One of the highlights of our recent few days in Wales was a visit to the St Fagans National Museum of History near Cardiff. This large park contains dozens of historic buildings stretching back hundreds of years. Each was found, often in jeopardy of demolition, somewhere else in Wales then taken apart, transported to the museum, and reconstructed. One of the most interesting to me was this 18th century tannery.
Rhaeadr Tannery was the last traditional tannery in Wales and specialized in producing heavy leather for boots and horse harnesses. The process, which took 18 months from raw hide to finished leather, involved soaking hides in increasingly concentrated solutions made from oak bark.
I could have happily spent three days in the museum photographing the buildings but, unfortunately we only had a day on this visit. We’ll have to go back!
For the technically inclined...