foodstuff now the core ingredient in bircher mueslis, cinnamon porridges and the multi-million dollar oat milk industry. In one sense, the newfound popularity of oats would have been no surprise to generations of Welsh, Scots, Irish and others living on the Atlantic fringes of north-western Europe. Oats are a versatile grain, and in the same way that entire food cultures grew up around rice, maize or wheat (think rice wine and paddies, tortillas and polenta, pies and pasta), oats as a staple can provide the basis for much more than simply breakfast porridge.
Oats (ceirch) were ubiquitous in Welsh food from the earliest records until the 20th century. It’s hard to convey just how much in the way of oat-based foods was consumed, particularly by people living in the western, windward side of the country. Oats found their way into bread, cakes, milk dishes (similar to porridge), broths, drinks and even sandwiches. Unsurprisingly there developed an array of traditions around preparing, storing and using oats with particular implements and a specific vocabulary associated with them.
Oatcakes
Oatcakes (bara ceirch) – round flat cakes made on bakestones – were one of the workhorses of the diet, depended on as a staple food in much of the country, from the hills of Glamorgan up to Snowdonia. They were used neat as an accompaniment to veg in a hot dinner, as a replacement to slices of bread and even as the filling for sandwiches in parts of North Wales.
The thing about oatcakes is the skill required in making them. Because oats don’t contain gluten, a mixture of oatmeal and water won’t form a workable dough in anything like the same way wheat or rye will. There were different traditions of making oatcakes, with variations around adding extra fat to the mixture (dripping or lard) or not and how to roll out the cakes. Suffice to say, the versions without the extra fat take considerable skill, and are crumblier even when well made. But in essence in both versions, water and oatmeal are mixed together to form a stiff dough, which is kneaded. This is turned out onto a surface sprinkled with dry oatmeal, and made it into cone shapes. These are then flattened – either with a rolling pin or with the palm of the hand – until you have a large, thin oatcakes ten inches in diameter. This is baked on a moderately hot bakestone until it turns golden, and then hardened further in a warm place.[1]
An 1814 image of making oatcakes
With a good store of these, the larder was full for the week and the staple ingredient for numerous dishes was ready. One of the most intriguing of these is an example of a traditional Welsh streetfood, Cocos a Wya. Here eggs and cockles were fried together with a pinch of salt and pepper. Some people added cuts of bacon too. This mixture was then served hot between slices of oatbread. In some coastal areas of northern Wales these were available to buy on the street or at the markets along the coast. A rhyming ditty hailed the availability of this snack:
Cocos a Wya, Bara Ceirch tena,
Merched y Penrhyn yn ysgwyd eu tina!
[‘Cockles and eggs, thin oatbread sliced
The Penrhyn girls’ butts looking nice’]
Note the reference to the oatcakes being thin – that was a mark of a good oatcake in this now-vanished food culture, and was a sure sign of the baker’s skills. There were other oatcake dishes too: picws mali, brwes, siot, and for these the oatcakes are crushed and then combined with buttermilk or beef broth to create further possibilities.
Many of these traditions of making and using oatcakes, along with numerous other oat dishes (which may form the basis for a future piece) survived into the 1980s and 1990s, before dying out with the last generation of women who had been raised in this culture.
Oat implements
The differences that arose even for a procedure as basic as making oatcakes have already been mentioned, and they are symptomatic of the omnipresence of oats in most Welsh kitchens for thousands of years. Around this a range of specific implements were developed, with their own particular purposes and uses. Staying with the oatcake theme, one of these is a drying or storage rack for oatcakes, not dissimilar to a toast rack, called car bara ceirch or diogyn. These were handcrafted, made of wood and a distinctive feature of many Welsh kitchen spaces. See the image here from 1964 for a lovely example. When placed or hung in the hearth at a suitable distance from the fire, they were useful as a location to put oatcakes fresh from the griddle that still needed drying and hardening – away too from curious childrens’ fingers!
