St Edmund, Crickhowell

     Back to the lovely Usk valley and a family celebration.  While the rest of the family were ascending Pen-y-Fan the bf and I made our first visit to the charming small town of Crickhowell, that lies between Brecon and Abergavenny.  There is some fine domestic architecture - early 19th century by the look of it and redolent of the rattle of the mail coach. It was very busy what with people and, less happily, traffic - the A40 passes through the town - too busy to take photographs. 

     However off the main street, and reached by a couple of narrow lanes, and much quieter, stands the parish church of St Edmund, built of New Red Sandstone. Rather Herefordshire in style.  Cruciform and with that rarity in Wales, a spire.  'The Buildings of Wales' volume on Powys suggests that this might be a post-Reformation addition. Work on the church however commenced soon after 1306 when the site for the church was donated by Lady Sibyl Pauncefoot. Her monument is on the n side of the chancel; to the s is the monument to Sir Grimbald Pauncefoot, who I presume is the good Lady Sibyl's husband. Otherwise, apart from the monument to Sir John & Lady Joan Herbert (also in the chancel) the interior is somewhat dull and barren. In the second half of the nineteenth century it underwent restoration at the hands of John Loughborough Pearson. (We've come across his work before at adjoining parishes of Burley-on-the-Hill and Exton in Rutland.)

over the hills and far away... I

     Over the Black Mountain on Saturday to the beautiful, remote hill-country (where it is the lambing season) between the Twyi valley and the mountain, a continuation, if you will, of the landscape around Carreg Cennen Castle, which I have written about before. A lyrical landscape. Timeless.  Le Pays de Galles Profonde.
     Off the mountain we drove through narrow winding roads in search of Llanddeusant and its Late Medieval church dedicated to Ss Simon and Jude.  The name means 'church of the two saints' and could equally refer to a meeting of St Teilo and St David which is believed to have occurred here.
     The village is tiny - just a handful of dwellings - perched on the ridge above the deep valley of the Sawdde. Noticeably colder than Swansea up there too! And there the church stands, humble after the truncation of its west tower.  The inside is a surprise, and wonderfully atmospheric - packing, for such a small building, a great emotional punch. Colder, if at all possible, than outside. There are two spacious naves divided by an arcade of almost primitive strength.  No furnishings of note (Oh, lets be honest here, some of them are downright wrong!) except the two late medieval wooden tunnel vaults, the ribs all silvery with age, yet somehow what a church should be.

Carreg Cennen Castle

     Standing there with a great pastoral landscape heaving and undulating around us like a great, green ocean it was hard to think that not so far away from us, behind those blind bracken covered hills on the horizon was a different, scarred, landscape of industrialisation and the 'world of telegrams and anger' - Swansea, and the small industrial towns of the Tawe valley and southern Carmarthenshire. This landscape seemed much older, much more settled and at ease with itself.  Of course it really isn't as simple as that but standing there amidst the wreck of Carreg Cennen Castle it was easy to think it was. Le Pays de Galles Profonde.

     Carreg Cennen Castle sits on a great crag of limestone, at a dizzying height above the tiny Cennen river that flows on to meet the Towy at Llandeilo Fawr.
The history of the castle is complex, changing hands many times throughout the Middle Ages, but site started off as an administrative centre in the Kingdom of Deheubarth and at the end of the War of the Roses it was awarded to Sir Rhys ap Thomas, who is now buried in St Peter's Carmarthen, before passing to the Vaughans of the Golden Grove, the Cawdors and finally into government ownership in 1932. (Thankfully the castle retains one, at least, of those beautiful 'Ministry of Works' signs.)  Architecturally speaking the important event in the castle's history is its capture by Edward I - most of what can be seen dates from the period shortly after when it was completely rebuilt by the Giffords who had been granted the castle in 1283. The best bit, apart form those breath-taking views is the mural passage leading to a cave under the castle. (Flashlights are provided for hire for this but we found the light on my mobile phone a very useful supplement.)
     Looking at the plan of the castle I was struck, given the irregularity of the site, by its regularity; a plan that displays its origins in the Late Antique.  It's always said that such designs were brought back to the West by the Crusaders impressed by the Eastern Roman and Islamic fortresses they encountered. The Crusaders, I think, were pretty overawed by the walls of the Imperial City of Constantinople, indeed it is thought that they were the inspiration for Edward I's mighty fortress at Carnarvon, which is a sort of mimetic model of the 'Holy City of Byzantium', in the same way that some scholars have understood Umayyad Damascus, but it must be remembered that both the Eastern Romans and the Arabs were essentially working in a continuing Late Antique tradition, an example of this can be seen the walls erected around Cairo in 1087-92 (a maidan was even laid out in the shape of a Roman hippodrome), or in the country houses erected in the Syrian Steppe by the Ummayad elite, and whose plans follow that of the Roman fortress - even the name for such a residence 'qasr' is derived from the Latin 'castrum'.
The shadow of Rhufain - Rome - is very long.

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.