When I wrote on 4 November of the ferocious storm which tore up pavings on the promenade it seemed an exceptional occurence. But the combined high winds and spring tides of Friday 3 January have demoted that earlier storm to the merest footnote. Yesterday it seemed the whole of Aberystwyth was out upon the promenade, viewing the devastation.
Devastation on Aberystwyth Promenade
The telescope, still attached to its huge coping stone, stands awry amongst the displaced paviours and sand
As with the last storm the most violent damage was wreaked in the area opposite the Marine Hotel with great areas of ornamental paving and setts tossed like lego bricks amongst the invading beach sand. Impressively the sprouting spring bulbs in the seaside planters hung bravely on by the roots, their pale green leaf shoots suddenly exposed by the seceding waves. Long stretches of the familiar white railings however, were gone. A little further south the Victorian timber shelter seemed, at first glance to have escaped lightly, with just some splintering to its pitch pine frame. It stands on a man made drum shaped piece of sea wall, which perhaps deflected the waves upwards. But closer inspection revealed a sinister hole in the paving between it and the sea. Viewed from the beach, it became clear that the sea had excavated a cave into the void beneath the shelter. A group of police assembled as the tide receded, to prevent risky exploration beneath the hole in the roof. I am told this promentory was once the site of tha Aberystwyth gallows. Another bystander said there had formerly been changing rooms accessible from the sands below the shelter.
A sea cave excavated beneath the public shelter
Further towards the pier, the railings of the paddling pool had been felled as a single entity, and deep beach sand extended right across the road.
Beach sand covers the promenade
The paddling pool
Even where the land level rises at the south end of the promenade the suction of the waves had neatly removed individual or small areas of the ornamental setts with which the prom was refurbished some years ago.
Paving lifted by the force of the sea
This surely will be remembered as the great Aberystwyth storm, – depending on the next one, which they say will be along tomorrow….
‘Tanybwlch Flats’ used to mean the extensive flat meadows of the Ystywth flood plain just inland from Tanybwlch beach. South of the meandering river the land has played host to many public functions. For many years the Aberystwyth Show was held here annually, and though that event has moved to a new site at Capel Bangor, there have been sheep dog trials and trotting races in recent years.
Earlier in the 20th century these fields were purchased, speculatively, by Colonel Pugh in the expectation that they would become Aberystwyth airport. At least one early aviator, Prince George had landed a plane on Tanybwlch Flats in 1933. This was a social triumph for the elderly landowner, Lord Ystwyth, who thus managed to finesse the royal guest from the hands of his grander neighbour Lord Lisburne at Trawscoed. Lord Ystwyth wrote to Buckingham Palace to explain that his own land was far more suitable as an airstrip than the proposed field at Trawscoed where the Prince was to land. Those responsible for the young Prince’s safety agreed, after a reconnoitering flight to the area. Lord Ystwyth, was a local man, Matthew Lewis Vaughan Davies, a political peer enobled after many years as a Liberal MP. As such he was always considered of lesser moment by the hereditary and Conservative gentry. So it was all the more gratifying to the 92 year old peer that his guest would land within his property, and as such could be entertained to light refreshments at the mansion before attending the Royal Welsh Show.
Prince George ( later The Duke of Kent) flew from Hendon to land on Tanybwlch Flats in 1933, on a visit to the Royal Welsh Show at Llanbadarn.
Lord Ystwyth and Prince George in 1933 on the steps of Tanybwlch mansion, flanked by local dignitaries
Today ‘Tanybwlch Flats’ has a different meaning, for the mansion has been divided and refitted as fourteen flats, which are now for sale with Raw Rees of Aberystwyth. The dense envelope of trees which long surrounded the house has been cleared away and it stands now, stark and grey, gazing out over the shingle bar to the sea. A new little outhouse houses a state of the art biomass boiler, which emits a wisp of smoke.
Inside, the show flats reveal a minimalist style – lots of white paint, shiny wood floors, blinds, sparse furniture and galley kitchens. Nothing could contrast more than with the early photographs of the Tanybwlch interiors decorated for Lord Ystwyth and his wealthy wife: rooms full of high Victorian decor, swagged velvet curtains, deeply embossed flock wallpapers, heavy legged tables and upholstered chairs.
