Ty Unnos: the house in one night.

One of my great grandparents was born in a Ty Unnos (literally - 'house one-night') - a house built in one night. You had to start at sunset, you had to gather everyone you knew around to help you. The walls would have to be of wood or turf, and the roof maybe of metal or more turf - everything prepared in advance and hidden around the place half-formed. The chimney would be the difficult part - it would have to be substantial enough to withstand the heat. That was the important thing - there had to be smoke coming through the chimney before sunrise.

I imagine the planning, the hints and rumours passed over the pews in chapel and the bar of the local inn. I imagined the time and place settled with a nod or a word in Welsh. It was important that the English landowners didn't find out. This house would be built on common land, and once that smoke was coming through the chimney, once the occupant had stood by each corner and thrown a mallet, then that would be the builder's land, and his children's land, and their children's..and so, I suppose, part of it should be mine.

It isn't of course. I've heard since that a lot of this was wishful thinking, not legal at all, and anyway, in the mid-nineteenth century when there were land clearances, the English landowners somehow took the common land back. * They evicted the people living in the Ty Unnos, as well as those in more conventionally acquired cottages, and enclosed their land to establish their own great farms. This, of course, happened everywhere, but it hurt more in some places than others.

The reason I'm thinking of all this tonight is that because today I read about a modern-day Ty Unnos being exported to the Smithsonian Folk Festival in Washington DC this July, and it reminded me of this story I heard from one of my grandmothers. It is a story I have incorporated into my Patagonia novel at a pivotal point. This house, this Ty Unnos, it turned out, explained everything...

* Added later. After doing a little more research I found out that many of the Ty Unnos were built as a result of earlier land clearances in the late eighteenth/ early nineteenth centuries. The people were evicted from their cottages then, and so forced to build on pieces of scrub that was infertile and no one else wanted - the common land.

But the clearances went on into the nineteenth century, and so did the building of the Ty Unnos, and some of these were cleared away too, as the landowners extended what was theirs.

Sky merging.

I've decided to update my website (prompted into this by a phone call from Dipika at Pedalo - my web-designers) and thought I'd put something about the research for my Patagonia book on it.

About five happy hours later I found the photo I was looking for - and also this one. It was taken outside the hostel I stayed in the Andes, at a place called Esquel. If you look closely you can see the tops of the mountains - they are are so high they seem to merge with the sky.


The editing has stalled for a few days, and I fear I won't get much done today since I am going out tonight (which necessitates much primping and preening because, as a hermit, I have obviously got out of practise).

Liverpool in 2008: commemorating an amazing adventure.

A bright hard sunlight lit the Liver building in Liverpool on Saturday. It was weirdly hot, people had pulled out their summer clothes to give them one last airing, and the Albert Docks were thronging with people.


I went to the quayside and looked at the Mersey and tried to imagine how it must have been in 1865 - dirtier, probably - in one version of my book (there have been so many) there was this describing the short trip out onto the Mersey for a group of Welsh colonists bound for Patagonia on a ship called the Mimosa...

Silas listens to the oars plopping into the water again and again - each stroke is taking them away from everything he knows. Soon they will have gone too far to come back: he remembers his mother clutching at him, making him promise that he will write, his sister kissing him hard on the cheek. Already it seems a different world, and yet they are just across the river, one stretch of land and then another, not very far.

‘Look, Dadda!’ All at once the ship is looming large and close beside them. wood scrapes against wood, and the ship is like a wall, the only escape up a ladder, one after the other, passing children, bags over onto the deck, until they are all aboard and the deck sways beneath their feet and the boat moves away back to shore. They look at each other and smile. The air is clearer here, cooler and fresher.

‘It’s starting,’ Jacob says, hugging himself, ‘our great adventure.'

I think that particular passage has been edited out of my novel now. Ah, I have written so many words, and have got rid of so many too, and now I am beginning to edit again. The final one, I hope.

I had come to Liverpool to visit the Merseyside Maritime Museum. More people migrated from Liverpool than from any other port in the world. From here they went to Australia, New Zealand, Canada and of course the United States. There is a marvellous permanent exhibition on this, including a place that (I think) rocks like the deck of the ship. When I was researching my novel I came here a few times. I imagined myself being in the hold of the Mimosa, recently converted for its passengers from its usual cargo of tea.



The event I had come to see was on the top floor. Here I found a room crowded with people speaking Welsh - members of the Liverpool Welsh Society. At least some of these people are the descendants of the people that were responsible for organising the migration of the Patagonian colonists and raising money and interest. There were several speakers: the head curator of the Museum, Dr Alan Scarth; the writer Susan Wilkinson; the model-maker, Tony Fancy;


the archivist, Bruno Derrick, and another writer, Elvey McDonald.

Elvey has written this book on the emigration, 'Yr Hirdaith' which I had hoped my father would translate for me, because it is in Welsh (but sadly he has never felt well enough to get round to it). I am assured it is excellent, which makes it even more aggravating that I have never been able to read it.



Then, at last, came the moment we had been waiting for: the unveiling of this accurate model of the Mimosa by Mrs Elan Jones (pictured here together with the chairman of the Merseyside Welsh Heritage Society, Dr D Ben Rees, and Tony Fancy).


Elvey McDonald, like Elan Jones, was born in Patagonia and now lives on the West coast of Wales. I like this picture of two of his grandchildren looking at the model.


And, talking of books, here is Susan Wilkinson, who is related to the Irish doctor who accompanied the colonists to Patagonia. There is an interview with Susan and a short review of the book here.


The day finished well: Susan and I went to a cafe and had a very long chat about Patagonia, research and writing, which I enjoyed very much indeed.