Another implement, which goes by various names, was the crafell or rhawlech, a sort of spatula or turner used on the bakestone. These had particularly long, thin blades used for turning the oatcakes as they cooked and varied in size and design from craftsman to craftsman. They were also used for turning the numerous other baked goods prepared on griddles in Welsh kitchens until the middle of the 20th century – breads, welsh cakes, pikelets and more.
The quantity of oats consumed in the course of a year, particularly in more mountainous regions where other grains yielded poorly, called for a proper way to store them. Enter the Cist styffyliog or Oatmeal chest (and see here). In a touch of vernacular space-saving genius, the lids of these store chests were often removable, and could be used as hand barrows. These hand-made pieces of furniture, centuries old, now command several hundred pounds at auction, which is only right considering the care and effort that went into them.
But perhaps the most evocative of these oat-food implements goes by the names wtffon, myndl or pren llymru. Like a slender wooden spoon, with only a narrow bulge at the head, this was used not only to stir llymru – a thin, oatmeal dish borrowed in English as flummery – but also to test its consistency. When the mixture forms a thin ribbon or tail and runs smoothly back into the pan from the stick, as the stick is held the right distance above the saucepan, the llymru was ready. Poor llymru in a household had consequences; word would get around and farmhands would stay away.
‘Ceirch du’
The Welsh oat traditions, like so many other Welsh food traditions, have come close to total extinction. But the links with the past have been maintained by a few thin threads; enough to form for the basis, perhaps, for a future revival. For one thing, as mentioned, many of these dishes and preparation methods were still practiced within living memory, and a great many people in Wales today will not only have strong recollections of eating these oat dishes, but also of how to make them. And beyond this, a small number of farmers kept the tradition alive, growing oats on their farms throughout the 20th century, in the teeth of government guidance and industry recommendations.
Field of ripe oats
One such farmer has kept the tradition of growing the local black oats going on his farm into the 2010s. In addition, far-sighted plant scientists at Aberystwyth University ensured that a significant number of Welsh oat varieties were kept in a seed bank there, awaiting rediscovery. The full story is told in this touching film, and this article. These local oat varieties, in all their genetic diversity, were selected and grown over the full range of Welsh soils and climatic conditions, and produced a staple crop in sometimes difficult growing conditions. With subtle but perceptible differences in flavour, use and growth habit, these Welsh oat varieties could form the basis for a rediscovery of oats in the Welsh diet. There always was more to this grain than just porridge (uwd).
[1] NB This takes practice and patience to get right, and the extra fat from using lard, dripping or butter makes the job easier on an initial attempt. See Tibbot, Welsh Fare, for detailed descriptions and images of various traditional methods, of which there are a selection here.
Here’s the second part of a piece about some of the ingredients and dishes that have real tradition to them in Wales – or in some part of the country – but that are mostly or entirely forgotten here today. Most contemporary Welsh people would view these foods as alien, foreign foods, but in their time they were widespread and important parts of the food culture:
Rye bread
We tend to think of rye bread as belonging more naturally to the cuisines of eastern Europe than to anywhere in the British Isles. But until comparatively recently, rye bread was considered a familiar, Welsh staff of life. In many areas, particularly inland, mountainous parts where the poor soil made wheat cultivation unviable, the majority of the population depended on rye and oats for their subsistence. This was also true in neighbouring England but the practice survived much longer in Wales, perhaps in part due to the well-known cultural brogarwch – love of the familiar places and people. Evidence of this is strewn throughout Welsh literature, and reference to the cultivation of rye are also found in poetry:
“Bara rhyg yw’r ymborth amla
Ymenyn caws sy’n aml ynddi”/
Rye bread is the most frequent staple
Cheese and butter commonly [eaten] with it
This couplet is taken from a description of the notable features of Radnorshire (one of the highest-lying and coldest of the Welsh counties) in a long poem published in 1750. The poem also mentions the ‘abundant rye’ of Cardiganshire and notes the the grain was also associated with Montgomeryshire. As the couplet states, people eat rye bread much as we would expect – with cheese and butter. This is however before the Earl of Sandwich’s invention of the modern ‘sandwich’. The ability to buy cheaper white wheaten bread when wheat started to be imported at scale into the United Kingdom is what ultimately finished off rye as a bread-grain in Wales, although oat bread survived into the 20th century. Placenames is almost all that remains of this formerly widespread and important Welsh food: there are several places called ‘Bryn Rhyg’ or ‘Cae Rhyg’ (Rye Hill and Rye Field) dotted around Wales.