Tanybwlch, Lord Ystwyth’s Drawing Room
Lord Ystwyth’s Dining Room
The house was stripped of most of these interior features after the estate was sold in 1936. One of the fireplaces now occupies the Elizabethan room at the Royal Oak Llanfarian. Subsequent uses for the building has been as a hospital, a hall of residence for the College of Librarianship, Coleg Ceredigion catering college and training restaurant, and more recently as the private home of guitarist Uli Jon Roth. During that last incarnation many original features such as the panelled doors were released from their hospital cladding of hardboard, and the coved ceiling of the Music room was painted and gilded like a starry sky.
As the potential homeowners flock to view its latest incarnation many will have connections with its past. Some may have relatives who experienced isolation there during the typhoid epidemic of 1946, others may harbour riotous memories of their student days in partitioned rooms in the attics and of winds so penetrating that the carpets were known to undulate in the windy blast from the west. The particulars all look very tranquil today:
Last week Jennie Macve addressed the Aberystwyth Bibliographical Group on the subject of Hafod. Her lecture, entitled Deeds and Dinner Plates – Some Primary Sources, introduced the audience to a variety of lesser-known resources which throw light on Hafod’s past. Deeds dating right back to Thomas Johnes’s ownership came to light a few years ago, most unexpectedly, in a solicitors’ office in Leeds, and are now in the care of the Ceredigion County Archive. Other sources include sketches, pictures, and photographs, which trickle in from all sorts of serendipitous sources, – Ebay produced one of a pair of glass plate stereo photographs which shows the Italianate wing added by Sir Henry De Hoghton, from the perspective of the present back drive leading to the estate office in the stables. Another collector has a Victorian souvenir Prattware plate, on which a well-known steel engraving of Hafod circa 1850 is reproduced.
A steel engraving by Newman and Co shows Hafod after 1850 with the Italianate wing to the left
The same image reproduced on an earthenware Prattware plate depicting Hafod c 1875
A much earlier and more sophisticated source is the Hafod Service, a dessert service commissioned from the Derby Pottery in 1788. Thomas Johnes had it made as a gift for the then Lord Chancellor Lord Thurlow. We can only speculate as to what favour or preferment Thomas Johnes was hoping for in return. It consisted of 45 pieces, two dozen plates and assorted bowls and dishes, each decorated with a view of Hafod. The pictures were painted in colour by the artists at the factory working from the sketches and paintings by artist Thomas Jones of Pencerrig and other contemporary images. The originals are for the most past lost, consumed, perhaps, in the great fire at Hafod in 1807, so these valuable collectors’ plates are a vital historic resource.
As the immaculately decorated plates turn up, in museums or other collections they throw light on previously unknown views from the late 18th century. Seventeen items from the service are in the National Museum at Cardiff, and another ten are known in other museums or collections. The most recent to come to light, in a provincial auction house last year, seems to show a scene on the river upstream from Pontrhydygroes. Two particularly useful dishes show the lodges at either end of the approaches to the house, both of which were subsequently demolished by the Duke of Newcastle to make way for 19th century structures. These original lodges were built to signal the diversion of the public road, (which formerly ran past Hafod) to its present route (the B4574) along a sinuous lane past Cae Meirch. Archways over the old road down the valley clearly signalled that this was now private property.
A Derby dessert dish, dated 1788 depicts the lodge and arch at the eastern approach to the estate
It is interesting to reflect that in the last decades of the eighteenth century landowners in Ceredigion were all busily diverting roads in order to improve their properties. We see the same pattern at Nanteos and at Llanerchaeron where the owners, all influential men, each purchased the old road past their mansion from the Trustees of the Turnpike Trusts on which they served, and thus ensured that the common drovers no longer passed their doors. Designed lodge houses served to emphasise the entrances to what was now private land. Estate improvement also often involved relocating the odd tenant farm to improve the flow of the landscape of the demesne. Some of the old maps reveal that Johnes too, though in many ways an enlightened landlord, removed farms and cottages which he considered inharmonious in the view.
The gentle watercolours and sketches of two hundred years ago are charmingly familiar, so similar to the views which can be seen today. But as Jennie pointed out, too many of us forget that the historic footpaths through the picturesque landscape have been hard won, through the last twenty years of restoration. Before the present concerted efforts by The Hafod Trust in partnership with the Forestry Commission these paths were impassable, blocked and in places broken by fallen trees, eroded by hillside torrents where culverts had become blocked, or entirely obliterated by landslip. When a path is clear of obstruction we take it for granted, and imagine it was always thus. Hafod is in fact a fine example of unobtrusive restoration.
