Tan countryside and its preservation do not much concern that
most beneficent body, the Pilgrim Trust (though last year it gave £1,000 to the C.P.R.E.). It is concerned more with bricks and stones than trees and rivers ; but every countryman will rejoice in its recent encouragement of the folk museum. The luvely gift of St. Fagans Castle, made by Lord Plymouth, is to put into effect the scheme of a Welsh National Folk Museum. " Here will be erected in their original form and in a natural setting, farm-houses, cottages and other ancient buildings illustrative of the life of the people," and more special emphasis will be laid on " the arts, crafts and husbandry of Welsh life." Something • similar, but less persuasively encircled, is being done, also under the encouragement of the Trust, at Cambridge, where the museum is to be transferred to the Old Abbey House, built on the ruins of Barnwell Priory. Lord Plymouth's beautiful Tudor house and gardens in the Cardiff neighbourhood should become a place of pilgrimage. The scene is glorious, and historically " here is a great house' maintained as such up to the moment of gift." May England, littered with " great houses " suffering or about to suffer indignities, follow with promptitude the example of the Welsh National Museum!
Previous page