Asparagus
Accounts of asparagaus growing in Wales date back centuries. There is of course a Welsh word for this vegetable – esbarag – recorded in Wiliam Salesbury’s 1547 dictionary.[1] It is very likely in view of the linguistic evidence and the ‘discovery’ of asparagus amongst the English upper classes at this time that it was already being consumed at the tables of the wealthy landowners in Wales by this point, but by the end of the 18th century it had become fairly commonplace. We have detailed descriptions from this era, such as the diary entry for the 24th of April 1788 by one of the Llangollen sisters, who notes “Dinner, Roast Mutton, boiled pork, peas pudding and the first asparagus we cut this year.” More significantly perhaps, Walter Davies’ agricultural survey of 1815 contains descriptions of the produce of the market gardens of Llandaff near Cardiff, which was sold in markets across southern Wales – and one of these vegetables in its season was asparagus. And there seems also to have been a market for the vegetable in northern Ceredigion, as the surplus of the Nanteos estate sold locally between 1842 and 1844 included “seakale, broccoli, leeks, carrots, cucumbers, asparagus, rhubarb, lettuce, gooseberries, peas, cauliflower, potatoes, strawberries, cherries, beans, cabbage, artichokes, raspberries, blackcurrants, melons, apples, pears, damsons and onions.”
What is true of asparagus was also true of other vegetables that later fell out of favour. These include watercress (Anglesey and the Vale of Glamorgan), samphire, cabbage stalks (Pwll near Llanelli – the villagers were known as the ‘stalk people’ – gwyr y bonau – for their penchant for this vegetable) and white carrots (grown across the country – the later orange carrots were a Dutch fashion that developed in deference to the royal House of Orange.) There was also a not insubstantial Welsh tomato industry! By the 1890s, two tonnes were grown weekly during the season in Llysonnen in the Teifi valley – and these were sold and bought locally. The nonconformist Wales of the 18th and 19th centuries was perhaps a more varied place than many now realize – and this was no less true of vegetables than many other fields.
(We could also mention the history of fruit growing – but that has been done already in Apples of Wales).
Cockles and eggs
Finally, an example of Welsh ‘street food’:
‘Cockles and eggs, thin oatbread sliced
The Penrhyn girls’ butts looking nice’
Eggs and cockles fried together with a pinch of salt and pepper. Some people added bits of bacon two. Then serve hot between slices of oatbread. Available to buy on the street or at the markets along the coast between Pwllheli and Harlech. Who said historic Welsh foods were boring again?
[1] Though this word has now fallen out of use, and been replaced by the more modern Anglicism ‘asbaragws’.
The slightly cheeky title I had given to my address to the Real Welsh Food and Farming conference last Novemeber was ‘Just leeks and lamb? Why Welsh food history matters for our future.’[1] But if Welsh food historically was wider in its range than leeks, lamb and those other tourist-pleasing dishes we tend to think of as ‘traditional Welsh foods’, what are those other foods? In particular, were there any foods widely eaten in Wales historically that we might consider surprising today?
Partly asking this question is just a bit of good fun. But it does also make a serious point about variety in diet, always a good thing for health, and about the interest inherent in a food culture. One of the most persistent and myopic assumptions made by advocates of the modern Western diet is that the diets of the past (and one suspects that the thought continues, the diet of those living in traditional societies today) were boring and monotonous. This is of course no different in essence than the argument that modern diets are boring and monotonous i.e. true when viewed from certain angles, and undoubtedly so when those with the least access to good food within the society in question are cherry-picked as representative of the whole. I explore these questions in more depth in Welsh Food Stories, and also here and here.
