Bridal gowns at Eglwysfach

by The Curious Scribbler,

I called in at St Michael’s Eglwysfach this afternoon to view their latest exhibition – of historic and recent Bridal and Baptismal Gowns.  The exhibits are provided by people who are local to the area, some who were born in the parish, others who migrated from elsewhere bringing their memorabilia with them.   First impressions are of an airy whitewashed church interior with simple dark brown box pews.  Each pew gives access to a wooden mannequin clothed in wedding gown, and a short description of the gown, its wearer and its day of glory.   Curated by Lynda Thomas, the exhibition casts fascinating light on not just the fluctuations of fashion but on the social history of the last century or so.  Accompanying material include wedding photographs and the wearer’s memories.  It is much more personal than just an exhibition of gowns.

 

St Michael’s Eglwsfach adorned with wedding gowns

 

 

The oldest gown on display went up the aisle in 1928 fashionably exposing  Sue Billingsley’s grandmother’s ankles.  Muriel Mary Richards made the dress herself in fine silk velvet with appliqued velvet flowers and embroidery and beads.  She must have been a talented seamstress.  Possibly age has discoloured it.  In the accompanying photograph is looks to be white.

The oldest gown worn in 1928 in West Bridgford, Nottingham

Next in antiquity was a heavy figured satin gown with long fitted sleeves and a broad divided collar.  Alison Swanson’s auntie wore it to her wedding at St Matthew’s Church, Borth in 1957.   A prestigious dress from Roecliff and Chapman of Grosvenor Street, London, couturiers to Princess Grace Kelly.   Eleven years later Alison wore it to her own wedding at the same church.  Flanking this mighty dress are those of her two daughters-in-law who were married this century.  The contemporary take on the formal white dress involves bare arms and shoulders which would have surprised the great aunt.  The other bride wore a pretty informal floral gown.

Alison Swanson married in 1968 wearing her auntie’s vintage 1957 gown. Her two daughters in laws’ dresses on either side.

Had Alison been buying anew, she might instead have considered a statuesque flowing  dress like the one worn by Mary Andrews when she married Keith Fletcher at St Bride’s Church, Cwmdauddwr Rhayader.  From Marshall and Snelgrove’s grand London store, it was of floaty rayon georgette fabric suspended from a  bodice and sleeves of Guipure lace with pearl droplets.  The groom must have had to take care not to tread on her train.

1967 gown with a long train from up-market department store Marshall and Snelgrove

Another mother and daughter trio was provided by Celia Boorman whose wedding to Russell Davies took place in 1972 at St Petroc’s Church, South Brent, in Devon.  Graduate students at Oxford at the time, they were on their way to buy tyres for his Mini when she spotted this flamboyant dress in a shop window in Cowley.

Celia Boorman married in 1972 in this flamboyant dress, her daughters’ dresses are on either side .

Her daughter Imogen married at Gregynog Hall in 2014 wearing another white bare shouldered  dress, while in 2018 daughter Tamsin had two wedding outfits, one for her wedding at St Michael’s Eglwysfach and the other for her Hindu wedding in Bradford. The sari is displayed like a tent behind the mannequin.

Sheila Cuthbert wore a pale blue Laura Ashley ‘Prairie’ dress when she married Mervyn Lloyd in Wombourne Registry Office in 1979.  Sleeves were long and necks were high in the 1970s.  It put me in mind of a similar dress I wore to my wedding in 1973.  My mother-in-law forbade a white wedding because she knew we had already shared a tent!  These were dresses which could come out on other occasions: Sheila wore hers at a Millenium party.

A blue Laura Ashley gown for Sheila Cuthbert and Mervyn Lloyd’s registry office wedding in 1979

Lynda Warren was married twice in the 1980s, both times wearing a hat.  Her second wedding, to Barry Thomas, was in a Registry Office and a chic Mothercare maternity gown.  It was touch and go whether the nuptuals would precede the baby.

Two 1980s gowns worn by Lynda Warren

The collection of baptismal gowns is less varied that the bridal ones, and also older, with several Victorian or Edwardian gowns which have attended numerous  family christenings.  The main fashion trend seems to have been that they have got a little shorter over the decades.  They are displayed in the enclosure around the font alongside  glowering images of RS Thomas.

