Neath Port Talbot YAC
NPT (Neath Port Talbot) YAC is open to everyone aged 8–16 years. YAC clubs get involved in all sorts of activities, including handling artefacts, visiting and investigating archaeological sites and historic places, trying out traditional crafts, taking part in excavations, and lots more.
NPT YAC is based at Neath Library in Neath and usually meets once a month on a Saturday afternoon from 1-3pm. It is an affiliated club of the YAC network and is run by staff and volunteers at Neath Library, which is managed by the local authority, Neath Port Talbot County Borough Council. The club runs on a set membership with a waiting list. Membership and sessions are free.
If you’d like to get involved with NPT YAC or find out more about how the club is run, get in touch with the team using the details below.
Contact: Harriet Eaton
Tel: 01639 644604
Email: heritage@npt.gov.uk
Our first year
From visits to Neolithic burial chambers, flint knapping, history detective walks and hands on excavations with the Glamorgan Gwent Archaeological Trust as part of the heritage project at Craig Gwladus Country Park. We’ve certainly got stuck in!
On our first session we were joined by an archaeologist from the Museum of London Archaeology. We embarked on sand pit excavations to understand the process and skills needed when excavating a site.
In March we visited Parc le Breos burial chamber and Cat Hole Cave on Gower with Dr Edith Evans from Glamorgan Gwent Archaeological Trust and in April an experimental archaeologist visited the library to show us how to make our own flint tools.
In May we made the first visit to Craig Gwladus Country Park with archaeologist Paul Huckfield who taught us how to draw and measure a site, then in June we travelled back to the Stone Age and created our own works of art and in July we had a Roman cooking and crafts session.
Thanks to funding from the Welsh Government’s Summer of Fun grant we were able to take a trip to the Round House at the Gower Heritage Centre where we made our own antler rings and learned how Iron Age people cast metal and made their own tools and at our next session we learned about stratigraphy and layers of time creating our own stratigraphy jars.
In October we got our trowels out and had hands on experience excavating a winding engine house, once part of a colliery. In November we took a history detective walk around our home town including special permission to enter Neath Castle’s grounds, looking for clues that would reveal Neath’s past. In December our very own archaeologist Chris taught us how to identify, record, measure and draw artefacts…we even got to look at a real Bronze Age axe head!
