We’re all used to seeing pictures of the past in stark black and white but now for the first time there’s a chance to see how the past really looked. Our new series takes applies a colourisation process to some familiar scenes in towns in Wales and the borders and transforms them into glorious colour.

If you have a picture you’d like to see featured please email it to [email protected]

B
YEARS before AI would be casually used to destroy all sense of what is real and what is fabricated, people were still getting their kicks from messing with the perceptions of others. Take this innocent little photo from 1932. To all extents and purposes, it looks like a gang of nuns taking some time out from watching ‘The Sound of Music’ to have their picture taken for posterity. Wrong! It’s actually a group of participants dressed as nuns for that most unholy of events - the Monmouth Pageant. They’re something of a scary bunch, aren’t they? They look like the sort of types auditioning for the role of Damian Thorn’s nanny. You might ask yourself why the one on the far right is carrying what looks like a wand and the one on the far left seems to have no face. It’s quite disconcerting. (Monmouth Museum )
C
WAY back when in the Forest of Dean, speech was outlawed and people were forced to communicate solely through smoke signals. As a consequence, those sociable souls looking to have a natter were forced to make the journey to Ye Old Speech House. It was the one place in the Forest where free speech was allowed and within the walls of this fine building, the local chatterboxes could gossip and hold forth to their heart’s content. They were even allowed to give voice to that terrible thing the Labour Party has long since banned - an opinion! We are of course talking rubbish. The Speech House got its name because the former hunting lodge of King Charles II was eventually used as the Court of Speech by the Forest’s Free Miners who would use it to resolve their disputes without anyone in authority telling them how! (Wikipedia Commons )
D
IN the old days the people of Abergavenny believed that all it took to make the ‘little people’ of myth do their bidding was to play the harp like a boss, whilst a man in a suit read some poetry, and two other gents stood on an elevated rock and monitored proceedings. Since those distant days of yore, subsequent governments have decided to use less carrot and more stick. Now if they want to make the ‘little people’ do their bidding they just threaten them. But back then, and we’re talking 1913, things were a little more poetic and civilised, particularly at Abergavenny’s Eisteddfod where this picture was taken in the grounds of the town’s castle. (Abergavenny Museum )