Author Archives: Curious Scribbler

Two great ladies of Eglwysfach

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by The Curious Scribbler

This winter has seen the passing of two remarkable women whose long lives were integral to the the life of Glandyfi and Eglwysfach.  Both created wonderful gardens and also wielded influence far beyond their chosen patch.

Penny Condry, who died aged 102, was the widow of the writer and conservationist Bill Condry, whose Country Dairy appeared in the Guardian for more that 40 years until his death in 1998.  It had been the Manchester Guardian when he started writing for them.  In the 1950s he became warden of the RSPB Glandyfi nature reserve, newly created as such thanks to its former owner W.H. Mappin of the jewellery firm Mappin and Webb.  The Condrys moved into the old stone house on the reserve called Ynys Edwin and remained there all their lives.  Not actually an island but one of those rocky outcrops which rise above the low marshland of the Dyfi Estuary.  Here Penny tended a magical private garden.

Bill and Penny Condry at Ynys Edwin in the 1950s. Her favourite photo, reproduced by Jeremy Moore www.talesfromwildwales.co.uk

At the recent memorial in Tabernacle chapel, Machynlleth, many of her friends and relatives ( great nephews and nieces for the most part) reminisced on the welcome which awaited behind the blue front door, the bookish interior, the tea and cake, and solitary beauty of the garden, half a mile down a muddy track, silent but for the birdsong and the rattle of the passing trains.  Long tailed tit nested there, and many of the shrubs and flowers were fragrant and often white.  But Penny was not only a gardener but a formidable botanist and naturalist whose knowledge could be relied upon, and a person who took a very great interest in all the people she met.  Not entirely rooted to her patch, she was a  long-time member of the Cardiganshire Horticultural Society and an expert, second only to John Corfield at identifying plants in other people’s gardens which they visited.

 

Penny Condry( left) and Joy Neal ( right) at the 100th birthday celebrations of the Eglwysfach WI in 2022, which also corresponded with Penny’s hundredth year. (photo: Alison Swanson)

The other lady in the picture is Joy Neal, granddaughter of a distinguished north Cardiganshire family, the Pughs.  Joy’s grandfather Lewis Pugh Evans Pugh built the handsome Victorian gothic mansion of Abermad near Llanilar to house his large family, and then briefly owned Glandyfi Castle before moving to build a new home on land he owned at Cwmerau, and retaining much of the Glandyfi estate.  Joy grew up at Voelas above the road at Glandyfi and remembered a girlhood swimming her pony across the Dyfi at low tide, and droving the family’ cattle across the mountains.  Her cut-glass accent was ensured by her parents’ policy of only ever hiring English nannies.  She  was married young,  to Stewart Neal scion of Daniel Neal’s, the London children’s outfitter which was later taken over by John Lewis Partnership.  After a busy life in England they retired to what had been her mother’s house, Llwyncelyn,  and the garden which she created became the highlight of the National Garden Scheme Open Days in West Wales.   It also starred on Gardener’s World.  Driving north through Glandyfi in summer one passes the entrance drive with a neat garage just inside the gate, and  a long wall holding back  an overflow of huge Gunnera leaves.  Up the winding drive through woodland one reached the house set in an immaculate garden blending seamlessly into the mossy oak scrub and bluebell wood of the adjoining hillside.  Joy became an expert collector of plants, especially acid-loving shrubs, rare ferns, trilliums, even a collection of eucalyptus.  She was always learning.

Last visitors leaving the NGS Open day at Llwyncelyn in May 2005

She was  a gifted organizer.  In the Cardiganshire Horticultural Society in the 1990s she pioneered and led an annual summer excursion visiting gardens of note.  In the old-fashioned amateur tradition which has since been extinguished by regulation, Joy would organize CHS coach visits as far afield as France, Belgium, Italy and Madeira as well as to Scotland, Ireland and many parts of England.  She would research and select the gardens we visited. Thanks to her Pugh grandfather’s ten offspring she seemed to have a well-heeled cousin wherever we went.  One trip saw her lead her motley society for a slap-up free lunch in the chateau of yet another cousin and a leisurely stroll around their estate.

Eglwsfach has Joy Neal to thank for organizing the restoration of the Iron Room, a listed corrugated church hall and for creating the RS Thomas Festival which has run there every second year since 2008.  Need an archbishop to address the company ( and also call the raffle)?  Joy’s charm and confidence would achieve it effortlessly.  In her eighties she became Vice Chairman of the Welsh Historic Gardens Trust and an indefatigable fundraiser for its charitable objectives.

