Wales hosts UNESCO Memory of the World awards

Tonight (Tuesday) at the Senedd in Cardiff, First Minister Carwyn Jones will host the UK Memory of the World awards which recognise documentary heritage collections of ‘outstanding significance to the UK’.

It’s the first time the prestigious awards have been held in Wales.

UNESCO established the Memory of the World (MoW) Programme in 1992. The programme vision is that the world's documentary heritage belongs to all, should be fully preserved and protected for all and permanently accessible to all without hindrance.

The UK Register recognises documentary heritage deemed by a panel of experts to be of outstanding significance to the UK.

Seven new inscriptions will join the 50 already listed on the UK register, one of several country-level programmes from around the world. Tonight’s reception will also celebrate two UK inscriptions to the international register, which identifies world-class documentary heritage.

The UK’s rich documentary heritage is filled with stories about people, places and events - they are the documented memory of humankind.  Much of it is publicly available in archives, libraries and museums.

Included in the awards for 2016 is a wide variety of remarkable historical documents from across the UK, dating from the ninth to the 19th century. Their content ranges from the medieval archives of Canterbury Cathedral to the laboratory notebooks of the scientist Michael Faraday, from the Exeter Book of poetry in Old English to the correspondence of the Newtown-born socialist pioneer Robert Owen.

From Wales, the UK Register recognises the Survey of the Manors of Crickhowell and Tretower, created by Robert Johnson in 1587 and now in the care of the National Library of Wales Aberystwyth.

Unlike most other estate surveys of this period, which were primarily textual descriptions, this survey also produced a set of maps. The creation of maps as an integral part of an estate survey did not become common practice for another two centuries and, as such, this survey is ground-breaking in its approach.

The full survey can be seen at www.llgc.org.uk/discover/digital-gallery/maps/estate-maps/badminton-estate/.