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Llawhaden Bridge, Church & Castle

Llawhaden Bridge, Church & Castle: My final post on my holiday at the start of September 2024 in Wales.

The last day of our holiday in Wales was a gloomy one so far as the weather was concerned, overcast and with occasional light rain interrupting the drizzle. It didn’t stop me from taking a rather long route into Narberth from our holiday cottage at Narberth Bridge in the morning with Linda, though it was a walk I’d made on my own a few days earlier, stopping then to take photographs in rather better weather and I made no more this time.

Back at the cottage after lunch we decided the weather would not put us off another walk and made plans to visit Llawhaden to view the church and castle and then to walk along a footpath to Robeston Wathen, where we would phone for a car to pick us up and take us back to Narberth.

It seemed a long drive mainly along narrow country lanes to take us to Llawhaden Bridge, a Grade II* scheduled monument. This medieval stone arch bridge is said to be “of national importance for its potential to enhance our knowledge of xmedieval or post-medieval construction techniques and transportation systems.” Wikipedia says it was built in the mid-18th century.

For us it was a convenient place to be dropped off and to take us across the Eastern Cleddau river, which here formed the boundary from Norman times between English and Welsh-speaking Wales.

Over the bridge we turned right, taking the road below the steep hill up to the village of Llawhaden to its church beside the river. It was unusual in being one of six parishes that straddled the linguistic border and was bilingual. The bridge is now on the Landsker Borderlands Trail that marks this divide.

St Aidan’s church was an impressive building from the outside, but relatively bare inside with only a few monuments on its wall, and just a little stained glass. This medieval church has an unusual double tower and is II* listed with a very complete description of the structure

Opposite the church is a steep path leading up around 80 metres to the village of Llawhaden, emerging close to the castle, though by the time I’d got to the top I was too out of breath to notice it and walked to the centre of the village before realising it was behind me.

Llawhaden was a far more important place back in the 12th and 13th century as it became the administrative centre of Dewisland, the land owned by the Bishops of St Davids which King Henry I had issued a charter as a Marcher Lordship – effectively an independent state.

The castle was first built as a smaller military castle to protect the area from the Welsh on the other side of the Cleddau river, but this was destroyed by the Welsh in 1193 was later replaced by the fortified palace for the Bishops whose remains we spent some time walking around and climbing up and down various parts. Much of it was “embellished” by Bishop Houghton in the 14th century, but later after it fell into disuse, much of the stones were used for other buildings in the area.

The site is well presented and free to visit, but rather off the beaten track despite being only a couple of miles from the A40. There were only two other visitors in the 25 minutes or so we spent there.

We might have spent longer, but the only one of us with a mobile phone realised she had left the piece of paper on which she had written the phone number for our ride home back in Narberth. We tried to contact others who might know it without success and our emails to the driver were only read the following day. We decided we had to walk back the whole way and continued on the route, going back down the hill and back over Llawhaden Bridge to the bridle way and footpath leading to Robeston Wathen.

This started well, but after around 500 metres we found the path flooded and decided not to try to wade through, turning around and going back to the bridge again. We were tired by the time we had walked back the 4 miles along the route we had been driven on our way to Llawhaden.

Just a few more pictures at Llawhaden Bridge, Church & Castle.

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Blackpool & Minwear Wood

Blackpool & Minwear Wood: More holiday snaps. We could have walked to Blackpool from where we were staying in Narberth. Not of course the Blackpool in Lancashire but the very much smaller Blackpool in Pembrokeshire.

It would have been a pleasant walk along country roads and through Carnaston Woods, perhaps 5 or 6 kilometres, but we wanted to go a little beyond Blackpool to Minwear Woods for a walk there, and together with the walk back would have been too much for some of us.

Blackpool isn’t a very large place. It has a bridge, Blackpool Bridge, a large house, Blackpool and Blackpool Mill. One road to nowhere very much, woods around and several footpaths including the Knights Way.

The bridge takes the Knights Way over the Eastern River Cleddau, close to the limit of the tide coming up the river from Milford Haven and at the highest navigable point of the river.

