Freddie Dixon

This biography of pre-war racer Freddie Dixon is due to be published by Haynes next month. I wonder if there is any chance of a few more such books, concerning the interesting characters who circulated around the tracks in the happy days BBCE, seeing the light of day.

It's surprising how little is really known about these old timers. Even the country's leading motor-sport historian was under the impression that Dixon's 1935 prison sentence followed a fatal accident whilst he was racing Luis Fontes on the public highway.

Infact Freddie was sentenced to three months imprisonment for dangerous and reckless driving on 4th October 1935, in Middlesborough. The incident in which Luis Fontes, a Manchester born ace of Brazilian extraction, killed a motor cyclist, and for which he was subsequently sentenced to three years imprisonment, occurred on 6th October 1935 in Coleshill, Warwickshire. The close proximity of the dates must have led to the subsequent confusion.

Motor Sport history has been dominated to an extent by the rivet counters, after all many of the cars still exist and historic authentication, leading to sales, is big business. Driver biographies haven't usually strayed very far from the race-track. They've also tended towards the hagiographic, with everyone being a bloody good chap. It will be interesting to see where this new biography of Dixon stands.

When Radnor Showed The Way

Here's an interesting letter from the April 1969 edition of Motor Sport. Wonder how much petrol you'd get for a shilling today? About three tablespoons worth if you're lucky!

Y Ffasiynau Diweddaraf

At the beginning of the last century this Llandrindod business found it worthwhile to advertize its products in the Welsh language.

This would have been aimed not just at Welsh speaking visitors to the town, but also at the large market opened up in West Wales via the railway.

More fun than a barrel-load of monkeys!

It seems that the new James Bond film Quantum of Solace (eh?) is going to include a car-chase around Italy's Lake Garda. Old time racing fans will perhaps remember that the lakeside circuit used to host races of the real, rather than the celluloid, variety.

Following the career ending Stirling Moss crash at Goodwood in 1962, Radnorshire based Innes Ireland picked up a number of the great man's scheduled drives. One of these was to compete in that year's Circuito del Garda, driving a works 1 litre Fiat-Abarth. The race saw Innes brushing aside the challenge of team-mate Ludovico Scarfiotti and with victory in the bag the two tiny Abarths cruised in convoy toward the chequered flag as team-orders demanded. A couple of miles from home Scarfiotti saw a chance of some hometown glory and scooted past the surprised Scotsman, hanging-on for a Pironi style victory. No doubt the film will see plenty of similar skulduggery!

Innes was placated somewhat by the cheers of the crowd, who thought he had made a magnanimous gesture to the Italian driver. His opinion of the Abarth provides the title for the post.

Bryn Pennardd

This is a picture of Penarth Mount in the parish of Cregrina, there's a good aerial photograph here. Like most such sites it's classified as a motte and bailey castle, even when, as here, there is no bailey.

To me it seems just as likely to have been the site of Bryn Pennardd, the home of two of Lewis Glyn Cothi's patrons Bedo Chwith and Gwenllian vz Gwilym. It certainly fits the description of the place in Glyn Cothi's poetry.

Welsh history has been seen too much in terms of the Roman, the Norman and English invaders, perhaps there needs to be a reconsideration of such sites from a more native perspective.

Booze in Fifteenth Century Radnorshire

The feast was symbolic of the bardic world view. The man of power, the foundation stone of the civilised society, gives food and drink to his followers, and they repay his generosity with loyalty. Traditionally this drink was mead, and Lewis Glyn Cothi's poetry shows that this was still being drunk in Fifteenth Century Radnorshire. It is interesting to look at those men who served mead; Phelpod ap Rhys of Brilley was a cyfarwydd - a storyteller, Dafydd ap Rhys of New Radnor owned the Book of Taliesin and was able to discuss its archaic language. Ieuan ap Llywelyn Fychan of Llanfihangel Nant Melan enjoyed reading the tenth century poem Armes Prydain. These men were intellectuals, did Lewis trim his language to suit them, or were they traditionalists in terms of drink as well as literary taste?

The favoured drink of most of Lewis Glyn Cothi's poorer local patrons was ale, especially that produced in the nearby English towns of Ludlow and Weobley. Weobley, the more widely drunk of the two, must have been dark in colour as Lewis describes two dark milk cows, requested as a gift from two ladies of Aberedw, as being darker than the Weobley ale.

