Tag: Cardiff
Anti-metropolitanism, 1759
In Volume I, Chapter XVIII of Laurence Sterne’s great novel, Tristram Shandy’s mother, as soon as she finds out she’s expecting him, absolutely insists that, when the time comes to give birth, she will be attended by no one but the old midwife who lives in the neighbourhood of Shandy Hall – even though within […]
On bedsits
We’re having some work done in our bedroom, so I’m currently sleeping in the attic, my normal place of work during the day. In other words, the attic is now my bedsit. It’s a slightly strange experience, and it’s got me thinking of bedsits of the past. My first was in Bath Street, in the […]
Some nineteenth century Cardiff archaeologists
Nineteenth century Glamorgan saw the birth and rapid growth of an industrial working class. But also significant was the rise to prominence, and eventually to power, of an enlarged middle class. Cardiff, though it failed at first to diversify industrially much beyond coal-exporting, found a role as the chief commercial and administrative centre of south-east […]
Francis Place, pioneer artist and potter
In the late seventeenth century York was a lively intellectual centre. The York Virtuosi – modesty was not one of their features – were a group of scientists, historians and artists including the zoologist Martin Lister, the antiquarian and historian of Leeds Ralph Thoresby and the glass painter Henry Gyles. Another member was a pioneering […]
Another day at the cricket
This year there’s no county cricket at St Helen’s – dark rumours circulate that it may never return to Swansea – so C and I make the journey to Cardiff. It’s my first time in Sophia Gardens since I lived in in the city in the 1980s. At that time there was little more than […]
The Londonification of Cardiff
It’s a commonplace that the UK has the least well-balanced economy in Western Europe. While London and its region, dominated by financial and allied services, continue to grow and thrive, the rest of the country is bogged in post-industrial depression, suffering still from the effects of George Osborne’s planned ‘austerity’ (still very much with us, […]
Up the Ely river
Where we start happens to be in south Cardiff, but could be anywhere in the world in 2019. Apartments are stacked in Duplo’d piles, each block with a ‘concierge’ and a primary colour. Sheds, with metal roofs shaped in shallow arcs, are home to companies that shelter behind opaque titles, usually including the word ‘global’. […]
Carys Evans and her women
Just over a year since her last solo show in Swansea Carys Evans has another, in the Kooywood Gallery in Cardiff. Again there are around forty paintings – large and small, on canvas and board, in oils, mixed media and pastel. A dominant theme runs through many of them – the lives of women. Not […]
Cardiff libraries: a Council dispossesses its people
Cardiff is a thriving place. Big new developments are announced almost monthly. Recent ones include the new BBC Cymru Wales building near the station, the electrification of the Valleys railway lines and the massive Embankment complex. But while the Council pours resources into stimulating and supporting commercial growth, it leaves some of its basic public […]
Wales Coast Path, day 4: Newport from Rumney
The Wentloog and Caldicot Levels are like no other part of Wales. They’re flat lands that lie partly below sea level, protected from the Bristol Channel by earth walls and drained by artificial watercourses – more like the Lincolnshire fens than Wales. Three of us set out, on a fine windless April day, to walk […]