Aberystwyth

     The first full day of our trip to Cardigan and a little jaunt up to Aberystwyth, a place that could claim to be the nation's cultural capital.  And a grey day we had of it.

     The old town is a dense network of narrow streets. Very urban feeling, very busy. A place, I suggest, of contrasts. Seaside and culture. Working class and middling. County and cosmopolitan. A place of faded respectability. I don't want to suggest that this is a place of conflict, but I suspect that the working class is slowly being ousted (not physically but visually) as the ordinariness of life is being erased as shops such as bakers and butchers disappear from the streets. Supermarkets, and the internet, have become the repositories of the ordinary. The streets are slowly becoming the place of the extra-ordinary - delis and art galleries. Places that are not everyday destinations. Aberystwyth is not the only witness of this process; it is evident too in Cardigan. Gone too are the local garage and the other sorts of workshops - the painter & decorator's yard. And here is where some nats in Wales get it wrong. They see it purely in terms of us and them. However it is a country wide phenomenon. I've long seen it in action in Stamford, Lincolnshire, where thankfully the weekly market helps keeps feet on the ground. It's there too in the Cotswolds and famously in Frome, where now apparently it is difficult for working class families to afford to live. The ideal is of course a 'mixed economy'. Gosh, I hadn't intended when setting out on this post to have such a rant, but I do like to see proper shops - as much as I like galleries and delis.

     All that said there is much architectural interest in Aberystwyth. Pride of place going to the Old College, built originally as a hotel it is a prime example of hard, muscular Gothic that dominated the Revival during the 1850 & 60s. It is pretty aggressive and wilful, endlessly inventive. Restless. Unyielding and relentless. The scale is massive, which is fine for the Promenade, but overwhelming for the gentle classicism of Laura Place behind. It is the work of J P Seddon and has a complex construction history - starting out as an hotel (grandiose and failed) and ending up as part of the University of Aberystwyth. Tamed a little too in the process. Alas and alack! currently the Old College is in bit of a state and is need of some attention.