'European Travellers to Wales 1750-2010' is a three-year AHRC-funded project that began in 2013, and is a collaboration between Professor Carol Tully of Bangor University, Dr Kathryn Jones from Swansea University and Dr Heather Williams from the University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies (CAWCS). It is led by Bangor University. It has a full-time Research Officer, Dr Rita Singer, based at CAWCS in Aberystwyth, and two PhD students, Anna-Lou Dijsktra (Swansea) and Christina Les (Bangor).
The project has uncovered a vast number of travel accounts to Wales in this period, the majority of which are written in French or German. Many of the accounts that are listed in the database were ‘hidden’ in writing about tours in England. ‘European Travellers’ investigated an array of sources including travelogues, guidebooks, diaries, letters and blogs, in both manuscript and printed form. The researchers discovered a broad variety of reasons for European travellers to have come to Wales: from those seeking a romantic idyll, to industrial spies in the Victorian era and refugees from Nazi Germany. This helps us understand Wales better: stories of refugees and exiles have emerged, and a store of detailed descriptions of Welsh landscapes, buildings and ruins has emerged. These are completely new resources for studying Wales, and broaden travel writing to encompass more than English-language portrayals of Wales.
A new website, Journey to the Past: Wales in Historic Travel Writing from France and Germany, has been developed in a partnership between Bangor University, CAWCS and the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historic Monuments of Wales. Follow along nine themed trails and discover Wales, its culture and people in an entirely new way. Through the eyes of these historical travellers, experience the country like you have never done before. Explore an ivy-covered Tintern Abbey, marvel at the fiery night-sky of Merthyr Tydfil and fall in love with some very unusual Ladies in Llangollen.