Baptism Gowns displayed  around the font

Many families have carefully preserved their baptismal gowns, but Joy Neal must be congratulated on also  retaining the box.

Trouseaux and layettes from Steinmann & Co of Piccadilly

The Exhibition is open till the end of the month 10am-4pm with the option of tea and cake for a modest £2.00 a head.  Donations support local charities   Hospice at Home   ( HAHAV) and Riding for the Disabled (RDA).  I reccommend it.

 

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A walk round Pendinas

by The Curious Scribbler

I was one of thirty people who joined Beca Davies, Project Community Outreach Officer for the Pendinas Hillfort Archaeology Project, on a relaxed evening stroll around the lower slopes of Pendinas yesterday evening.

We met at the gate in Parc Dinas, traversed the middle path across the flank of the hill and returned on the lower path past the horse field and across the former rubbish dump.  Stopping at intervals along the route Beca  and Richard Suggett contributed their knowledge and further insights emerged from the group.

The Wellington monument, which stands within the iron age hill fort, was the brainchild of William Eardley Richardes of Bryneithin.  Richard Suggett reminded us that public subscription had been limited and  as a result the proposed equestrian statue of the Duke of Wellington was never placed on top of the gun barrel column.  This is perhaps not surprising in view of the fact that it was not constructed until 1856, forty years after the  battle of Waterloo!  William E Richardes had, as a young officer, served in the army of occupation after the victory, but this was a monument stimulated by the death of the Duke of Wellington aged 83 in 1852.  Possibly local interest in him had considerably waned by this time. More significantly the monument was sited such as to form a splendid eyecatcher when viewed from William’s home at Bryneithin!   Today it would be considered very poor taste to erect a modern monument on top of such an important ancient site!

We looked out, across the Tanybwlch flats and its palimpsest of the trotting races etched on the grass, towards the tree-fringed hill top which is the site of the original Aberystwyth castle.  This was Gilbert de Clare’s ring and bailey castle with a wooden stockade, built in about 1110 AD and repeatedly fought over by the Welsh and the Norman invaders.  Llywelyn Fawr took it back in 1221 and later built a stronger fortification on the stony headland to the north.   In 1277 after more than 150 years of skirmishing Edward I massive stone castle was built there, north of the mouth of the Rheidol but the name was never changed.  Perhaps to the King and his strategists In London the geographic niceties of Aberrheidol Castle seemed unimportant.  Prof Fred Long brought us a similar story from the 1940s.  Two war time radar stations were to be built in Ceredigion, one at Llanrhystud and one at Tanybwlch.  The Tanybwlch site was soon deemed unsuitable, probably because of the risk of flooding.  So the radar station was installed on Constitution Hill instead,  but was always known in the army documentation as Tanybwlch!

Our outward path then led us past the foundations of a two storey farmhouse which stood beside a natural spring adjoining the path.  Beca showed us a black and white photograph  where the farm was occupied and the farmer stands surrounded by chickens outside his front door.  A barn stood at right angles to the house.  The image is thought to have been made around 1930.

I’ve since looked out a much earlier picture, in the collections of the National Library of Wales. Drawing Volume  56  contains  twenty two North Ceredigion scenes  described as the work of  ‘Welsh Primitive’  c.1830-1853 .  Pendinas seems a little taller lumpier than it looks today and the foreground shows fishermen apparently below a weir on the river.  But the divisions of the fields on the slope, the farmhouse, and the track we walked along seem accurately represented.  The monument is depicted on the top, so the picture cannot be before 1856.

The primitive painter’s view of Pendinas ( NLW Vol 56)

The fishermen’s costumes may give further indication of the date.

Another view entitled  Pendinas and the River Ystwyth shows the farm on the hill and  a rider fording the river near a watermill below the south slopes.  Here too the monument is shown.

Pendinas and the river Ystwyth ( NLW Vol 56)

We learnt about the common lizards and slow worms which are numerous on the Pendinas.  Chloe Griffith’s Nature of our Village project has led to a much wider understanding of the importance of the site.  The spring is home to palmate newts.  This water source was presumably also important to the iron age inhabitants, for without it they would have had  to carry water all the way up from the river Ystwyth at sea level.

A third picture in the volume is captioned  Tanycastell Bridge Perhaps it was painted a few years earlier, for the monument is not to be seen.

