Tag Archives: Edward VIII

A Tour of Old College

Posted on by
1

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

More on Rutelli’s sculptures

Posted on by
2

by The Curious Scribbler

I’ve had a lot of interesting comments arising from the blogs on Rutelli’s Aberystwyth war memorial sculptures. In this town we like our handsome nude woman, and people often stop to take her photograph.  She is more eyecatching than the traditional assemblage of weapons or the lone and gloomy soldier of so many other towns.

It was a real find to discover she also exists in a garden in Rome ( see Truth comes out of the Bushes) .  But as correspondent ‘dredwina’ points out, it is not unusual in the 20th century  to make five or six editions of a bronze, declaring them at the outset, but not actually creating them all until buyers turn up.  Just as there are at least three Rutelli winged victories in the world, there are, for example, two locations where Churchill and Roosevelt chat upon a bench. Spotting the duplicates could become an absorbing hobby.

The original model, however, was a one-off and  sources have come up with several  oral histories on the subject.  Helen Palmer  writes:- I had a story that the model for the busty lass was a Belgian girl who – as a very elderly lady – visited Aberystwyth some time in the 1980s, but I cannot remember the source and maybe it was all baloney!

While historian Gerald Morgan had a slightly different version – When showing a group around Aberystwyth I was told that the naked lady had been modelled on the wife of a local shopman, Ernie’s Chips or some such, and that as an old lady she had returned to Aberystwyth in the ?1990s and been interviewed by the Cambrian News! Again, I’ve never checked it out!!

Possibly these are both spurious claims.  More likely the girl in question was in Rome, and since she would have been  at least 16 when she modelled she must have been extremely old by the 1990s!

By contrast ‘Tone’s account of repairing the part-severed head of Edward Prince of Wales on the seafront stands up to robust scrutiny. ” At the time when I was employed as a Art/Ceramics technician at the then Visual Art Dept. Llanbadarn Road, on more than one occasion I had to travel to the “Old College” to repair Edward’s neck as an attempt was made to remove his head at the end of the academic year by, it was said, students from Pantycelyn Halls of Residence.
He wasn’t a tall prince, though could be described as handsome, It was an easy to repair as I could reach the damaged area without the aid of steps.
Although as you say “seldom remarked upon” he is certainly marked upon by the use of the hacksaw!”

I climbed up the plinth to verify, and established both that Tone is a good deal taller than myself, and that the repaired hacksaw groove on the back of the neck is plain to see.

The green line of corrosion marks the repair to the Prince’s neck

I don’t think we will find other editions of this sculpture tucked away incognito.  It is generally understood to be the only life-size bronze of Edward VIII anywhere.  His abdication in favour of marrying Wallis Simpson put paid to what might otherwise have beena lustrous career in commemorative statuary.

Statue of Edward Prince of Wales at Old College Aberystwyth

Edward Prince of Wales, Chancellor of the University College of Wales 1922, by Mario Rutelli

Arthur Chater also comments  “And I believe that students once sawed off, or tried to saw off, his head. There is certainly a nasty scar on the side and back of his neck. The statue as a whole is rather good I think, with a nice art nouveau trail to his gown, but the face is appallingly weak – maybe though this is in fact a perceptive insight into Edward’s character on the part of Rutelli?”

His gown is indeed very fine, and richly ornamented.  His face looks strangely faun like, though it is true that in photos as a young man his tip tilted nose and and boyish look is indeed apparent.  If this was modelled in 1922 he was less than 28 when the likeness was taken.

A close up of Edward's face

Detail of Edward Prince of Wales, a likeness from or before 1922

The Prince of Wales photographed by Hugh Cecil Saunders in 1925

Speaking of fauns, Mary Burdett Jones has reminded me that I have so far neglected Rutelli’s first commission in Aberystwyth, the war memorial to 10 members of the Tabernacle chapel who died in the First World War.  Tabernacle Chapel?  Yes, that is another story…

An Image of Multi-tasking Womanhood

Posted on by
3

By The Curious Scribbler

Cruising the works of Italian sculptor Mario Rutelli, I came across another work of his, the memorial to Anita Garibaldi on the Juniculum Hill in Rome, which was created in 1931.

If ever we need a monument to multi-tasking this must surely be it.  Poised upon a rearing steed, brandishing a pistol whilst breastfeeding her infant son, the Brazilian wife of Guiseppe Garibaldi is represented as a heroine of mythic proportions. Fashioned 83 years after her death, to embellish the seventh and final resting place of her mortal remains, there is no reason to consider this an accurate portrayal of the woman, but of an ideal.

Rutelli’s Anita is the stuff of legends – mounted on a rearing horse (an exceptional feat of engineering) she brandishes a pistol in one hand while holding her nursing son close in the other arm. Photo: Will Hobbs

Garibaldi was an active Republican dedicated to the liberation and unification of Italy.  Finding it politic to depart for South America, he soon became involved in fighting for  independence in Brazil.  During this swashbuckling existence he acquired an 18 year old  Brazilian wife, Ana Maria de Jesus Ribeiro, who often fought at his side, dressed as a man, and is credited with greatly improving his horsemanship. During a five year lull in revolutionary activity in Montevideo he worked as a schoolteacher and fathered four children with her.

He and his family returned to Italy to join the conflict between the revolutionary army and the invading forces of Napoleon III.  Briefly the revolutionary army won the battle of the Juniculum Hill in 1849 and repelled the French.  However two months later the Roman Republic was defeated, and he and Anita were fugitives.  Four months pregnant with their fifth child and ill with malaria, Anita died, at a farmhouse near Ravenna, in her husband’s arms, and was hurriedly buried in an unmarked grave.  She was just short of her 29th birthday.

Monument to Ana Maria de Jesus Ribeiro di Garibaldi, best known as Anita Garibaldi, on the Juniculum Hill, Rome.  Photo Will Hobbs

Oddly, when I studied History O level many years ago, the examiners had determined that we should study this period of Italian history.  So I used to know quite a lot about Count Cavour, Victor Emmanuel II, Mazzini, and Garibaldi.  At  an age when I had learnt  almost nothing about 19th century British history it seemed an irrelevant and isolated bit of knowledge, most of which I promptly forgot.

However everything forms connections eventually.  And the connection with Aberystwyth?  Well, it confirms my suspicion that the sculptor Mario Rutelli was in his element with an imaginative brief, and his female figures are rarely sedate in their bearing.  By contrast how bored must he have been with his commission for the bronze full figure sculpture of Edward Prince of Wales ( Edward VIII) in the robes of Chancellor of the University College of Wales in 1922.  It too survives, seldom remarked upon, in the narrow strip between the Old College and the sea.

I am grateful for permisison to reproduce the photographs of Anita’s monument, see http://willyorwonthe.blogspot.co.uk/2011/06/beside-every-great-man.html