Llantwit Major In Camera

There are glossy coffee-table books packed with dramatic aerial photography, celebrity endorsements and expensive printing techniques. Then there is Llantwit Major in Camera, a far more dangerous proposition altogether: a book capable of persuading perfectly sensible people to spend an entire afternoon examining photographs of streets, shops, chapels and people who have been gone for decades.

Published in 1981 by the Llantwit Major Local History Society, this delightful volume captures the history of one of Wales’s most fascinating towns through the medium of photography. It is a visual time machine assembled by people who understood that today’s ordinary scene is tomorrow’s priceless historical record.

Within its pages, readers are invited to wander through vanished streetscapes, forgotten businesses and familiar landmarks caught at moments when nobody imagined they would one day become history. Every photograph quietly asks the same question: "Do you remember when this looked like that?" Even if the answer is no, the images remain endlessly absorbing.

Llantwit Major itself possesses a history stretching back well beyond most towns’ comfort zones. Long before modern housing estates, supermarkets and discussions about parking restrictions, it was an important centre of learning and religion. Yet what makes books like this so engaging is not merely the grand history. It is the everyday details. The shop signs. The fashions. The vehicles. The expressions on faces caught by a camera decades ago.

There is a wonderful irony to local history photography. Images that may once have seemed entirely unremarkable gradually become fascinating. Nobody rushes to photograph a row of ordinary houses because they expect future generations to be captivated by them. Yet fifty years later those same houses, buses and shopfronts become the stars of the show.

The editors have assembled more than a simple collection of pictures. Together, the photographs create a portrait of a community changing through time. Readers familiar with Llantwit Major will find themselves identifying locations and comparing them with the modern town. Readers unfamiliar with the area may discover themselves unexpectedly engrossed in the life of a place they have never visited.

As with the finest local history books, there is also an element of detective work involved. Every image contains clues to a vanished world. A discarded advertisement, an old motor car, a style of clothing or a familiar building before later alterations can all trigger memories or inspire further investigation.

This 1981 edition remains in good condition and comes from the shelves of Crappy Old Books. It has aged rather better than many of the hairstyles, vehicles and architectural fashions likely to be found within its pages, and remains a thoroughly enjoyable browse for anyone interested in Welsh history or local heritage.

An ideal acquisition for collectors of Welsh local history, residents of the Vale of Glamorgan, photography enthusiasts, genealogists, or anyone who understands that sometimes the most interesting stories are hidden not in great national events, but in the ordinary lives of ordinary places carefully preserved on film before they disappeared forever.1

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