A History of Aberystwyth: Part 4

Kind Reader,

Looks like Part 4 is here. Although I have just been researching something else, which had brought up a whole load more interesting little details about Aber. Well, I’m not rewriting this, so here I present part four.

The Top of Great Darkgate Street, Leaving the Square

GR: We now head up towards the castle, and, to our left, you can see the great building of St Paul’s Church, most recently turned into Academy. The church was built in 1880 on the site of Three Jolly Sailors, a pub that had stood there since the early eighteenth century and was famed as one of the most squalid public houses in the town. It originally held 550 people and still holds much of its Victorian grand interior, although some of the Christian spirit that once filled it has been replaced with a kind that is far easier to pour.

C: What a building! That truly is one of the grandest places I have seen in this town so far.

GR: For certain, my friend, but opposite it you see now a row of houses; down the end and towards the castle is the Angel Inn, an ancient pub that has its roots in the craftsmen of history itself, and opposite Academy there should be the Farmers Arms, a pub dating from the nineteenth century, which sadly, however, is there no more.  Those two pubs, along with the Three Jolly Sailors – which Saint Paul’s (Academy) replaced – were public houses that grew up around the early markets held here, and are a remnant of the revelry that surrounded those early times when Aberystwyth was a defended market town in the middle of a Wales still new to complete English rule.

Now, if we carry on down this road we pass the building where the remains of the ancient and vast market still continue, although the current building was originally planned to hold the meat market in, it is a place that it is indeed worth a look at if you have some money to spend on something to remember  your visit here by.

C: I would be glad to find myself something to remember this good town by, but how should I ever sum up all that I already know about this town in one souvenir?

GR: I shouldn’t say I know – but don’t hasten to say ‘all you know’ there is plenty yet you will learn!

C: I fear that is true, then please, carry on.

GR: If we carry on up Great Darkgate Street, over the crossroads past the market, we pass on our left a large Georgian building called the Assembly Rooms; built in 1820 and enlarged in 1829, it was another project of the Powel family to enlarge and improve the standing of Aberystwyth. From it’s completion on the 1^st July 1820 it was the heart of Aberystwyth high society, holding a ball every Tuesday starting at 9pm sharp, and during the day acting as a casual drinking and meeting place for the elite. For a while at the beginning of the twentieth century it was home to the National Library of Wales, and now serves as part of the University.

C: Interesting, so this small part of the town went from Medieval marketplace to the grandest part of Georgian Aberystwyth?

GR: Yes, I suppose so, I hadn’t thought of it like that. If we carry on we will come to the entrance to the parkland around the church and castle. To our left you can see the large stone and pebbledash theatre that was originally a Church School built in 1914. It replaced the old Aberystwyth Grammar school that had been built just over a hundred years earlier in 1813, just beyond it, out of sight, are the many ship-builders houses who fuelled the growing Victorian town, in amongst them was the Victorian custom house that had been moved there from Pier Street as well as a number of iron foundries.

C: I see, I see, but what a view ahead! The castle and the church must look magnificent from here at sunset.

GR: Oh yes, I would certainly say that the twilight ours are the perfect time to explore this place, but you would not suppose the entire history that happened here, perhaps.

C: Oh? Go on, please, good guide.

GR: Well, the original thirteenth century church of Aberystwyth was severely shaken when the castle was destroyed in 1649 and that church fell into the sea only a year later, which left the town without a church. So, after a century or so of preachers simply giving sermons in the street or in meeting houses, the town decided to build a new church for themselves. Standing directly in front of us if we face into the park around the castle, it was a large rectangular building consecrated in 1787 as the Chapel of St. Michael, and could hold 350 people. It had been built a few years earlier and was in fact not well thought of by the worshippers; in its early days only a few people were allowed to preach there, these people were the favourites of the local town council and often had differing views to the more traditional ideas of the townspeople.