While ale and mead were native drinks, wine had to be imported. A common practice was for a local nobleman to buy a shipload of wine direct from the Continent, keeping some for his own consumption and selling the rest from a gwindy or winehouse. Lewis Glyn Cothi was born in the north Carmarthenshire parish of Caio. In the 1390s, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd of that parish was importing 16 tuns of wine per annum from Bordeaux through the port of Carmarthen, 55 bottles for every day of the year!

Less wine may have been drunk in Radnorshire than in some other parts of Wales, probably because of the distance from the sea. Thomas ap Rhys of Llangynllo is described as sending a wagon to Weobley to bring back barrels of ale. He also served bragget - a mixture of beer and honey and an unnamed spirit. His wine was Y Gien - either from the town of Gien on the Loire or Guyenne, the Bordeaux region. Morgan ap Hywel of Llanbister seems to have been an importer of wine. He bought Gwin Borgwin - Burgendy wine, which is dispensed from tunellau and pibau. A tun was a barrel containing 252 gallons, a pipe contained 105 gallons. Sioned vz Rhys of New Radnor had been given orange and claret since birth, she and her husband drank dwsed - doucet, a sweet wine. In Cefnllys Ieuan ap Philip served wine from the pipe and Gwin o Roeg ynys - a wine from a Greek island.

Lewis Glyn Cothi's poetry is full of the names of the wines his patrons served from France, Italy and Spain and even individual villages in France are singled out such as Sant Miliwn - St Emilion. All this goes to show that Fifteenth Century Wales and the districts that later became Radnorshire were far from being rural backwaters - they were part and parcel of a Europe wide economic and cultural order. A bard like Glyn Cothi, visiting the home of Rhys ap Phelpod and his wife Mallt in Llansantffraid yn Elfael, was charged with caring for his patrons mazer-cup, kissing the rim of the sparkling glass six hundred times during the feast. Nice work if you could get it.

The Pound in Your Pocket

Currently for sale on ebay is this £1 note issued by the Rhayader Bank in 1811, starting price is £43.

I can think of one or two Bwgeyites who probably still have a few of these in their wallets waiting to see the light of day.

Rural Housing

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation report into the housing scandal in Rural Wales should come as no surprise to anyone. What is disappointing are the half-hearted recommendations for addressing the crisis.

The public sector needs a revision of the points system to give priority to local working families. In the private sector a two-tier market should be created by ensuring that a substantial percentage of new builds can only be sold and subsequently sold-on to locally educated young people.

Our Friends From the North

Here's an interesting image from John Speed's General Description and Severall Divisions of the Principality of Wales published 1n 1676.

As you can see Gwarthrynion, by which Speed means that part of Radnorshire west of the Ithon and consisting in the main of the parishes of Nantmel, Llanyre, Rhayader and St Harmon, was considered to be a part of the cantref of Arwystli. Arwystli was one of the three cantrefs of Meirionydd, which itself was part of Gwynedd.

Now I don't want to upset any of our good friends raised along the banks of the Bwgey but doesn't this mean that Rhayader folk are actually Gogs?

Radnorshire Arts Update

Work continues apace on Llandrindod's newly discovered inner gateway, we'll post pictures as soon as the installations are installed. Can't wait.

Meanwhile some sad news from St Peter's Church, Evancoyd where a 500 year old painting by the Italian artist Bernadino Luini was stolen from the church. Who even knew that such a treasure was to be found there?

Finally lets mention a challenging new work from that little known Breconshire artist Steffan Powell (right) called "Soggy Soggy Soggy Olé Olé Olé" - a collection of sodden Panama hats collected from this year's Hay Literary Festival field.

UPDATE, I've always been a great supporter of Breconshire artist Steffan Powell, sometimes against my better judgement, so it was with sadness I heard that, since his recent critical success, Steffan seems to have ditched his old friends - admittedly a rather sad and desperate bunch - for a newer, trendier crowd. On a totally unrelated matter it was good to hear that the Liuni has been recovered from a Mid-Wales art gallery.

