St Mary, Swansea

     St Mary's is a big boned church. Victorian and hefty. Worldly. It stands on an old site in the centre of the city, the mother church of the city.  However the original church has long disappeared, and the current church is the replacement of a replacement, and, to be honest, doesn't move me much. 

     St Mary's is the work of Sir Arthur Blomfield (1829-99) - that prodigious but not exactly top-rank architect whom we have encountered before in Oundle. Alas this church, which dates from 1894-8, is one of his more pedestrian offerings. One can imagine any number of similar churches populating the Victorian suburbs of Britain, cold and dutiful. It replaces a Georgian church design by one of the Woodard brothers (William) who also designed St Anne's Bewdley.  Judging by photograph evidence it was quite rustic structure, with little of the Baroque polish of St Anne's. The eastern chapel - the Herbert Chapel - escaped the fell hand of Woodward and Blomfield only to fall under the fell hand of the Blitz when St Mary's was gutted.  The church was rebuilt (1954-9) by Sir Percy Thomas, Leslie Moore (the son of the great Temple Moore) having already resigned before work began. And Thomas's fell hand can be seen in the replacement for the Hebert Chapel - Gothic nearly stripped of all spirit, and feeling and looking like an electricity substation.

     Happily the interior is altogether of a different order of things, though in much need of repair. Even George Pace who did behaved himself reasonable well at St Mary's - the only really jarring object is the font cover.

     Well, I wrote those words in December 2023 and have only today gone back to St Mary's to take some photographs of the interior.  Sadly, I couldn't get into the rebuilt Herbert Chapel to see the reredos by the artist John Piper - it's all marbled paper rather like the reredos he designed for Newport Cathedral.  Even for a building of this scale the interior architecture is a little on the heavy side, and roof on the thin side a bit like one of those oddly skeletal roofs Pugin designed for his churches.  More heft required.  Alas, none of the furnishings are quite up to the scale of the church though there are couple of fine icons.  As I said over a year ago now, all rather worldly.

Tair Trysor Pontypridd

      The Eisteddfod was our first visit to Pontypridd and we were were rather pleasantly surprised.  By no means as dour as expected.  The site of the Eisteddfod, Ynysangharad War Memorial Park, was trim, well maintained with carpet bedding, lido, bandstand, and a smart bowls club. All a proper municipal park should be. It contains the memorial to Evan James and his son James, residents of Pontypridd, who between them wrote 'Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau', 'Land of my Fathers'.  

     Pontypridd stands at the point where the river Rhondda joins the Taff, making it an important road and rail junction in the South Wales Valleys.  There are, of course, some issues as with any town this size: the road system is understandably intrusive, and disruptive to the urban fabric; the shopping area was, sadly like many, a bit rundown.  In the last few years quite a bit of redevelopment has taken place in the town centre.  I don't rate the architectural quality of what has been done but it has, amongst other things, opened the main shopping street to the river Taff, and that is a good thing.  This part of the development, replacing the 1960s Taff Vale Shopping Centre, consists of three separate buildings: a public library, and two office blocks, one of which houses 'Transport for Wales'.  I had to smile seeing the 'T' logo of Transport for Wales on the roof of the building as it reminded me of the vast illuminated 'T's that decorated the corner of roof of 'Fordson Community Singery' in Aldous Huxley's 'Brave New World'.  On what floor, I wonder, do the orgies take place?

     Architecturally though, Pontypridd, an essentially Victorian town, has three treasures.  The first is the famous and quite extraordinary 'Old Bridge', a breath-taking leap of stone over the churning waters of the river Taff.  It was completed in 1756, on the fourth attempt.  It is the work of William Edwards (1719-1789), autodidact, engineer, architect and Methodist minister.  I have talked about him before, briefly, in my post about that wonderful bridge by the falls at Cenarth built by his son David.  The Cenarth bridge looks quite traditional compared to this daring design. Strangely enough it looks a bit like a Late Roman/Byzantine bridge, such as the Karamagara in Asia Minor.  Or one of those bridges erected under the Ottoman Empire.  The likeness must be purely coincidental. 