Walkers can pass without hindrance along the Gentleman’s walk today
Estate Manager Dave Newnham checks a recently completed stretch of path
A recently restored landslip on the spur path to the Cascade cavern
Hafod is open to the public at all times. For more information see www.hafod.org/
Aberystwyth Bibiographical Group see http://users.aber.ac.uk/das/texts/aberbibgr1.htm
The much anticipated storm of 27th October passed Aberystwyth with scarcely a ruffling. It had been vaunted as the greatest since 1987 and Michael Fish’s famous pronouncement that some woman was entirely deluded in her belief that a hurricane was on its way. In the event, the storm took a more southerly course and while trees were blown down and four lives lost elsewhere its impact on Aber was non-existent.
Not so last Saturday evening when the still leafy apple trees behind my house creaked and roared with the gale and the last bramleys thundered unceremoniously to the ground. I was relieved to find no trees uprooted the following morning.
The direction of the wind drove great seas across the bay at Aberystwyth, focussing their force especially at the northern end on the promenade. An occasional but exhilarating sight is the explosive force of great waves sending a sheet of spray right over the terraces houses from the Marine Hotel to Alexandra Hall. Some years ago I photographed such a scene on a sunny wintery morning. This time the height of the storm and tide came after dark.
But daylight revealed considerable damage to the promenade opposite the Marine Hotel with the white iron railings uprooted, still attached to their huge anchoring stones and twisted in the air. Where the edge stones of the promenade were displaced the sea made short work decorative sets and small paving slabs with which the prom has been refurbished in recent years. As the waves deposited a slew of gravel across the road they sucked back to the beach, taking the pointing, and whatever substrate secured these small paviors with them.
Sets and paving slabs lifted by the waves where the edge of the prom has been washed away
Cleanup commenced on Monday morning with the combined efforts of men with barrows and road sweepers large and small successively clearing a passage for cars. The handsome dragon seats all remained firmly anchored in place, but several appear to stand now not on paving but on a shingle beach, pockmarked by the tread of passers-by.
Several inches of shingle covered the promenade and road
Road sweeper outside the Marine Hotel
The smaller sweeper whisks away the remaining pebbles
The Victorian blue and white timber and glass shelter is the most northerly building on the promenade, rashly placed, it would seem, on a projecting semicircular drum of masonry above the beach. But it has passed through the tempest unscathed. It seems that it is the lower parts of the prom which have failed to break the waves’ force and have proved the most vulnerable in this storm.
Passers-by survey the damage south of the timber shelter, which escaped unscathed
Plants, mainly grasses, have been being selected and improved at Aberystwyth for almost a hundred years.Modern experimental oat breeding, for example, began here in 1919 along with experiments designed to improve the properties of forage grasses for sheep and cattle.In those bygone days the research organisation was called the Welsh Plant Breeding Station (WPBS) and it was directed from 1919 to1942 by George Stapledon, who was duly knighted for his endeavours towards achieving what we now call ‘Sustainability and Food Security’.In those days it was called ‘Autarky’.In the Seventies we called it ‘Self-Sufficiency’.(In any case, all these terms mean producing more, with less dependence on imports and political alliances).
I recently saw some charming photos of the early days of plant breeding at Aberystwyth.Airy greenhouses contained bevies of women in pretty dresses, meticulously stripping the male parts (the anthers) from oats or other grasses and pollinating the stigmas with paintbrushes loaded with the chosen pollen.Over the years the Welsh Plant Breeding Station grew in size and importance, moving in 1953 to the Gogerddan estate, of one of the former great mansions of Ceredigion, at Penrhyncoch.The Queen came to open the new establishment.The former walled garden of the estate soon disappeared under a complex of modern buildings.
Traditional experimental plots trialling many varieties of rye-grass at IBERS, Gogerddan
In the 1990s after various mergers WPBS renamed itself the Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research (IGER) and then to the bewilderment of many, mutated once more, by merger with Rural and Biological Sciences at Aberystwyth University into IBERS (The Institute of Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences).Many still know it by its older acronymns, especially the large local workforce who since its inception found employment in its glasshouses, fields and experimental plots. Today IGER oats account for 65% of the oats planted in Britain and IGER varieties of rye-grass are contentedly masticated all over the world.IGER turf has been developed for the particular needs of different sporting venues, and even to grow on vertical surfaces to enrobe green sculptures.
