St David's II: The Interior

   This was not my first visit to St David's. I had visited once before with my parents, and standing there in the nave the cumulative aesthetic and spiritual strength of this building brought my mother to tears. It is impossible, I think, not to be moved.
The nave possesses an immense spaciousness. That was what struck me first on this my latest visit.  Only then did I notice the architecture: the great slope of the floor as it rises towards the pulpitum at the east end; the ornate Transitional arcades and combined triforium and clerestory and the way it all leans so precariously backwards; and finally the incredible, the immense late Gothic ceiling with its great pendant bosses, the last thing to be added to the cathedral before the Reformation. The cumulative is indeed almost overwhelming.

  This is all much grander architecture than at Brecon, but there is that same sense of the parochial - a feeling amplified by the more intimate scale of architecture at the east end. The cathedral is filled with beautiful things: there are the pale late Gothic choir stalls situated under the central tower, and the wide meadows of encaustic tiles designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott in the choir, aisles and transepts.  They had a layer of richness and apart from the east wall of the chancel, with its three panels of  mosaic by Salviati, are the only evidence that he had been this way.  The sanctuary, however, is stilled paved with its original Medieval tiles, possibly made over in Malvern.  The prominent tomb in the chancel belongs to Edmund Tudor, 2nd husband of the remarkable Lady Margaret Beaufort (we've come across her before at Bourne Abbey) and father and grandfather to Henry VII & Henry VIII respectively.  It originally stood in the choir of Greyfriars in Camarthen and was moved here at the Dissolution of the Monasteries.  The shrine of St David has recently been restored and modern icons added.  I'm not sure I like them as much as an original Greek one that's on display in the south transept. They are far too delicate in execution for the scale of the building.

St David's Cathedral I

   On Sunday we drove over to St David's - one the most remarkable places in Britain, remote and ancient; out on a peninsular in north Pembrokeshire, on the very edge of  Wales. A place where the veil between the worlds seems very thin.  The little city, which is Britain's smallest and is really hardly more than a large village, was packed tight with visitors, however slipping down between the houses and through the great gate - the Porth-y-Tyr - into the cathedral close we left the getting and the spending - 'that external world of telegrams and anger'.  It was as if a door had been gently shut behind us.  There were plenty of visitors here too but the atmosphere was changed.  Silence reigned.  Holiness was palpable.  It radiated from the very stones around us.  And before us a truly wonderful, awe inducing sight: the cathedral itself nestling below us to the right, cozened in the hillside.  And beyond that, beyond the stream - the river Alun which gently bisects the close, the ruins of the Medieval Bishops' Palace, with the tree covered valley side framing and enclosing everything.  Altogether remarkable.
   The cathedral is perhaps the largest and most complex medieval church in the Principality. St David had founded a rigorous monastic settlement here in the 6th century that soon gained a reputation for holiness and learning; and became an important place of pilgrimage in the British Isles, with the shrines of St David and St Caradoc.  The present structure is a conglomeration of a number of medieval building campaigns.

  Like Brecon Cathedral it is constructed of rubble masonry and shares some of Brecon's chthonic massiveness. The first campaign was undertaken at the behest of Bishop Peter de Leia c1180 and saw the construction of the nave, transepts and chancel.  At some point afterwards aisles were added to the chancel and an ambulatory constructed around the east end. Bishop Henry Gower was responsible for rebuilding the eastern chapels and for the second stage of the central tower.  The top storey was added by Bishop Edward Vaughan who also built the Holy Trinity Chapel behind the High Altar. Vaughan died in 1522 shortly before the Reformation. There would be no more additions to the fabric.  Both the shrines were dismantled.

   Post Reformation the eastern parts of the building were abandoned, and weren't restored to use until the early 1900s.  Abandoned too were the cloisters and St Mary's Chapel.  The Oxford Movement in the 19th century set in motion this reversal of fortunes, and Sir George Gilbert Scott undertook a massive restoration of the building - again, as at Brecon, he worked with remarkable tact. His most conspicuous work, on the outside at least, was to take down the W front constructed by John Nash in 1793 and replace it with a design based on what was there before, such as depicted in Sparrow's 1776 copperplate engraving in 'The Antiquities of England & Wales'. But the most audacious thing Scott did was to rebuild the western arch and piers of the central tower while keeping the tower in situ. Quite a feat when you think about it.

Swansea

   The watery theme continued on Saturday when we took the bus into Swansea and the National Waterfront Museum.  I particularly wanted to see the exhibition of Mid-century railway posters on the theme of Summer Holidays.  It was an absolute delight.  Of the permanent collection the 'Transport, Materials and Networks' gallery is particularly good.

The good time had by all.

