Category Archives: Ceredigion present

Service but no smile.

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The day started well, the weather was dry and it being a Monday I thought I’d do a few long overdue errands in the town.  Not that it’s that bustling these days.  The last few weeks have seen the disappearance of two more retail opportunities, Millets has closed down and gone, and Monsoon – which along with New Look and Dorothy Perkins used to constitute the Aberystwyth window on current high street fashion, has quietly transformed itself into an Accessorize.  Presumably the depleted town is more likely to buy scarves and earrings than to actually choose an entire outfit.

First stop was the bank (funnily enough we still have lots of those).  I pulled into part of the extensive empty space in Stryd y Popty to run down to the cashpoint.  The parking sign allowed 30 minutes parking after 1pm.  The time was 12.35pm.  And the 60 seconds I was away was sufficient time for one of the numerous traffic wardens to appear.  I suppose it was really nice of him to just give me a polite telling off for infringing the law so briefly in an empty road. But my morning dis-improved.  I confessed to him that, having got the money, it was my ambition to take a bundle of curtains from my car into the dry cleaners 30 yards away before driving off.  But no, he wasn’t as nice as to allow that.

I eventually walked from a legitimate spot to the drycleaners, bearing a pair of heavy cotton William Morris print curtains.  I knew they were the real deal.  I bought the material myself nearly 30 years ago in a very upmarket curtain shop and sewed them, fully lined, myself.  But what was I thinking of all those years ago?  No fabric care label!

I had gone hoping to be advised by the professionals – wash or dry clean?  What would they recommend for traditional cotton?  What do other people do? (obviously they clean  their curtains more often than I do for a  start!)  But the young assistant only wanted to know whether I had an International Care Label, and it not being present recited a warning that my curtains might shrink, run, or stain during cleaning.  Not only did I have to pay in advance but sign a disclaimer taking full responsibility for any such disaster.  What was missing though, and would have been welcome, was the professional opinion of someone in the dry cleaning trade.  But he wasn’t as forthcoming as that.

So after spending a good four minutes in my legal one hour parking spot under they eye of the roaming wardens I set off for Morrisons supermarket. Here one can park without hindrance. I completed my shopping and queued at the till behind a newly delivered mother and her 10 day old baby.  The child was sleeping determinedly in a bucket shaped car seat balanced at the top of a huge supermarket trolley.  Mother had come prepared, her body wrapped in a baby sling into which she could transfer the child if it fretted.  She looked as if she was laying in supplies for a fortnight.  Quite possibly it was some considerable distance to her rural home. She also looked tired.

Any woman who can shop with such efficiency with her new baby gets my respect.  And everything went fine until the check out operator reached her two little packets of 16 paracetamol and two little packets of 16 ibuprufen.  And here the operator nicely explained to the the purchaser of some £200 worth of food and household necessities that she wasn’t allowed to buy more than one packet, worth just pence, of each!

There is many a newly delivered mother who is advised by her midwife to take these two medicines while she recovers from the birth and its attendant aches and pains.  But store policy takes precedence over customer convenience. The young woman accepted the confiscation without argument and departed with her meagre supply.  She will have to go out shopping again sooner than she planned.

In each of these interactions a politely robotic employee has been trained  to thwart the customer by performing their duties without a trace of helpfulness or empathy.  Not a heart warming experience.

 

 

Historic derailment on the Devil’s Bridge Railway

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Wet winters are the time for reminiscences, and for ferreting out memorabilia amongst the old photographs which every family accumulates.  This activity recently took me back almost 28 years, to my last excursion on the Vale of Rheidol Railway and a sensational incident now largely lost in the mists of time.

The railway is one of the last narrow gauge railways to be built in Britain, commissioned by Act of Parliament in 1897 as a multifuctional line.  It would transport tourists between Aberystwyth and the spectacular beauty spot of Devil’s Bridge, but it would also extend from Aberystwyth station to the harbour, and facilitate the export of timber and of lead ore from the mountains through which it passed.  There were some difficulties with the financing, but the line opened in 1902 and in its early years it flourished, and indeed stimulated the re-opening of several of the lead mines which to this day scar the flanks of the valley with their mineral-rich spoil heaps.  Two wars and several changes of ownership followed, and at many times the axe must have hovered over this eccentric little railway.  In 1912 it became part of Cambrian Railways, and in 1923 the company was absorbed by Great Western Railways.  In 1948 it became a small but anomalous part of British Railways.  It seems extraordinary that this little steam railway escaped the Beeching cuts.  Aberystwyth lost its rail link to the south at this time, the line which meandered through Llanilar, Tregaron and down to Carmarthen was closed.  Ever since that decision  the residents of Aberystwyth have had to travel to Shrewsbury, in England, before they can get to south Wales.

