How to make an icon
The three of us were talking, as we strolled along the front at Porthcawl the other day, about modern icons. J. had just been for a return visit to Newcastle-upon-Tyne, so the Angel of the North in Gateshead soon came up in the conversation. Antony Gormley’s great weathered steel figure is over twenty-five years old, but it won its status as an archetypal image almost as soon as it was complete. It’s not hard to understand why. It has a striking design, it sits boldly above a motorway used by thousands daily, and it’s well named. ‘The North’ has a strong resonance, especially for people in the north-east of England, and as a multi-meaning symbol the angel carries an appeal well beyond people of religion.
More recently, a similar freshly-minted icon appeared closer to home, in Ystrad Fflur (Strata Florida). Its story is told by Glenn Morris, Simon Batty and David Austin in The Strata Florida Pilgrim, a new addition to the excellent bilingual series of short books published by the Strata Florida Trust.
The Strata Florida Pilgrim has had two ‘incarnations’. Glenn Morris was originally invited to create a large walking figure out of oak as part of a series of local commissions by Sculpture Cymru. The Pilgrim, leaning into his (or her?) stride on a long staff, was fixed on top of Pen-lan hill, to the east of the Abbey, in 2012. He was easily visible from the Abbey and other viewpoints, and very soon became an object of fascination to many people, visitors as well as the locals of Pontrhydfendigaid, who adopted him as one of them. Before long, it was almost as if he’d always been there, marching over the hill – a natural part of the Teifi valley landscape.
The Pilgrim was never intended as a permanent installation, and gales duly blew it to the ground in 2019. His collapsed remains were left where they fell, and the photographer Simon Batty captured his sad corpse lying in the snow. Many felt the loss. Finally, thanks to the Community Liaison Group of the Strata Florida Trust, the World Monuments Fund and a large number of donations by individuals, enough money was raised to engage Glenn Morris to plan and install a new Pilgrim on the same site as the old. This time he was built to withstand the gales. Permission for his re-erection was granted by the landowner, Iwan Arch. Simon Batt describes in detail, in words and photos, the process of manufacture: preparing the foundations, sawing and carving an oak tree in Coed y Bont that had been felled by recent gales, creating the steel framework, bolting together the many components, galvanising the metal, and erecting the figure on the hill.
The new Pilgrim, taller, at fifteen feet, than his predecessor, took his place again on the hill in October 2022. Like walkers equipped with new hips and knees, he wears metal strips to keep his limbs together – but the metal strips are on the outside, so that he looks a bit like a benign Frankenstein’s monster. He’s become a site of pilgrimage himself: local people hold an annual trip to greet him on the hilltop.
As a literal pilgrim the Pilgrim is problematic. In his essay in the book David Austin tries to make the case for Strata Florida as a medieval pilgrimage destination. But it’s a case, it seems to me, that rests mainly on speculation. There’s no documentary evidence, and the only archaeological object of relevance is a single ampula, a small lead container for holy water in the form of a shell, the symbol of the pilgrim. There’s no saint whose shrine would attract pilgrims, and no associated physical features. There is a holy well, it’s true, but it seems to be a relic of an earlier time, and it’s right in the centre of the Abbey church, unlike the wells of known pilgrimage sites.
The Pilgrim, though, isn’t making for the Abbey, he’s striding on towards the south, maybe towards St Davids. In his piece in the book Glenn Morris hesitates to ‘explain’ the significance of the Pilgrim. I’m sure he’s right. Just like the angel, the pilgrim is a figure capable of bearing many interpretations. One is the obvious (or maybe not so obvious?) Christian one. But just as many non-religious people embark on one of the new or revived pilgrimage routes in Wales, the Pilgrim, a determined walker with a purposeful tread, appeals to all kinds of people for all kinds of reasons. Maybe each person gazing up the hill sees in him a different version of a searcher after truth.
There may be another reason why the Pilgrim has achieved instant fame. Strata Florida Abbey doesn’t owe its magnetism to the wealth of its material remains. Compared with, say, Fountains Abbey, or Rievaulx or similar medieval religious sites, its extent is small. The remains above ground are meagre, with the exception of the admittedly impressive west arch of the Abbey church. What makes it exceptional are two things: its magical landscape setting, nestled beside the infant Teifi under the Cambrian Mountains, and its rich cultural associations: the earliest Welsh manuscripts to have survived, the life and poems of Dafydd ap Gwilym, and the works of many other writers and artists since his time. The Pilgrim gives us a new, powerful, visible presence at Strata Florida, a contemporary companion to the great arch. His presence, though, striking though it is, still invites us to use our creative imaginations to enter into his world of solitary travelling.
The Strata Florida Pilgrim and Pererin Ystrad Fflur (£7.00 each) are available through the website of the Strata Florida Trust.