Category Archives: Parks and Gardens

Remembering Tabernacle Chapel

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It is not often you see a listed building smashed to dust in front of your very eyes.

The 11th of July 2008 was such a day though, on which we stood and watched with disbelief as the largest demolition crane ever seen in Aberystwyth methodically chomped its way through the burnt shell of this landmark chapel crammed into the sloping plot between Mill Street and Powell Street.

The chapel was a huge building, its curved gallery of pitch pine seating supported by elegantly fluted  iron columns.  It had long lost a viable congregation, though I remember attending a big school carol service there in the 1980s. While an undeniable hulk dominating the town, its fine interior, and the portentious facade at the Powell Street end had contributed to its listed status and its eventual downfall.  Saving these features and creating a sympathetic conversion to flats at the same time would have been a considerable challenge. Planning permission for such a scheme was granted, but work never began.

On the preceding Friday in July the empty building had caught fire, and although only metres from the fire station its roof was soon well alight. By morning, the smoke scarred windows and collapsing roof ridge caused the closure of the nearby roads to traffic.

The fire damaged building

The Calvinistic Methodist Tabernacle Chapel, built in 1878 and gutted by fire 130 years later

The following Friday the gigantic crane began at the Mill Street end reaching great clawfuls of masonry with the grab on its telescopic arm and advancing inexorably through the building.  The tiers of seating, the elegant metal pillars, the pitch pine interior were all soon reduced to a tangled mass under the caterpillar tracks of the machine.

The Powell Street facade was especially grand, and almost independent of the rest of the barn-like structure.  Here it was not rendered but built of dressed local stone, with pillars, balusters, and seven tall round-topped windows and lintels of Cefn Sandstone from Ruabon  stone.  It seemed untouched by the fire.  By the early afternoon, only this facade, and the return walls built in the same material still stood.  Naively we assumed this would remain and could still front the eventual conversion and retain a little historic character in this part of the town. To the side of this facade, and enclosed by substantial arrow headed iron railings was a tiny shady patch of grass, barely a garden.  This had been one of Aberystwyth’s secret spaces. For in the centre of the little lawn was a plinth on which stood a bronze statue of a  winged youth, with a laurel wreath on his curls and a bundle of ragged palm leaves cradled on his arm.  His foot balanced on a sphere of bronze and on this sphere are engraved in bold capitals the names of fourteen men.  These were the members of Tabernacle chapel killed in the First World War.  Like the monumental town memorial, this graceful piece was also the work of Mario Rutelli.  By the morning of 11 July 2008 it had been removed from the site.

The demolition crane just kept on working its way through the building.  Effortlessly it reached up from the old chapel floor to grasp the towering pediment of the Powell Street entrance and casually brought it crashing to the ground.  Methodically it tugged off the coping stones of the parapet. The immaculate turned stone balusters snapped like so many broken teeth.  Then it chomped up the chimneys at the two corners, the seven elegant first floor windows, the little balcony over the sturdy pillared portico.  The massive freestone quoins of the corners were the hardest to shift and among the last stones standing.  Supported on the inside by the two chimneys these massive corners would surely have braced the facade.  Finally there was just the ground floor with its three tall doorways and four windows standing.  And when these crashed to dust the workmen carried away the white-lettered Tabernacle board and gave it to a neighbour as a souvenir.

For a brief period we thought the Powell Street Facade would be retained

 

The demoliton crane soon nibbled away the facade

The massive quoins and chimney corners were difficult to demolish

A new view opened up towards Penparcau. The railings of the little War Memorial garden remained.

Finally the Tabernacle board is given away as a souvenir

That night the crane left town, and a great gap allowed a view from Powell Street out to the hills of Penparcau.  The site was soon surrounded by high fencing and the wreckage was gradually carried away.  The little garden is a forlorn tangle of brambles now.

Rutelli’s pretty monument eventually found a refuge in the Ceredigion Museum, eight sturdy volunteers carried it up the stairs and strapped it to a pillar of the Coliseum where it can be admired today amongst the varied exhibits.   The accompanying information sheet states that the developers, Merlin Homes, intend to eventually restore him to his little garden at the corner of the site.  But there has so far been no development, and this summer will be five years since the fire.