The bridge at Tanycastell ( NLW Vol 56)

One of the Welsh cobs at Spencer’s sheds entered into the spirit of the evening by trying to nibble Beca’s backpack. Frustrated in this endeavour it rhythmically and noisily kicked a big galvanised box until we all moved on.

The return journey was on a less historic path which was created after the old town rubbish dump had been covered with soil and re-vegetated in the 1990s.  Willow scrub, gorse, brambles and nettles form an impenetrable undergrowth.  Here the path cuts down through the reclaimed ground and fragments of bottles and polythene appear at the surface where they have been excavated by the rabbits, foxes and badgers whose paths run through the brambles and bushes.

In the 1980s I remember when the wire fences on the Tanybwlch flats were festooned with tattered polythene bags whipped away from the dump by the wind.   We should be proud that Pendinas now looks almost as pristine as it did in these old paintings.

Pendinas in May 2020. The middle path traces the historic route across the flank of Pendinas

 

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Artists at Hafod

by The Curious Scribbler

Hafod has an illustrious history of landscape artists.  In 1798 J.W. Turner painted the original house glowing in sunshine beneath an exaggerated mountain wreathed in cloud.  J. ‘Warwick’ Smith painted a series of views which were later published as handsome aquatints in A Tour to Hafod by J.E. Smith, in 1810.   Many of these images are familiar to  us as postcards  – especially The Peiran Falls in spate, gushing either side of the central outcrop, the Cascade Cavern approached in those days by a three gentlefolk and a dog who have just crossed a long lost rustic bridge, the meadow with resting cows by the river.    Rarer but equally choice are the elegant views baked onto  Derby Porcelain to create the Hafod dinner service for Thomas Johnes in 1787.

Items from this service occasionally appear on the antiques market.  The largest collection of about twenty  pieces is on display  at the the national Museum in Cardiff.

A plate from the Hafod service

The following centuries have seen many further artists’ contributions,  ranging through  talented 19th century tourists and at perhaps the lowest point in its history, the 20th century artist John Piper.  His scratchy impressionistic views of the Ystwyth Gorge gave The Hafod Trust the only clear basis on which to reconstruct the  dilapidated pillars of the Gothic Arcade above the river.

In the last five years two new artists have been annually introduced to Hafod courtesy of a residency offered through the Royal Drawing School.  The successful applicants, all graduates of the School,  live for two weeks in the holiday cottage Pwll Pendre, and explore, paint and draw on the estate.   This afternoon I went to meet this year’s two artists Yiwei Xu and Iona Roberts at an exhibition of their work in their temporary studio in the Hafod Stables.   Tacked to the wall were paintings and sketches inspired at Hafod, some finished, others to be worked up into finished pieces when they return home. Both had perspectives on some of the same views.

Yiwei Xu ( left) and Iona Roberts ( right) Artists in residence at Hafod 2023

Yiwei was deeply impressed with the beauty and wilderness of Hafod and concentrated colorfully on the busy matrices of branches and tree trunks and rock.   She told me she  had never previously been so far from the urban experience.  She had painted in London parks  but was greatly delighted with the lone Sequiodendron gigantea which stands near the walled kitchen garden, placing it centrally in one of her larger pictures. Another view showed the Gothic Arcade perched above the gorge.

Yiwei Zu’s picture wall

 

Three of Yiwei Xu colourful views of Hafod

The Sequoidendron appeared in Iona’s pictures too, with the mountains delicately delineated behind. The Gothic Arcade also  loomed indistinctly amongst dappled black and white foliage further dappled by  actual raindrops falling on the paper while she worked.  Intricate fine brushwork characterized many of her sketches and I was particularly taken with two black and white views taken from the bastion on the drive which overlooks the Ystwyth and lead the eye upward to the bald mountain to the east.  She had also done  colourful oil paintings of Hafod church and Pwll Pendre cottage in a busy landcape. Iona  currently teaches at the Glasgow School of Art, and will be doing another residency in the autumn at Dumfries House in Ayrshire.

Ioan Roberts’ picture wall

Two views up the Ystwyth at Hafod by Iona Roberts

The residency was begun six years ago by the Hafod Trust.  The new guardians of Hafod, the National Trust, intend to continue the tradition and it is hoped that in due course an exhibition of  contemporary artists’ work on Hafod will be put together, and the Royal Drawing School artists will be among the exhibitors.