The church was still standing in 1834, when a second larger church was built in a grand Gothic style; with space for 1100 worshippers when packed, it was a fitting statement against the then un-repaired silhouette of tumble-down castle towers.

C: I see it now over the houses to our right, sir; what a church!

GR: Oh, don’t mistake my words, that church was pulled down in 1894, I’m sorry to say, and in the fading years of Victorian sea-side holidays the current church was put up. It is a grand church, although most of the graves that surround it are from the previous church, the graveyard used to be to our right as you make your way down this path ahead of us, but sadly was cleared in the 1970s.

But perhaps we have dawdled too long here, the tantalising ruins ahead of us await, follow me, sir!

C: Lead on!

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A New Website & Old Books

Sensible Reader,

With the start of term fast approaching and little more than three sticks of Apium Graveolens, I invite you to explore my growing creation at antiquarian.atwebpages.com (I would do anything for a better web host right now) where I am slowly cataloguing some of my books (hopefully all of them once I am home for Christmas and actually have most of them around to catalogue!)

Working on the site reminds me of the great need there is be for one central site where all owners of private collections could list the books that they have, so there could be some rough knowledge of the vast wealth of rare books in private hands. The British Library has set up the ISTC for cataloguing incunables in libraries, and sites similar to WorldCat sometimes list libraries in which to find titles, but there is no standard record anywhere in which private collectors can list their books.

My attempt is simply to create a site to list my own books, but perhaps in the future a larger more standardized site would be a useful project for someone to work on.

For now, honest reader.

A History of Aberystwyth: Part 3

Kind Reader,

Perhaps I should inter-splice this with a little of some other posts, but for now, I pray you read and enjoy.

The Square at the Top of Great Darkgate Street, Entering from Bridge Street

GR: Now here we are, the very end of Bridge Street, on the right side of us is a building recently acquired by Spar, but has a rather long history as a public house and hotel; built in about 1727, it was opened as The Gogerddan Arms, although also called the New Black Lion at times, and was a successful pub and hotel until the 1960s, when it was used as university halls for a few years, and finally sold on and has since been shops. It was owned in its early years by the mayor of Aberystwyth, as well as being owned by Sir Pryse Pryse, a man who was deeply involved with the Powel family in the nineteenth century, and who also owned Castle House, which we will come to later. It was outside this inn that from 1780 a stagecoach left every morning at four o’clock during the summer, bound for Shrewsbury, where it did not arrive until nine that night. This was the same coach that took mail from Aberystwyth to other parts of the country. It was a very important inn during the days of Aberystwyth’s growth, and in the early nineteenth century became popular as a haunt for local writers and poets, who would sometimes perform their work for pub patrons.

C: A shame it has closed, I would gladly drink at such a historic bar, but oh – what a fabulous clock tower opposite!

GR: It is impressive, but sadly not as grand as it once was.

C: Oh? How so?

GR: There used to be a much grander clock on that spot that was built in 1855; a true monument to horology built from pale sandstone in a Romanesque style, it was pulled down in 1956 after the council decided that it was unsafe. It turned out to be harder to remove than they had thought, and, I have been told, the old clock put up a fight before it fell. No less than could be expected of such a relic of true Victorian engineering.

That clock, though, was only the latest in a line of important buildings that stood on this spot. Being outside the main castle gates, the part of Great Darkgate Street that lies to our left was always the centre of trade and administration during the town’s earlier years. Old Medieval Aberystwyth would have seen this place filled with shops and street market traders, originally administrated and taxed through the castle. However, when the castle ceased to exist a town hall was put up on this site, almost exactly where the clock tower stands now, which was finished in the early 1690s. It would have been a large building, probably timber built, which would have towered over the old houses around it. However, the wood and plaster construction of it was very fragile against the salty sea air and by 1770 it was costing so much to maintain the building that it had to be pulled down and a new hall was built in its place, which stood almost exactly as long as its predecessor, finally being pulled down in the 1850s.

C: What became of the town hall then? Was that the last?

