ABEREIDDY, or What Did the Industrial Revolution Ever Do for Us?

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A sort of Folk Musical by Broadoak and The Fishguard Folk Singers

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Abereiddy is on the coast about twelve miles west of Fishguard. At the start of the 19th century it was exactly what it was at the start of the 20th century: a tiny rural hamlet housing a few farm workers. However, during those hundred years its population grew enormously, it rose to be a major industrial site with a huge quarry, and then just as quickly it went back to what it had been before. The quarry is now a tourist attraction called ‘The Blue Lagoon’.

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The story of Abereiddy asks important questions: if you change a rural way of life for a new, 'improved' industrial one, is that change sustainable? For Abereiddy, it wasn't. Who benefited? Not the villagers. Let's hope that the changes we are so ruthlessly making to all our lives in the twenty-first century will prove to be more beneficial to all of us. What have we learned?

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Our show looks at what happened during Abereiddy's century of change. Two narrators tell the story, helped (or hindered) by the ghosts of the real people of nineteenth century Abereiddy. Fourteen new original songs in a wide variety of styles explore the emotional heart of the story: sometimes bawdy, sometimes poignant, they expand and comment on the narrative.