So here are some of the ingredients and dishes that have real tradition to them in Wales – or in some part of the country – but that are mostly or entirely forgotten here today. Most contemporary Welsh people would view these foods as alien, foreign foods, but in their time they were widespread and important parts of the food culture:
Sheep’s cheese
Ewe’s cheese and goat’s cheese (and sometimes a mixture of the two) were commonplace in the mountainous tracts of Wales from the earliest times until the 19th century. Thomas Pennant provides us with a memorable description of the way these were made in the summer dwellings people had in the mountains:
‘This mountainous tract scarcely yields any corn. Its produce is cattle and sheep, which, during summer, keep very high in the mountains, followed by their owners, with their families, who reside in that season in Hafodtai or summer dairy houses as the farmers do in the Swiss Alps do in their ‘sennes’….During summer, the men pass their time either in harvest work or in tending their hers; the women in milking or making butter and cheese. For their own uses, they milk both ewes and goats, and make cheese of the milk for their own consumption.’
The practice also existed in parts of Glamorgan – primarily again the hillier northern part that later became the coal tract:
“A kind of cheese is made in some parts of the country of all sheeps milk, or a mixture of sheep and cows’ milk, exceedingly rich and highly flavoured.; and when of a proper age, little if at all inferior to the boasted Parmesan.” (John Evans, 1804)
One of the most interesting aspects of this liking of sheeps’ cheese and goats’ cheese in Wales is the connection between this and the historical love of baked cheese or in other words, Welsh rarebit. Sheep and goats’ cheese can work better as a baked good than many cows’ cheeses, as the famous Cypriot halloumi demonstrates. The Welsh, famously, were so fond of baked cheese that this became a widespread stereotype of the country’s food. Why then did ewe’s cheese and goats’ cheese die out? In a word, fashion.[2] I explore this story more in Welsh Food Stories…
Oysters
This was an affordable source of good-quality protein for the poor and was commonly available in several coastal areas and near market towns for centuries. As early as 1603 they formed the basis for export from Milford Haven in Pembrokeshire, and were shipped to places as far afield as Worcester, Bristol and other towns in a broad swathe of Western England. They were also sold in Welsh markets including in inland areas: the price of 100 oysters in Carmarthen market in 1652 was a penny – the same price as a dozen eggs or 6 pears. According to an observer a century later, Tenby oysters in particular were noteworthy for their great size, with many as large as 7 inches in diameter, which he believed put them amongst the largest in the world. They shaped the town’s character – a traveller in 1807 noted how there lay about in heaps ‘Mountains of shells, the aggregate of many a century, occur in several parts of the town, forming a nuisance that would amply pay for removing’. Swansea Bay and the Menai straits were also areas with significant oyster fisheries in their day (hence the village name ‘Oystermouth’ near Mumbles), the former providing a livelihood to nearly 500 men.
Oysters were generally eaten fresh in Wales, but there also developed a tradition of pickling them for export – Lewis Morris, a member of the illustrious Anglesey Morris clan – described the size and ‘fatness’ of Penmon oysters, and how they were ‘famously pickled’ in his day. And were these Welsh oysters any good? The Pembrokeshire antiquarian George Owen was in no doubt about this:
“Were it not that the Walfleete and Gravesend oysters are better frinded in court then this poore country oyster of Milford is, no question but he would, and well mighte, challenge to have the cheefe prayse before them both: and I presume if the poet Horace had tasted of this Milford oyster, he would not have preferred the oyster of Circæi before this”
Part two of this piece to follow next week…
[1] Eironi mawr hwn wrth gwrs yw nad oedd cig oen yn hanesyddol yn rhan bwysig o ddiet y Cymry, a hyd y gwela i does dim tystiolaeth chwaith iddo chwarae rol diwylliannol pwysig chwaith. Ond mater arall yw hwnnw y bydda i’n cyffwrdd ag e yn fy llyfr, Welsh Food Stories.
