Category Archives: Ceredigion past

More on the memorial

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by The Curious Scribbler

A number of readers of my last blog have commented that 1923 is not especially tardy for the erection of a war memorial. The Royal Artillery memorial by CS Jagger in Hyde Park was not unveiled until 1925, and my fellow historical  blogger in the Essex village of Great Dunmow reports that their much less elaborate memorial was unveiled in 1921.http://www.essexvoicespast.com/war-and-remembrance-the-making-of-a-war-memorial/

In search of more background I spent a pleasant hour in the Ceredigion Archives http://archifdy-ceredigion.org.uk/  which afforded me the joy of inhaling the fragrance of a bound volume of 52 issues of the Cambrian News for 1923.  An experience far more evocative than scrutinising the screen of a microfiche reader.  Also, an envelope of world war I Aberystwyth miscellanea revealed several choice ephemera: an estimate and appeal for funds from the War Memorial Committee in 1921, the programme for a three day fund raising bazaar in 1923, and the programme of the actual unveiling ceremony held on Friday 14 September 1923.   I also had a trawl round the internet.

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The war memorial committee handbill, flanked by the programmmes for the three day bazaar and the unveiling on 14 September 1923

The War Memorial Committee, put out a hand bill in November 1921 with an artist’s impression of the Rutelli monument.  It informs the reader that “the bronze statues, palms and dragon is being executed at Rome and is already far advanced”, while the “65 foot column and base will be composed of local stone, a gift of the Corporation of Aberystwyth”.  Actually some or all of the bronze statuary may have pre- existed the commission.  A trawl of the internet finds the identical twin of our Winged Victory in the Piazza Vittorio Veneto in Palermo, on a column designed by Ernesto Basile, erected to commemorate the unification of Sicily and Italy. It was unveiled in 1911.  She balances on the same ball as Aberystwyth’s figure, but is sited on a more ornately carved 28 metre plinth.

Victory by Mario Rutelli, on the monumento ai Caduti in palermo

The monument at the end of the Piazza Vittorio Veneto was designed by Ernesto Basile, to commemorate the unification of Sicily and Italy. After world war I,  Victory, by Mario Rutelli was set upon the the top.

The winged Victory in Palermo

The Piazza Vittorio Veneto, Palermo
http://palermo.eventseekr.com/war-monument/tourist-attractions-sightseeing/venue/653011

Rutelli’s Winged Victory for Aberystwyth must have been a later commission, years after Palermo’s monument was updated.This sets one thinking about our buxom Aberystwyth wench, Humanity emerging from the Horrors of War.

Humanity emerging from the Horrors of War, Aberystwyth

She bears a close resemblance to the girls who can be found wrestling with sundry water monsters in Rutelli’s Fountain of the Naiads in the Piazza della Republica, Rome.  When these four figures were installed in 1902 their realism and saucy image created a considerable storm.  Representing the oceans, the rivers, the lakes  and the underground waters each embraced an allegorical animal: horse, snake, swan, and strangely finned fish and they were felt to be doing so with excessive languor and or enthusiasm.The guide books assert than an additional challenge to the public morals of Rome was that the naiads were modelled upon twin sisters, high price Roman prostitutes of the day.  A fence was erected around the fountain to curtail the view from ladies who might be offended, or prevent incursions by lewd young men.

Fontana delle Naiadi, The Naiad of the Oceans –                                                                                    Photo © Benedetto Dell’Ariccia

Compare the faces of the Naiad of the Oceans, the reclining naiaid of underground waters and of Aberystwyth’s Humanity.  I suspect she is one and the same girl.

Naiad of the underground waters Photographed by Massimo Merlini

River naiad by Rutelli, in an abandoned pose

To return, though to the Aberystwyth documents:

On their handbill in November 1921 the War Memorial Committee stated that the estimate for the memorial was £5,000 of which £2,000 had been subscribed so far. The rest was slow in coming in.

The Cambrian News of 1923 shows feverish fundraising activity – for the monument was nearing completion and more than £2600 had still to be raised.  In spring there were a series of Fund-raising teas given by members of the local gentry, – in March Lord Ystwyth’s tea raised £4-14-0d, and a week later John Williams’ tea raised £4-10-0d.  But much more money was needed.