GR: A new town hall was built in Queens Road, which I’m sure we will pass later, where an old hotel called The Talbot had to be pulled down to make room for it. But now I think we should head a little further back in time and examine the castle and the town’s origins, before we begin to rise too quickly into the annals of our modern times. So, if you will follow me left up to the top of Great Darkgate Street then we can head towards the only obvious remnant of Medieval Aberystwyth.

C: Gladly, sir.

A History of Aberystwyth: Part 2

Honest Reader,

Allow me to humbly continue from where we left off.

Bridge Street

GR:  Here we are, by Powel Street, which was named after the famous local Powel Family; an ancient noble line who claim descent from  Edwin ap Gronow, prince of Tegeingl. I cannot say exactly which member of that family this road is named after, but, looking at the age of the houses in that street, I would suppose it to be either Thomas Powel, sheriff of Cardiganshire in 1785, or his son William, who was Lord Lieutenant of Cardiganshire and represented this county in parliament from 1816 to 1854.

C: I have not heard of this family, where are they now?

GR: Sadly, the male line died out in 1930, with the only heir having been killed some years early in the First World War, only five days before the end of that dreadful combat.

C: It seems no place escaped that tragic war.

GR: Indeed, and for sure it was not the first nor the last war that Aberystwyth had its part in, for only just behind us is the junction to South Road, once called Ship Builders Row, and it was here that many of the renowned shipwrights lived who built vessels that served at Trafalgar and many battles throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

C: Is it so? Then no wonder so much business changed the town so much, for I see now, as you said before, all these buildings date no early than the late eighteenth century.

GR: The facades of these buildings certainly do, but they stand very much on the same plots as their medieval predecessors, so it is very possible that the buildings behind these fronts are far more ancient than they appear. Certainly, though, many of these found new purposes during that time of growth in Aberystwyth; on the left hand side of the road there, set back a little further than the houses around it, with an iron railing in front of it and two large Georgian doorways next to each other, is The Old Bank House, where in 1762 The Ship Bank opened its doors. After the customs house was moved to Aberystwyth a few years earlier, ships importing goods to Wales were having to stop in the harbour, and this increase in goods passing through the town meant people were making more and more money, and needed to store it. The building itself was owned by the Powel family (they truly were very powerful in this area) and the bank leased it from them until 1864, when they moved to New Street.

This was one of several early banks that shipping brought, since another two opened in the early nineteenth century, the Aberystwyth Provident Bank for Savings, of which I’m afraid I can tell you little, and the Aberystwyth and Tregaron Bank, opened in 1810, which was popularly called the Black Sheep Bank owing to the sheep that appeared stamped onto their bank notes. This bank, however, was never very successful and after a number of futile investments by the company it went into liquidation and the company was entirely finished by 1815.

If we carry on, then, I have a little more to say when we reach the junction to Gray’s Inn Road.

C: And I shall hear it gladly, please, carry on.

GR: I am glad you enjoy it, so here we are then, at Gray’s Inn Road, a name that has puzzled me somewhat, but one that I have found no information on how it came to be called so, however, if you go down it, you will find yourself in what I believe is one of the quietest parts of Aberystwyth. Even though it may seem like just another side street, it leads through into a small square in which stands St Mary’s Church, a fine artefact of Victorian gothic revival, built in 1865 and opened a year later. The surrounding houses were built by the Powel family, and the church itself was funded by a man called Philips, who fell out with the architect badly enough that a number of other pieces of ecclesiastical work in the area, that the architect was due to take on, had to be assigned to others to do. It can seat 480 and is, I must say, one of my favourite churches that still stands in this town.

C: I shall be sure to take a look when we are done.

GR: You will not be disappointed, it is part of the town that seems to me very calm and untouched.

C: Then you think other parts of this town are not so?

GR: Much of this town is very busy, as it has been for a very long time, and, indeed, it is the busyness of life and the coming and going of travellers that caused to be built the next two places I want to show you; two inns that are perhaps two of the oldest in the town.

