Wye Tour lives again
It's been hailed as the birth of British tourism and now the Heritage Lottery Fund has awarded £200,000 to Chepstow and Monmouth museums to buy artefacts of the Wye Tour.
The tour was made popular from the 18th century as the British equivalent of the Grand Tour.
The award comes under HLF's Collecting Cultures scheme, a one-off museums and galleries collections' development programme designed to help support acquisitions, curatorial skills, research and increased public involvement.
Chepstow and Monmouth museums already hold some important pieces - guidebooks, engravings and paintings relating to the Wye Tour. The award will allow them to continue to build the collection of original works such as the painting Chepstow by Thomas Rowlandson 1780, Anne Cooper's Journal 1786 and Harriet Bowdlers' 12 views of Monmouthshire 1789.
Visitors to the Wye Valley today are following in the footsteps of many an 18th century traveller, sketchbook in hand.
In 1745, it was John Egerton who was the Father of the Voyage down the Wye' when he started taking friends on boat trips down the valley from his rectory at Ross-on-Wye.
By 1770 the two-day trip from Ross to Chepstow had already become established when the Reverend William Gilpin visited.
His Observations on the River Wye relative chiefly to Picturesque Beauty' published some 13 years later became the bible for those who followed in his footsteps in search of the picturesque' - looking for the landscapes which would make the ideal composition for a picture.
By the end of the 18th century the Wye Valley was witnessing the birth of British tourism and some of the most famous artists, poets and writers of the day had visited Goodrich, Tintern, Piercefield and Chepstow - among them Pope, Coleridge, Gray, Wordsworth and Turner.
Most of the picturesque' scenes were sketched from river level incorporating the brooding forest and cliffs as well as the ruins along the route outlined in Gilpin's guide.
Some well known highlights of the tour include Tintern Abbey. Wordsworth described the steep and lofty cliffs' the waters rolling from their mountain springs with a sweet inland murmur' and the wild green landscape'.
Also the Windcliff, the cliff ascent at Piercefield, now the site of Chepstow racecourse. Coleridge wrote: "Oh what a godly scene. The whole world seemed imaged in its vast circumference."
Dan Clayton Jones, chairman of Heritage Lottery Fund's committee for Wales, said: "The majority of the £200,000 will be used to acquire art and journals associated with the Wye Tour to enhance the museums' collections.
"However, a comprehensive public programme is also planned, including guided walks and tours and printed trails, a young peoples' project Why Tour Today' and performance-based interpretation, with a tour of performances at local venues and village halls.
"Volunteers will also have the opportunity to undertake research on material relating to the tour, learn about the acquisition process, documentation work and become involved in both the organising of the programme of activities and the activities themselves."
Anne Rainsbury, curator, Chepstow Museum who put together the application on behalf of the two museums, said: "The Collecting Cultures Award will allow us to
build a strong, quality collection which will showcase the Wye Tour and its importance locally and within the Picturesque movement as a whole.
"This is a fantastic opportunity for us and we are obviously thrilled that our bid was chosen among stiff competition from across the UK.
"It gives us a secure foundation to seek out material, and we hope that over the next five years we will find some substantial works to acquire for our museum collections.
"I hope that the programme of activities planned will excite and inform people of all ages, and there are creative opportunities planned too - so that the tradition of the Wye Valley as a source of inspiration will continue into the future."
12:08pm Tuesday 1st July 2008
Print 
Email this 
Comment
What are these links for?
If you liked this article and would like to share it with others on the web who might be searching for good content we've made it easy for you to do it.
At the bottom of all articles, you'll see links to six sites. These sites - commonly called 'social bookmark' or 'social news' sites - have large communities of web users who share and rate interesting, useful and fun things on the web.
Clicking the links will automatically add the address of the story you are reading to one of these sites, letting you share it with others. Each site will ask you to register to share stories. Registration is free and once a member, you can store, recommend and search for stories that interest you.
More on Digg
More on del.icio.us
More on Furl
More on reddit
More on NowPublic/
More on Yahoo!
