St. Fagans National Museum of History, Cardiff (must see)

Saint Fagan's National Museum of History is named for the nearby village of Saint Fagan. It is an open air museum of ordinary people's lives, how they lived and where and when they lived. It holds more than fifty buildings that have been moved to the site on the grounds of a 16th century manor house called Saint Fagan's Castle.

The museum was founded in 1946 with a donation of the castle and its lands by the Earl of Plymouth. The idea of the museum belongs to Iorwerth Peate, a Welsh poet and scholar and to Cyril Fox, an English archeologist and museum director. The concept was modeled after Skansen, a Swedish outdoor museum of architecture in Stockholm.

The buildings have been brought to Saint Fagan's from different locations in Wales and from different periods in history. They were reassembled in 100 acres of parklands.

Among the many buildings open to the public are: a nonconformist chapel; a village schoolhouse; a cockpit; a pig sty; a tannery; a blacksmith shop; and a flour mill. There is the medieval parish church of Saint Teilo, a Tudor merchant's house, and a pub from Newtown, in Cardiff.

The workshops are operating and demonstrating traditional skills. The museum provides an insight into the heritage and culture of the Welsh people.