Joy Neal, ( right) at a fundraiser for WHGT, modelling hats at the Conrah Country Hotel

Only in the last few years did poor health slow her down and she died aged 92 just after Christmas.  Her memorial will be held at St Michael’s Eglwsfach next Saturday.  Neither Penny Condry nor Joy Neal had been to university or held any higher qualifications, but they were two of the most capable and knowledgeable people one could hope to meet.

 

Hair Ice at Hafod

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by The Curious Scribbler

The old carriage drive on the Gorge walk at Hafod

The Second of January 2025 served up a perfectly clear and ferociously cold day at Hafod.  The rivers were  gushing with clear water draining from the sodden uplands, and the overnight rain remained as frozen ice droplets on the fine twigs of the birch trees.  Out of direct sunlight they remained stuck like jewels, while where to sun penetrated they gradually melted and dripped to the forest floor.  It was here that I was privileged to find that rarest of phenomena  Hair Ice.

Hair ice sprouting from a dead bough on the forest floor at Hafod

There was no snow on the ground, but here and there among the brown leaf mould and green moss one could see bright  strands of white.  At a distance they looked more like a sparing litter of  elongated white scraps of Kleenex discarded by a careless hiker.   On closer inspection these proved to be a thick growth of delicate hairs of ice, sprouting from pieces of thin  dead branches on the forest floor.  The ice forces outward from the bare dead wood.   The twigs thus decorated are never conifer twigs but always fragments of oak, birch and beech.

Hair ice at least a centimeter long prizing the bark off a dead branch

Very specific conditions of moisture and temperature are necessary to this occurrence, and the precise explanation has only be elucidated by researchers in the last ten years.  A necessary ingredient for hair ice formation is that the dead deciduous twig should be very damp and also infected with a fungus Exidiopsis effusa.  Only in the presence of the mycelium of this species of fungus does hair ice form.  Each strand, about 0.2 of  a mm in diameter freezes as it is extruded from the damp wood, and the lignin and tannin freed by the action of the fungus are necessary to the formation of hair ice.  The ice-like fur more than an inch long had grown during cold humid night exerting force sufficient to lift away chunks of bark from the substrate.

The Hafod Gorge viewed from the Gothic Arcade

The Hafod Gorge below the Gothic Arcade

Hair ice covering an rotten twig on the path

It is a winter treat to find Hair Ice, and pleasing to be able to understand the conditions which produce it.  Another curious piece of winter magic is Star Jelly, which people find and marvel at every winter, strange blobs of clear jelly often lodged as if it had fallen among coarse meadow grass.

Star Jelly – is it Crystal Brain Fungus or regurgitated frog spawn?

Here science has yet to provide a convincing explanation.  Some like to think it is a fungus, others that it is the regurgitated jelly of frog spawn sicked up by herons or crows which had eaten a frog.  But the scientists have failed to find frog DNA, or even identifiable cells within the jelly.   An unsolved mystery as yet..

 

 

Weathering Storm Darragh

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by the Curious Scribbler

We all knew Storm Darragh was on its way, and when it arrived it certainly lived up to the Met Office predictions.  The wind roared from the small hours on Saturday morning and continued, varying only slightly in violence all through the day.  Violent rainstorms came and went, stinging the face as they were delivered horizontally by the wind.   Towards evening the direction veered a little and only then did my handsome thirty year old Nordmann fir, which had been tossing its boughs all day without breaking them, suddenly and catastrophically toppled into the road. It didn’t immediately inconvenience many motorists for the road was already blocked in three other places, two by floods and one by a fallen oak.

Farewell my Nordmann Fir

Possibly more surprising was how totally the widespread loss of electricity disrupts 21st century life.  When the power went down on Saturday morning we didn’t just lose heat and light.  The router stopped working, the internet disappeared and the phone, which is now delivered by the router rather than a copper wire, ceases to work too.  So we reached for our mobile phones only to find there was no signal, because the booster mast which delivers it was also lacking power.  Only by driving up the road to a different location was contact with the world restored via 4G.