Rutelli’s statue now resides in the  Ceredigion Museum

For Ceredigion Museum visit   http://www.ceredigion.gov.uk/index.cfm?articleid=197

 

 

 

On choosing a gardener, an employer or a mate

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by the Curious Scribbler

My perusal of The Gardeners’ Magazine for December 1943 reveals some advice, from a Thomas Jones of London (a Welshman I suspect), entitled Phrenology for Gardeners and their Patrons.  Mankind has always deceived itself into believing that inspection of the physiognomy will reveal the secrets of the inner self.  If only it were true, surely tricksters, burglars and murderers would have been long since weeded out of the population?

Nonetheless this article, and the accompanying illustrations ( engraved for our education at the author’s expense) caused me quiet amusement.

Figures 129 and 130 illustrate the physiognomy desirable in an employer, should a gardener be fortunate enough to have a choice of situations.  Jones tells us “it might be useful to know that all other circumstances such as duty, wages, prospects &c., alike, the lord or the lady with a broad full chest, broad erect forehead, and not much exceeding middle size (fig. 129) will naturally be the most kind and generous to them…  An intelligent gardener would not willingly choose to live with a master having narrow shoulder and a contracted chest (fig. 130).”

Engraving in The Gardener’s Magazine, December 1843

Funnily enough the gentleman on the right is the one who more closely resembles the 21st century vision of Mr Darcy!

A further pair of images explains the importance of The Facial Angle.  Our well-informed gardener would not willingly choose to work for an employer with a defective facial angle – a sloping brow and receding chin ( fig. 131).  Such flaws would also be undesirable in an employee.   However a  gardener contemplating an employer might take the risk after all, because “the inestimable blessing of education, and the intercourse of high and polished society, neutralise or counteract the former to such a degree as to put its possessor almost on a footing with the man of native strength of mind”. Chinlessness then, is an insuperable defect in a gardener, but may be overlooked in a well-educated member of the landed classes!

Engraving in The Gardener’s Magazine, December 1843

Thomas Jones moves on to wider implications:    “If this kind of knowledge is of importance to a gardener or an employer, it is of still greater importance to him in the choice of a wife.  Nothing good is to be expected from an uneducated woman, unless she has an ample chest and attenuated extremities.”  Expanding his theme he writes: “All other things being equal, a man should make choice of a wife whose form and extremities come as close as possible to those of the Venus de Medicis ( fig. 133) and a woman should choose a husband of a form, and with extremities, coming as near as possible to those of the Apollo Belvedere ( fig. 134).  Full sized statues of these models of beauty and perfection ought to be in every garden, and in the hall of every gentleman’s house: casts of them ( which may be had perfect of their kind at 7s each),  on the chimney piece of every cottage as a beau idéal to operate on the imagination.”

Engraving in The Gardener’s Magazine, December 1843

Jones also deplores the eugenic impact of  prolonged war, quoting an article in the Annales de la Hygiène Publique, which asserts that wars tend to degenerate the human race by killing off the tallest healthiest men without their leaving offspring.  It would be best, says Jones, to select for soldiers none but little men.

Classical statuary is not uncommon in historic gardens.  Hitherto I saw it as merely as ornament, the focal point of a view. In the light of Thomas Jones it can be reappraised as a manifesto commending the coupling of tall athletic men with young women possessed of ample bosoms and long feet.

 

 

Truth comes out of the Bushes

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by The Curious Scribbler

Just occasionally, life imitates fiction with the well-turned symmetry of a good short story.

When I started writing about the Aberystwyth’s war memorial I drew only upon my own imagination in describing the striking nude at the foot of the column as “a naked woman emerging from a thicket”.

