Stories In Stone

I can only show you some memorials – Welsh Country expenses wouldn’t stretch far enough to send me to where she rests, even if we could be sure where it was. There isn’t a grave, but then there isn’t a […]

We went to Llanrwst to see a coffin. Not an ordinary coffin, but one the greatest treasure of Wales, the sarcophagus of Llywelyn Fawr or Llywelyn the Great, Prince of Gwynedd and, for a short time in the twelfth century, […]

There is no memorial to Peter Ham. No stone, no statue, no plaque. His ashes were scattered to the winds at Morriston Crematorium in Swansea in 1975. And if there was such a memorial, what would it say? Peter Ham […]

Thomas Johnes had a mad idea, that you could tame and order a landscape as wild and extensive as the Ystwyth Valley. Like others he believed that human intervention could improve what nature had created. But the Hafod Estate, no […]

Outside the castle in the heart of the lovely town of Kidwelly, you will find a fine Celtic memorial, unveiled by Gwynfor Evans in 1991. It stands there defiantly, as if confronting the bulk of the Norman castle before it. […]

Geoff Brookes travels to the battlefields of Ypres to find William Jones We went to the battlefields of the Ypres Salient to find William Jones, one man amongst thousands. You can go there and be overwhelmed by the number of […]

When we arrived in Llandudno we initially ignored the thrills of the excellent tramway; we did that in the afternoon. In the morning we went up the Great Orme by car because we were looking for a grave. It is […]

Geoff Brookes tells the tale of Thomas Rees, a gardener from Mynachlog-Ddu. There are those who believe that near Mynachlog-Ddu in the Preseli Hills, you will find the source of the bluestones used in the construction of Stonehenge. Quite a […]

It is such a distinctive church, and can be seen for miles, standing tall and pale on the coastal plain. It has an elegant limestone steeple, in keeping with its beautiful interior. St Margaret’s Church in Bodelwyddan, ‘The Marble Church’, […]

He is remembered in the name of a street, a pub and a school in Cardiff. His achievements are recorded on a clock face in Cardiff Bay but his grave lies forgotten and neglected in Cardiff’s Cathays Cemetery. His gravestone […]

You know about Robert Recorde’s invention. Of course you do. Everyone does. You have used it, perhaps even on a daily basis. It is just that no one has told you it was him, but it was. This story begins […]

In the tangled woods behind the Vyrnwy Hotel, at the top of a steep and sometimes muddy slope, there is a neglected memorial. It is a stone obelisk on a double plinth and engraved on three sides are the forty-four […]