Scaffolding

 

Scaffolding is going up around the Cabinet of Curiosities - it looks as if it's going to go right over the roof.

It's good to see the work starting to renovate the building. 

Inside the Cabinet of Curiosities

 I spent this morning wandering round Henallt House, which is the stone house next door to the old Nat West Bank building.  This is a Grade II listed building dating to the late Georgian period.

The whole building has been turned into an exhibition space by Botany and Other Stories.  It's a wonderful building to begin with, full of original feature like wide floorboards, doors and a servant's bell in the hall.  It's also bigger than I thought it was - the exhibitions go right up to the attic rooms - and there's a lovely enclosed garden at the back.

Some of the walls are bare plaster, and some have fragments of old wallpaper - but that sets off the exhibits very well.  For instance, on the upper staircase dried flowers are arranged in the gaps in the walls.  

The two front rooms downstairs are full of books about plants and botanical drawings.  Everything is laid out so that there's something new to look at wherever you turn, but the effect is not cluttered at all.

Under the stairs, there's a tiny schoolroom with little chairs facing a stage.  There's even a little display devoted to Gertrude Jekyll in the back entrance hall, on the way out to the garden.  Other displays mention Darwin and Gilbert White.  There are butterflies on the first stair landing. 

One of the first floor rooms is devoted to weaving and dyeing - a length of linen is accompanied by some fascinating information on bleaching linen (white, or blue-white, or yellowish according to fashion).  Another room has a globe made with dried flowers, and a figure in a blue dress decorated with flowers.  Several artists have work on display throughout the house, and I had a very interesting chat with the dried flower lady.

I recognised some exhibits from the exhibition that was put on in the Buttermarket some time ago, like some of the astronomical pieces, but others were new to me.  There was also a lot of information on cards dotted around the exhibits about what humans are doing to the planet - an explanation of Earth Overshoot Day, for instance, or the melting of the world's glaciers.  There was even some information about the ink used in tattooing in the bathroom (and how the UK is not keeping up with the regulations for various toxic substances that have been passed in the EU).

Quite a few people were visiting the house while I was there, but not enough to make it feel crowded.

The exhibition will also be on tomorrow from 10am to 5pm (and one lady I spoke to said that she'd have to come back several times just to take everything in).

Refurbishment for Old House in Hereford

 The Old House, the black and white building in the square in the middle of Hereford, needs to be refurbished, and a local Hay firm has been chosen to do the work.  

Splitlath started out as barge builders in Stourbridge in 1867, and is still owned by the same family.  These days, they specialise in the conservation of historic buildings.

They will be repairing the woodwork of the Old House, including frame, windows, bargeboards, and finials.

Black Swan Window Broken Again!

 

Here we see the window on the side of the Black Swan holiday cottage being boarded up after a lorry hit it - again.

The Three Tuns on the other side of the road has a similar problem with the corner of their roof that gets slates knocked off it regularly as lorries swing round the corner.

It's a narrow junction, and it isn't helped by cars that park on the double yellow lines opposite the junction.

It would, perhaps, be better for Hay's historic buildings if big lorries were banned from using this route - this would mean them using the bridge at Glasbury to cross the river instead.

Touring Inside the Castle

We entered the Castle by the door from the lawn (or at least, it will be a lawn again fairly soon), but there there will be a second entrance at the top of the steps from the Honesty Garden.  This will lead directly into the King of Hay Bookshop, and off to the side down the corridor is the counter for the cafe - the kitchen being at the end of the corridor.  

Across the way is the big room that has been used in recent years for events, and that will be the cafe.  There was a plan to turn the stable block into the cafe, but that's been put on the back burner for now.  When the Castle re-opens next year, the buildings round the yard will be retail units as they were before.

Upstairs, there are offices and toilets (there's an accessible toilet near the cafe counter on the ground floor), and one room has been kitted out with a lot of storage space for educational purposes.  The Hay Castle Trust got a grant from the Clore Duffield Foundation to set it up.  The Foundation only has two other educational rooms in Wales, both of them at St Fagans.  The idea is that it will be used by school groups, or local groups like Local History Societies, and so forth, and will be suitable for talks, courses and workshops of various kinds.

One part of the first floor has been re-inforced, because a printing press is going to be installed there!  It's the one that is, at present, in the cafe at Booth Books, and they are hoping to have people there who can work it, and encourage visitors to have a go.

Upstairs again, what was once the attic space is now going to be an area with comfy chairs where members of the public can go to quietly read - there will also be displays showing the history of the castle, including oral history (for instance, an interview with one of the firemen who helped to put out the 1977 fire).  I think this may be where the historical costumes will be, too.

On the other side of the building, the room has been reinforced with steel mesh in the walls and ceiling, to make it as impregnable as they can so that top art galleries will be able to loan displays.  The first exhibition planned for the space will be a collection of portraits of authors, from the National Portrait Gallery.  

And then we were heading up again to the top of the tower, where the new viewing platform is:

It's easy to see why the Castle was built in that spot!

Castle Tour - Blending Ancient and Modern

 I was invited on a tour of the Castle, together with a couple of other ladies who have been involved in helping the Castle Trust, and it was great fun!

