What is Welsh Architecture? In Wales: Churches, Houses, Castles Simon
Jenkins asserted that it is ‘buildings in Wales’. It is a claim which is
difficult to contest and may be reinforced by his sequel, Wales: Chapels, Empty
Shops and Rugby Grounds. The greatest of our castles and monasteries may be
said to be French and our capital was built by the Irish for a Scot. Only the
houses of the rural peasantry, the vernacular architecture of poverty, might be
said to be truly Welsh. The notable exceptions to the rule that our public
buildings plagiarize European precedents in their bastardized provincial
Victorian and Edwardian interpretation of the Classical and Baroque ‘styles’
will be discussed below.
Driving in from Penarth on a nice sunny other day I chanced to glance
across the sparkling azure waters of Cardiff Bay and marvelled at our achievement.
From a distance, on such a day, our capital could be taken for Benidorm. In a
chance conversation with a visiting academic from The University of Great Leighton,
Treforest Branch (open late and weekends for takeaway degrees) he said that he
had travelled down by train to the meeting at the proper university in Cardiff.
“I think it’s marvellous what this university is doing for Cardiff” he said. “It’s
like coming in to Reading now.” And in the shopping centre named after our
patron saint you could be anywhere and everywhere. Global brands and local
bland.
All that is good about the place in terms of a distinct character was
largely built before we were born. All that is good about the place is slowly
going.
Who will make the difference and start adding to places that truly
inspire or revitalize a general sense of civic pride? Who can design and build
a place which will truly instil such a sense? Who are the Percy Thomas’s, Dale
Owen’s and Alex Gordon’s of our day? These were chaps who could knock up a
building of distinction without tracing it from the previous months edition of
the Architects Journal or downloading the latest architectural icon from the
internet and getting a cheapo version flung together by a local contractor*.
Who may or may not qualify for the definition of Welsh Architect? Under
the rules of International Rugby Union Football Frank Lloyd Wright would. We
have exported several, most recently John Belle, the Welshman responsible for the restoration
of many of New York's most famous landmarks including the National Museum of
Immigration on Ellis Island, (coincidentally named after a Welshman who once
owned it). He made the curious
statement that "New York has become one wonderful big community ...
unconsciously I may have found a place that is like home without realising
it."
I am
not sure whether he was referring to Wales as ‘home’. If so then he may simply
be parroting that clichéd national sentiment which we call hiraeth. In my experience our adoration of the homeland is usually
noisily expressed in a bar which is as distantly removed from it as possible. This
hiraeth seems to chiefly involve getting
maudlin about Wales in a place as cosmopolitan as Noo Yoik or singing about it where
rugby is played in the sun. As to the former, the template was developed and
patented by Dylan Thomas and rigorously followed by our performing artists ever
since. Laugharne to London, Mumbles to Malibu, Holyhead to Hollywood.
Getting back to architecture I recently ordered a biography of John Nash
from Jersey Marine’s principal antiquarian bookseller, Messrs A. M. Azon on the
strength of their synopsis which suggested that Nash may have been born in
Neath. It proved to be as accurate a claim as ‘next day delivery’ but he did
have relatives there as it happens. An interesting bit of scuttlebutt which
does not appear in other biographies is that he packed his first wife off to
Aberavon from London and, by implication, then encouraged an acquaintance to
service her to facilitate the divorce that he wished to effect. This is possibly
the only recorded instance of some chap having to be induced to seduce in the
Neath and Port Talbot district. It does establish that he shared with his
principal patron, The Prince Regent and his current successor a rather cavalier
attitude to first wives. He also built a lot of rather nice houses in Wales, the
one at Rheola being one of the more pronounceable and accessible
from our only motorway.
Another famous contributor to our pantheon of Welsh architects was the Northamptonshire
born Clough Williams-Ellis. Three names and two houses is definitely
thoroughbred crachach and the
splendidly patrician and patronising Clough is most definitely a role model for
the aspirant National Architect of Wales. Here is a chap who started from
nothing. As he tells it himself in one of his several autobiographies there
were times in his early career when he did not have the cost of a hansom cab
to return home from a ball. But he pulled himself up by his bootstraps – or would
have if he hadn’t been wearing spats at the time – and elected himself an
architect. Portmeirion is perhaps his best known work, one that delves deep
into Welsh history and stands as an elegant reminder that, before we were
French, we were run by Italians for four hundred years.
That may well be the nub of the matter. There is no such thing as ‘Welsh
Architecture’; perhaps there never has been and never will be. That may be a
good thing as architecture as a self-conscious expression of regional cultural
identity has often been suspect. However well meant or well executed it is, at
best, contrived and at worst a manifestation of the Volkisch mentality that fuels rabid nationalism. We already have
plenty of that and need not encourage its representation as The Word in Stone –
or whatever that is in Welsh.
What we need are more buildings and places which are Original and Good and
widely recognised as such. Structures which are not procured from the itinerant
band of starchitects who roam the planet tossing up gimcrack ‘Iconic Buildings’
but emerge from a genuine understanding of place and are recognised as unique.
Buildings which, when seen anywhere, are recognisable as being located in Wales…..
And are preferably not castles, chapels, etc etc etc……
- Note. This is a regrettable oxymoron. ‘Local’ contractors with any
significant capability are now the wholly owned subsidiaries of French multi-national
companies.