Venturing into Aberystwyth we found the whole town without light except for a few emergency lights above the back doors into some of the bigger stores.  The traffic lights were off.  And absolutely every shop was closed.  Clusters of disconsolate students roamed around the closed convenience stores.  In yesteryear a few small shops where the shopkeeper lived on the premises would have been open.  But tills don’t work without electricity and cards cannot be read.  The cashless society is totally dependent of electricity.  Those of us who have lived here for many years have the resources to weather a power cut comfortably:  log burners, camping gas cylinders, candles and lamps.  We cook our meals, and play scrabble by firelight until power is restored.   The bedrooms do cool down rather.  Central heating requires electricity to circulate the water.  But for the all-electric home a power cut must be very bleak indeed.

Even bleaker is a flood.  Unusually, the Ystwyth seems to have flooded more severely than the Rheidol, where the flood-plain playing fields became merely rather wet.  The Ystwyth and the Paith, which drains into it, flooded spectacularly, creating a single sheet of water from Tanybwlch beach to to Gosen.  I have stolen Alan Chamberlain’s photo from a Facebook post.

Alan Chamberlain’s photo of the Tanybwlch flats on Saturday 7 December

By Saturday afternoon the roadworks at Gosen were underwater, the plastic barriers bobbing in the flood, the metal ones collapsed under the water.  The lovely old house, Tynlone, was flooded. It must be over 30 years since I’ve seen the river quite so  full.  The water receded overnight leaving the usual mire of silt.  Only the field closest to Tanybwlch beach, which really wants to become a saltmarsh, remained deeply flooded by Sunday evening.

Devastation at Gosen

The swollen River Ystwyth by Llanychaiarn Church

Highest road flooding I can remember

By Monday only the field closest to Tanybwlch beach, which really wants to become a saltmarsh, remained deeply flooded. The dog was pleased to walk the length of the strand.  There was less change here than I had expected, only in one place had a fresh load of beach pebbles been taken right over the bar to cascade into the river.  On the seaward side the Sea Sandwort  Honkenya peploides has taken a hammering, the mat of rhizomes and stolons which stabilize the sand has been much reduced and the big quarry stones arranged to protect the shore have moved even further down the beach.  At the south end the sea had left huge heaps of bladder wrack and laminaria, piled more than knee deep along the strand line.  Plenty of marine life had been scooped from the sea bottom by the violent waves.  Creatures seldom seen have been thrown up by this storm.  Another contributor to Facebook Ceredigion Birds and Wildlife has posted a selection of finds: lobster, crab and crayfish on the strandline at Aberaeron.  I particularly note the Sponge Crab Dromia vulgaris.  This animal is covered in coconut-coloured hairs except where it bright pink pincers protrude, as if it were wearing nail varnish.  It picks up sea sponges to wear on the shell like a cloak, using a pair of specially modified hind legs to do so.  I had no idea this species was native to our coast  – I thought it belonged in the Mediterranean.  But then the sea has been getting warmer, as well as the storms more violent.

Melissa Lilley posted this picture of a Sponge Crab among the debris washed up on Aberaeron North Beach

The sheep had very little space to graze, but rustic seat on the Tanybwlch strand proved stronger than it looks.

It has been a week of total calm since Monday and the clear-up is ongoing.  Restoring our phone and internet has been a long job; both the fallen trees on our road took down the lines with a vengeance, but it was encouraging to find that by Tuesday several vans of Openreach  engineers were tackling the job.  Today is  Thursday and  Letter from Aberystwyth can reach the world.

A Tour of Old College

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by The Curious Scribbler,

I was privileged to join a group of Old Students Association members for a tour of Old College.  Twelve of us gathered at the site office in the building formerly known as The Cambria, on the corner of Pier street, where we donned borrowed hard hats, luminous tabards and steel toed boots before being led around the site by the indefatigable project manager, Jim O’Rourke.  Jim is in his eighth year of nursing the restoration of Old College,  a costly undertaking which has received funds from The National Lottery Heritage Fund, Welsh Government and the European Regional Development Fund, UK Government, Coastal Communities Fund, The National Lottery Community Fund, philanthropic trusts, and individuals.  The many projected uses of the building can seen on the University’s website.

The early phases of the project were mostly destructive.  I recollect the many months when the site was the domain of the asbestos removal specialists, and more recently the demolition of the hotch potch of later buildings clinging to the flank of the Old College on the inland side.  These are all gone now and we went out of the back of the building to view the massive hole from which a 21st century building will soon rise in its place.  This will house kitchens and other utility rooms in the basement, an airy modern restaurant above, and the modern lifts which will give access to the five floors of the northern part and the three to the south.  A huge glass function room will in due course hover above the Georgian villas.