Meanwhile the sophistication of genetic engineering moved on from the days of girls in pretty dresses and now involves the scrutiny not just of new hybrids but of individual genes. And to mark the twenty-first century IBERS has a startling new toy, The National Plant Phenomics Centre, one of the most advanced experimental greenhouses in the world.
In the National Plant Phenomics Centre glasshouse, plants leave the artificial sunlight for a visit to the measuring chambers.
Here in a giant brightly lit glasshouse, plants reside in identical individual pots, moving gently around the huge space on whirring, clicking conveyor belts.Each pot contains a microchip which identifies its programmed needs. Each plant may have been designated for a personalised regime of water, fertiliser, pesticide.And each plant is daily monitored.As its progresses along the conveyor belt it pauses, turns to the left and passes into a chamber like a lift, whereupon the automatic doors close it from view. Inside it is rotated and photographed from four sides and above so that a computer programme can compute its precise enlargement since yesterday’s visit to the chamber.In another chamber it may be lifted out of its pot to measure the root growth under infra red light, or measured for fluorescence.Then the doors open and the belt moves on.Then there is a breathless pause.The plant pot stands upon a scale by which its weight indicates the amount of water it has lost or used since last it visited this point.The pause continues, the computer deliberates, and then according to its needs and the experimental programme, a downward angled gun delivers a precisely measured bolt of water to the roots.There is a further click and the patient moves on, to be followed by another and then another.There is a remarkable sense of suspense in watching a series of identical plants passing the weigh station, some to be rewarded with a drink of water, others assessed, measured and sent on their way thirsty.
This lucky plant receives a squirt of water before returning to the bench
The multi-million pound National Plant Phenomics Centre opened very recently. It is a magnificent piece of sci-fi, with all the man-appeal of a train set.Quietly clicking and whirring belts drive continual motion, not a human in sight.Watch the You Tube animation here.
It looks as if fewer local jobs will arise from the National Plant Phenomic Centre than from the old techniques of watering cans and trial plots, for it is all controlled by computer from a single work station.In the animation you will find that the sole operative of the laboratory computer terminal looks suspiciously like superheroine Lara Croft. The film is accompanied by a mind numbingly repetitive electronic music sound track.Only in this respect does the animation exceed reality.
Here is a handsome notice which stands at the entrance to St Marcella’s (Llanfarchell) Parish Church on the outskirts of Denbigh. So what is so wrong with play? Any sort of play? Indeed what is wrong with enjoyment on consecrated ground?
Forbidding sign in St Marcella’s Churchyard, Denbigh exhorts: DO NO HARM. DO NOT PLUCK THE FLOWERS. DO NOT ALLOW ANYONE TO PLAY
St Marcella’s Parish Church, also known as Whitchurch or Eglwys Wen is just east of the fortified town of Denbigh
It is well worth overlooking this bleak notice to penetrate this, the grandest of Denbighshire’s medieval churches. Inside its double nave are reminders of Elizabethan exuberance and of the wealthy and fecund family whose tendrils extend to Cardiganshire, to London and to Chirk Castle. Here is a monumental brass plaque portraying Richard Myddlelton ( who died in 1575) along with his wife and their seven fashionably dressed daughters and nine sons. They are of interest to Cardiganshire historians because one of these sons, Hugh Myddleton was the first great exploiter of the Cardiganshire Mines through leases granted to him in 1617 by James I. Sir Hugh Myddleton had attracted the King’s patronage through an extraordinary civil engineering project, the construction of ‘The New River’ a 38 miles canal cum aqueduct which brought clean water into London from springs at Chadwell and Amwell through Stoke Newington and Hackney to Clerkenwell. Sir Hugh leased Lodge Park, the Gogerddan hunting lodge from Sir John Pryse, and died there in 1631.
One of Hugh Myddleton’s daughters, Hester, became wife of Sir Richard Pryse of Gogerddan, who was made 1st Baronet in 1641. (Also see letterfromaberystwyth May 14, 2013)
Another Myddleton woman, Jane, had married the powerful Sir John Salusbury and they are commemorated after his death in 1578 by a magnificent painted alabaster tomb celebrating their fecundity. On one side of the box-shaped tomb are nine sons, eight in armour and one a cleric, while the other side shows four daughters: two fine ladies in ruffs and two swaddled, to indicate their death in infancy.
Alabaster tomb of Sir John Salusbury and his wife Jane
The four daughters of Sir John and Lady Jane Salusbury, two represented as grown women, two swaddled.