So on 26 May 1986, when my husband and I and my young children boarded the train with other families for an afternoon excursion to Devil’s Bridge we were in fact travelling on the last steam railway to be operated by British Rail.  It was a fine day, and we all piled into one of the  cheaper fare open carriages which had unglassed windows from which it was customary to wave frenetically at the motorists queued up at the level crossing in Llanbadarn. Then we chugged sedately up the valley, pausing at tiny stations along the way.  At Nantyronen we stopped to take on water.  Children hung out of the windows and  watched fascinated as a great grey hose like an elephant’s trunk was swivelled over the engine to pour water into its tank.   Then the train set off once more, to Aberffrwd, Rheidol Falls and Rhiwfron Stations before arriving at the terminus at Devil’s Bridge.   Here the adventurous would pay for tickets to pass through the tall green turnstile gates and explore the precipitous footpaths of the Mynach Falls and gaze up at the three bridge arches, sitting piggy back atop each other, so that the public road now crosses the valley at a great height above the river.

The open-sided third-class carriages were at the rear of the train on the outward journey up the valley in May 1986

The less adventurous, and those with small children would buy ice creams at the kiosk and return to the station half an hour later for the return journey.

In the cheap fare carriages we sat upon bench seats, hung out the windows and sometimes inhaled a gust of steam and soot from the Owain Glyndwr which propelled us.  But there was a grander option, the First Class Carriage, which had glazed windows, and upholstered seats, just like a full sized train.  And in 1986 there was also a special, even more expensive coach, the Vista Car which we had recently watched passing the Llanbadarn playground.   In it the passengers sat in tiered rows like a theatre, all facing out the side to admire the view through a big plate glass window.  The line hugs the south side of the Rheidol valley so the big views were all to the north.  It was the front carriage on the outward journey and the last carriage, at the back of the train on the return.

The return journey is easier for the locomotive, being downhill or level all the way, and there was no water stop at Nantyronen.  But 1/3 of a mile further along, as the train rounded a gentle corner and passed through some trees, there was a violent lurch, metallic screeching and our train jolted to a halt.  Leaning out of our open sided windows we soon realised that while we 3rd class passengers in the front three carriages remained on the tracks the last two carriages were tipped over at an angle of 45 degrees, stopped from falling further by the felicitous presence of a small embankment beside the track.  The driver, the only attendant on the train, walked back along the track to view the scene as the First Class passengers, some visibly shaken threw back the doors and clambered out the upper side of their leaning train.  Those in the Vista Car had all been tumbled onto the plate glass, and had to clamber along it to emerge through the end door on the other side.

The Vista Car at the rear of the train had tipped over, dragging the next carriage with it

1986 was before mobile phones and the driver had to walk off to find a landline to summon assistance.  Then everyone was instructed to walk back to the nearest halt and wait for buses to collect them.  I don’t believe anyone was more than bruised but it took a further two hours before we were returned the six miles to Aberystwyth.  Many mused on the disastrous possibilities had the accident occurred on a different corner, without embankment, where the carriage could have rolled unimpeded into the valley below, dragging the train with it.  Most of us felt very lucky and I don’t think anyone received compensation.

The front three carriages remained upright, while the rear two had lurched off the line.

Passengers emerging from the Vista Car and the First Class coach in front of it.

The Vista Car was never seen again.  It was new that season, and on that fine May day, heavily laden with passengers seated in tiers, I believe that its uneven distribution of weight and high centre of gravity  caused it to topple on the bend, pulling the rest of the train with it.  A British Rail Accident Enquiry was announced in the local paper the next week but I never heard the result of it.  In 1989 British Rail was privatised and the railway is now run by a charitable trust.

