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 James, Spanish Place

     I arrived at The Wallace Collection with time to spare before it opened and took the opportunity to revisit the remarkable Roman Catholic church of St James, Spanish Place.  Truth be told I have been blogging for over a decade now, and this is only the third Roman Catholic church I've written about.  A contrast to the contents of The Wallace Collection, but perhaps not so far in its emotive power from the work of some French Neo-classicists.

     St James's was built in 1870s the work of Edward Goldie, grandson of that very interesting Neo-Classical Joseph Bonomi.  The furnishing is however the work of, amongst others, J F Bentley, who is best remembered for the Neo-Byzantine Westminster Cathedral and the Late Gothic Holy Blood, Watford.

   The exterior is blunt in the extreme, almost to the point of rudeness.  Quite uncompromising.  Such a contrast it must have been when newly built to all those reticent Georgian houses that then surrounded it.  As with many Gothic Revival churches the tower was not completed.  The interior is almost just as severe.  Serious is perhaps more apt.  The church is essentially a basilica with double aisles, with a transept before the apse.  So, oddly for a gothic church you might think, the plan recalls the great early Christian churches of the city of Rome, such St Peter's, and the Lateran.  Gloomth in the aisles contrasting strongly with light filled nave.  Westminster Abbey and Salisbury cathedral are among the other obvious precedents.  And amongst this eclectic range of sources there is, I think, somewhat unexpectedly the early Gothic architecture of Northern England (and Scotland).  

     Rather like one of those later churches by Pearson St James's is completely vaulted in stone and the overall effect is very successful being rather majestic and serene.   Drama is reserved for the transepts where, to great spatial effect, the inner bay is 'bridged' in a similar manner to the transepts of Pearson's great church St Augustine, Kilburn. Were either church an influence on Bentley's design for Westminster Cathedral?

     The furnishings - Late Gothic, quite effusive, rich and often very inventive - provide a contrast to the serene austerity of the architecture.  I believe there were more, but they were culled post-Vatican II.

     Apologies but I've managed somehow to delete all the photos of the exterior.  What an idiot!