National Screen and Sound Archive of Wales preserves and celebrates the sound and moving image heritage of Wales, making it accessible to a wide range of users for enjoyment and learning. Its film collection reflects every aspect of the nation’s social, cultural and working life across the 20th century, giving a fascinating insight into Welsh filmmaking, both amateur and professional.
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Haymaking - Trebettyn, Cowbridge
The Iles family, having moved out of Cardiff just before Christmas 1948, have good weather for their very first haymaking at ‘Trebettyn’.
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Overview
A golden summer: the sun is shining, the Iles family are cutting hay for the first time on the farm they moved to just before Christmas 1948, and a boy wearing a schoolcap is having the time of his life driving the tractor that is pulling wagonloads of hay to the barn. Mrs Iles calls the tired, thirsty workers in to the farmhouse for tea and over the fields they troop, milk being fetched fresh from the cows. Stooks in a field show that the sun has also allowed for the harvesting of corn.
Reginald George Iles, filming this first, idyllic-looking haymaking, worked in Imperial Tobacco’s Bonus department, in Cardiff. He was a founder member of The South Wales and Monmouthshire Agricultural and Horse Shows Association (for which he would record the various local shows and give screenings in the winter) and moved with his family from city to country in order to taste the good life and to enable his daughters, Monica (seen here dressed in red) and Gillian (seen on ponyback), to develop their interest in horses. The family remained at Trebettyn until Monica’s marriage to a farmer in 1954, after which they gave up their own farm and moved to a house in Cowbridge.
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