 

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A Garden of Concrete Memories

by The Curious Scribbler

There has been quite a lot of publicity this summer about Carreg Llwyd, ( Google ‘Mark Bourne Wales’ for a selection: the Daily Mail, the BBC, Wales Online, and even The Times ran articles this summer).

The story concerns the extraordinary scale models built by writer and chicken farmer Mark Bourne, who died about ten years ago.  Some will remember his many contributions to the Cambrian News and Country Quest.  His remote garden on a terraced slope near Corris has become dilapidated and overgrown and The Little Italy Trust has recently been set up  to preserve it.  Jonathan Fell, gardener and conservator showed me round.

A medley of Italian buildings climb the mountainside

Looking up from the adjoining footpath one sees an amazing medley of model buildings, their facades facing westward, marching up the slope, fading away into the dense conifers above.  Nearest to the house is a signature piece, The Duomo in Florence, just four feet tall and neatly labelled with an inscribed slate slab reading Santa Maria del Fiore.  Nearby, ascending from the top of the boundary wall are the Spanish Steps from Rome.    These and every other garden feature have been fashioned out of concrete, often impregnated with pigments to mimic the warm tones of southern Europe. There are palazzos, churches and towers, mostly palladian and always clearly labelled, often like a guide book with architect and date, which you approach by a labyrinth of concrete paths and steps. Interspersed are a number of breeze-block and corrugated-iron stores and workshops in which the creative process took place.  Timber moulds and formers were built to imprint the decorations, and reclaimed objects, chickenwire, hub caps, dustbins, bottles, washing machine drums and bedsteads often form the basis of these three dimensional structures.

Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence

It is certainly true that about thirty of the models are of famous Italian  buildings, and that Mark Bourne and his wife Muriel holidayed regularly in Italy, taking photos and making drawings which were then copied in concrete at home in Wales.  It rains a lot in the mountains, and no doubt when the concrete would not set he had plenty of time to inscribe the calligraphy on the slate plaques which adorn each piece.  But there is much more than Italy represented here.  Rather, it seems that while Mark Bourne might have written an article, or I a blog on a subject which caught our interest, he instead committed it to concrete.

Randomly perched among the models, and all labelled, are the Brick Kiln at Amlwch, Anglesey, the Nash Lodge at Attingham Park, Boyana Church at Sofia, Bulgaria, and the worlds longest brick bridge, the Goltzsch Viaduct which takes trains from Mylau to Netzschkau in Germany.

‘World’s largest brick bridge. 26,000,000 bricks’.  Jonathan Fell surveys the garden.

A model of York Minster and accompanying plaque marks the accession of Rowan Williams as Archbishop of Canterbury.  Another plaque list the names, ages and occupations of the occupants of Carreg Llwyd as recorded in the 1841 and 1851 censuses.  When Mark Bourne wanted to remember something, he did not make a note, he made a model.

People gave him stuff which he incorporated into the garden.  Pieces of architecture, concrete urns and figures, and Victorian bricks.  One friend, John Oliphant, gave him an entire brick collection, and many of these are built into a wall visible from the passing footpath, set on their sides to display the lettering on the bricks.  Farther up the same path Mark mounted a concrete geological relief map of north Wales into the wall.

A small part of the John Oliphant Brick Collection

Someone else gave him a bit of artificial stone salvaged from the cargo of the Primrose Hill, a vessel which foundered with great loss of life, on South Stack, Anglesey in 1900.  A complex slate memorial records the story.

And somehow he became the owner of a great many tiny bricks.  They are built into small didactic walls demonstrating different bricklayers’ patterns.  Where else can one find labelled examples of  Flemish Bond,  Stretcher Bond, English Bond, Header Bond and Garden Wall Bond?

Exemplars of five types of brick wall ( and an old bedstead)

Carreg Llwyd is certainly unique, a monument to one man’s creativity, but what is its future?  Its tourist potential is limited. It is up a steep footpath away from the nearest road and there is nowhere to park within a mile.  Once one arrives it is perilous, for the paths, the terraces and some of the buildings are beginning to collapse, ( the Leaning Tower of Pisa is already just a memory.)

Some structures have already collapsed and others are at risk.