      For the first fifty years or so after opening the 'Old Bridge' stood in open country.  However by the beginning of the 20th century the town had grown rich enough to call in a London based architect, the admirable Henry Hare, to design the new council offices, and a rather wonderful job he made of it.  Stylistically it almost defies categorisation.  Most likely historians will refer to a building of this type as 'Edwardian' or 'Free Style'.  It owes a debt to both Richard Norman Shaw and the Arts and Crafts movement.  As with any building of that period it is exquisitely detailed - the result, I believe, of drawing out the details full scale.  The slate roof is beautifully graded - a delight.  The sculpture is by J D Forsyth.  As you can see below the building does suffer, however, from being on a busy junction.

     Sadly, I have no images of the third treasure to offer you, and it was not at all obvious to us from the street.  It was only when we entered what we thought was just a bakers (we were after the chicken pies), that the full, busy (if not chaotic) splendour was revealed.  This is the 'The Prince's Café', a virtually intact Art Deco bakers, café and grill room.  You will have to believe me when I tell you the place is a delight.  Or go there yourself.

The National Eisteddfod

     Earlier this week we took the train to Pontypridd in the South Wales Valleys and the National Eisteddfod.  It is the most important arts festival in Wales, and with the Royal Welsh Show the main social event of the Principality. It is a great pity that BBCR3 does not broadcast annually from the Eisteddfod.  It really should as the standard of performers, as we can testify, is excellent.

     The Eisteddfod is a moveable feast, having a different venue each year.  In recent years it has become the custom to divide the Eisteddfod site into a number of Maes (fields) A - D.  We spent our time in Maes A, the outer court of the Temple, the Court of the Gentiles. To be honest I felt somewhat underwhelmed by it all. After a hour and a half I felt ready to leave.  It wasn't that I can speak very little Welsh; this was south Wales and there were at times very few Welsh speakers to be herd; so much so that at one point seeing a rather nice vintage car parked in the middle of the Maes the bf (who has the Welsh) quipped 'Spot a Welsh speaker and win a car!' Only it all felt a little purposeless. There were plenty of exhibitors, such as the National Museum of Wales, the Senedd, and WNO and the NOW, but they were unvisited; the staff sitting around idly browsing their phones. 'Y Lle Celf' - the pavilion of the fine & applied arts - could, at first sight, be described as perfunctory.  However I don't think that would be entirely fair.

     The crepuscular heart of the Eisteddfod is the Pafiliwn, part concert hall and part Telesterion, the Holy of Holies, where the main competitions and the majority of ceremonies take place.  Perhaps it best thought of as a ship's engine deep in the dark and unseen hold of the ship generating meaning and purpose.  It could also be thought of as a womb.  For some reason it was placed - fenced in - at the very southern apex of the site right beside the the noisy A470.  The result was a continual hum of traffic that really wasn't satisfactory for the audience or fair to the performers.
     I've chosen my words deliberately because, like all Arts festivals, the Eisteddfod is a sort of 'Mystery religion' - a secular version of Eleusis.*  'Spilt religion' made visible.  After all it has its own vestments and rituals - initiations and such, and most likely its own taboos.  The speaking of English upon the main stage is perhaps one such.  Certainly as we entered the inner enclosure there was sense of something set apart, that we stood in the presence of something important.  A small but telling point here is the almost total lack of signage; we had no idea where the entrance to the actual Pafiliwn was; perhaps it was sort of knowledge that was whispered to the initiate only.  Oddly, standing in front of that large, blank and somewhat aloof structure I was put in mind of the Kotai Jingu shrine at Ise Jingu in Japan, the holiest site in the nation.  An extreme comparison perhaps.  Rather, it is the Mishkan, the Tabernacle.

     In the end we both agreed we preferred the Royal Welsh Show.  As you may already be able to tell, I certainly felt an ambiguity about the Eisteddfod. Perhaps I shall return, bearing in my mind the secret of a successful visit is to decide what to watch in the Pafiliwn and build your day around that, otherwise it just becomes aimless wandering.  I may even submit a painting or two and see how I get along.

* I think there is tendency in arts festivals towards 'in' and 'out' groups.  It is probably inevitable. I can imagine that this was true of The Aldeburgh Festival in the Britten/Pears years.

