Have you ever wanted to live in a 200-year-old gothic castle with dozens of acres of gardens and woodland to roam around?
The National Trust is offering a rare opportunity to live and work in one set on the edge of Eryri National Park in north Wales.
Employees residing at the neo-Norman Penrhyn Castle will be asked to help maintain its building and woodland grounds as well as at Plas Newydd House and Garden across the Menai Strait on Ynys Môn, also known as Anglesey.
Hey, it’s like The Shining!
The new staff member will also have to deal with the “unexpected challenges” that come with historic buildings.
“Historic buildings have a habit of presenting strange and unusual issues overnight, so being able to think on your feet and find creative solutions is a big part of the role,” it said.
…concerningly so…
This is quite bizarre, they refer to this person as a “tenant”, but the position is a live in caretaker, both performing and coordinating building maintenance.
Referring to an employee as a tenant is quite bizarre.
Shite wage.
Even with the free room it’s still crap.
Its the kind of thing that sounds idylic but the reality would be anything but.
Lived in cold old houses most of my life and a castle sounds similar but with bigger gas bills.
Point in favor of the heat caused by global warming?
/s
You could pick it up and move it to the sahara and I bet it would still be freezing in winter
Yeah I’d hate living in a place like that. I would never be able to find my car keys, or my cat.
I find it uncomfortable and wrong to say that Ynys Mon is “also known as” Anglesey. It’s not an Alias; it’s the name of the island in English, which is also the main language of the article. I wouldn’t expect an article written in Welsh to use the name Chester sand explain that it’s also known as Caer, it would just say “Caer”.
Strange times.
I’d love to live in a castle but I’m not sure I’d love to maintain one
That’s pretty colonial.
Place names are a lot more than just translations.
Is it colonial to call Germany Germany?
No, because Germany doesn’t have a problem of facing erasure. Or being colonized. The difference is specifically colonialism and erasing local culture.
Rather compare it to the word Eskimo and how these last few years it has been considered disputed and is getting phased out in favor of the local languages.
Also the part where the country has a right to be recognized under the name they want, see: Turkiye. “Why don’t you accept Shitland, that’s just the name we give you in our language” is not a good argument.
Yeah I’m still going to call Turkey Turkey. And I’m not going to demand the Turks stop calling the UK Birleşik Krallık either - that’s insane. To me, that is exactly a colonial attitude: “you must call us what we want to be called, because your language isn’t important to us.” It’s as coherent as demanding any other word in a foreign language be changed; you don’t have the right to it just because it’s about you. From your Turkey example it sounds like you think we ought to call Deutschland Deutschland if ever a German asks us to.
Wales is not being colonised, and Welsh is not being erased, but if it were, I would say that the remedy is to decolonise, grant Welsh official status, support it in the curriculum, and in general the exact kind of measures that are being taken. Not try to make a little linguistic exclave in the English language.
There will also be a lot of Welsh speakers who would be uncomfortable with the English name being used considering the history of the Welsh language. Ynys Môn is also the official name of the parliamentary constituency so it is pretty commonly used in an English context.
Another argument is that there is conscious effort to increase usage of the Welsh language and place names are a good place to start understanding the alphabet and pronunciation.
When it comes to matters of the Welsh language, I’ll defer to what Welsh speakers are comfortable or uncomfortable with. But I don’t think they have a say when it comes to English, except that many Welsh speakers are also English speakers.
Similarly, increasing use of Welsh is a good aim, but you don’t do that by sticking Welsh words and names in the middle of English sentences, just as calling Germany “Deutschland” doesn’t promote the use of German.
Sorry to be argumentative, but I think this is a bit of an ignorant take. For hundreds of years the English have been “having a say” in the affairs of the Welsh language, both actively and passively. What’s to say that the language shouldn’t be taken back and encouraged, however small of a step?
I am not all that well versed with the history compared to some (some things in the past were far more brutal), but from my own personal experience the Welsh language has been wiped from my family within two generations. From being a first language to the current generation knowing almost nothing. This is down to Welsh being portrayed as a peasants language and from this my grandmother refused to pass any of it down, or even speak to her neighbours in it despite them talking to her in Cymraeg.
Comparing Welsh to German I feel is also a poor comparison. Welsh is a native language and has been spoken here longer than English has. This very article is in the ‘Wales’ section too so aimed at Welsh people. Despite the majority of Wales speaking English today, most people will still understand some words and appreciate it being used.
To me this feels like "to correct the wrongs if the past we have to commit more wrongs today"which I always disagree with.
Welsh speaking is on the up, which is a good thing, but it’s doing so by giving it the status and support any official language would have.
