Time was every community in Wales had its own "fleapit" cinema, showing two features a week - and a special show on Sundays. They were the social centres of the town, people dressing in their best clothes and queuing round the block to get a seat.
Cinemas had their origins in the travelling picture shows, the Bioscopes, which were part of the fairs that visited towns across the country in the late nineteenth century. People like Harry Scard, Mitchell and Kenyon and, in particular, William Haggar not only showed films, they also made them.
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Virtually every town in the country has one - and many villages, too. There are nearly 40,000 of them across Britain. And yet, most of us pass them by without a second glance apart, maybe, from the weeks leading up to 11 November every year. We are talking, of course, about war memorials.
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Tredegar House in Newport was, for years, the family seat of the Lords Tredegar, one of the richest families in Wales. In December 1924 the disappearance of Gwyneth, daughter of Courtanay Morgan, then holder of the Tredegar title, caused a furore in the country.
Gwyneth, always something of a wild child, had been staying at a house in Wimbledon, possibly drying out after drug or alcohol abuse. She just walked out one foggy morning, with £70 in her pocket, and five months later her lifeless body, weighted down with stones, was discovered in the Thames at Limehouse.
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