St Nicholas, Swansea

     Down to the old docks and the rather charming little church dedicated to St Nicholas, the patron saint of travelers. I walked from the station down High St, Castle Square and Wynd St., before crossing a dual carriageway - the noisome A4067 - to what was once the political and mercantile hub of the city. It is now a backwater.  Wynd St is about the most architecturally interesting street left in the city. It was once the commercial hub of city with any number of banks. It is now the hub of the city's 'night-time economy' and it is looking very down at heal. One building in particular looking ready to shed quantities of cornice down onto the street below. 

     The church was built in 1868 as part of the mission to seamen. The architect was Benjamin Bucknall (1833-95), the architect of the extraordinary, but unfinished, Woodchester Park.  He was also architect of Swansea Grammar School.  It was Benjamin's nephew William who was business partner of Sir John Ninian Comper qv.  St Nicholas's is a simple bi-cameral church in the Neo-Norman style, and I rather like it. Partly because it is so unexpected, like a little village church fell asleep one day, woke up and found itself by a vast, often ugly, city. It is now the 'Mission Gallery'.  The apse, as is fitting, is the best bit.

     The church stands at the end s end of Gloucester Place; on the west side of the street is rather fine but austere terrace. They look as though they've popped over from Ireland. These few streets between the docks and the A4067 (what is now called the Maritime Quarter) are really the only area of the city where any real numbers of Georgian houses are left - though are suspect one or two more are to be found lurking behind later facades on the High St.

Weobley Castle

   A jaunt onto Gower this morning and a visit to Weobley Castle, romantically set high above the salt marshes on the north coast of the peninsula with wide views across the Loughor estuary and far to the Brecon Beacons. On the landward side the castle stands beside a working farm. As castles go not at all large, but a comfortable fortified manor house, the best remaining example of its type in Glamorgan according to the Buildings of Wales volume on the county. Some nice architectural details too.  In places the ruins seem to merge with the natural outcropping rocks. 

   From there to quite my favourite village on Gower, Llanmadog, wth sheep grazing in the village street and ancient stone walls and even older parish church. A place to treasure. We took a brief walk along the coastal path towards the pine woods of Whiteford Burrows and Cwm Ivy Torr, a place of utter silence and solitude. Le Pays de Galles profonde. A truly remarkable place, very atmospheric if not faintly disturbing in its emptiness. I can quite understand its folkloric associations. From there back to civilisation and the lovely Cwm Ivy cafe for tea and cake.

Gower

      We've been away for a couple of nights, staying at Port Eynon on Gower. It's been just the ticket. We've done a lot of walking, exploring the coast line between Port Eynon and Oxwich. Beautiful, remote and empty. The sort of landscape that sometimes leaves me a little uneasy. I really do need some humanity, and that is one of the reasons why I found lockdown so hard to bear. Gower is, in Diane Williams words, 'a land set apart'. Somewhere quite special. A poetic, 'thin' place.

      Wednesday afternoon took us to within sight of The Sands at Lower Slade. Yesterday we went further walking over to Oxwich via Oxwich Green. Horton and Oxwich Green are both delightful, but quite different. The last time I was in Oxwich was Boxing Day 2015 in very different weather; overcast and wild. The beach the haunt of fearless surfers. Yesterday it was full of holiday makers.

     Lunchtime was an extraordinary treat: we had lunch at The Beach House, Hywel Griffith's Michelin starred restaurant at Oxwich. The whole thing was purely serendipitous - the bf having, unbeknownst to me, emailed the restaurant in case of a cancellation - only for them to contact us when we were in Oxwich Green. It was needless to say marvellous. I had 'Flowering Courgette', 'Carmarthenshire Pork Belly' and 'Bara Brith Soufflé'. I'm still thinking about that soufflé. It was just exquisite. And the sherry, a Fernando De Castilla Cream Sherry, that was pretty damn good too. The return walk to Port Eynon was a sluggish affair.

     And then Friday morning a brief stop on the return journey in Penmaen to draw and photograph the church. Mostly Victorian, 1854-5 by R K Penson. Best 'Cambridge Camden Society' approved Middle Pointed. Lovely position on triangular village green.