The huge hole from which the kitchens and restaurant will rise.

The old building being restored comes in five different phases, the Cambria, the two Georgian villas, the Seddon core which boasts the Quad, the Seddon Room and the Council chamber ( originally a billiard room), the architecturally distinct 1894 central block by C.J. Ferguson, and the tapering southern prow which had first been designed as the hotel tea room but had been demolished and rebuilt by Seddon as the Science Wing  after the fire of 1885.  Victorian architects expected the public to be sufficiently able bodied to use stairs, and the stairs in the building are many and varied:  the grand staircase of Ransome’s artificial stone near the original front door with its porte cochere, the short flight giving access to the council chamber, the tight spiral staircases up the turrets, and a handsome iron and mahogany open well stair rising four storeys in the central Ferguson block.

The dramatic asymmetric stairwell in the section designed by Ferguson

The challenge for the restoration is to make all these floors level and accessible from the lifts in the new atrium.  In some places floor levels must be altered to make this possible.  New openings have been made to create linking corridors and former partitions have been cleared away.

It is now possible to see the bones of the future rooms and their purposes.  The Georgian villas will function as a new entrance point to the Old College, while the first, second and third floor rooms adjoining the quadrangle will become bedrooms of a lavish hotel.  We walked through several each 40 or more square yards in size, with gothic windows reaching down to the floor.  Looking down on  the balcony of the quad to the floor below it is easy to imagine the weddings which will in future use the large open spaces of the quadrangle and the old hall.

A future bedroom in the Old College hotel

Everywhere there is evidence of the conservation ethic of this project, original plaster coving carefully protected, damaged walls patched with lath and lime plaster to match the original building techniques.  It contrasts dramatically with the lack of respect for high Victorian buildings which was common in the mid twentieth century.  I remember being in the council chamber twenty years ago.  While it still boasted an incomparable view out over the sea, this lofty vaulted room had been boxed in with plasterboard inner walls and a low ceiling from which some ugly sixties pendant lights hung.  This has all been stripped away to reveal a handsome vaulted timber ceiling.  Clustered banded pillars like those in the colonnade by the Seddon room were concealed behind the plasterboard.  Horrifyingly, their ornamentation had been chipped away where it projected against the boarding.  These pillars were not of fine marble, but built of concrete blocks skimmed with a thin coating and ornamented with bands and capitals of plasterwork.  The damage will be painstakingly repaired in plaster.

Original features of the Council Chamber, (former billiard room) emerged from behind boarding and a false ceiling.

Historic plaster was chipped away to accommodate a refit of the room in the mid 20th century.

Another challenge to the budget is the handsome banister surrounding the asymmetric stairwell at the south end of the building.  Wrought iron with a chunky  mahogany rail, it is, unfortunately, some twelve inches lower than the current regulations for a banister.  When we visited a crude timber handrail had been assembled to protect the workers from falling over. All the rails will have to be taken down and lengthened by a skilled blacksmith.  If there had been Health and Safety in the 1960s I have no doubt the entire rail would have been ripped out and replaced with pine planking!

Non-compliant banister topped by a temporary rail

A further expense will be the careful removal of the peeling gloss paint liberally slathered on the walls and ceilings in years gone by.  Gloss paint was felt to be particularly hygienic and easy to clean, but it is the wrong material to coat onto lime plaster, and detaches itself like leaves in autumn.  A lot has been learnt about conservation practice in the last thirty years.

Peeling gloss paint and new plasterwork in one of the many tiny irregular-shaped rooms

Our tour continued to the tapering south end of the building where science was formerly taught. The small partitions in the first floor room have been removed to create an attractive space, lit by windows on both sides.  It will provide desk space for IT, games or web designers in the business enterprise hub.

The southern prow of the building which is ornamented externally by the Voysey mosaic

Removal of the false ceiling in the adjoining  semi-circular Chemistry lecture theatre revealed a tall conical roof which formerly was lit by six windows between the rafters.

A newly discovered feature was the roof of the former Chemistry lecture theatre

Leaving the building on the seaward side we passed two tall timber crates standing on end.  Peeking between the planks we could verify that Thomas Charles Edwards, first Principal of the college is within one protective crate, and  Edward  VIII, that most transient of monarchs, stands safely on his pedestal  in the other.   Aberystwyth has the only full length effigy of him, created by Mario Rutelli in 1922, when he was  Prince of Wales.  Over the years at least two attempts have been made upon his  head, famously recovered by the police and re attached only to be hacked at once again  by  angry students in the 1980s, when the wound was soldered by the then ceramics technician in the art department.    Perhaps he feels safer in his crate!