Alderman J Barclay Jenkins had, in his then capacity as mayor of Aberystwyth, cut had the first sod on the castle ground in January 1922, and remained chairman of the Memorial Committee. When the new mayor, Councillor Captain Edward Llewellin took on the post the following November he remarked that  “he was taking on a job” and would have to do his share to clear the deficit, “ for the memorial was there now, and the debt had to be cleared”.

The solution was the Three-day bazaar, held in the College Buildings, the former railway hotel which had become the home of the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth.  Lord Ystwyth, a founder of the College, presided. Daily it was opened by a different local dignitary, ( from each of whom tradition would have required a substantial donation) and the townswomen strove mightily with stalls devoted to cakes, needlework, handicrafts, knitting, flowers, and games including Finger Football. By close of business on Friday 14th September, the bazaar had raised £2,300, and with a small shortfall the unveiling took place the same day with a printed programme to mark the event. Hymns were sung in both Welsh and English.

The Cambrian News reported the facts and figures the following Friday.  One hundred and eleven names from the Borough appear on the plaques. Lord Ystwyth, “aged though sprightly, slowly mounted the steps to pay tribute to our glorious dead”.  The Cambrian News, though thorough in its reporting, expresses no opinion on the monument itself, confining itself to a series of facts and figures: the total cost of the monument had been over £7000, the 65 foot column was of stone from Ystrad Meurig Quarry, the palm leaves on its shaft each 13 foot long.  The figure of Ball and Victory was 15 foot tall, and the figure at the base 14 foot high.  No adjectives at all encompass the description.

The Italian sculptor Rutelli did not attend.  I wonder whether Humanity was actually a refugee from a pre-war ornamental commission, possibly one as a naiad?   If so, her creator may not have wished to be present to fully justify her re-assignment to so much less frivolous a purpose.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Aberystwyth’s raunchy war memorial

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by The Curious Scribbler

There is a very chilly naked woman emerging from a thicket on the sea front at Aberystwyth.   She faces the sea, in the teeth of every westerly gale, on the margin of the ground once occupied by the Norman castle.  She is, to say the least, a well built girl, larger than life and fashioned in bronze.  No wispy maiden she, but a flesh and blood woman with strong thighs, pert, full breasts, large capable hands and a purposeful expression.

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The bronze figure at the base of Aberystwyth war memorial

 

As the authors of the recent Pevsner sedately remark, “ Unexpectedly sensual for a Non-conformist country”.

For this huge empowered woman is the lower ornament on the Aberystwyth War Memorial, erected to commemorate the dead of the First World War.  Rising from her octagonal plinth is a  tapered shaft of stone, and on top of it a pretty, rather fey angel with billowing dress and an elegant pair of wings.  She appears to be about to lob a wreath of laurel, hoop-la style, onto the head of her companion below.

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The Winged Victory atop the column throws a wreath of laurel

 

The memorial is the work of an Italian sculptor, Mario Rutelli, and was erected fairly long after the close of war, in 1923.  The angel above is, apparently, the Winged Victory, whilst the powerful nude represents Humanity emerging from the Horrors of War.  The bronze thicket from which she strains to escape is thought by some to be seaweed, by others to be rifles transmuted back into bushes.

Later tablets on the plinth commemorate the Aberystwyth dead of the Second World War, and the monument is the final destination of the Poppy day parade.

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The memorial stands in the full blast of the westerlies off Cardigan Bay

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The memorial stands in the full blast of the westerlies off Cardigan Bay

The winter sun goes down over Cardigan Bay

The winter sun goes down over Cardigan Bay

This western extremity of the headland north of the harbour is a place of great beauty, commanding views along the coast southward to the sharply truncated cliff of Alltwen.   Framed by woodland a little inland from the sea squats a grey stone mansion, recently released by its new owner from a dense surrounding of self-seeded sycamore and ash.  This was the home of Matthew Lewis Vaughan Davies, later Lord Ystwyth, Liberal MP for Aberystwyth from 1895 to 1921.  Lord Ystwyth was a bit of a philanderer in his life and died at the great age of 94.   Posthumously, historians have judged him harshly.  However he was undoubtedly a mover and shaker in his time, founder among other organisations, of the Royal Welsh Agricultural Show, and in 1923 he was made Honorary Freeman of the Borough of Aberystwyth.  It appears that it was his influence which provided his home town with what is surely the least sombre war memorial in the land.