The life-size figures lying on the top of the tomb are meticulously represented. Sir John in armour is equipped with sword on the right, and gloves and helmet at his feet. The hunting knife at his left is complete with a miniature knife and fork set nestled in its scabbard a sort of Elizabethan Swiss army knife! His wife in her high ruffed dress lies like a doll, the soles of her feet neatly framed by the ruffles of her voluminous petticoats.
Lady Salusbury’s feet
Two very disreputable fat little male nudes support the crest in the panel at her feet. I’d like to know more about what these figures represent. They look very playful ( and not at all holy) to me. Perhaps someone among my readers can throw more light upon these ugly little men.
At the foot of the tomb, the family crest is supported by two fat frolicking hominids
Before the show opens, stewards calculate the number of points scored by winning contestants at the Llanfarian Show
The Vegetables occupy a separate tent
This is a part of the world where, bucking the trend, the Village Horticultural Show is alive and well, as it has been for most of the last century. It is an extraordinary co-operative effort which unites communities. Everyone has a vital part to play: Committee, competitors, judges, spectators. For just two hours or so a thousand or more exhibits are collected under a marquee or village hall roof, and then, tea taken, the prizes distributed, and old friendships renewed, the whole is dispersed once again leaving no imprint other than the carefully assembled list of winners in the following week’s paper.
I judged the Flowers at Llanfarian Show last Saturday.
It is a heavy responsibility. For me the morning began at 11-30am when I presented myself at the primary school to join eleven other specialist judges, many accompanied by their husbands or wives. We sat on the miniature pupils’ chairs and consumed ham salad with hard boiled egg, coleslaw, beetroot and pickles and thiny sliced brown bread, trifle and strong tea. Conversation was sporadic and a little tense. Judges are mainly recruited from a little farther away, so they know each other less well than the Stewards, all locals who, having presided over the staging of the competitors’ entries, congregate on a separate table for their meal at noon. Judges are also tense at their impending responsibility, some are faced with ranking the merits of widely diverse objects, ( Any item in Applique, An Item of Pottery) others with judging the quality of a slew of extremely similar cakes, jams or flowers. Entries must be rigorously as per schedule – woe betide the judge who fails to notice that an extra bloom found its way into the class for six sweet peas, or who allows a Decorative dahlia to insinuate itself amongst the entries in the Waterlily dahlia class!
The Floral Art judge has perhaps most to fear. Tradition demands that she produce a written critique of each exhibit, which is propped up for all the public to read during the afternoon. These critiques are traditionally encouraging in tone, but nonetheless must expose weaknesses in order that basis for winning entries is generally understood. And the first prize may not go to the arrangement most pleasing to the untutored eye, but to the one most interpretative of the arrangement’s set title. Little wonder that we judges scurry home before the competitors stream in at 2-30pm.
Many locals enter just a few classes with their home grown produce, for the fun of the chance of a prize, but there are also the titans of the show bench who compete at a local show almost every weekend of the summer season, and whose targets are the cups. Special Cups for most points in a class may be won outright through three consecutive wins ( or five spread over time). The big names in local showing have display shelves at home crammed with trophies, some on one year placement, many others won outright, their gleaming sides inscribed with the names of the annual winners of their past. Other cups are Perpetual Cups, returned every season to their awarding show.
The Cups, some are awarded annually, others can be one outright for repeated winners.
One such competitor is Buddug Evans, whose carefully managed garden yields roses, gladioli, geraniums, african marigolds, spray chrysanthemums, petunias, pansies, sweet peas, asters, dahlias and potted plants just as the show schedule demands. It is among the dahlias that competition is particularly hot. Half the length of the hall is devoted to competition in seven distinct subgroups of dahlias, glorious matched trios of strong straight blooms staged in the tall green metal vases which professionals favour. There were up to eight good entries in each of the dahlia classes, so she did not go unchallenged by other skilled growers. Beating Buddug in any contested category has become a target in itself. For total points she was the clear winner.
The Flower Section, dominated by seven classes of dahlias and three of chrysanthemums
At the end of awarding thirty Firsts, Seconds and Thirds in 30 Classes it fell to me to select the Best Exhibit from among the Firsts. Often this falls to trio of dahlias or to a gigantic single chrysantheum bloom the size of a newborn baby’s head. But this year, among the entries in Class 60, ‘Vase of Garden Flowers from Own Garden’ nestled an outstanding fanned display of huge creamy gladiolus spikes, the smaller gladiolus ‘Dancing Queen’ with red blotched throats, creamy decorative dahlias, pure white ball dahlias, spray chrysanthemums and huge white snapdragons. Judging is done while the competitors’ cards are concealed, so it was the final revelation to turn over the label and find this blaze of perfection, and worthy winner of the Best Exhibit Perpetual Cup was the work of another veteran competitor Gwyn Williams.