Edward VIII safely in his crate

And she’s gone!

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by the Curious Scribbler

Clearly I was too pessimistic yesterday in my account of the dismembered Hot Toddy on the Tanybwlch shore.   Later that day the broken hull was indeed removed, and has been recorded on Facebook by Bethan Thomas.

Bethan Thomas’ photo – The Hull is removed!

And loaded onto a council lorry

Well done everybody involved and I guess the removal of the mast and metal parts was just the first part of the salvage operation.  It is so good to see this dramatic stony beach return to its pristine condition.   If only the permanent repair of the retaining wall between the bridge and the river could also be achieved before this winter’s storms remove yet more of the parking area by the stone jetty.

The white bags protecting the riverside wall have mostly collapsed and more of the wall will soon follow.

 

Ignominious end of the Hot Toddy

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by the Curious Scribbler

I wrote in August about the two boats beached at Tanybwlch, the second of which remained un-rescued and acquired a council notice for its removal under the terms of the Aberystwyth Harbour Act 1987.  It was no surprise that notwithstanding this enforcement notice the boat continued to sit stranded on the pebbles.  It was an old  fibreglass boat with its cabin closed off with a piece of hardboard and we speculated it had been abandoned.

The two boats beached in early August

On Monday it was still there, its mast clearly visible from the car park. But today things are different.  The shell of the hull is now in two pieces and fragments of fibreglass and other detritus litter the shore line for a considerable distance.  There has been a high tide and a good swell is rolling in, so the pieces have probably been knocked around a bit.  But the critical observation is that the aluminium mast, the rudder and keel  and much of the other metal work of the hull have disappeared.  It has been cut in two.

The fibreglass remains of the Hot Toddy

There is even a neat pile of less important metallic odds and ends sitting on the shore waiting to be collected. And an empty fuel can which probably powered the tools used to dismember the boat.

Small items of salvage left behind on the upper shore

I think that some opportunistic salvage, perhaps by moonlight, took place this week.  Certainly nothing of any scrap value remains.  The fibreglass hull is is a negative asset –  it would be very costly to recycle and would be treated as landfill waste. However its removal from the shore is even more pressing as the eroded fragments break down to release fibres damaging to all forms of filter-feeding marine life.

There is an urgent need for  a beach-clean to remove the many fragments already scattered along the upper shore.  I shall be happy to take part.  But the broken halves of the hull need professional disposal as soon as possible.

The wreckage of the Hot Toddy

Too many people view our rivers and seas as waste disposal units.  Only yesterday on facebook  several people also recorded three men dumping planks and other trade waste from a trailer into the Rheidol River in Penparcau.  There are some folk who don’t deserve a good night’s sleep.

Planks tossed into the river at Heol Tyn y Fron

The perpetrators’ load.

Hot Toddy on Tanybwlch Beach

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There is a new piece of litter on the beach this month, a rather aged fibreglass yacht which lies stranded on the shingle at the north end of the beach.

The abandoned boat now wears a bilingual enforcement notice

I first saw it on 5 August, when not one but two boats had come ashore, the Hot Toddy and another boat  which was on the sand half way down the strand near the concrete barrier.  That second yacht has now been removed, while the Hot Toddy has today been pasted with a Council Notice.  Under Section 40 of the Aberystwyth Harbour Act 1987 it will shortly be removed and disposed of unless the owner serves a counter notice and removes it themselves.

The Hot Toddy on tanybwlch beach

Passers-by gather to inspect it and exchange news.  I have been told that the second boat got in to difficulties trying to help the Hot Toddy and both ended up on the beach. Another source had heard that the Hot Toddy was sailed ( or motored) by a complete amateur with no sailing skills who had bought the old boat in Cardiff and was trying to sail it to Liverpool!  It certainly appears that the owner has not identified themselves, and has abandoned it.  I looked more closely at it today and met an experienced sailor who owns a similar boat  He told me that, unlike with cars, the registration of boats is voluntary and an old one such as this could be bought for £2000 or so.   The costs of disposing of it will probably exceed any scrap value.

