National Library of Wales is missing almost 1,200 items

The National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth is home to items such as the White Book of Rhydderch, the earliest compendium of Welsh prose texts

About 1,200 items are missing at the National Library of Wales.

Writers whose books are missing include Dylan Thomas, Ernest Hemingway and Sylvia Plath, a BBC Wales Freedom of Information request has revealed.

Other items include an 1859 painting and documents from Gwrych Castle in Abergele, which twice hosted ITV's I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!

The library in Aberystwyth, Ceredigion, said it had procedures to reduce the risk of "misplacement" and theft.

Issues of Seren Gomer, the first newspaper to be published in Welsh, are missing, as are a number of tithe maps produced between 1838 and 1850.

Four maps have been missing since 1939, some letters since 1978, and some books and magazines since 1999.

"We cannot say with certainty that all of these items are on the library's estate," said a spokesman but "the reason is usually misplacement".

This oil on canvas painting is missing - John Parker of Sweeney Hall, by Charles Edward Hallé

Of the 1,196 missing items, the FoI request revealed:

• 665 books and magazines have been recorded as missing "between 1999 and 2023"

• 393 maps missing "between 1939 [four items] and 2023"

• 117 in the "archives and manuscripts" category missing "between 1978 [one item] and 2023"

• 21 "pictures and photographs" missing "between 2009 and 2023"

Among the books missing are Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas and poems by Cranogwen (Sarah Jane Rees), the first woman to win a poetry prize at the National Eisteddfod.

This year a statue of her became only the third sculpture in Wales of a real woman.

Cranogwen was one of Wales' most popular poets

Items missing from the archives and manuscripts section also include several items from the records of the Court of Great Sessions, which the library describes as the "important and unique collection relating to legal administration in Wales before 1830".

There are also missing deeds and documents from 1535-1920 relating to the estate of Gwrych Castle, home of the 2020 and 2021 series of I'm A Celebrity, but the library said it was not clear what was missing.

Separately, four maps of Bettisfield, near Wrexham, deposited by Cpt Sir Edward Hanmer in 1937-38 have been marked missing since 1939, when they were loaned to London solicitors.

The library said: "It is quite possible that the owner decided they should stay with the lawyers or that they even decide to keep them."

Pedr ap Llwyd has been chief executive and librarian since 2019, after being deputy chief executive and director of collections and public programmes

The Government of Wales Act 2006 is also missing - it changed the then-National Assembly for Wales into a full legislature and established the Welsh government.

Among the lost pictures and photographs is a painting of Rev John Parker of Sweeney Hall, by Charles Edward Hallé (1859).

"The majority of the items have been recorded as missing from their correct location on the shelf in recent months and years," said Manon Foster Evans, head of the library's published collections.

"The work of checking the stock and returning items to their correct location is ongoing and therefore this information is constantly changing."

Library head of marketing and audiences Rhodri ap Dyfrig said: "We cannot say with certainty that all of these items are on the library's estate, but our past experience shows that misplacement is the reason most of the time."

He added that the number of missing items was "a very small percentage of the library's collections".

Dylan Thomas died at the age of 39, a few weeks before the landmark recording of Under Milk Wood

The library carries out an annual audit of items worth more than £10,000 and no missing items that cross that threshold were found this year.

The Welsh government said the security of collections was a matter for the library, whose staff "work to professional standards including archive service accreditation".

The library's collections include seven million books and newspapers, 1.5 million maps and 950,000 photographs.

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