Concrete formed upon corroding metal has a limited life, and the whole project though impressive  is crudely executed.  It is magical to stand among the crumbling ruins, overreached by rhododendrons, briars and sapling trees, scraping away the moss to read more of Mark’s explanatory calligraphy on slate. One can also see where once there were vegetable beds, roses, cats’ graves,  a little lawn and water channels flowing through the grounds. But this very personal space was built by hand (and  prodigious amounts of cement), by one poor but passionate amateur, who was still adding to his oeuvre at the age of eighty.   There is no place or access for the machines which might repair its inherent faults.  To achieve maintenance would require the services of a full-time hermit.

A former flower garden among the ruins

Every space within the plot has been adorned with models

A vertiginous view of turrets and workshops from above

This is the ultimate secret garden – most people who come across it by chance feel it is their personal discovery.  Even were it fully repaired and made safe it could take only a tiny number of visitors at any time.  Its plight perhaps bears comparison with Derek Jarman’s shingle garden created around a modest shack in the shadow of the nuclear power station at Dungeness, Kent.  Last year it was announced that the crowdfunding led by the Arts Council had raised £3.5 million to preserve it, and that artist residencies and very limited visiting opportunities will follow.

But Derek Jarman was a famous film director (and gardener)  with many influential showbiz and artist friends.  Mark Bourne, throughout his lifetime, was a very private man.

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New lights on the Promenade

by The Curious Scribbler

It is sad to see the removal of the curlicued streetlights which are such a characteristic of our lovely promenade.

Out with the Old

SWALEC are out in force today, with crane and cherry picker removing the tops of the street lights on the prom, lowering them gently to the ground and chopping them up with an angle grinder to be carried away. The poles are then capped with a new fitting.

In with the New

Of course I can understand the reason for doing so.  The new LED technology will illuminate the town for a fraction of the electricity cost and the planet will benefit from the reduced emissions.  But was it really impossible to find a design of lamp head more fitting for our Victorian town?  The new plate-like fitments are an undignified truncation upon the old poles.  And the vista of white globes leading  towards Constitution Hill will soon be a distant memory.

Old lighting on the Aberystwyth promenade

Shorter stemmed bifurcating globes of a less elaborate but similar style also flank the sea from the Pier to the Castle, and are an important part of a vista which so many people enjoy.  They may not be all that old, the metal plate on the lamp bases reads NJG 2001 but they do need a lick of paint.

The shorter lights on the south promenade

I do so hope that for these, at least, a less radical solution will be found,  and modern bulbs could somehow be inserted in the old globes, or a new but ornamental form of lamp be obtained.  With the renovations of the Old College,  an apotheosis of Victoriana, soon to become a gleaming public attraction it would be very sad to find the entire South Prom adorned with such utilitarian little slabs of lighting. In our heyday these lights used to support hanging baskets of flowers in the summer season.  As the post-covid world wakes up the delights of holidaying at home, perhaps these ornamental posts should be cherished and fully adorned once more.

The lamps used to also suspend hanging flower baskets

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Upfest at Tanybwlch?

by The Curious Scribbler

Tanybwlch beach, looking north to Aberystwyth

Inspired by the video I described in the preceding blog, I walked Tanybwlch beach again yesterday, enjoying the blazing sun and balmy breeze. The sea was almost waveless, clear and the deepest blue, and the shore, as usual, was almost deserted.  I saw a family at the water’s edge, and a couple of people walking their dogs, and I passed one man who was seated watching his three terriers each of which was energetically digging its own hole in the sand.  The sea, cracked only by a single ripple approaching the shore, looked like shot silk.

Three digging dogs

The graffiti artists on the concrete sea wall have been back and have further embellished the design which appeared on the drone video I had watched.  The letters NHS are no longer brutalist boxy letters, now sporting serifs and curliques of a playful nature.  The seated figure, on closer inspection, is a dead-eyed Boris debating whether or whether not to save the NHS.  To the right are a series of weird heads, two gowned and masked blue front-liners, and then a group perhaps the public, some in outline,  one with a covid mask.  There is more wall yet to be painted, I think there is more work to be done there.

Graffiti at Tanybwlch beach

Graffiti at Tanybwlch beach

The right-hand end of the mural, yet to be coloured in?