For years afterwards my young children would demand to play the “Devil’s Bridge Railway game”, which consisted of a leg ride on a parent seated on the sofa.  The ride became gradually more vigorous until suddenly the giggling child would be pitched off onto the floor to the accompaniment of squealing sound effects.  Re-enactment games are the best.  Before long it can be played all over again, with my first grand-daughter, who was born at Christmas.

Tanybwlch Beach undergoes a radical reshape

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Tanybwlch beach is one of those beaches which grades its pebbles.  It forms a generous arc south of the concrete jetty which shelters the harbour at the mouth of the Ystwyth and Rheidol rivers. At the north end the foreshore is an ankle-breaking slope of big round stones up to the dimensions of a small loaf,  and even near low tide mark there are pebbles, not sand.  At the middle of the curve, by contrast,  is a beach of dark sand, winnowed by the steep suck of the waves.  Down near the southern end, below craggy Alltwen the sea only deposits a floating load.  Here one finds lobster pots, fishing floats, the occasional dead dolphin, and great quantities of driftwood and uprooted seaweed. Of sand and pebbles there is very little, they move inexorably northward, leaving the rock pools largely free of sediment.

This is my favourite beach.  Not for swimming,  the shore shelves steeply and the undertow is well known, but for its elemental wildness, its dark grey pebbles, and gritty sand jewelled on close inspection by many shades of tiny smooth pebbles, amber and creamy quartz, jasper, granite, mica, all alien travellers brought by the glaciers which carved their way across this land. Niall Griffiths in his debut Aberystwyth novel Grits was so taken by Tanybwlch beach’s dark brooding grandeur that he described it as a volcanic landscape.  But it is not.  Its jagged outcrops are of the prosaically named Aberystwyth Grits – greywackes to the geologist, layers of muddy silt hardened to stone since their accumulation under Silurian seas.

The wild grandeur of Tanybwlch beach

Along the shingle bar which separates the beach from the low lying meadows beside the Ystwyth runs a rough road.  In Victorian times a small railway ran along it bearing stones from the quarry at Alltwen to their destination in the buildings of the town. In the twentieth century it gave access to the length of this deserted beach, a refuge for rod fishermen encamped along the shore, wild campers, insalubrious assignations, and the occasional impromptu party fuelled by the copious driftwood.  In summer brash tattooed men from the Midlands would roll up, with trailers, power boats or jetskis and launch them from the sandy middle of the bay.  That pastime ceased though, when the northern half of the beach was designated a local nature reserve, and a new barrier prevented vehicular access along the  bar. On balance it was a good decision, but not everyone was instantly won over and several years of barrier vandalism followed the change.  In recent years only keyholders such as the adjoining farmer have driven along the bar, and the life of the beach has become pedestrian, though not necessarily sedate.

The recent storms have wrought an elegant transformation.  Approach the car park at the end of Penyranchor and you will find it closed, for it is impassible due to a liberal scattering of those big round beach stones.  Press on beyond the barrier and there is no road to walk along.  Huge wave force has lifted the sloping pebble beach up over its former crest and deposited it on and beyond the road.  Waves surged over the beach barrier throughout its length, taking a slew of stones down the landward side, running briskly through the old shingle where the ancient prostrate dwarf blackthorn grows, the seawater rejoining the tidal Ystwyth river beyond.  And the consequence is the most elegant re formation.  A sculpted bank of round beach stones rises from the beach and descends, less steeply to the grassy slope descending to the river. Harder walking.  Quite undrivable.  But no one needs to drive through a local nature reserve anyway.

The new beach profile has entirely buried the road along the strand.

Farther to the south the encroachment has been of clean gritty beach sand. Here the sea has tended to break through in the past and the road runs on a barrage of concrete, with low walls on either side, a nice spot to sit and look out to the westering sun, or east to the sharp bend which the Ystwyth takes as it meets the strand.  It’s still a nice place to sit, but its road function now looks remote.  Erosive forces have cleaned away the ground where the concrete ends.  It is now a massive step up onto the concrete road at either end.

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The concrete road at the centre of the bay has been excavated at either end by the waves.