On the left of Bridge Street, a little further down from Grays Inn Road, there is the Nag’s Head, which has been there since well before 1790, although the façade itself dates from around that time. And then, carrying on a little further, there is the Old Black Lion Inn, or Yr Hen Llew Du, this is, as far as I know, the oldest inn in the town, and some say that there has been an inn on that site since the fourteenth century. Recently it seems to be remarkable for having a particularly high bar, and has only newly been refurbished, but still the outside looks much as it would have done during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as the rest of Aberystwyth grew and changed around it. Somewhere behind it there was a church built, which I think still stands, but it is so stuffed amongst other buildings that I’ve never found my way to it, it is a Methodist chapel that seats 300, and I think built sometime in the early nineteenth century.

Now, if we carry on down this road past the cross roads, towards Great Darkgate Street and the clock tower, we will begin to see what became of the heart of the old Medieval town.

C: Ah, I shall be glad to see it.

A History of Aberystwyth: Part 1

Excellent Reader,

Having just purchased an incredibly good milkshake from a local shop (custard milkshake, if you must know), and having just missed out on a free brand new picture frame that was sitting presumptuously outside, I thought it would be best to make public this rather simple work I put together last year on the history of our great town.

(Please, worthy and most kind reader, accept it for what it is; a work I wrote for personal enjoyment and interest, and had not planned at the time to put on this blog, even after enjoying an exceptional milkshake.) I pray you read and enjoy; its form is that of a rhetoric spoken by a guide as he travels around the town – there is some very interesting history I missed since I did not want to go too deeply and bore people, which I may make several blog posts about another time.

Until next time, fair reader.

The Gentle Rambler: or a Short History of Aberystwyth

Presented in Prose, as Conversed and Explained by a Guide

Part 1: the Harbour Bridge looking toward the Town

Countryman: Excuse me, Sir, I come by this place that I might perhaps explore this town that I have heard so much about, and perhaps you would be kind enough to tell me the way about it, since you look like you know the place?

Gentle Rambler: Why, for sure Sir, I know this place well, and I could indeed tell you the way about that you might explore it, but it so happens I am somewhat of a guide myself.

C: A guide? And you would show me about this place?

GR: It is true, sir, though I have less time than I would like, perhaps you would allow me to show you some of this place and its history as far as I understand it, and then you might yourself get some more enjoyment from your own exploration.

C: That would be very kind of you, sir, but why so eager to help a stranger, may I ask?

GR: This town was made and surely only survived by being welcoming to all, and I hope that with that spirit I might welcome you and introduce you to this great place.

C: And how do you mean that then, my guide?

GR: Unlike many Welsh Medieval towns founded by Englishmen, Aberystwyth survived through allowing anyone to live here, meaning that the Normans who founded the current town became citizens of Wales rather than rulers of it. However, allow me to begin from the very start of settlements in this place; there have been many different peoples living around this place throughout time, and I think that to know this town you should surely know how it and its predecessors came to be made.

C: For sure, then do go on.

GR: Back during the rise of man, in the stone ages and days when we were a nomadic species, this place was commonly a hunting and camping ground for those people. The sea that you see today was much further out, in fact before twelve thousand years ago it was no more than a mere channel, and beyond thirteen thousand years ago it would have been possible to cross to Ireland with little effort. So, since the beginning of man’s ‘modern’ exploration of this place, the area around here has been a rich and plentiful place.

C: Indeed, I can imagine so, but surely there was no settlement then, so that is no beginning to this town.

GR: Too true, and it was not until long after the stone ages had finished that any lasting structure came to be built near here, it stood on that hill you see behind us, Dinas Maelor, when in the Bronze Age a burial mound for a great warlord was raised on the hill’s southern slope. And, though it was no settlement itself, it attracted people to it so that they could remember their ancestors who had ruled this place.

C: And they lived here?