[2] In a word means that it really isn’t just fashion – there’s a whole array of historical contingencies, economic factors, policy decisions etc – but it would take an essay in itself to explore that here.
Ces i’r pleser o annerch cynhadledd Gwir Fwyd a Ffermio Cymru ym mis Tachwedd, a rhoi cyflwyniad cryno yno ar werth hanes bwyd Cymru wrth i ni ystyried posibiliadau ar gyfer bwyd ac amaeth Cymru i’r dyfodol. Penderfynais roi teitl ychydig yn smala i’r anerchiad: ‘Dim ond cennin a chig oen? Gwerth hanes bwyd Cymru i’r dyfodol’, neu yn Saesneg ‘Just leeks and lamb? Why Welsh food history matters for our future.’[1] Ond os yw hanes bwyd Cymru yn cynnwys mwy na chennin a chig oen a’r bwydydd eraill y byddwn ni’n meddwl amdanynt fel bwydydd traddodiadol Cymreig, ac efallai rhai bwydydd annisgwyl, beth yw’r bwydydd hynny?
Dyma gyflwyno felly rhai o’r cynhwysion a seigiau hynny ag iddynt hanes yng Nghymru – neu mewn rhyw ran o Gymru – ond sy’n bur anghofiedig erbyn heddiw. Byddai nifer ohonynt yn cael eu gweld gan lawer ohonom bellach fel bwydydd tramor, anghyfarwydd. Nid bwydydd cyffredin, bob dydd oedd y rhain i gyd, ond nid eithriadau dibwys chwaith:
Caws dafad
Hwn, a chaws geifr, oedd y caws arferol ym mharthau mynyddig Cymru o’r oesoedd cynharaf hyd y 19eg ganrif. Mae Thomas Pennant yn rhoi i ni ddisgrifiad cofiadwy o’r arfer o wneud y cawsiau hyn yn yr hafotai:
‘This mountainous tract scarcely yields any corn. Its produce is cattle and sheep, which, during summer, keep very high in the mountains, followed by their owners, with their families, who reside in that season in Hafodtai or summer dairy houses as the farmers do in the Swiss Alps do in their ‘sennes’….During summer, the men pass their time either in harvest work or in tending their hers; the women in milking or making butter and cheese. For their own uses, they milk both ewes and goats, and make cheese of the milk for their own consumption.’
Roedd yr arfer hefyd yn bodoli mewn rhannau o Forgannwg – y mynydd-dir yn bennaf, mae’n debyg:
“A kind of cheese is made in some parts of the country of all sheeps milk, or a mixture of sheep and cows’ milk, exceedingly rich and highly flavoured.; and when of a proper age, little if at all inferior to the boasted Parmesan.” (John Evans, 1804)
Un o’r pethau mwyaf diddorol am yr arfer hwn o fwyta caws gafr neu gaws dafad yng Nghymru yw’r cysylltiad rhyngddo a’r hoffter hanesyddol o gaws pobi: mae cawsiau gafr neu ddafad yn gallu bod yn addas iawn i’w pobi (meddyliwch am halloumi). Roedd y Cymry mor hoff o’u caws pobi nes i hynny fynd yn ystrydeb cyffredin iawn am y Cymry. Pam felly bu farw’r arfer? Mewn gair, ffasiwn. Ond mwy ar hyn yn Welsh Food Stories pan ddaw o’r wasg….
