page_title: Cambrian Archaeological Association
section_title: Early years 1847–1855
hierarchical_section_title: Cambrian Archaeological Association / History / Early years 1847–1855
caption_attribution_description: English: Kidwelly Castle plan This is a photo of listed building number 11876.
context_page_description: The Cambrian Archaeological Association was founded in 1846 to examine, preserve and illustrate the ancient monuments and remains of the history, language, manners, customs, arts and industries of Wales and the Welsh Marches and to educate the public in such matters. The association's activities include sponsoring lectures, field visits, and study tours; as well as publishing its journal, Archaeologia Cambrensis, and monographs. It also provides grants to support research and publications.
context_section_description: The first annual meeting of the Cambrian Archaeological Society was held at Aberystwyth between 7 and 10 September 1847, and the first president was Sir Stephen Richard Glynne. By the time of the second annual meeting at Caernarvon it was claimed that the membership had grown to 350. Initially the association was well supported by members of the Welsh Manuscripts Society. In 1849 Harry Longueville Jones resigned as joint general secretary on his appointment to the Civil Service position in the Privy Council office as Inspector for National Schools in Wales. This appointment was a result of the uproar that had been created by the publication of the 1847 Welsh Blue Book on Education. Jones remained a very active member of the association and resumed as editor of Archaeologia Cambrensis in 1855. He was succeeded as joint general secretary by the Rev Basil Jones, later to become Bishop of St David's.
  
  Many scholars and academics were involved in the work of the association at this time. These included G. T. Clark, the manager of Dowlais Ironworks for Lady Charlotte Guest, who was to become a leading authority on British Castles. Clark's first article to be published in Archaeologia Cambrensis in 1853 was on Kidwelly Castle. It was accompanied by plans and drawings by a Mrs Trehearne engraved by John Henry le Keux.
   Another figure was the youthful Edward Augustus Freeman, later celebrated as a medieval historian, and, from 1884, Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford. Freeman submitted a series of articles on church architecture in Wales and on the domestic architecture of Pembrokeshire. Also in this group was John Obadiah Westwood, a notable Oxford entomologist, whose studies of inscribed and sculptured stones of the post Roman period was to provide a systematic approach to the subject. The Cambrian Archaeological Association was to sponsor the publication of Westwood's Lapidarium Walliæ: the early Inscribed and Sculptured Stones of Wales in 1876–1879. A final key figure was Rev Cardale Babington, who came from Ludlow in Shropshire. Professor of Botany at Cambridge, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1851. Babington was also interested in archaeology, and joined the General Committee of the association in 1855: he was to chair the committee until 1882.
  In the 1850s a schism developed among the membership of the Cambrians. John Williams, who had been to Jesus College, Oxford, and whose sympathies lay with the Tractarians (or Oxford Movement), belonged to an older school of celticism, which wished to promote the authenticity of the writings of Iolo Morganwg. Williams did not fit in with the members of the association, whose primary interests were in Welsh architecture and archaeology. The association was also in a poor state financially as there had been a failure to collect subscriptions. Williams resigned as general secretary and Editor late in 1853 and he was followed by other joint secretary the Rev Basil Jones who resigned at the Summer Meeting at Ruthin. The published list of members now shows that membership had shrunk to 163. Williams, following his resignation created an alternative society, the Cambrian Institute, publishers of the Cambrian Journal, which Williams edited until his death in 1863, when the Institute faded away.
caption: Kidwelly Castle plan used to illustrate G T Clark's article
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