The whole mural at Tanybwlch beach, possibly yet to be completed

It seems surprising now, that no-one has formerly set about embellishing this long wall.  Here is a canvas comparable with some of the large murals created for the Upfest Festival in Bristol, and like many of those, it is on a topical theme.  I have just noticed that the latest Upfest, which brings together British and international artists, was scheduled to take place this weekend,  30 May- 1 June 2020.   I presume that like everything else, it has been postponed, though this is not confirmed on their website.

This blog has previously reported from Upfest, and I hope to go again.

 

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Tanybwlch – A Historic Video

by The Curious Scribbler

Day 67 of lockdown – the days have become a bit of a blur.  Like a soothing nature programme, the past two months have been generally beautiful, with startlingly clear skies, lovely wildflowers, continuous birdsong.  Too continuous even, I sometimes wish that the monotonous chiffchaffs would give it a rest.

My walks start from my front door, and lead me to Tanybwlch beach, Pendinas, Penparcau and Llanfarian along the footpaths and cycle paths.  I am so fortunate to have such an amazing landscape within easy reach.    Today I found a newly posted video on You Tube  named Aberystwyth in the SKY Tan Y Bwlch which gave me great delight.  Here  is a tranquil 4 minutes of a birds-eye view of my entire domain, shot during lockdown on one of the many still days when the sea barely sucks at the shore, the sun blazes down, and people, so few and far between, are visible here and there.  There are no cars in the Tanybwlch car park (a consequence of the concrete roadblock erected in late March), no contrails in the sky.  We may look back with nostalgia on this creepily empty scene when normal life is resumed.

I am pleased that the photographer has briefly included a child and a dog, (presumably his or her own) enjoying the shore.  Children have been out and about far too little during lockdown.   Joggers and cyclists have made the most of their freedoms, but to spy a child has been a rare sight on my walks.  Hopefully today’s announcement will empower more families to take their children out on our beaches.

At the very end of the film is the briefest glimpse of a huge new graffito on the concrete barrage where the Ystwyth turns northwards.  The brutalist blue capitals contrast with the human depicted on the left, a figure more typical of the ethos of the beach.

A screen grab from the video

It would be very visible from the sea: were anyone out there to view it.

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Three thousand years of Archaeology

by The Curious Scribbler

I had an enjoyable day at the Morlan Centre in Aberystwyth on Saturday, at the Archaeology Day organized by the Dyfed Archaeological Trust.  The remit of archaeologists today stretches from the very ancient to the extremely recent,  and this was reflected in the range of talks.  The morning started with the archaeology of yesterday while by the afternoon we were taken back three thousand years to the beginning of the first millienium BC.

Alice Pyper had been having fun exploring the archaeology of Llyn y Fan Fach, the glacial lake which now supplies Llanelli with a clean water supply.  It was not always thus: the water system was built by conscientious objectors during the first world war.   Some thirty of them were compelled to live in two drafty huts  at 1200 feet above sea level to work on the project.  Field archaeology involved excavating and recording the footings of these huts. Documentary sources including newspapers and humorous sketches by the objectors fleshed out the story.  This workforce was of Englishmen who had already served time in prison for refusing to fight.  Michael Freeman pointed out that in Wales objectors were less harshly treated, and that most of the thirty conscientious objectors in Ceredigion were not imprisoned and were allowed to keep their jobs.

Also representing the very recent past is the built heritage of the 20th century.  Susan Fielding of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales treated us to photographs of a splendid succession of architectural gems or carbuncles, some listed, others already demolished.  The architects of the Percy Thomas Partnership ( familiar to us here for much of the Penglais Campus) kept cropping up, with Harlech College, Trinity Chapel at Sketty, and the soon-to-be-demolished Broadcasting House at Llandaff, all redolent of the 1960s.   The Prestatyn Holiday Camp ( 1935) and the Rhyl Sun Centre (1980) have both gone, both extravagant expressions of their times, and dear to many people’s holiday reminiscences.


Rhyl Sun Centre by Gillinson Barnett & Partners
Source:Architectural Press/Archive RIBA Collections

The Shire Hall in Mold, dubbed Britain’s leading ugliest building, and the Wrexham Police station are brutalist buildings which will perhaps not be mourned too much.  Still standing, and crying out for a role in a brooding  TV Drama is Ysgol Syr Thomas Jones at Amlwch – one of the very first 1950s comprehensive schools.