Wystrys
Bwyd rhad i’r tlodion ac un cyffredin mewn sawl parth arfordirol am ganrifoedd. Mor gynnar ag 1603 roedd y rhain cael eu hallforio o aber y Cleddau yn Sir Benfro – i lefydd amrywiol gan gynnwys i Fryste, Caerwrangon a threfi gorllewin Lloegr. Caent eu gwerthu yn nhrefi marchnad Cymru hefyd: mae disgrifiad o farchnad Caerfyrddin ym 1652 gan ŵr o’r enw John Taylor yn nodi bod modd prynu cant o wystrys am geiniog, sef pris 12 wy neu chwe gellygen. Yn ôl gwr arall ganrif yn ddiweddarach, roedd rhai o wystrys Dinbych-y-Pysgod yn cyrraedd rhyw 7 fodfedd ar eu traws – credai eu bod felly gyda’r mwyaf yn y byd. Noda teithiwr i Gymru yn 1807 bod Dinbych-y-Pysgod yn llawn o ‘Mountains of shells, the aggregate of many a century, occur in several parts of the town, forming a nuisance that would amply pay for removing’ Roedd bae Abertawe a’r Fenai hefyd yn fannau hel wystrys gyda physgodfeydd sylweddol yn eu dydd (o hyn daw enw’r pentref ‘Oystermouth’ ger y Mwmbwls) yn rhoi bywoliaeth am ran o’r flwyddyn i hyd at 500 o ddynion.
Roedd arfer ar draws Cymru o’u bwyta’n ffres ond roedd hefyd traddodiad o’u piclo i’w cadw a’u gwerthu – mae Lewis Morris (un o Forrisiaid enwog Môn) yn nodi bod wystrys Penmon ‘yn fawr a thew, ac yn enwog i’w piclo’. A’u blas? Doedd dim amheuaeth ym meddwl George Owen:
“Were it not that the Walfleete and Gravesend oysters are better frinded in court then this poore country oyster of Milford is, no question but he would, and well mighte, challenge to have the cheefe prayse before them both: and I presume if the poet Horace had tasted of this Milford oyster, he would not have preferred the oyster of Circæi before this”
Bara rhyg
Tueddu i feddwl am fara rhyg fel rhywbeth yn perthyn i ddiwylliannau dwyrain Ewrop y byddwn ni erbyn heddiw. Ond yn ei ddydd, ystyrid bara rhyg fel cynnyrch cyfarwydd, Cymreig. Mewn rhai ardaloedd, yn enwedig y parthau mewndirol, mynyddig â phridd sâl lle’r oedd tyfu gwenith yn wastraff amser, ar ryg a cheirch y byddai’r mwyafrif yn bodoli am eu cynhaliaeth. Roedd hyn hefyd yn wir mewn rhannau o Loegr, ond goroesodd yr arfer lawer hirach yng Nghymru – efallai yn rhannol oherwydd brogarwch nodedig y bobl. Mae tystiolaeth am y brogarwch hwn mewn cerddi hyd yn oed:
“Bara rhyg yw’r ymborth amla
Ymenyn caws sy’n aml ynddi”
Disgrifiad yw hwn o nodweddion traddodiadol Sir Faesyfed (yr oeraf a’r uchaf ond odid o siroedd Cymru) mewn cerdd gan David Thomas, 13 Sir Cymru (1750). Mae hefyd yn son am ‘rygau dibrin’ Sir Aberteifi ac yn nodi bod rhyg hefyd yn gysylltiedig â Sir Drefaldwyn. Fel mae’r gerdd yn nodi, bwyta bara rhyg fel y byddem yn ei ddisgwyl roedd pobl – gyda chaws a menyn (er bod hyn cyn i Iarll Sandwich ddyfeisio’r ‘brechdan’ modern). Ffasiwn – a’r gallu i brynu bara gwyn rhad pan ddechreuwyd mewnforio gwenith o dramor – roddodd y farwol i fara rhyg yma mae’n debyg, er i fara ceirch oroesi am hirach. Mae olion o’r arfer o dyfu rhyg wedi goroesi yn bennaf oll yn ein enwau lle: ceir sawl ‘Bryn Rhyg’ yng Nghymru, ac mae yna ‘Cae Rhyg’ ger Nefyn ym Mhen Llŷn.