As I’ve said, the sea at Tanybwlch removes stuff at the south end of the arc, and moves it, the heavier the further, to the north.  So as one approaches Alltwen there is less sand or pebbles scattered on the foreshore.   Instead the sea has torn away at the turf and the big quarried blocks placed there as sea defences.  Some of these big stones from Hendre quarry have actually been trundled up slope and over onto the former road.

Tanybwlch Beach. Turf and sea defence stones rolled back by the force of the sea

It is here, near the south end that the beach last breached, in a big storm of 1964.  It hasn’t happened yet, but there are no national plans to defend this piece of seashore, and it doubtless will.  The consequence will be most picturesque.  With this (and during many lesser storms) the fields below Plas Tanybwlch become a shallow brackish lake, visited by appreciative gulls and waders.  The strangely rounded hill fort of Pendinas looks well with the blue winter sky reflected at its foot.  The dark bulk of Alltwen also rears elegantly above the foaming rollers to the one side and a still wide pool on the other.

The tranquil winter sunshine falls on a large salty flood below Plas Tanybwlch

Pendinas stands above the new brackish lake on the Tanybwlch flats

Devastating storm hits Aberystwyth Promenade

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When I wrote on 4 November of the ferocious storm which tore up pavings on the promenade it seemed an exceptional occurence.  But the combined high winds and spring tides of Friday 3 January have demoted that earlier storm to the merest footnote. Yesterday it seemed the whole of Aberystwyth was out upon the promenade, viewing the devastation.

Devastation on Aberystwyth Promenade

The telescope, still attached to its huge coping stone, stands awry amongst the displaced paviours and sand

As with the last storm the most violent damage was wreaked in the area opposite the Marine Hotel with great areas of ornamental paving and setts tossed like lego bricks amongst the invading beach sand.  Impressively the sprouting spring bulbs in the seaside planters hung bravely on by the roots, their pale green leaf shoots suddenly exposed by the seceding waves.  Long stretches of the familiar white railings however, were gone. A little further south the Victorian timber shelter seemed, at first glance to have escaped lightly, with just some splintering to its pitch pine frame.  It stands on a man made drum shaped piece of sea wall, which perhaps deflected the waves upwards.  But closer inspection revealed a sinister hole in the paving between it and the sea. Viewed from the beach, it became clear that the sea had excavated a cave into the void beneath the shelter.  A group of police assembled as the tide receded, to prevent risky exploration beneath the hole in the roof.  I am told this promentory was once the site of tha Aberystwyth gallows. Another bystander said there had formerly been changing rooms accessible from the sands below the shelter.

A sea cave excavated beneath the public shelter

Further towards the pier, the railings of the paddling pool had been felled as a single entity, and deep beach sand extended right across the road.

Beach sand covers the promenade

The paddling pool

Even where the land level rises at the south end of the promenade the suction of the waves had neatly removed individual or small areas of the ornamental setts with which the prom was refurbished some years ago.

Paving lifted by the force of the sea

This surely will be remembered as the great Aberystwyth storm, – depending on the next one, which they say will be along tomorrow….

The Joy of Cats ( episode 2)

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by The Curious Scribbler

In November 2012 I wrote about Boris and Bertha, our new tabby kittens, latest in a distinguished series of tabbies to dwell at this house.  Now they are adults, 18 months old.

Shortly after that post they underwent the indignity of being spayed – an obligation you have to sign up to in an explicit pledge if you get your kittens form the Cat’s Protection League.  It’s undoubtedly a good rule to limit the feral cat population, though I can’t help also remembering fondly the days when we had un-neutered toms, Tomcat and later Kevin, whose rich private lives were hinted at by their erratic disappearances and by the hunger and occasional scars with which they returned home, triumphant.  Kevin, in the 1990s contracted feline AIDS, and I remember the gloom which enveloped the household after his blood test revealed him to be FIV positive.  The vet remarked that, in view of the diagnosis he was surprisingly well at present, and so we took him home and promoted him from “Black Cat” brand cat food at 12p a tin to little pieces of fresh cod and other nutritious delicacies. To everyone’s surprise Kevin thrived, and lived life to the full for another decade.  His blood test had been promoted by the appearance of a sort of raw growth, a ‘Rodent Ulcer’ on his nose, an affliction comparable with Kaposi’s Sarcoma in people.  Surprisingly, on his improved diet this regressed and healed, but it left him with a lopsided and slightly quizzical sneer on his face.  When he wasn’t in pursuit of voles and rabbits he liked to go to church, where he would stroll up and down the aisle during the sermon.  We never went with him.  As one of the parishioners, the writer Kathleen Humphreys, informed me one day, “You may not be a churchgoer, my dear – but I would like to inform you that your cat is extremely devout.”  Kevin was a huge personality and formed a close bond with Kay.  So much so that she left him something in her will.  Unfortunately he predeceased her.