Ffransis Payne

"Et nous, dont le nom connu des goélands et des cormorans, Fut banni de tous les langages humains, De toutes les bibliothèques, de toutes les cartes terrestres"

Having been educated in 1960s Radnorshire it was an easy thing to relate to the words of the Breton singer Alan Stivell. Our history, too, was untold, buried in dusty manuscripts, replaced by stories that had no place for our heroes, our writers, our songs. My first real inkling of all this came in 1968 in the sedate surroundings of the Ty John Penry bookshop in Swansea's St Helen's Road. Here I came across two recently published volumes by Ffransis G. Payne, Crwydro Sir Faesyfed.

Supposedly part of a travelogue series covering the thirteen Welsh counties, the two Radnorshire volumes contained much more, the broad outlines of a suppressed and forgotten history. Two books written about, rather than for, the people of Radnorshire, folk who were, in Payne's words, unaware that the fragrant names of their parishes and farms sparkled like gems in works that would be an adornment for any literature. Struggling to understand these books with the help of a Spurrell's dictionary, I soon became aware of another truth about Wales in the Sixties. Payne's elegant prose was quite beyond many of my Welsh-speaking friends, the education system had left them practically illiterate in their mother tongue. Clearly the liberation struggles of 1968 needed to be fought far closer to home than many imagined.

Ffransis Payne was born in Kington, Herefordshire in 1901 and it was perhaps the tomb of Elen Gethin and Tomas ap Rhosier Fychan in the local parish church, where he was a choirboy, that awakened his interest in the history of Radnorshire and the border lands. In the 1920s Payne got on his bike and cycled west, working as a farm labourer in order to learn the Welsh language. In 1936 he found a post as an assistant keeper at the National Museum of Wales, coming to wider notice in 1943 when a collection of his essays was hailed as a modern classic of Welsh prose. Despite his lack of academic qualifications, Payne's meticulous scholarship saw him appointed as deputy curator of the Welsh Folk Museum in 1948. In later life Payne did infact study for a degree and had the amusing experience of having to answer a question on one of his own essays in his final examination. In 1969 Payne retired from the Folk Museum and moved back to Radnorshire, he died in 1992.

They were not followed by their betters was Payne's judgement on the old uchelwr class who sustained the civilised society in Radnorshire deep into the Sixteenth Century. As a scholar of Radnorshire and her history a similar judgement can surely be passed on Payne.

Llanbister's Outraged Moralists

A quaint Radnorshire custom from 1898, just click on the cutting to enlarge

Verdun Edwards - Wesh Formula One Driver

Welsh Formula One drivers are few and far between but now, thanks to an illuminating post from his grand-daughter on the TNF site, we can safely add another to the list.

Verdun Edwards was born in Brynna, Glamorganshire in 1916. For the 1958 season Verdun and his business partner Ken Flint purchased one of the B-series Connaught Formula One cars which had been auctioned off when the company was wound-up in October 1957 - I wonder if this car had passed through the hands of one Bernie Ecclestone?

In any case, on April 19th 1958, Edwards drove the Connaught in the Formula One Aintree 200 mile race. The event was won by Stirling Moss, a car's length ahead of Jack Brabham, with Salvadori and Scott-Brown third and fourth.

Edwards had spun out - a spectacular gilhooley in the words of Autosport - at Country Corner and did not finish. Although his race ended somewhat ignominiously with a stalled engine, Edwards had joined, on that Easter Saturday afternoon, the select company of Welshmen who raced in Formula One.

100RMI (update)

It's more than a year since I posted about Innes Ireland's Lotus Eleven with the personalised number plate 100RMI. At the time I rather naively believed that this was an Irish registered car with a Wexford plate. Of course I underestimated Radnorshire's most famous racing motorist .... the plate was, as Ireland later admitted, "entirely fictitious."

Book of the Month

I'm really enjoying dipping into this book at the moment, another excellent offering from that marvellous Herefordshire publishing house Logaston Press. The book has been out for quite a while and I'm afraid I must have dismissed it as one of those fey works about Wales you sometimes get from English authors. Big Mistake. The book is solidly historical and it's 250 plus pages are full of interest and many facts about Radnorshire of which I was blissfully unaware.

A few minor quibbles, but just one for now. The author repeats the story of Elen Gethin of Hergest Court deliberately killing her cousin Sion Hir during an archery contest in Llanddewi Ystradenni churchyard. Like many an author before him Mr Palmer translates Gethin - not a surname of course - as meaning terrible. Now Elen was the subject of many bardic poems, all of which call her Gethin - something they would be unlikely to do if it meant terrible! No the sobriquet Gethin in names like this means olive-skinned, so Elen the olive-skinned, not Elen the terrible.