Asbaragws
Mae cofnodion o dyfu asbaragws yng Nghymru yn dyddio yn ôl ganrifoedd. Mae gair Cymraeg amdano wrth gwrs – esbarag, a chofnod yng ngeiriadur Wiliam Salesbury amdano. Mae’n bur debygol bod rhai o’r uchelwyr yn ei dyfu a’i fwyta yn ystod cyfnod Salesbury yn y 16fed ganrif, ond erbyn diwedd y 18fed ganrif, roedd y llys hwn yn weddol gyfarwydd. Ar y 24 o Ebrill 1788 dyma ddisgrifiad gan un o Foneddigesau Llangollen o’u cinio y diwrnod hwnnw: “Dinner, Roast Mutton, boiled pork, peas pudding and the first asparagus we cut this year.” Yn fwy arwyddocaol, mae arolwg amaethyddol Gwallter Mechain o 1815 yn cynnwys disgrifiadau o gynnyrch gerddi marchnad Llandaf, a oedd yn cyflenwi llysiau i farchnadoedd ar draws De Cymru – ac ymhlith y llysiau hyn oedd asbaragws. Ac mae’n amlwg bod rhywrai rai blynyddoedd yn ddiweddarach yn hoff o esbarag yng Ngogledd Ceredigion hefyd: rhwng 1842 ac 1844 mae cofnodion ystâd Nanteos ger Aberystwyth yn dangos y gwerthwyd yn lleol ‘surpluses…. of seakale, broccoli, leeks, carrots, cucumbers, asparagus, rhubarb, lettuce, gooseberries, peas, cauliflower, potatoes, strawberries, cherries, beans, cabbage, artichokes, raspberries, blackcurrants, melons, apples, pears, damsons and onions.’
Ac mae’r hyn sy’n wir am asbaragws yn wir am lwyth o lysiau eraill – berwr dŵr (ynys Môn a Bro Morgannwg), carw’r môr (sef samphire), bonau bresych (Pwll ger Llanelli – adnabuwyd pobl y pentre fel gwyr y bonau am eu hoffter ohonynt), moron gwynion (ynys Môn ond heb os ar draws y wlad – ffasiwn diweddarach ddaeth o’r Iseldiroedd oherwydd y teulu brenhinol yno oedd moron oren). A thomatos Cymreig! Erbyn yr 1890au roedd dwy dunnell yn cael eu tyfu yn wythnosol yn Llysonnen, dyffryn Teifi – a’u gwerthu a’u defnyddio’n lleol. Lle mwy amrywiol nag y bydd rhai yn tueddu meddwl oedd Cymru anghydffurfiol yr 18fed a’r 19eg ganrif – ac roedd hynny’n wir o ran arferion bwyta lawn cymaint ag unrhywbeth arall.
Ac mae hyn oll heb sôn am y ffrwythau… dwi wedi gwneud hynny eisoes yn Afalau Cymru
Cocos a wya
Yn ola enghraifft bach o ‘street food’ Cymreig ar ffurf rhigwm:
‘Cocos a wya, bara ceirch tena
Merched y penrhyn yn ysgwyd u tina’
Dyma ffrio cocos a wyau gyda’i gilydd, ac efallai tipyn o facwn hefyd. Ychwanegu pupur a halen yn ôl y galw. Yna bwyta’r cyfan rhwng tafelli o fara ceirch. Gwerthid ar y stryd/ yn y farchnad ar arfordir Eifionydd. Pwy honnai fod bwyd hanesyddol Cymru yn ddiflas?
[1] Eironi mawr hwn wrth gwrs yw nad oedd cig oen yn hanesyddol yn rhan bwysig o ddiet y Cymry, a hyd y gwela i does dim tystiolaeth chwaith iddo chwarae rol diwylliannol pwysig chwaith. Ond mater arall yw hwnnw y bydda i’n cyffwrdd ag e yn fy llyfr, Welsh Food Stories.