War memorial sculpture by Mario Rutelli

A handsome girl, Humanity emerging from the Horrors of War, Aberystwyth

Bring in the bulldozer!

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By The Curious Scribbler

There is a smallholding for sale not far from Aberystwyth near Lledrod.  With customary overstatement the local agent, Jim Raw Rees begins their particulars “Rarely does such an opportunity come to the market..”     The price has been reduced to £150,000 for 12 acres, a bungalow and outbuildings.

But what buildings!  If there is something that Ceredigion has excelled at in the 20th century it is mean rural dwellings.  Set on a south facing slope is a small red brick bungalow of repellent appearance, not that old, just small and ugly, but with planning permission to become less so.  Paul White, who has devoted much of his life to photographing ruins in Wales, both grand mansions and modest farms and outbuildings has been along to take these evocative photos in black and white.   He suggests it looks like a railway cottage escaped from its natural habitat.

The derelict red brick bungalow at Lluest Newydd, near Lledrod
Copyright Paul White

Blocking the view, or more poetically  “in the eye of the sun” to quote Raw Rees, is a range of even stranger out-buildings – part masonry, part corrugated iron.   Why those three tall doorways and above each the domestic style upstairs window? Why does the roof sit directly upon these windows?  Is this one of those abortive self-build projects which ran into despair?

If the whole site were razed to the ground the south facing hillside would warm the cockles of a horse or goat owner, or make a happy field for a great assortment of poultry.  And today far more attractive modern vernacular buildings are being put up for more enlightened owners.

Paul’s pictures distil what is ugliest about Lluest Newydd.  It has a place in history, but let us hope is soon loses its present foothold on the hillside.  According to Zoopla it has received 500 hits in the last month.  Surely salvation, notwithstanding our almost incessant rain, is in sight?

Outbuilding at Lluest Newydd

Outbuilding at Lluest Newydd

 

Pictures copyright Paul White see http://www.welshruins.co.uk

 

The Joy of Cats

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by The Curious Scribbler

It is lovely having cats in the house again.   I make my morning cup of tea and take it back to bed.  Up the stairs with heavy tread come Boris and Bertha, six month old siblings.  Boris bags the prime position on my chest, purring vigorously, Bertha winds her tail around my face and settles down beside him.  It is difficult to guide my tea mug to my lips.

Boris and Bertha

Boris and Bertha, the kittens

You’ll be hearing more about Boris and Bertha, the latest in a line of distinguished tabby cats to live in our stone house in the hills.

The first was Tomcat.  Unimaginatively named by us he was a big tabby, proud possessor of his testicles, who marched into our house one day and stayed.  My young daughter was entranced.  My baby son, seated in his Maclaren buggy, took immediate offence –  holding his breath until he turned blue, and then emitting a square-mouthed wail of affront.  But it wasn’t long before Tomcat and he were snuggled amicably upon a beanbag, the latter grasping the former’s silky ear in his fat little fist.  Tomcat spent the days at home and the nights in feral pursuits.  Some mornings he’d return with a rabbit, his fur rimed with dew from the long grass and the edges of his ears laced in black with a new crop of rabbit fleas, reluctantly rehomed from his cooling prey.  I kept flea powder for these occasions.

Tomcat grew old and eventually left us, probably to die.  Before he went he brought home a successor, a skinny teenage tom of the same colouring.  For two days they ate together and slept together in the same bed.  Then Tomcat disappeared.  We called the newcomer Kevin.  He proved to be a superb addition to the family.

Then there were Sharon and Darren,  Kevin’s kittens by a feral farm cat he brought home.   They streaked around the house chasing, rolling and scaling curtains and sofa backs.  Darren was beautiful, a mackerel tabby with intricately striped body.  Sharon had the circular target on her flank.  We called her, affectionately, the little limited cat.  There hadn’t been quite enough material to make Sharon, and she had to go to the vet as a kitten to repair an abdominal hernia.  We thought she had been slightly short-changed in the brain department too, but we loved her.