Since then I have searched the internet for similar images using various search engines and search terms, and at last my quest bore results, in the form of pictures on the website of a professional conservationist and restorer in Rome.  Here was the self same girl! http://www.art-conservation.it/rutelli.html

Two views of Rutelli’s sculpture  “Verità esce dai Rovi” which stands in a courtyard in Rome. Photo: Marco Demmelbauer, before restoration

Marco Demmelbauer  tells me that he worked on this Rutelli sculpture many years ago. It is privately owned and can be seen in the courtyard of an apartment block, at Via Quattro Fontane n.18  in Rome.  The sculpture has a name too!  Not quite “Humanity emerging from the Horrors of War”, but  “Verità esce dai rovi”,   which translates as “Truth comes out of the bushes”.  I feel vindicated indeed!

It now seems clear that our Aberystwyth war memorial sculptures are from re-used moulds, and have elder sisters elsewhere in Europe.   In my last blog I pointed out that the Winged Victory by Rutelli on top of our memorial had already been poised on a monument in Palermo since 1911.  I am grateful to Marco Demmelbauer for pointing out that she also stands on the right hand column in front of the Monumento Nazionale a Vittorio Emanuele II in  Rome.  This also dates from 1911.

The same Winged vistory as we have in Aberystwyth

Winged Victory by Rutelli on a column in front of the Monument to Vittorio Emanuele II in Rome
Photo: Marco Demmelbauer

Winged Victories were not however the sole preserve of a single artist.  The original Victory ( the Goddess Nike) was discovered in 1863 in Samothrace, and is one of the great treasures of the Louvre.  She was fashioned in Parian marble about 190 BC.  A few extra fragments of her, the right hand, a finger tip and thumb have turned up, but her arms and head being missing has left scope for the re-interpretation of the figure in the late 19th and 20th centuries.  Rather remarkably the two tall Roman columns bear two different Winged Victories, one by Mario Rutelli and the other by another sculptor Arnoldo Zocchi.

Winged Victory by Zocchi on the other column in front of the Monument to Vittorio Emanuele II in Rome.
Photo: Marco Demmelbauer

It seems that there were certain criteria for these turn-of-the-century Nikes.   Unlike Truth/Humanity, a Winged Victory is modest, her long draperies rippling in a strong breeze, and she holds aloft the laurel wreath of victory.  She stands upon a sphere, and carries some kind of object in her other hand. Here the interpretations vary, Zocchi provides a sheathed weapon, Rutelli some kind of foliage.

Winged Victories by Rutelli and by Zocchi on columns in front of the Monumento Nazionale a Vittorio Emanuele II in Rome.
Photo: Marco Demmelbauer

Exactly whose influence led to Rutelli tendering a design for a war memorial  utilising two of his pre-existing works for the Borough of Aberystwyth has yet to be revealed, but my guess is that Lord Ystwyth had a good deal to do with it.

 

High on Henbane? The Welsh Witch and her broomstick

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by The Curious Scribbler

Simon Goodenough, the new Curator of the National Botanic Garden of Wales came to speak this week to the Cardiganshire Horticultural Society.    For my less local readers: Cardiganshire is the old County name for this county, now properly known as Ceredigion.  Dyfed, a mystifying administrative amalgam  of Cardiganshire, Pembrokeshire and Carmarthenshire was created in 1974 and abolished in 1996, but lives on in address databases and in the title of the police force.

Anyway, the Cardiganshire Horticultural Society ( or CHS) was founded in 1968 before Dyfed was invented and is a flourishing local society bringing together some 200 members of wide and often learned interests.  The National Botanic Garden is over our borders in Carmarthenshire, and was a major millennium project, 507 acres of historic landscape now centred on Norman Foster’s famous glasshouse, nestling like a giant insect’s eye in the rolling green landscape.  We have always maintained a keen interest in its progress.