Best Exhibit – Gwyn Williams’ garden flowers
I left as Councillor Rowland Jones of Llanilar arrived to open the Show, and the public, including Ceredigion MP Mark Williams and his family arrived to scrutinise the tables. I passed the winning exhibit in Class 126 Best Misshapen Vegetable where it lay outside the tent. If winner, farmer Ieuan Jones plans a long flight or coach journey, it seems he has grown the ideal marrow!
The winner in ” Misshapen Vegetable” was Ieuan Jones
A banner commemorating Mabel Pakenham Walsh Photo by Keith Morris
Mabel Pakenham Walsh has been part of the Aberystwyth scenery since the 1980s.
She was always to be seen, around the town or crossing the road near her home in Llanbadarn Village. I remember her walking with sticks, effortfully and painfully slow, and then some years later, after her hip replacements, whizzing around the town with a wheeled shopper-cum-walking frame, her legs powering away like Sonic the Hedgehog. As part of her health regime she swam regularly, and I remember the surprise I felt on first seeing the contrast between her ruddy weathered face and the youthfully smooth white skin of her body.
It was beautiful skin and others must have admired it. There is at least one nude portrait of her which I have seen displayed in the National Library Wales.
For Mabel was both an artist and an artist’s model. There are three of her oil paintings in the collections of the National Library of Wales, two self portraits in her thirties, and a head and shoulders of a saturnine man, identified as J. Warburton. In their collections she has also deposited several boxes of letters from the 1960s to the 1980s which include correspondence with many arts organisations, and with friends and artists including Martin Leman, Maeve Peake, Lord Snowdon, the writer Tom Stoppard, and the wife of the then Archbishop of York, Jean Coggan.
She was a prolific woodcarver, gardener, and proper eccentric. The photographer Homer Sykes recorded the thirty-eight year old Mabel, then resident in Sussex carving one of a series of ornamented toilet seats.
Mabel Pakenham-Walsh, Artist, woodcarver and painter in 1975, carving one of her wooden toilet seats.
She was not rich, but she had original artworks in her home and she was often strikingly dressed. I remember startling hats, and a complicated tweed skirt and jacket, fashioned of many fragments of material cleverly joined, but with the raw edges protruding at the seams. She wore such costumes with great panache.
I got to know her through the gardening club, the rather grandly named Cardiganshire Horticultural Society. Her last lover ( husband?) had also been a member of the CHS, Peter Hague, a loquacious compulsive hoarder whose home up in the hills near Ystrad Meurig was, by his own estimation a graveyard for every piece of rusted machinery he could acquire, and intended, one day, to fix. When I knew him she had moved out to the relative comfort of her terraced house on Heol y Llan, not far from the vet’s in Llanbadarn. He was a gentle man, a compulsive talker, who fed himself largely out of tins. He was known to those with deeper roots than mine as the brother of the formidable Douglas Hague of the Royal Commission for Ancient and Historic Monuments.
Some 15 years ago a remarkable sculpture appeared in one of ancient apple trees which protrude above the wall shielding the backs of these gardens from the widened Llanbadarn Road. It was a huge wooden spider’s web made of twigs, with a realistic rubber spider at its centre. From a passing car or bus it looked very striking. It was in quest of this landmark in the days when I wrote a column for the local paper, The Cambrian News, that I eventually found my way to the front door of Archnoa on Heol y Llan. . A house whose windowsill assemblage of rocks, shells and objets trouve suggested eccentricity within. I was not disappointed.
So I am saddened to learn that Mabel, aged 76 has died. With the panache which characterised her life, her friends and relatives ( she told me she had a houseful of kin in Ireland) assembled round an impromptu blaze on Aberystwyth’s North Beach, and, as the sun went down, her cremated remains and flowers were scattered in the sea at dusk.
Friends of Mabel Pakenham Walsh gather in the firelight on North Beach, Aberystwyth
Photographer Keith Morris attended the occasion and the complete set of pictures may be viewed on his Facebook page. A touching detail he records is the rustic picture frame placed beside the disposable red plastic cremation urn. It displays the words : Well behaved women rarely make history.