Less is sometimes more, and it was strangely gratifying to learn from Clwyd-Powys Archaeologist Paul Belford that we really don’t know whether Offa’s Dyke has a great deal to do with King Offa, when it was built, or quite what it was for!  Opportunities to excavate this world heritage site are few and far between, but one did arise from the actions of a Chirk man who bulldozed 50 yards of it in order to build a stable. ( His ignorance of its historic significance saved him from prosecution in 2014).  Perhaps this vibe for vandalism is in the air around Chirk.  Paul showed us a lidar image of the grounds of Chirk castle.  In the 17th century Landscape Architect William Emes flattened much more than 50 yards of it to create smooth parkland, and submerged a further length of it in an ornamental lake!

Low water levels in 2018 revealed Offa’s Dyke in the lake at Chirk Castle. Picture: The Shropshire Star

Two afternoon sessions concerned the days of the iron age hillfort, a period lasting from at least 1000 years BC.  Hillforts are scattered like measles across the whole of the map of Wales, and with techniques of  aerial photography and lidar more are still being discovered.  Either they are on hilltops with ridge fortifications all the way round, or they are promontory hill forts, situated on the edge of a cliff or at the confluence between two valleys such that fortifications are not needed at the steeper sides.  The archaeologists have been seeking evidence both within the enclosures, where  groups of round houses were situated, and outside them where burials, and farming actvities took place.  Ken Murphy rounded off the day with an account of the iron age chariot burial discovered last autumn in a field not far from a hillfort at an undisclosed location in west Pembrokeshire.  Being buried along with your two wheeled chariot and your horse requires a pretty extensive hole and this type of burial is well known from East Yorkshire. The chariot burial discovered at the evocatively named village of Wetwang, revealed the human skeleton curled  up between the wheels of his chariot, and the horse laid transversely at his head.  The limey soil chemistry in east Yorkshire does not dissolve the bones.

In the Welsh burial bronze fragments of the bit, bridle and horse ornaments testifies to the horse, and an iron sword to the warrior, but their bones are long dissolved.  The iron rims of the wheels and the imprint of the wooden chariot were found.  These items are undergoing conservation at the National Museum of Wales and will then be put on display.

Photo credit: Archaeologists exposing the wheels of the Pembrokeshire chariot.
 Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales

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Up the tower at Gelli Aur

by The Curious Scribbler

It seems to be my destiny to visit Gelli Aur ( Golden Grove) in the rain. Last week was my third visit in many years, and once again it poured.  Which was a pity because one of the anticipated high points was expected to be the view over the Tywyi Valley from the windows, or better still the roof.    Dryslwn Castle and Paxton’s tower lie to the west,  while Dynefwr Castle  should be visible to the north east,    Instead the distant views were lost in the mist.

Golden Grove mansion roof light above the main stairwell

 

Nonetheless it was a fascinating visit, for a small group of us were taken around the house, which was built 1826-34 for John Frederick Campbell, Lord Cawdor, to a design by Wyatville. Not his principal residence, ( which was Stackpole in Pembrokeshire)  but a summer retreat,  staffed all year round by as many as 55 house servants, but on full performance only for a few weeks of summer.  The proportions of the house reflect this, the grand rooms approached from the port cochère at the east end of the house  are not that numerous, while stretching away to the west is an extensive two-storey range  of servants’ rooms, and the stable courtyard  beyond that.  Unusually, the house faces north.. but this is the side with the long views, and north-facing was perhaps not such bad news during a hot summer.

Golden Grove mansion, the principal rooms are in the eastern end below the clock tower

After a disastrous decade of neglect and destruction the house and 100 acres of park now belongs to a Preservation Trust which has ambitious plans to create an art gallery and cultural centre there. One initiative already under way is the restoration of the clock which adorns the clock tower of the main house. New replica clock faces have already been prepared and a specialist clock restorer has been commissioned, one who is also working on Big Ben.