Anyway, Boris (who was in any case destined to live with his sister) was deprived of his testicles in late November a year ago, and appeared not to notice their loss.  For Bertha the experience was more trying and she excelled herself in her efforts to remove her stitches.  The vet provided a sort of post surgical baby-gro for her to wear but she soon extracted herself from it. Instead she had to wear a humiliating lampshade on her neck and kept colliding with doorways she expected to pass easily through.  Every day I would release her from her lampshade for while, so that she could eat in comfort, and play with her and take her mind off grooming her scar.  By the time the vet removed the scratchy black stitches ten days later her tabby pattern was growing back as a soft velvet pelt on her shaved patch.

Bertha did not much like wearing her lampshade collar.

Christmas provided scope for new exploration, and both cats entered into the excitement of tinsel and glittery baubles, and the comfort of relaxing with their family.

Boris gets to grips with a tinsel decoration

A  sofa full of pets and family.

Bertha (left) and Boris (right) assess a new toy. Bertha’s fur was regrowing on her shaved patch.

And so we learned that Boris has a very special characteristic – he chatters his teeth!  When his attention is caught by a bright ceiling light, or reflected sunlight tracking from a bauble across the wall, he gazes fixedly at it and his lower jaw judders to audibly rattle his teeth.  He will chatter his teeth in short bursts for minutes on end.  No previous cat of my acquaintance has performed this trick.  He catches mice and voles too, though he has not yet found out how to eat them and leave the gall bladder on the mat.  Bertha is particularly adept at catching flies.

The relationship between the cats and Otto the Lhasa Apso is everything I could have wished, the three are firm friends.  The cats often sleep together, and groom and play fight amongst themselves. Both cats also submit to having their ears groomed by affectionate dog licks, and present themselves for inspection when they re-enter the house.  Otto and Boris also have an understanding where wild cat chases are concerned.  These are invariably initiated by Boris and may involve several circuits within the house.  But my morning tea time is pet chill-out time, and all three animals adopt positions of ease around me on the bed.

The animals take their ease while I have my morning cup of tea

The animals take their ease while I have my morning cup of tea

TheTanybwlch Flats

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by The Curious Scribbler

‘Tanybwlch Flats’ used to mean the extensive flat meadows of the Ystywth flood plain just inland from Tanybwlch beach.  South of the meandering river the land has played host to many public functions.  For many years the Aberystwyth Show was held here annually, and though that event has moved to a new site at Capel Bangor, there have been sheep dog trials and trotting races in recent years.

Earlier in the 20th century these fields were purchased, speculatively, by Colonel Pugh in the expectation that they would become Aberystwyth airport.  At least one early aviator, Prince George had landed a plane on Tanybwlch Flats in 1933.  This was a social triumph for the elderly landowner, Lord Ystwyth, who thus managed to finesse the royal guest from the hands of his grander neighbour Lord Lisburne at Trawscoed.   Lord Ystwyth wrote to Buckingham Palace to explain that his own land was far more suitable as an airstrip than the proposed field at Trawscoed where the Prince was to land. Those responsible for the young Prince’s safety agreed, after a reconnoitering flight to the area.  Lord Ystwyth, was a local man, Matthew Lewis Vaughan Davies, a political peer enobled after many years as a Liberal MP. As such he was always considered of lesser moment by the hereditary and Conservative gentry. So it was all the more gratifying to the 92 year old peer that his guest would land within his property, and as such could be entertained to light refreshments at the mansion before attending the Royal Welsh Show.

Prince George ( later The Duke of Kent) flew from Hendon to land on Tanybwlch Flats in 1933, on a visit to the Royal Welsh Show at Llanbadarn.

