St Helen’s ArchivePreserving the past for the future
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About the St Helen’s Archive
The St Helen’s Archive represents the sporting heritage of the Swansea Cricket and (rugby) Football Club and that of its famous ground of St Helen’s. Due to the achievements of the first class cricket and rugby football played at St Helen’s since its opening in 1875, the collection is of national and international importance.
The St Helen’s ground’s connection to famous sporting events goes back to 1882 when Wales played an international rugby match on home soil for the very first time. A legion of memorable Club and national rugby and County cricket achievements followed. Each milestone event has left historic ‘fingerprints’ at St Helen’s in the form of irreplaceable memorabilia. Many other sports have also been recorded at the ground, from cycling, hockey, tennis and athletics to boxing and even American football.
What we do
The remit of the Swansea RFC Memorabilia Community Interest Company (CIC) since its formation in 2013, has been to protect, preserve and bring this incomparable collection to the wider community. We aim to help visitors to the collection to understand the artefacts and their sporting and social significance. We also endeavour to help visitors to interact with the collection and add their own experiences and connections personal or familial to the collection, to further adhere the wonderful artefacts to the community that brought them into being.
This website
The St Helen’s Archive comprises many thousands of items from jerseys, caps, trophies and medals to illustrations, film and aural recordings, correspondence, maps and more. Whilst displays at St Helen’s, both permanent and seasonal make the collection available to the community, the limits of physical space mean that only a certain portion can ever be viewed at one time. This website’s objective is to bring the wider collection and the wider community together in a way that will enable the online visitor to link different aspects of the collection together and follow the extended stories they tell. Making the collection universally available allows it to become a powerful and versatile educational tool and enables closer interaction for students, sports enthusiasts and people for whom the players and artefacts relate to their own family history. It is a collection for everyone, available to everyone, the product of and reflection of the community that brought it into being.