The Barwise Clock at Golden Grove

The clock is by Barwise of St Martin’s Lane, London, Chronometer, Watch and Clockmaker to His Majesty and the Royal Family, and dated 1832.  It stands in a large glazed cupboard with pulleys and levers reaching out in several directions.  I don’t pretend to understand exactly how it works, but it was clear to see the winding mechanism of three drums, round which ran the cables attached to three huge weights descending through neatly formed hatches in the floor of the tower.  A man with a crank handle would have had to regularly wind the clock, bringing the three big weights back up to the level of the clock.  This mechanism drove two clock faces on opposing sides of the tower, and three handsome bells which are attached to the outer wall of the clock tower.  ( I wonder what melody you can play on just three bells?  Probably the largest of the  three struck the hour.)

Golden Grove, one of the three weights driving the clock mechanism

The tower rises at the junction between the principal bedrooms and the servants’ wing, and the bells hang above the large glazed lantern which lights the grand stairs.  When operating, this handsome clock must have been more than audible to the grand occupants of the house.

The three bells on the tower. Golden Grove

The firm of Barwise existed from 1790 to 1855, and enjoyed greatest fame in the 1820s, it seems to have been best known for its pocket watches, long case and bracket clocks.  In an article on Barwise in the Antiquarian Horological Society journal we get just one glimpse of a clock similar to that at Golden Grove.  A correspondent to The Times 26 September 1855, described the scene after the Battle of the Great Redan, an engagement during siege of Sebastopol.    He wrote ” The Great Redan was next visited.  Such a scene of wreck and ruin! all the houses behind it a mass of broken stones – a clock turret, with shot right through the clock – a pagoda in ruins – another clock tower, with all the clocks destroyed save the dial, with the words Barwise London thereon“.

Golden Grove’s clock has lasted considerably better than that one. Perhaps some others are hidden away in English church towers:  there is at least one, at Clayworth St Peter, Notts, but that is a much more modest affair.

One regulator dial of the Barwise clock at Gelli Aur

Gelli Aur. The second regulator dials in the Barwise clock bears the date

The Barwise Clock at Golden Grove ( Gelli Aur)

 

 

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The Mosaic Restoration Company

By The Curious Scribbler

In 2016 I wrote about Aberystwyth’s two fine mosaics by Jesse Rust of Battersea, which respectively adorn the exterior of the Old College, and the floor  of Llanbadarn Church.  Both arose as a result of the influence of the architect J.P.Seddon, who worked on the restoration of St Padarn’s Church in 1878 and who designed the seafront hotel which was to become Old College.   When Seddon enlarged the building for the College the triptych panel, (which depicts Pure Science flanked by two acolytes bearing the fruits of applied science), was installed at the south end of the Science wing in 1887.

For many years the mosaic floor of the church has been partially covered with a red carpet, and pockmarked here and there with damage, missing tesserae, and a few poor quality repairs. That is until last Monday, when the Mosaic Restoration Company came to town.

Llanbadarn Church mosaic floor. holes before restoration

In just four days the team of four have wrought a massive change.  Specialist cleaning has revealed a palette of colours barely apparent before.  Down on their knees each worked on replacing the missing pieces of of the design.  Beside him was a set of tupperware boxes containing appropriately matched pieces of opaque glass.  The original glass was made, by recycling glass bottles, in Jesse Rust’s Battersea workshop.  Today the glass is sourced from Italy, where mosaic restoration is bigger business than it is here.

Repair in progress

Material for the glass tiles

Many of the swirling patterns contain flower designs, in which the replacement petals have to be clipped away to make a curved edge.

New  white tesserae cut to shape to replace the missing pieces

A crudely repaired curlicue before restoration

The same after restoration

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It takes close inspection to notice all the elaborate detail of the floor, the different shades and patterns within which the large squares of gold and red picture tiles are framed, and the edging details which make this extensive mosaic resemble a bespoke fitted carpet. The sets of four picture tiles set in circular frames are by Godwin of Lugwardine, a popular manufacturer of tiles on holy subjects.  The many different designs include the  Lamb of God, the four evangelist symbols, and sundry angels and kings.  Not a single one is broken, and the variety on the church floor far exceeds the collections of the British Museum!

The gleaming cleaned and restored floor.

The Church is to be congratulated for seeking out the funding and expertise which has brought this huge mosaic back to its full potential. I hope that the carpet will not return! The organist tells me that the acoustics, without it, are much improved so there is every reason to display the entire floor as the designer intended.

Four restorers from The Mosaic Restoration Company, at Llanbadarn Church last week

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