Gower Cockle Gatherers

Описание: Delighted to share this special film, ‘Gower Cockle Gatherers ’ on Saint David’s Day, filmed by Andy Davies, made in collaboration with Liz Williams, with a special introduction by Gareth Thomas, BRIDGES, UWTSD.

Meeting Liz for the first time felt less like an introduction to an individual and more like encountering a living part of the coastline itself. She carries its histories, its work and its changing fortunes in a direct and unembellished way. My route to her door came through my doctoral ethnographic research on the lives of traditional fishers in South Wales. As a side project, as often happens in anthropology, I had become interested in seaweed production in my home town of Swansea. A couple of family run businesses still keep this old industry alive in Crofty, and I was keen to meet the people behind them. More than once I had been told, if you want to understand laverbread properly, you need to speak to Liz Williams.

Over the course of several months we sat in her front room while she talked me through the making and history of laverbread in South Wales. What began as interviews gradually became a collaboration. We went on to write an article together for a local history journal and later delivered a series of public talks. I would outline the wider historical and academic context and Liz would bring the story up to the present, explaining how her son, Spencer Williams, continues to run Gower Coast Seafood and produce laverbread in Crofty today. It is always Liz’s part of the talk that draws the most questions. She commands the room with loud authority, speaking from lived experience and never from notes. She has an instinct for detail and a sharp sense of humour, and there is nearly always a funny story woven into the history.

Before Liz’s family moved into laverbread production, they were cocklers, and it was this dual connection to shellfish and seaweed that made me think she would find our research visit to Câr-Y-Môr particularly interesting. As part of our international project, Coastal Tales: Telling Adaptations, Living Environmental Stories for Coastal Resilience, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Belmont Forum, we were hosting partners and showcasing the work taking place in Pembrokeshire around regenerative aquaculture and community based food systems. I invited Liz to join us.
She thoroughly enjoyed the visit. At the end of the day we gathered at St Non's Chapel and Well, traditionally recognised as the birthplace of Saint David, to reflect on what we had seen and learned. As the conversation turned to working lives on the coast, Liz began speaking about her family’s experiences on the sands, picking cockles in all weathers. We were fortunate that Andy Davies was with us and able to film her as she spoke.

The question afterwards was what to do with this short piece of footage. It was Andy’s idea to pair Liz’s narration with the photographs she was describing. That required tracking the images down, securing permissions and carefully matching them to her words. Liz guided us through the process, identifying people, places and details that we might otherwise have missed. The final edit was shaped with her involvement, ensuring that the film remained true to her account and to the working lives it represents.
In six minutes, the film captures more than memory. It captures the texture of lived experience. For Coastal Tales, which explores how heritage knowledge informs sustainable futures, Liz’s voice reminds us that adaptation begins with listening.

On St David’s Day, our Welsh Dewi Sant, we celebrate national identity through symbols and ceremony, but it is voices like Liz’s that give that identity substance. By recording her reflections at St Non’s Chapel, we were marking the continuity of coastal knowledge, carried not in monuments, but in the voices of strong Welsh women.