It has an inscription stating it was built around 1830 by Baroness de Rutzen; she was the daughter and heiress to Nathaniel Phillips, the owner of the Slebech estate and of Blackpool Mill. I think it may have been rebuilt then rather than entirely new though it may have replaced a ford a short way upstream.

Mary Dorothea Phillips (1797-1860) had met Charles Frederick (1795-1874), Baron de Rutzen in Rome in 1821 and they were married in 1822 in England. Later they became Lords of the Manors of Slebech, Minwear, Newton, Narberth and Robeston Wathen, and of the Manors or Reeveship of Lampeter Velfrey and Llanddewi Velfrey.

Usually described as German, de Rutzen was born in what is now Latvia and the family had extensive estates in Lithuania and you can read a great deal more about him on Geni.com, including his description of his first meeting with the charming daughter of Mrs Phillips, who was a notable pianist. After the marriage the couple lived in Brighton and London for some years, moving to Slebech Hall after Baroness de Rutzen became joint owner of the estates there as well as in Jamaica in 1830. It was a happy marriage and they had seven children.

There is no sign of a pool on either old maps of Blackpool or the current OS maps, but I think the name may come from a creek of the Cleddau immediately upstream of the bridge. The were some dramatic views of this overgrown area from the track leading to the bridge, but a footpath there was closed as too dangerous to enter.

Blackpool mill was built in 1813 on the site of a wharf and a former ironworks and is a remarkable Grade II* listed building, recently beautifully restored as a “Heritage Dining” restaurant, Black Pool Mill, by the nearby holiday park. We didn’t go inside as we had brought sandwiches which we ate at a picnic table in the woods but the restoration has retained the machinery of the mill virtually intact. Originally powered by a large waterwheel using water from a mill race coming from around a mile up-river, the waterwheel was replaced by more efficient turbine in 1903. The mill race is a feature in front of the mill which is set back from the road.

Minwear Woods are a short distance to the west on the slopes above the river and we walked around the clearly marked trail. Trees obscure any view of the river except at a recently constructed viewpoint just off the trail. A short distance to the west the view from an earlier viewpoint is now completely blocked by trees.

There are a few more pictures from this walk in the album Blackpool & Minwear Wood.

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Ninety from Narbeth, Pembrokeshire:

Ninety from Narbeth: Narberth (Arbeth to Welsh speakers) was until recently a place I had never hear of, a small town in Pembrokeshire with ancient origins. I spent a week staying there with a small group of friends at the start of September 2024, returning last Saturday.

Narbeth apparently grew up around the palace of a Welsh king and in the great collection of ancient Welsh stories preserved by oral tradition until first written down around 1350, the Mabinogion, is the chief palace of Pwyll, Prince of Dyfed. There were ancient camps nearby and the Romans came – and went.

But it was the Normans who, having invaded England in 1066, a few years later turned their attention to Wales and left a great mark on the area, building more than 50 massive castles to invade and occupy the area. Thee wars here were a complex and changing situation and other castles were built by the Welsh to defend their land.

A castle was first built at Narbeth by the Normans around 1116, but rebuilt in stone in the following century. It formed a part of what is now called the Landsker Line, defending the territory they controlled against the Welsh. The castle is now in ruins but open to the public, though the buildings are fenced off for safety reasons.

The Landsker Line divided the largely English-speaking area of south Pembrokeshire, dominated by the Normans from Welsh-speaking Wales, and the area to the south of it was often called ‘Little England’.

Now only around a fifth of the roughly four thousand residents of Narberth are Welsh-speaking. For a town of its size it has a remarkable number of independent shops and particularly at weekends the place is crowded. Ten years ago The Guardian called it “a gastronomic hub for West Wales” and named it as “one of the liveliest, most likeable little towns in the UK.“

I can’t comment on the gastronomy, though I did help to cook some interesting meals for our small group staying there, but it does have a very fine shop making artisanal ice cream with some unusual flavours. And I only visited one of its many pubs, which was a very friendly place, though I just missed the live music there.