GR: I cannot say, there is no evidence to say where they lived, but some two and a half thousand years ago a hill fort was built on the side of the hill visible from this bridge; the people that lived there defended themselves by way of a stone bank, likely topped with a palisade, surrounded then by a ditch. The gateway faced the sea, and allowed people to make their way from the beach to the fort.

C: But why not make it so that the entrance faced the land? Surely that’s where the majority of visitors and newcomers came from?

GR: Quite the opposite, the fort was built by raiders from Ireland who terrorised the local people before beginning their own settlement on the hill.

C: You mentioned early that this town only survived by welcoming everyone, so how did they welcome people if they destroyed and stole lands?

GR: Ah, and that is why that fort did not survive; like almost all hill forts it was abandoned within decades. I cannot say if it was war that brought it down, or drought, or some other reason, but they soon returned to try again and built a second fort about a hundred years after the first on the south side of the slope, which you cannot see from here. This one was built to be more defensive and had terracing as well as strengthened gateways with high banks and walls to keep out intruders. The northern gate of that fort was attacked some two thousand three hundred years ago and burnt, before the entire of the fort was overwhelmed, after which it was abandoned again. For a short while it was used to try and hold against the romans about two thousand years ago, but after that this place was fairly uninhabited for about five hundred years.

C: And what came next?

GR: Well, Saint Padarn visited here from Brittany in the sixth century and founded a small monastery at Llanbadarn Fawr, and here a village had grown by the time that anything began to be built on the site of our town here, which is why early references to this place call it Llanbadarn, and not Aberystwyth. But I have held you far longer than I would like on introducing our town, may I now give you that tour of our town that I offered.

C: For sure, carry on as you will.

GR: Gladly, I shall. Then look towards our town and imagine looking upon the very first time a man called this place home. It was borne out of battle and war; there had been three previous castles around this place and Aberystwyth Castle was a final attempt to put some control over this part of Wales. There were two other castles built for the same means, and they were built quickly, but Aberystwyth was raided even while under construction and the whole place put to the torch. But, we are not at the castle yet, so let me tell you of the parts that we see now.

The town had a great stone wall that, when finished, had foundations a meter and a half deep, and nearly three meters thick. I had for some time believed it had been entirely destroyed by building and theft by the mid 1700s, but I now know that there were parts of it still standing in 1846, which were being taken down at the time to use to build houses with. This wall surrounded the town through South Road, Mill Street, Chalybeate Street, Baker Street, and all the way down to Pier Street, each end meeting the castle. The placement of the gates isn’t entirely clear, there was certainly a gate at the bottom of Darkgate and Eastgate Street, and I suppose there was probably one past this bridge. So imagine now that we look towards a town where a church spire and castle towers are all that stand higher than a tall stone wall, broken only by a gate ahead of us.

C: I see, and how changed it is!

GR: For sure, the years have quite altered it, but that was over seven hundred years ago!

C: Does much of that old town remain?

GR: We shall see; it certainly seems to be a well too frequently used phrase amongst historians that the nineteenth century began with a different town here to that which it ended with. It is true that the castle is the only recognisably ‘ancient’ building around, and indeed it is my opinion that there is hardly a façade in the town that predates 1780, but I know a good few buildings that date back at least in part to a much more medieval Aberystwyth, and I shall gladly introduce you to those tinges of history as we take our walk about.

C: And I shall gladly hear it.

GR: Well then, let us enter; we cross now over a bridge that is over two hundred years old, although a bridge has likely stood on this site since medieval times, this current bridge was opened in 1800 after the old bridge was washed away in 1796. The river runs, as you see it, much as it did when the town was first founded in 1277, and there was probably originally a shallow area around this bridge for boats to be beached on before there was a proper harbour.

And now as we come across it we enter into the town itself; this part, just outside of where the medieval town walls once stood, was called Under the Town, and consists mainly of early nineteenth century and later houses, built out of stone quarried from the remains of the old walls. Don’t be fooled though, even though we may be at the very edge of the town we are still in a part that has been quite busy with history, even if just in more recent years.

