Gower heritage centre

Gower Heritage Centre- Cider Making for Our 60th Anniversary Weekend in 2026

It’s always a complete delight to dance at the Gower Heritage Centre, however this year we have been in such demand that nearly every request made we’ve had to turn down, already having something else in the diary.  But on Saturday we made a Very Special Exception and piled down to The Mill for a spot of dancing – and cider making!

Sweyn’s Ey is unbelievably excited to be celebrating their 60th birthday next year – yes that’s right, the side has been going for sixty whole years (who’d have thunk it)  – and the fantastic Mr Richie Saunders has agreed to make a special cider on our behalf, to drink on the Big Day.

This last week saw various members of the side swinging by the Heritage Centre at different times to drop off their contribution of apples for the cause, which were washed on Friday and pre-chopped ready for the pressing on Saturday.  Each of us that wanted to then donned a heavy-duty apron and scary-looking gloves, and had a go at filling a ‘cheese’ with pulp.  Lowen, my son, got to press the magic button that started the squeezing of the press, whilst we all stood by and watched the lovely fresh juice pouring out.  Some of us glugged a bit of it immediately, whilst others grabbed a pint (or three..) of last year’s vintage from the Heritage Centre shop.

At some point we even got to do some dancing!  With the brook coming up higher and higher at a rate of knots in response to the heavy rain that fell all morning, we danced under cover in the main courtyard with an engaged and fun bunch of visitors and locals.  We even got a few people up for our standard ‘volunteer’ dance (Brighton Camp, Adderbury), and there were fun tunes played by some of our musos in the break.  I’ll leave it to someone else to list the rest of the dances we did, as the time flew by and I cannot remember a thing!

Massive thanks to Richie and all at the Gower Heritage Centre for hosting us, making us cider and generally just being fabulous cheerleaders for Sweyn’s Ey.  We really appreciate all support keeping this traditional practice alive, and we were particularly grateful to Sylvie who kept bringing out batch after batch of homemade Welsh cakes throughout.  They certainly gave us energy to keep on jumpin’.  Yum.

Look out for our Birthday Bash weekend in early June next year, as we’ll be dancing across Gower over a whole weekend, alongside several other sides.  And come see us sometime before then – possibly our next public outing will be back at the Heritage Centre in January, blessing some of the very trees that contributed to our cider!
Post by Di Clark Pics by Erin & Claire.