As well as more traditional shops, the town also has more than its share of arty shops and some with a hippy or ‘New Age’ vibe. And its certainly a very friendly place compared to suburban London and one of a number of locals we met in a pub shook my hand when I revealed one of my Grandmothers had come from Wales. I’m not surprised that Narberth was “named one of the best places to live in Wales in 2017“

It has an excellent local museum and of course a number of churches and chapels, though some now in other uses. These are among its 70 listed buildings, most of which I think are in the pictures I took, though many of the more interesting are unlisted.

It isn’t far to drive to many other attractions of the area – more castles, mills, the rugged coastal path and more sedate seaside resorts with some fine beaches. Friends took me to some of these but there were many more.

Perhaps the most disappointing thing about Narberth is the railway station, around three-quarters of a mile from the centre of town. On the map the railway seems useful, but in reality there are too few trains to be of much use. The station building is now a joinery though Platform 1 (and only) still stands, with an announcement telling us that this was a request stop, and we should indicate clearly to the driver as the train approached that we wanted to board. Fortunately it did stop when we began our journey home.

All the pictures here are from Narberth town centre, and there are more on Facebook in the album ‘Ninety From Narbeth‘. I’ll make some later posts about some of the places in the area we were able to visit during our holiday.

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No Sweat, Street Photos, Holocuast Memorial Day

Saturday 27th January 2007 was a rather unusual day for me. Of course one of the joys of working as a photographer is that most days are different, but perhaps this was more varied than most, though I only had three sets of pictures to put on line

No Sweat Protests Burberry Factory Closure – Regent St

No Sweat, Street Photos, Holocuast Memorial Day

I’ve never owned or worn any clothing made by Burberry, but they are very much a traditional British brand, producing and selling clothing that seems rooted in the British countryside and images of farming, hunting shooting and fishing. But I’ve always been a town or city dweller.

Until 2007 their clothing was proudly Made in Britain, and for years had come from a factory in Treorchy in the Rhonda where the factory had started in 1940 and employed large numbers of local skilled workers. The factory was set up when Alfred Pollikoff received funding in 1937 from Lord Nuffield to bring new industries to distressed areas of the country and began production in 1939 producing clothes for all kinds of workers and military uniforms for the Second World War.

The Pollikoff factory was bought by Great Universal Stores in 1948 and was taken over by Burberry, also a part of GUS, in 1989 when they changed its name, although many locally continued to refer to it as Pollikoff’s.

They became one of the largest employers in the Rhonda, at its peak employing around a thousand workers, though by 2006 increased mechanisation had reduced that to around 300. It was a great shock to the workers and the local economy when Burberry in September 2006 announced they were closing the factory at the end of March 2007 and moving production to China.

The Treorchy factory was efficient with high productivity and profitable. But UK labour costs meant that production was more expensive than overseas. According to the GMB union it cost around £11 to produce a polo shirt in Wales, but with cheap labour only around £4 in China. Burberry sold these shirts for around £60 in shops such as that on Regent St.

The Treorchy workers began an huge campaign to keep the factory open, gaining support from many in parliament and such unlikely figures as the owner of Harrods, along with stars including Sir Tom Jones, Michael Sheen, Ioan Gruffudd, Rhys Ifans, Charlotte Church and Ben Elton.

*Local MP for Rhonnda, Chris Bryant (brown jacket) with Treorchy workers*

A group of workers had come to London to pursue their fight and to demonstrate outside the Bond St and Regent St Burberry stores on January 27th. And a team from ‘No Sweat’, “an activist, campaigning organisation, fighting sweatshop bosses, in solidarity with workers, worldwide”, dressed as removal men arrived to support them, attempting to wrap the shops and workers in brown paper and ship them, second class, to China.

No Sweat’s protest was an amusing act of street theatre and one which helped an otherwise rather vanilla protest gain publicity in the media, always hard for protests to achieve unless they involve celebrities or violent illegal acts. Generally our media are very much on the side of the bosses (like the billionaires who own most of the papers) and the status quo, and the vast majority of protests are simply ignored by them, as “not news”.