First of all, we went into the old site office, where Nepal Bazaar used to be, to change into hi-viz vests, white hard hats and steel toe capped boots, since the Castle is a building site at the moment.  I brought my own hi viz, but it's a long time since I had my own steel toe capped boots (I was issued with a pair when I was on the Castle Mall dig in Norwich, thirty years ago!).

Andrew Williams was guiding us round, and he started outside the castle, where the lawn used to be.  It's all churned up at the moment, but eventually it will be landscaped, and available for people to picnic, or just sit around on.

He started by explaining that he fills in a report for the Clerk of Works for each week of the project.  At the beginning of the renovation, it was thought to be an 80 week job - and they're now on week 166.  Some of this is normal building work delays, but a lot of it is Covid, and some of it is because of Brexit causing delays in materials arriving.

We were standing on some of the new flagstones outside the front door of the castle.  They're the same stone as the steps leading down to the square on the other side of the castle, and the stone was chosen (and agreed on by Cadw, the National Parks and other interested bodies) to look modern, rather than to simulate something old.  He pointed out the gables on the front of the building - three are original, and two were reconstructed last year, and those are built with exactly the same stone as the original, and blend in perfectly.  So the thinking has been that as much of the original fabric of the building should be preserved as possible, but the new parts should look modern because this, too, is just a phase in the history of the building, and in a hundred years, people will be looking at those steps down to the square and thinking how quaint and twenty-first century they are!

Then we went into the entrance hall, which is at the side of the building which was affected the worst by the fires in 1939 and 1977.  That end of the building had been open to the elements.  Now there is a roof, but the re-building has left the space open up all the three floors, with mezzanine galleries.  This is where the modern and the ancient fabric have to fit together like a jigsaw:

The modern brick will not be covered up - behind it is the lift shaft which gives access to all the floors and the viewing platform at the top of the tower.

And at the top of the tower, there are skylights (Andrew said they were supposed to be self-cleaning) which also look very modern:

The black steel is basically holding the building together, and behind the skylight is a good view of the Jacobean chimneys.

Elsewhere, the original beams have been retained, and the original roof was taken down and refurbished with original tiles over most of the area of the roof.

From Dog Poo to Timbuktu, and Swimming Pools

No-one can say that Council meetings are predictable! They covered all sorts of different topics last night, and I only rolled home at 10.30pm!
Often, they have a visiting speaker for the first part of the meeting, and this month it was a chap from Ross explaining how their community dog warden scheme works. It's been so successful they've had enquiries about it as far afield as Glossop. In Hay, we would have to liase with the Powys Dog Wardens, and it might also be possible to get the traffic wardens to issue fixed penalty notices for dog fouling and littering (fly tipping is also one of the things the community dog wardens look out for). It would also be worth getting in touch with the Cusop Council, over the border in Herefordshire, as people walk their dogs in both Hay and Cusop.
Rhona had heard of a churchyard where they stuck little coloured flags in every patch of dog poo - and embarrassed dog owners into clearing up the mess. She sat and designed her own little flag during the meeting. The man from Ross said that some places have had similar success with the florescent paint that they use to mark pot holes in the road - the poo becomes more visible, and people start clearing up after their dogs.

Meanwhile in Timbuktu, the schools have re-opened, but there are no books or pencils or any supplies at all. They have water, but mostly no electricity, and food is very expensive and in short supply.
The Tuareg quarter of the city is empty - they have fled for fear of reprisals from the non-Tuareg population after what the rebels did.
A second speaker was Ann from the Two Towns One World project, who had come to give the Council an update on what they are doing. She was confident that they would be able to deliver all the projects that they had planned, though she didn't have time to go into any detail about what those projects are. They did talk a little, though, about making the project more visible in Hay, for instance by taking over one of the empty shops for an exhibition, or having a display in the Library. The project comes to an end at the end of this year.

It seems a cloud is hanging over the future of the school swimming pool, which usually re-opens for the summer at Easter. This year it may remain closed. However, there is a statutory duty on the school to teach the children from Year 3 to swim. This would mean bussing them to Brecon to the pool there - but there are no free time slots for this to happen at the moment, and it would cost quite a bit of money.
Apparently, Hay and Sennybridge got swimming pools some years ago as part of an experiment - the idea being that every small rural community would be able to have their own pool. In fact, this never happened, and a while ago the Council stopped funding Sennybridge pool. The community took it over, but were unable to keep it open for more than three years. During this time, they even ran the heating and lighting by using a steam engine which they fuelled with scrap wood!
There is another swimming pool in Hay, at the Seven Stars B&B, and there was a suggestion that people should be encouraged to swim at the school pool instead when it was open, as it is quite close to breaking even economically. Of course, this would take customers away from the Seven Stars.

And finally for today, there is a new list out from the County Council, of buildings that have architectural merit, and which should be preserved as they appear now in case of any planning applications. Strangely, this includes the Community Centre, which is not in the best state of repairs and needs to be replaced. They don't seem to be listed buildings (though there are quite a few Grade 2 listed buildings in Hay). The Town Council are going to ask someone from the County Council to come down and explain the list to them.