Further down the beach I checked up on another piece of flotsam, the Tanybwlch dragon which I first wrote about in December 2019.  This heraldic-looking tree trunk has been moving around the beach ever since, ( it even disappeared for a while), its dragon head steadily eroding away as storms rolled it on the pebbles until the likeness was lost.  Now it has had its final come-uppance, its headless body incorporated into a beach bonfire,  and now burnt through to create two pieces of charred trunk.

Demise of the Tanybwlch Dragon

A copious amount of timber, trunks and branches, brought down river, washes up on the south end of this beach and is soon de-barked by the action of the sea.  I wonder who was the creative soul who came down with saw and screwdriver and fashioned  the fine rustic bench which looks out to sea from the stones where the Wheatears breed.

A driftwood bench overlooking Cardigan bay

The Tanybwlch bench

For a while there was also a driftwood arbour tied together with fishermens’ rope and twine, but this blew down and disappeared.  Always something new to look out for on my favorite beach.

It is to be hope though that along with the disposal of the Hot Toddy the Council’s attention with be focused on the continuing collapse of the retaining wall above the river where the cars park.  It is two years since a temporary repair was done with white bags full of rocks.  Most of these have now washed away and the winter storms will play havoc with the remaining structure.  If only the small hole which developed before during Storm Ciara in 2020 had been promptly filled with cement!

The white bags protecting the riverside wall have mostly collapsed and more of the wall will soon follow.

Aberystwyth Allotments

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by The Curious Scribbler

Fine days have been few and far between this summer but Sunday afternoon in Penparcau proved a happy exception. The sun shone, there were unthreatening fluffy clouds,a paraglider wheeled overhead from its launch at the top of Pendinas, and at the bottom of First Avenue, many people took the opportunity to visit the allotments during the Open Afternoon in aid of the National Garden Scheme charity.

The axial path between the Aberystwyth allotments

It is more than ten years since I last came on an open day and once more was charmed by the range of gardening skills on display. At one end I found Veronica’s traditional vegetable plot bursting with rows of flourishing foodstuffs runner beans, french beans, broad beans potatoes, carrots and many more besides. A retired soil scientist, she has gardened this plot for a couple of decades, and recollects the year when floods covered the allotments, the water rising two feet and more inside her garden shed. Hers is a full sized allotment, the generous space deemed necessary in the post war days to feed a family.

Aber Allotments Veronica’s generous vegetable plot

At the other end of the axial path I found another long-established allotment with quite different use of space, largely devoted to fruit trees, elegantly lawned, with tubs of vegetables and flowers and a restful place to sit and relax at the distal end.

A tranquil oasis of fruit trees and lawns. Aber Allotments

Other allotments bristle with garden technology, raised beds, edging, hooped cloches made of alkathene pipe, fruit nets and trellises. There are several living willow structures and exuberant roses on the boundaries of many plots. And every allotment has a shed, some just tool stores while others are little home-from-homes, places to heat up a cup of tea, sit back and enjoy the peaceful scene.
In recent years, as they become vacant, some of the old allotments have been divided into two or three parts, better serving the needs of townsfolk without gardens. There is great contrast amongst these too, reflecting the owners’ enthusiasms for flowers, food or nature. One mini-allotment is dominated by a wildlife pond. Nearby I found another with two keen gardeners devoted to an amazing range of choice and exotic vegetables – Chilean Guava, several different cultivars of blueberry, grafted vegetables growing upon a gourd rootstock, unfamilar cultivars of familiar herbs and greens.

Raise beds and wood shaving paths at Aberystwyth allotments

Flowers and vegetable blend at Aberystwyth Allotments

The visit put me in mind of the allotments at Konigstein in Germany which I visited with the Cardiganshire Horticultural Society as part of a twinning visit to Kronberg in 2015. Up to half of the space in these allotments could be devoted to recreation, and many plots contained substantial chalets, dining areas, play equipment and ornamental trees, while the rest would be devoted to edibles or flowers. Many of the holders would have been flat dwellers, who spent whole days at their allotment homes. I remember how impressed we were by the feel-good ambience of these German allotments. The Aberystwyth allotments are evolving in a similar direction.

The Konigsberg allotments in Germany

A homely chalet in the Konigsberg allotments in Germany

The Konigsberg allotments in Germany

The Konigsberg allotments in Germany

The Konigsberg allotments in Germany

The brimming bin of Bryn Eglur

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I often walk my dog on the cycle path between  Rhydyfelin and Llanfarian.   At either end of this stretch there is a dark blue bin.  The slim one at the Rhydfelin end is lined with a black plastic liner and regularly emptied by Ceredigion  Council.  Strangely the similar, but double-sized bin at the other end has been overflowing for months.

