Dr Iorwerth Peate
His great achievement was to create a National Folk Museum at St. Fagans.
- Born:
-
1901
- Place of Birth:
- Pandy Rhiwsaeson in the plwyf of Llanbrynmair
It was Peate who dreamt of an open-air museum in Wales on the Scandinavian model where the visitor could view the way of life past ages. (Anglo-Welsh Review)
Dr Iorwerth Peate
- Biography:
-
Iorwerth Peate was a scholar and a poet and was the first director of the Museum of Welsh Life which stands on the grounds of the St Fagans castle, a late 16th centry manor house, on the outskirts of Cardiff.
The 100-acre parkland opened on the 7th of July 1948, and since then it has established itself as one of Europe's main open air museums. Iorwerth Peate received his education at Aberystwyth University and was a pupil of T Gwynn Jones. In 1927 he was appointed to the National Museum of Wales Archaeology Department, but five years later he was promoted to Head of the Sub-Division of Folk Culture. This is when he started to verify his dream of having in Wales a Folk Museum on the pattern of Folk and Culture Museums in the countries of Llychlyn. When the National Folk Museum finally opened at the end of the second world war, Iorwerth Peate was its first director, a post he held until his retirement in 1971. He was also a conservative poet but did not practise the Welsh metrical alliteration although he was regarded as a refined lyrical poet. He wrote extensively about the Welsh material culture, and his work can be divided into three categories, mainly his scholar work, his prose and his poems.
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