Dolores was our next cat.  A feisty young tabby female from an eccentrically run private animal sanctuary.  She was not as soppy  as her predecessors – someone somewhere perhaps had closed a door on the tip of her tail and the end vertebra  was crooked and sensitive.  You couldn’t run your hand up to the tip of Dolores’ tail.

You may detect a strand of tabby racism in this narrative.  And the story reached yet farther back.  This house has always had a tabby cat.  One day a knock on my door revealed a lovely lady from Wisbech who had passed the war years with her mother as a blitz refugee in this house.  She came with photographs.  And there was her mother, seated with her hosts Mr and Mrs Daniels, against the pine end of the house.  Standing behind them is their schoolteacher daughter, Mary Ann Daniel, holding in her arms a big Cardiganshire tabby, the very image of the indomitable Kevin and very possibly a direct ancestor.

Mary Ann Daniels holds the family tabby in 1940. Seated in front are her parents and their evacuee guest

Mary Ann Daniels holds the family tabby in 1940. Seated in front are her parents and their evacuee guest, the photographer’s mother.

So while feral cats of other shades and patterns pass through the neighbourhood, perhaps contributing to the squalling spats or eerie yowlings in the night, Tomcat, Kevin, Sharon, Darren and Dolores saw our children from babyhood to independence, and when Dolores died of a septic foxbite, the house was strangely bereft.   Boris and Bertha now continue the tradition.  They were born in May a few miles up the river where their mother was in the care of the Cats Protection League.  A couple of months ago they re-encountered her.  She was leaving the vet with her fresh operation scar, a microchip and a new name.  She looked with disinterest at her mewing kittens in my cat carrier, waiting for their immunizations.  She was going back to her new home.

 

A Welsh gentleman’s link with the Chelsea Physic Garden

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by The Curious Scribbler

When I visited the Chelsea Physic Garden a couple of years ago I received a charming little ticket inscribed in the blank middle ‘Admit One’. The 18th century engraved decoration of the card showed exotic palms, banana trees, agaves, a well-built and scantily clad lady, ( The Goddess Flora I presume?) and a sturdy and equally flimsily veiled cherub, or more accurately, a putto. Flora rests her bare foot upon the works of Philip Miller, (gardener of the Physic Garden and author of eight editions of the Gardener’s Dictionary 1732-1768) and of Hans Sloane, the garden’s benefactor.

Day entry ticket for Chelsea Physic Garden

Day entry ticket for Chelsea Physic Garden

I had seen this design before. Amongst the ephemera of one of Ceredigion’s great houses I came across an original, in which, instead of the terse “Admit One” the central panel reads:
Mr David Lewis The Bearer, a Member of the Society of Apothecaries of London, is intitled to visit their Garden at Chelsea, as often as he pleases, at convenient Hours. No servant is to receive from him any acknowledgement on that Account.

Membership pass: Mr David Lewis, a member of the Society of Apothecaries of London

On the reverse were written three names: Hugh French, Master, E.D.G. Fafield, and Wm. Henry Higden, Wardens.

The reverse of the card names the Master and Wardens
The Archivist at the Chelsea Physic Garden was able to tell me that the Society of Apothecaries appointed a new Master annually, so Mr David Lewis’s card was issued in 1807-1808.
Lewis is not a rare name in Wales, but this David Lewis was almost certainly a local gentleman, the owner of a 199 acre estate, Cefn yr Yn, which was located about 12 miles inland from Aberaeron in the fertile Aeron Valley. His estate was surveyed in 1787 and showed it divided into four tenanted farms, two of which had very extensive gardens which may have produced herbs.
His membership pass to the Apothecaries Garden ended up in the archives of Nanteos (see last post) amongst unsorted papers dating from the life of William Edward Powell. W.E. Powell inherited Nanteos, one of the four great estates of Ceredgion, in 1809 at age 21 and promptly set about an extensive program of house and garden improvements, egged on by the influence of Welsh architect John Nash and his circle. Very possibly he borrowed David Lewis’ membership card in order to familiarise himself with the most fashionable trees and plants in London. Certainly a Tulip tree, a gigantic Ginkgo and an Oriental Plane are among the prestigious trees which mark out Nanteos as a historic garden of distinction.

Nanteos in 1995 before its recent refurbishment as a country house hotel

Nanteos in 1995 before its recent refurbishment as a country house hotel