Lord Ystwyth and Prince George in 1933 on the steps of Tanybwlch mansion, flanked by local dignitaries

 

Today ‘Tanybwlch Flats’ has a different meaning, for the mansion has been divided and refitted as fourteen flats, which are now for sale with Raw Rees of Aberystwyth.  The dense envelope of trees which long surrounded the house has been cleared away and it stands now, stark and grey, gazing out over the shingle bar to the sea.  A new little outhouse houses a state of the art biomass boiler, which emits a wisp of smoke.

Inside, the show flats reveal a minimalist style – lots of white paint, shiny wood floors, blinds, sparse furniture and galley kitchens.  Nothing could contrast more than with the early photographs of the Tanybwlch interiors  decorated for Lord Ystwyth and his wealthy wife: rooms full of high Victorian decor, swagged velvet curtains, deeply embossed flock wallpapers, heavy legged tables and upholstered chairs.

Tanybwlch,  Lord Ystwyth’s Drawing Room

 

 

Lord Ystwyth’s Dining Room

The house was stripped of most of these interior features after the estate was sold in 1936.  One of the fireplaces now occupies the Elizabethan room at the Royal Oak Llanfarian.    Subsequent uses for the building has been as a hospital, a hall of residence for the College of Librarianship, Coleg Ceredigion catering college and training restaurant, and more recently as the private home of guitarist Uli Jon Roth.  During that last incarnation many original features such as the panelled doors were released from their hospital cladding of hardboard, and the coved ceiling of the Music room was painted and gilded like a starry sky.

As the potential homeowners flock to view its latest incarnation many will have connections with its past.  Some may have relatives who experienced isolation there during the typhoid epidemic of 1946, others may harbour riotous memories of their student days in partitioned rooms in the attics and of winds so penetrating that the carpets were known to undulate in the windy blast from the west.  The particulars all look very tranquil today:

A sitting room in one of the new flats

A sitting room in one of the new flats

 

A bedroom in the new flats

A bedroom in the new flats

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Deeds and Dessert plates of Hafod

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by The Curious Scribbler

Last week Jennie Macve addressed the Aberystwyth Bibliographical Group on the subject of Hafod.  Her lecture, entitled Deeds and Dinner Plates – Some Primary Sources, introduced the audience to a variety of lesser-known resources which throw light on Hafod’s past.   Deeds dating right back to Thomas Johnes’s ownership came to light a few years ago, most unexpectedly, in a solicitors’ office in Leeds, and are now in the care of the Ceredigion County Archive.  Other sources include sketches, pictures, and photographs, which trickle in from all sorts of serendipitous sources, – Ebay produced one of a pair of glass plate stereo photographs which shows the Italianate wing added by Sir Henry De Hoghton, from the perspective of the present back drive leading to the estate office in the stables.   Another collector has a Victorian souvenir Prattware plate, on which a well-known steel engraving of Hafod circa 1850 is reproduced.

A steel engraving by Newman and Co shows Hafod after 1850 with the Italianate wing to the left

The same image reproduced on an earthenware Prattware plate depicting Hafod c 1875

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A much earlier and more sophisticated source is the Hafod Service, a dessert service commissioned from the Derby Pottery in 1788.  Thomas Johnes had it made as a gift for the then Lord Chancellor Lord Thurlow.  We can only speculate as to what favour or preferment Thomas Johnes was hoping for in return.  It consisted of 45 pieces, two dozen plates and assorted bowls and dishes, each decorated with a view of Hafod.  The pictures were painted in colour by the artists at the factory working from the sketches and paintings by artist Thomas Jones of Pencerrig and other contemporary images. The originals are for the most past lost, consumed, perhaps, in the great fire at Hafod in 1807, so these valuable collectors’ plates are a vital historic resource.

As the immaculately decorated plates turn up, in museums or other collections they throw light on previously unknown views from the late 18th century.  Seventeen items from the service are in the National Museum at Cardiff, and another ten are known in other museums or collections.  The most recent to come to light, in a provincial auction house last year, seems to show a scene on the river upstream from Pontrhydygroes. Two particularly useful dishes show the lodges at either end of the approaches to the house, both of which were subsequently demolished by the Duke of Newcastle to make way for 19th century structures.   These original lodges were built to signal the diversion of the public road, (which formerly ran past Hafod) to its present route (the B4574) along a sinuous lane past Cae Meirch.  Archways over the old road down the valley clearly signalled that this was now private property.