Walking along Queen’s Road these days one finds a strangely discordant sight, the 19th century Catholic Church, St Winefride’s, has suddenly found itself encased in security fencing and strident site warning signs. Which is odd because the building is pleasing to look upon, with well tended lawns and a pretty Presbytery House, occupied until just a few months ago, which is framed in roses and hydrangeas. It has always made an uplifting scene in this Conservation Area of Aberystwyth, the only building which is well set back, providing a green oasis of lawn.
Intimidating security fences have appeared around St Winefride’s Church
But all is not well in this idyllic spot, for the Catholic Bishop of Menevia is set upon dispensing with this church, much to the dismay of many of the parishioners, for whom it is of personal and cultural importance. That very lawn is perhaps the key to its undoing, for the site of house, church and garden would accommodate a lucrative development of flats – (what is described in the application as a ‘Quality Mixed Residential Development’). The Bishop plans to bring in the wrecking ball and demolish the lot.
The Presbytery and its pretty garden will be neglected until demolition can be secured.
The Council Planning Department however opposes the demolition of much-loved buildings in a Conservation Area, and the legislation suggests that before this course of action can be considered the owner must put the building up for sale to establish whether an alternative use can be found. And so it is shortly to be put up with a local Agent. Now, while most people trying to sell a slightly shabby but charming building would try to emphasise its best points, it seems the Church has other ideas. The security fencing is an eyesore, and erected as it is upon the lawn, the garden will soon be overgrown and ugly too. The best outcome from the Bishop’s point of view would be to demonstrate that no buyer will match their price, and then re-apply for demolition.
The parishioners meanwhile have not been idling. The Save St Winefride’s campaign has funded surveyors to consider the realistic costs of repairing a sound but somewhat elderly building, and have drawn up plans to renovate the buildings and build an additional Church Hall upon the site. This design is unpretentious, sympathetic, and has been granted Planning Permission by the County Council. The whole project would cost £1.2 million, far less than the £2.7 million estimated by the Bishop’s architects for their impossibly expensive version of the job.
So why not accept the wishes of the congregation? The Bishop has an alternative plan, first promoted in 2008, centred upon a little-known ruin two miles from the town centre in the suburb of Penparcau. Here is another Church, the far more neglected Welsh Martyrs. A brutalist concrete structure from 1968, it has been closed for many years. Few people have even noticed it, for it is down a side road near the Tollgate public house. The new Pevsner described is as “an interesting design, let down by poor finish and detail”. The Bishop wants to pull that down too, and with more justification.
The derelict church of Welsh Martyrs, Penparcau. Photographed by Paul White, http://www.welshruins.co.uk/photo14087508.html#photo
You could, alternatively, put a block of flats here, but Penparcau is not as sought-after as the town centre, the site is less valuable, and the profits would doubtless be less. Instead, the vision is that Catholic worshippers from the town will take one of the rare Sunday buses out to Penparcau and walk down to a newly-built modernist building on the Welsh Martyrs site. It is hard to imagine that this will be a popular choice with worshippers. University students, who include many foreign Catholics will have a yet more daunting journey from their halls of residence on the opposing hill. Townsfolk who have been hatched, matched and dispatched at Queen’s Road for generations would like to go on doing so.
The repercussions continue from a well organised parishioner and community action group which has become more active and vociferous as it has found its views to be ignored by the Church. There have been representations to the Vatican, consultations on Canon Law, opposing teams of surveyors and valuers, a sit-in in the church, an offer of resignation from the Board of Trustees by the incumbent priest. The Diocese of Menevia, though, is a vast catholic administrative region – stretching right down to Swansea. Angry Aberystwyth must seem very insignificant to a property-developer Bishop.
For much more detail visit http://savestwinefrides.co.uk/home.html which gives links to a Dropbox bulging with damning evidence of manipulation behind the scenes.
Among the papers belonging to Elisabeth Inglis Jones is the draft manuscript of a talk she was putting together in later years which reflects upon her career as a writer of novels, biographies and articles. It includes reference to her last book on Augustus Smith of Tresco Abbey, so must have been delivered after 1969, when Miss Inglis jones would have attained seventy years of age. It commences with an account of her first novel, set in her native Wales, and the bruising experience that it set in train.