Norman Foster's Great Glasshouse at the centre of the Middleton estate

Norman Foster’s Great Glasshouse at the centre of the Middleton estate

Simon described his many plans for the enhancement of the gardens.  One theme concerns pharmaceutically useful medicinal herbs, currently represented by the Apothecaries’ garden, which celebrates the traditions of healing attributed to the Physicians of Myddfai, three brothers living in the nearby hamlet of Myddfai in the 13th century.  While he is enthusiastic about the ancient traditions of herbal cultivation in this area, known to reach back to Roman times and beyond, Simon was sceptical about the Myddfai story.  Scholars have suggested it may well be something of a folk fiction of fairly recent origin. This would not surprise me: we have quite a tradition of embellishing the facts in Wales.  Iolo Morgannwg , for example is, now recognised to have been a most prolific inventor of druidical history, while Lady Llanover can be credited with singlehandedly creating the picturesque Welsh peasant costume we still dress children in to celebrate  St David’s day.

Simon went on to show us a picture of henbane (Hyoscyamus niger), a British native herb with powerful psychoactive properties which crops up in coastal locations and on disturbed ground.  It is in the garden’s collection and may well have been utilised in Myddfai

The poisonous and psychotropic herb, Henbane

The poisonous and psychotropic herb, Henbane

Apparently henbane can make you feel you are flying.  According to tradition it was pulped and mixed with porkfat, smeared upon the end of a handy broomstick, and applied vaginally where the moist skin and rich capillary bed allowed the active chemicals to reach the bloodstream and the brain.  This, we learnt is what was really meant by witches flying on a broomstick.  I do not know the origin of this scholarly insight, and can only speculate as to where wizards might have put their broomsticks.  If true, it is most satisfactory, and if false it joins the ancient tradition of tall tales in Wales.

 

A Welsh gentleman’s link with the Chelsea Physic Garden

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by The Curious Scribbler

When I visited the Chelsea Physic Garden a couple of years ago I received a charming little ticket inscribed in the blank middle ‘Admit One’. The 18th century engraved decoration of the card showed exotic palms, banana trees, agaves, a well-built and scantily clad lady, ( The Goddess Flora I presume?) and a sturdy and equally flimsily veiled cherub, or more accurately, a putto. Flora rests her bare foot upon the works of Philip Miller, (gardener of the Physic Garden and author of eight editions of the Gardener’s Dictionary 1732-1768) and of Hans Sloane, the garden’s benefactor.

Day entry ticket for Chelsea Physic Garden

Day entry ticket for Chelsea Physic Garden

I had seen this design before. Amongst the ephemera of one of Ceredigion’s great houses I came across an original, in which, instead of the terse “Admit One” the central panel reads:
Mr David Lewis The Bearer, a Member of the Society of Apothecaries of London, is intitled to visit their Garden at Chelsea, as often as he pleases, at convenient Hours. No servant is to receive from him any acknowledgement on that Account.

Membership pass: Mr David Lewis, a member of the Society of Apothecaries of London

On the reverse were written three names: Hugh French, Master, E.D.G. Fafield, and Wm. Henry Higden, Wardens.

The reverse of the card names the Master and Wardens
The Archivist at the Chelsea Physic Garden was able to tell me that the Society of Apothecaries appointed a new Master annually, so Mr David Lewis’s card was issued in 1807-1808.
Lewis is not a rare name in Wales, but this David Lewis was almost certainly a local gentleman, the owner of a 199 acre estate, Cefn yr Yn, which was located about 12 miles inland from Aberaeron in the fertile Aeron Valley. His estate was surveyed in 1787 and showed it divided into four tenanted farms, two of which had very extensive gardens which may have produced herbs.
His membership pass to the Apothecaries Garden ended up in the archives of Nanteos (see last post) amongst unsorted papers dating from the life of William Edward Powell. W.E. Powell inherited Nanteos, one of the four great estates of Ceredgion, in 1809 at age 21 and promptly set about an extensive program of house and garden improvements, egged on by the influence of Welsh architect John Nash and his circle. Very possibly he borrowed David Lewis’ membership card in order to familiarise himself with the most fashionable trees and plants in London. Certainly a Tulip tree, a gigantic Ginkgo and an Oriental Plane are among the prestigious trees which mark out Nanteos as a historic garden of distinction.

Nanteos in 1995 before its recent refurbishment as a country house hotel

Nanteos in 1995 before its recent refurbishment as a country house hotel