A Derby dessert dish, dated 1788 depicts the lodge and arch at the eastern approach to the estate

It is interesting to reflect that in the last decades of the eighteenth century landowners in Ceredigion were all busily diverting roads in order to improve their properties.  We see the same pattern at Nanteos and at Llanerchaeron where the owners, all influential men, each purchased the old road past their mansion from the Trustees of the Turnpike Trusts on which they served, and thus ensured that the common drovers no longer passed their doors. Designed lodge houses served to emphasise the entrances to what was now private land. Estate improvement also often involved relocating the odd tenant farm to improve the flow of the landscape of the demesne.  Some of the old maps reveal that Johnes too, though in many ways an enlightened landlord, removed farms and cottages which he considered inharmonious in the view.

The gentle watercolours and sketches of two hundred years ago are charmingly familiar, so similar to the views which can be seen today.  But as Jennie pointed out, too many of us forget that the historic footpaths through the picturesque landscape have been hard won, through the last twenty years of restoration.  Before the present concerted efforts by The Hafod Trust in partnership with the Forestry Commission these paths were impassable, blocked and in places broken by fallen trees, eroded by hillside torrents where culverts had become blocked, or entirely obliterated by landslip. When a path is clear of obstruction we take it for granted,   and imagine it was always thus.  Hafod is in fact a fine example of unobtrusive restoration.

Walkers can pass without hindrance along the Gentleman’s walk today

Estate Manager Dave Newnham checks a recently completed stretch of path

 

A recently restored landslip on the spur path to the Cascade cavern

Hafod is open to the public at all times. For more information see www.hafod.org/

Aberystwyth Bibiographical Group see http://users.aber.ac.uk/das/texts/aberbibgr1.htm

 

Storm on the promenade

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The much anticipated storm of 27th October passed Aberystwyth with scarcely a  ruffling.  It had been vaunted as the greatest since 1987 and Michael Fish’s famous pronouncement that some woman was entirely deluded in her belief that a hurricane was on its way.  In the event, the storm took a more southerly course and while trees were blown down and four lives lost elsewhere its impact on Aber was non-existent.

Not so last Saturday evening when the still leafy apple trees behind my house creaked and roared with the gale and the last bramleys thundered unceremoniously to the ground. I was relieved to find no trees uprooted the following morning.

The direction of the wind drove great seas across the bay at Aberystwyth, focussing their force especially at the northern end on the promenade.  An occasional but exhilarating sight is the explosive force of great waves sending a sheet of spray right over the terraces houses from the Marine Hotel to Alexandra Hall.  Some years ago I photographed such a scene on a sunny wintery morning.  This time the height of the storm and tide came after dark.

But daylight revealed considerable damage to the promenade opposite the Marine Hotel with the white iron railings uprooted, still attached to their huge anchoring stones  and twisted in the air.  Where the edge stones of the promenade were displaced the sea made short work decorative sets and small paving slabs with which the prom has been refurbished in recent years.  As the waves deposited a slew of gravel across the road they sucked back to the beach, taking the pointing, and whatever substrate secured these small paviors with them.

Sets and paving slabs lifted by the waves where the edge of the prom has been washed away

Cleanup commenced on Monday morning with the combined efforts of men with barrows and road sweepers large and small successively clearing a passage for cars.  The handsome dragon seats all remained firmly anchored in place, but several appear to stand now not on paving but on a shingle beach, pockmarked by the tread of passers-by.

Several inches of shingle covered the promenade and road

Road sweeper outside the Marine Hotel

 

The smaller sweeper whisks away the remaining pebbles

The Victorian blue and white timber and glass shelter is the most northerly building on the promenade, rashly placed, it would seem, on a projecting semicircular drum of masonry above the beach.  But it has passed through the tempest unscathed.  It seems that it is the lower parts of the prom which have failed to break the waves’ force and have proved the most vulnerable in this storm.

Passers-by survey the damage south of the timber shelter, which escaped unscathed