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Yesterday I met the man who empties the bins.  He tells me that the Bryn Eglur bin is an unauthorized bin ( although it looks very much like a council bin) and it is not their job to empty it.

The Bryn Eglur bin is almost exclusively full of bagged dog poo and smells pretty unpleasant.  It is on the edge of a small picnic area which I imagine was specified by the Council as an amenity area when Planning Permission for the development at Bryn Eglur was obtained.

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Perhaps the Planning Department specified a bin but failed to ask the Waste Collection Service whether they could empty it?   I wonder whether this situation will ever be resolved.

Dafydd ap Gwilym’s Kestrel

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by The Curious Scribbler

There is a celebrated yew at Strata Florida.  It is certainly old, and by tradition is deemed to be the yew under which the fourteenth century poet Dafydd ap Gwilym is buried.    Its status was marked by a painted stone bearing  his dates which lay in the undergrowth at its foot, and was then further established with an inscribed slab installed by the Honorable Society of Cymmrodorion in 1951.  To further advertising the poet they at the same time installed an even larger inscribed slab within the adjoining abbey ruins.    Walking through the footings  of the north transept one cannot miss the huge commemorative slate rectangle, like an outsized gravestone, officiously engraved in Welsh and Latin,  which is affixed to the wall by iron cramps.

Current scholarship is a little less emphatic. The excellent little book, The Poetry of Strata Florida, by Dafydd Johnston examines the evidence and exposes the assertion to a measure of doubt.  The antiquary John Leland writing in 1540 stated that there were 39 vast yews in the cemetery, while by 1874 there were only three.  Statistically, Dafydd ap Gwilym could have been under any one of these trees!

Johnston further points out that he may not be buried there at all.  A substantial strand of evidence for the grave under the tree has been a poem by ap Gwilym’s contemporary poet Gruffud Gryg.  The poem is addressed to the yew tree above Dafydd ap Gwilym’s grave.  However I now learn that writing marwnadau ffug  – mock elegies –  was a popular pastime for fourteenth century poets.  There are several known instances of pairs of poets writing reciprocal elegies for one another – obviously at least one in each of these pairs must have been alive at the time, and possibly both were.  These elegies were complimentary, as were the praise poems which poets composed about the homes of the the princes and landowners they visited.

Dafydd ap Gwilym was a native of Llanbadarn Fawr and may have learnt to write at the abbey scriptorium.  He was not just a professional sycophant turning out eulogies about broad acres, fat cows, and fine houses.  Much of his work celebrates nature, love and indeed lust.  He sounds like a cheerful chap, addressing his love poems to Dyddgu  or Morfudd or indeed improper suggestions to the Cistercian nuns of Llanllugan in Montgomeryshire.  He depicts woodland as a church and bird as clergy, or holly as a lover’s bower.

So irrespective of the exact truth it seems very apposite that he should have a tree as his memorial.  When I visited it today,  the silence of this deeply rural spot was only broken by a party of screaming swifts  flying low over the ruins and the intermittent  clamour of baby birds from the top of the yew.   I discovered that  pair of kestrels have chosen to rear their nestlings in the top of Dafydd ap Gwilym’s tree.   This is surprising, for kestrels barely build a nest and typically nest in crags or old buildings.  Perhaps an old crow’s nest has provided a sufficient platform for their eggs.  I feel sure Dafydd ap Gwilym would have approved.

St Mary’s church Strata Florida and Dafydd ap Gwilym’s yew

 

An alternative stratagem for remembrance  is represented by the huge black marble memorial situated between the church and the abbey wall.  Sir David and Lady Grace James died in the 1967 and 1965 respectively.   His business interests had expanded  from his father’s  London dairy business to foodstuffs and cinemas.  He acquired a country estate, Sutton Hall, Barcombe,  and a knighthood. His roots were at Pantyfedwen and the couple  were justly proud of their wealth  and their worth as  philanthropists and patrons of Welsh culture.  Bold capitals on six faces of the column assert their names, their charitable trusts, their characters and their  claims to fame in considerable detail.   Will this massive memorial outlast the reputation of the poet, or vice versa?

The memorial to Sir David and Lady Grace James.