'Look darling, over there, somebody's fallen down and broken their leg.'

The NWM stands on the Victoria Quay of the Tawe Basin, a former dock that is now a marina.  It is the last remaining industrial building - the other quays have been lined with restless and mediocre housing.
The centre of Swansea was heavily bombed in the last war and great swathes of the urban fabric had to be rebuilt, and on the whole its pretty dull.  Though the indoor market is very good.  The eastern half of St Margaret's St was re-aligned slightly and re-named King's Way and given - at its east end - a great rond-point in the French Beaux Arts tradition.  Unfortunately there are no lines of plane trees lining the street or a massive, bombastic monument  - such as an honorific column - to act as a focus and urban node.  Money was tight in Post-war Britain, and in any case we're not given to such grand gestures.  A shame in this case.  However to the north-east of the NWM is an intact area of Pre-war cityscape and rather satisfying, if somewhat seedy, it is.  Georgian and Victorian housing, some of it quite grand; vulgar Edwardian public buildings, and The Swansea Museum and the Dylan Thomas Centre.  Both of these are housed in nineteenth century public buildings.  The chaste, Ionic, Neo-classical Museum was built as the Royal Institution of South Wales (founded in 1835), and is Wales's oldest museum.  It's a bit run down to be honest, but it contains a most wonderful collection of Swansea Pottery.  I'm very found of transfer ware and there are some lovely examples on display as well as grander hand-painted porcelain. Magically they are housed in original mahogany display cases and look splendid.  Sad though that the former institute library is denuded of books.  I wonder where they all went?
In the same area look out also for the Transport Museum, where you can sit in a tram - the Mumbles Train - and also the atmospheric Mission gallery in Gloucester Place.  Both are worth a visit.

Book-ended by water

   An odd title for a post perhaps but our trip to Brecon was rather topped and tailed by water - in the form of reservoirs and a waterfall, and that's to forget the Monmouthshire and Brecon Canal.  The reservoirs are at Crai and Talybont (with its slightly sinister buildings), the waterfall, in the Vale of Neath, is at Aberdulais and is owned now by the National Trust.  Aberdulais was a favourite of Romantic painters such as Turner, but such admiration didn't prevent it being turned into a tin works in the 19th century.

Brecon, town and cathedral

   Last week and a short break in Wales. On the Friday we drove over the Brecon Beacons and down into the verdant valley of the Usk - heartland of the old kingdom of Brycheiniog - and the attractive market town of Brecon.  Brecon has always been a place of some importance, standing at the point where the Tallant and the Honddlu join the Usk, which is fordable at this point.  It was a hub, firstly, on the ancient network of drove roads that led from the pastures of west Wales into England, and then in the late 18th/early 19th century the turnpike system. Prosperous too. From the Middle ages there remain the priory (now the cathedral), the castle, St Mary's church and Christ College - originally the Dominican priory of St Nicholas.  We saw all except for the college.
   The old town has an intricate, and very satisfying pattern of narrow streets lined with mainly Georgian facades.  At its centre stands the church of St Mary, which possesses a very fine west tower.  Welsh both in its bluntness and the relative smallness of openings; and Somerset in its details.

   The cathedral stands above, and to the north of, the town centre.  It is a big-boned structure, rubble built with a squat central tower.  The whole thing could almost be a geological feature, rather than something made by the hand of man.  The interior is spacious, the architecture massive and powerful, seemingly much more ancient than it actually is.  Cavernous almost, particularly in the nave where the walls are stripped of plaster.  In places one gets a sense of the architecture - the arches and windows - having been sculpted out of a great mass of masonry like it was solid rock.
   As at Kidwelly and Abergavenny 'the Church of St John the Evangelist beyond the walls' is an Anglo-Norman foundation, (1093, by Bernard de Neufmarche) and built in close proximity to a castle.  A Benedictine house, it was under the temporal and spiritual authority of the Abbey at Battle, Sussex. The font, with its powerful, barbaric carving is the earliest recognizable feature.

   The transepts and choir are Early English.  The architecture of the nave later still, though it is possible that the rubble walls themselves are much older.  At the Reformation the priory was dissolved, the church became parochial and the priory buildings sold to Sir John Price.  The transepts are full of memorials from that period as a parish church. Look out in particular for the amazing number of distinctive floor-slabs.  George Gilbert Scott senior restored the cathedral in the mid 19th century (1860-75) but his touch was light.  His one major visual contribution was the vaulting in the choir.  A stroke of genius.

   Further restoration was undertaken by W D Caroe and later by his son Alban both of whom worked in an Arts & Crafts idiom.  In 1923 it became the cathedral church for a new Anglican diocese - Swansea and Brecon.