Burberry workers destroy a Burberry polo shirt made in Treorchy

Burberry still makes some clothing in Britain (and elsewhere in Europe), and in 2015 enraged some who had fought to keep Treorchy open by announcing plans for an new factory in Leeds, though this was to replace two existing Yorkshire factories.

A number of small businesses were set up after the closure on the factory site, including the Treorchy Sewing Enterprise Ltd, set up by former Burberry employees.

West End Walk – Bond Street, Piccadilly, Leicester Square

I’ve never really thought that ‘street photography’ was a useful definition of an area of photography, and certainly never thought of myself as a street photographer, though the huge majority of my work has been made on the streets.

And while there are some ‘street photographers’ whose work I admire, there does seem to me to be a huge amount of totally vacuous and pointless work that is produced under this label. It too often seems to be an excuse for having nothing to say.

*Fortnum and Mason’s clock from 1964 is surely the most hideous in London.*

So while the little performance in the tree at the side of the National Gallery may be ‘street photography’ the rest of my pictures on this little walk are more concerned with architectural detail and illustrate the profligacy which was (and is still) enabled by our exploitation of the British Empire. They pictures on this walk also say something about taste and attitudes to women, both in previous eras and of course my own.

Holocaust Memorial Day – Soviet War Memorial & Peace Garden, Lambeth

I was unable to be at the wreath-laying ceremony to mark Holocaust Memorial Day at the Soviet War Memorial in Geraldine Mary Harmsworth Park as I was taking pictures on Regent St. But I did go there later in the day.

The memorial is dedicated to all of the 27 million Soviet civilians and military personnel who died for Allied victory in World War II and off course the Soviet Union played a vital role in the defeat of the Nazis, but the Russian record of persecution of the Jews both before and after the revolution is horrific. The Russian Orthodox Church for centuries led opposition to Jews who were not permitted to go ‘beyond the pale’ into Russia unless they converted. The first recorded pogrom was in Odessa (now in Ukraine) in 1821 and there were widespread pogroms in the Russian empire later in the century which led to many fleeing to Britain and the USA. Tens of thousands of Jews were massacred in the civil war following the 1917 revolution. Antisemitism continues to be rife in Russia after the Soviet era.

Close to the Soviet War Memorial is the Holocaust memorial tree, planted in 2002 by the then Mayor of Southwark where wreaths are also laid at this annual ceremony.

The park surrounds the Imperial War Museum, which houses a moving exhibition on the holocaust, but I didn’t visit it on this day. Instead I went past to the Tibetan Peace Garden in the park, opened in Summer 1999 by the Dalai Lama. It seemed an appropriate place to sit and reflect for a while, which I did, as well as taking some pictures.

You can read more about these events by scrolling down the January 2007 page where there are links to more pictures

Robert Frank’s London

I’ve long been an admirer of Robert Frank’s pictures taken in London, and you can see a fine selection of these in the feature Extraordinary Black And White Photographs Of London In The Early 1950s.

There are at least two videos paging through the book London Wales on You Tube, and I recommend that by Алексей Гуменюк only because I think he is a better page-turner, though his commentary and the sound track perhaps add a certain charm – but you can turn the sound off if it annoys you. Of course if you have read my earlier thoughts on the book or otherwise bought it you can turn the pages yourself. It’s better.

Frank’s London is a city (and City) long lost, with men in bowler hats and men carrying sacks of coal, both enshrouded by the pea-soupers which the coal produced (and in the second part of the book, he goes to photograph the men who mined it.)

Thankfully those days of almost solid air in London are long gone, though I can just remember them. But appearances are deceptive and London’s air is still toxic, leading to huge amounts of miserable illness and an estimated almost 10,000 early deaths each year, with levels of pollutants typically well above the EU legal limits in many streets and schoolyards.

The City too has changed, though still equally toxic. We no longer have an Empire – it had already begun to disappear when Frank coughed his way through those streets, but neo-colonialism has replaced colonialism, and many of the world’s most toxic companies – for example in mining – are still London based, and the City is the money laundering capital of the world.