The Royal Welsh Show

      Yesterday and a trip along the picturesque and busy Mid-Wales line to Builth deep in the Le Pays de Galles Profonde, and day 3 of the annual Royal Welsh Show.  Our first visit and my first visit to an agricultural show in years - as a child there were trips to the Lincolnshire show and the East of England Show and, possibly, the Royal Norfolk Show.  The overcast sky and then the rain did little to dampen our curiosity and we did a lot of walking. Fascinating in themselves, these events are far more importantly integral to rural life - farming can be a rather lonely way of life, and agricultural shows, like market days, are a means of connecting the farming community.  They are also a concrete example of the Enlightenment and the Agricultural Revolution in which competition was used as a means of improving animal husbandry.
    The Royal Welsh is also an important social event in the life of Wales as a whole and indeed the rest of the UK with competitors coming from all the home nations.  It was, as you can image, very busy, and a first visit can be a little overwhelming as there is so much to see - countless trade stands, events and most importantly the competitions.  

     Growing up in a small Lincolnshire market town in the late Sixties & early Seventies there was a weekly cattle market.  Sadly these local markets have now, by and large, been closed and the increasing urbanisation of the UK, the growth of supermarkets, and the urbanisation of culture generally has led to more of a distance between country and town.  Events such as The Royal Welsh are a very important way to link these two communities.  No farmers, no food.

St Mary, Builth Wells

     Last week's jaunt took us up into Powys and Llandridnod Wells, Builth and Llanwrtyd Wells.  Llandridnod is a quite extraordinary place, as though a late nineteenth century suburb of London had been uprooted and then dropped into rural  mid-wales - all Queen Anne revival, Olde English, plus the odd splash of Gothic revival, Arts and Crafts and Art Nouveau.  A rather laid back sort of place, perhaps lacking in direction.  I have never seen so many intact Victorian and Edwardian shop fronts.  Extraordinary.  But far too many parked cars to make photography easy.

     Then on to Builth Wells, one of the three market towns of the old county of Breconshire. (It still has a functioning cattle market - quite a rare thing to find these days esp for someone like me from eastern England where most have disappeared.) A small attractive place hugging the south bank of the Wye with a long, narrow high street. There is plenty to admire both in terms of townscape and individual buildings - though there was nothing outstanding.  I did however like the neo-Georgian Post Office.
     As with Llandridnod, Builth's heyday was probably in the nineteenth century - everything spoke of a relatively comfortable provincial life.  Food, however, was my big concern as we were walking around but I did make the effort and take some pictures of the parish church. To be honest since visiting Oystermouth and Llancarfan I've been a bit hesitant to take photographs of churches - hence I snapped nothing of the slightly bizarre, and florid, Holy Trinity, Llandridnod.

     St Mary's Builth, standing in a large graveyard full of monuments, is a mix of Victorian and Medieval. The tower is massive and blunt, 13th centrury; the church, which dates from 1875 and is the work of John Norton, is High Victorian Gothic, muscular and tough. Mincer-plate tracery in some of the windows. Perhaps a little unlovely though well detailed in places.  Hard to believe it is nearly 150 years old - will it ever weather and mellow? The east end of tower, chancel and organ chamber is well composed.  But all together more successful perhaps if the interior wasn't so cold and cavernous. It's the sort of building that Bodley should have got hold of and decorated within an inch of its life. At present it just looks tatty and barren. It really needs some help.  I'm pretty sure I saw day-light through the roof.

     I suppose too that as a gay man I ought to be grateful that this place trumpets its inclusiveness. It however does nothing for me. A church is a temple of transformation, God orientated, where the worshipper encounters and participates in and with the divine, it is not a place for the semi-secular centred upon our selves. For all the well meaning banners etc I really couldn't worship there. Sorry to bang on about this yet again but I'm slowly feeling my Anglicanism wither and die and it's a far from pleasant experience.  Trouble is that being an Anglican these days is hardly intellectually or spiritually or even aesthetically satisfying.