Just to our left we have Rummers Wine Bar, or so it is called as I write this, which was built in 1860 as a corn warehouse, to store stock that was coming in off of ships docking in the nearby harbour. Before this there was a small collection of buildings here called Bridge End Place, where in 1818 the first theatre in Aberystwyth was built. I hear rumours in the pages of history books that there was also at some time a chapel, or religious meeting place on that site, but when that was built or how it appeared I cannot be so sure.

To our right runs Mill Street, so called because in 1740 a water mill called Our Lady’s Mill was built there after the old mill in pier street was demolished, I have had some trouble saying exactly where it stood, but for sure it was on the right side of the road when you look that way from this spot, and probably stood not so far from the bridge, perhaps only a few houses down. There are too many suggestions of what the first building was to be built outside of the town walls, and, to put forth my own view, I would say that that mill was probably one of the very first permanent structures to be built beyond the old limits of the town.

If we went down Mill Street there is a forlorn stretch of ground on the left side of that road that deserves a mention, it is now hidden behind fences, opposite the long red brick wall, and until 2008 contained one of the oldest Calvinistic Methodist chapels in Wales, a truly monumental structure that was only the latest in a line of chapels built on the site. It was finished in 1880 and could hold 1010 people if it was full, unfortunately on July 4^th 2008 it caught fire and was gutted before it could be brought under control, the building was later cruely demolished on the 11^th.

C: A shame, for sure, but all towns move on and change, sometimes beautiful things are lost; we cannot keep them all.

GR: For sure, for sure, now, if you will walk with me, we shall head some way straight up Bridge Street towards the first right junction with Powel Street, and I will tell you a little more. By going down this road we enter the Old Town, as it was known, that is to say – the area of the town surrounded by the old town wall, which probably had a grand stone gatehouse leading into the town just about at the junction to South Road, to our left.

C: Then lead on, please, and I will hear you.

The Dark Beneath the Greenery

Admirable Reader,

Allow me to entertain you with a simple poem today, with promises of something more witty and wholesome to come. May you read if you wish, and I pray enjoy.

(Written some time last Spring, when a late frost caught the early buds of the coming Summer.)

  The dark beneath the greenery
Where we would one day lie
Warned cold amidst the scenery;
You too, my friend, will die.
Perhaps we’ll meet again, my lad,
When our two fates are through,
Beyond the mourners deathly clad
And wasted days you’ll rue.

  The hawthorn may be em’rald yet;
More summers you’ll see go,
But doubt it not, one fate is set;
You’ll lie where sun shan’t glow.
The clay on which the leaves do rot
You’ll rot upon as well,
When days you know are long forgot;
And we’re forgot as well.

Until next time, kind reader,

Farewell.

A Boring Catch-up Post

Most sensible reader,

Having now been some considerable months worthy of note since I made any effort towards this blog, I should be obliged to explain myself and deliver a reason for my absence with due haste. So, here are some things that have been going on.

Firstly, I have been busy digging at a new site near my home in Danbury, Essex, where we have defined a new system of earthworks dating back at least to the early iron age, if not older!

I have been book binding and increasing my collection of books (some 150 volumes now and growing). My latest acquisition comprises of six leaves from, when I bought them, an unidentified book that the dealer had bought from a German bookbinder six months previously. Over the last few weeks I have been busy researching them and managed to pinpoint them as being from an extremely rare edition of Compendium totius logicae by Magnus Hundt, printed in Leipzig in 1497. (It is rare enough that the only other copies are in Germany, and my fragment is the only part of that book anywhere else in the world!) The book is currently being restored professionally and I’m looking forward to seeing the resulting work in December!

Finally, I have been hard at work with the MADD team creating Crowfell, a project I will post about properly soon.

Hopefully next time I post I will have something of more interest than this rather simple personal extract.

Until then, dearest reader,

Mike