It is best recorded in her own words. “In April 1929, Starved Fields came out, nicely bound in grey with green lettering. But my joy and delight at seeing it in print was quickly obliterated by the storm which broke over my unhappy head. The widely read South Wales newspaper, The Western Mail immediately launched a full page scarifying attack on the book and its author. This did not gratify my parents who until then had been somewhat elated by my achievement. Then when a favourable review appeared in our local paper it only served to spark off a spate of indignant letters – a correspondence which went on in print for some weeks, and was very embarrassing. Worse still everybody began pinning names to my characters and one irate lady, an old family friend, wrote furiously to my mother saying the kindest thing to think of me was that I was suffering from a diseased mind.
Then suddenly the gales of wrath abated thanks to a certain Mr Herbert Vaughan, a very erudite man and the author of several books, who was related to a great many of our neighbours. His tastes were wholly dissimilar to those of his Cardiganshire cousins who held him in great respect. He had been much amused by Starved Fields and wrote me a very kind and encouraging letter, besides broadcasting his praise of it to all and sundry. Coming from such a literary authority as he was, his relations had to pipe down and we were soon on good terms again…”
Herbert Vaughan had himself published, three years earlier The South Wales Squires (Methuen 1926) an anecdotal history which had also been ill received locally because of the eccentricities he revealed. However he was of consequence in the region and had held the honour of High Sheriff of Cardiganshire in 1916, so his dismissal of the Western Mail’s as ‘spiteful and misleading’ will indeed have carried some weight.
It led me to spend a fruitful afternoon winding through microfilms of the Western Mail in the National Library of Wales in search of this offended and offending review.
The reviewer was Frederick J Mathias and the piece is entitled: A new writer on a Queer Wales. His first priority was to identify the new novelist – “Miss Elizabeth Inglis Jones …. Her story mainly concerns two unkempt Cardiganshire mansions and their derelict and generally disgusting inhabitants.” It is significant that Elizabeth and her publisher had not sought to make her gender obvious, for in the book her byline is E. Inglis Jones. Initials, or an ambiguous cognomen were a common stratagem by which women authors sought to receive a more serious hearing. At a similar time Somerville and Ross ( Experiences of an Irish RM) built a loyal readership of many years before they revealed themselves to be women.
So the odium of writing about flawed Welsh characters is compounded by the revealed identity of the author, and the Western Mail, untypically for a book review, included a head shot of Miss Inglis Jones to press the matter home. After a series of quotations from the book, Mathias concluded “In short in this book Welsh people are not allowed to speak or eat or look or live like ordinary persons. One poor man was even short because he was only five foot nine: surely the tall men must be giants in Tregaron. The story begins in 1896 and yet its barbarism suggests a prehistoric age. This is a pity because with her clever pen Miss Inglis Jones might have created a precedent by doing justice to Wales, instead of providing a sensation for the amusement of her English friends.” In a final flourish the enraged Mathias declared “The Tragedy of Wales is that Thomas Hardy was not a Welshman”.
It is difficult not to picture Frederick Mathias as a short, angry, racist Welshman. He even objected in his synopsis of plot that “The only real gentlemen who appear in the book are Englishmen”. Which is unnecessarily huffy since Inglis Jones’ Englishmen may be politely spoken, and tall, but they are unexciting and spineless creatures who get discarded by the women they court.
The publishers, Constable, responded by placing a large advertisement amongst the following week’s book reviews – A Welsh novel by Welsh author – and an extract from a favourable review.
The publishers, Constable placed an advertisement in 18th April 1929 with a view to countering the damning review in the previous week’s paper.
This advertisement also throws light upon the confusing question of Miss Inglis Jones’ given name. Was she Elizabeth with a z or Elisabeth with an s? Readers of Peacocks in Paradise, who are the most numerous of her present-day fans, will know her with an s. But inspection of her early titles shows that in her first few novels, Starved Fields (1929), Crumbling Pageant (1932) and Pay thy Pleasure (1939) she was Elizabeth with a z. And her supporters and critics in 1929 addressed letters to her as Elizabeth. It seems that not long after moving permanently to London, she adopted the more distinctive spelling by which she is now generally known.
( Elizabeth Inglis Jones’ debut novel is described in the preceding blog)
Viewed from the beach, it became clear that the sea had excavated a cave into the void beneath the shelter. A group of police assembled as the tide receded, to prevent risky exploration beneath the hole in the roof. I am told this promentory was once the site of tha Aberystwyth gallows. Another bystander said there had formerly been changing rooms accessible from the sands below the shelter.