Keep Chiseling Away

Weird Fact: The most comments I've ever received for a post on this blog concerned sculpture.

No doubt the sculpture vultures of Mid Wales are eagerly awaiting the artistic treasures to be unveiled at Llandrindod's newly discovered, indeed newly invented, inner-gateway. With the promise of bandaged trees, clothes pegs and neon lights on offer, the Victorian group pictured must seem very old hat. It is a work entitled The Death of Tewdric, King of Gwent by the Brecon born sculptor John Evan Thomas (1810-1873)

Now I'd like to say a word or two in favour of this work, and not just because Evan Thomas's mother, Jane Evans, came from the tranquil Radnorshire parish of Aberedw. For this is a revolutionary work, completed in that year of Revolution,1848. It appeared at a time when the very idea of Wales had been expunged from the consciousness of the British state with the abolition of the last surviving Welsh institution, the Court of Great Sessions in 1830. In a legal sense Wales no longer existed.

The work won the prize of 70 guineas at the Eisteddfod at Abergavenny organised by Lady Llanover and it was surely these romantic nationalists who planted the seed of later national revival. So yes, it is a revolutionary work, a work that shouted out in defiance that Wales continued to exist, despite the obvious wishes of the British state. Will the works promised for the inner-gateway have similar fire in their belly? Somehow I doubt it.

Innes Ireland Remembers

Hot from the presses Ed McDonough's collection of Innes Ireland's journalism published by Mercian Manuals. Here's the blurb:

Innes Remembers

Innes Ireland was a successful racing driver, all-round sportsman, patriotic Scot, lover of classic cars and a prolific writer. His books have always been very popular but for many years he was also a contributor to a wide range of automotive magazines including Classic Cars, Road & Track, Autocar, Car Graphic and many others.

His love of motoring and racing began at a very early age in Scotland and over the course of his long career in journalism, he wrote down many of the tales of his childhood and youth, as well as his adventures as a Grand Prix driver for Lotus and exponent of long distance sports car racing. He knew a vast number of people associated with racing and other sports and was given a free hand to recount his stories. Some of the tales are very personal, many reflect on the highs and painful lows of racing, and there are episodes clearly born out of his love of driving good cars.

Motor racing historian Ed Mcdonough has taken the original transcripts of Innes’ articles, with the co-operation of Jean Ireland, and edited them into this collection of tales, adding many photographs not previously published. They demonstrate the depth of Ireland’s passions and his skill as a writer and story teller.

Price: £34.95

Now where have I seen that cover photo before?

Evenjobb

Here's a little site about the Radnorshire hamlet of Evanjobb. Now why the author should confuse Evanjobb and Evancoed I don't know; while the origin of the name he dismisses, seems perfectly acceptable to me. Richard Morgan's scholarly study of Radnorshire placenames gives examples of Emynghop from 1304 and Emyngehope from 1328. By 1544 a process of Cymricisation gives Evyngeopp and by 1612 it is Evengeobbe. It also appears that the present-day villagers are most annoyed about a welsh version, Einsiob, appearing on local roadsigns.

One fact that the author fails to note in his brief historical sketch is that during the sixteenth century Hugh Myles of Evenjobb was the owner of the Book of Taliesin, one of the most important sources for Welsh, if not World literature. By the way the bard Lewis Glyn Cothi had seen the manuscript at nearby Harpton a hundred years before it came into Hugh Myles' possession, see here.

I'm afraid, like it or not, as soon as you begin to study Radnorshire's history in any depth, its essential Welshness comes bursting through the thin veneer of Anglicization.

Scandal

In my review of the Guto'r Glyn biography, I made the point that bardic poetry can provide us with colourful insights that are often missing from the official records of the period. Of course these records can occasionally provide colour, as for example in E J L Cole's article Clandestine Marriages, The Awful Evidence From A Consistory Court, which appeared in the Radnorshire Society Transactions for 1976.

The Consistory Court was a church court which exercised authority in matters such as marriage and adultery, punishments meted out were based on humiliation, often involving ritual whippings around the local church. Mr Cole quotes some examples from the Hereford diocese involving people from what would become Radnorshire, I believe a couple of these individuals are also mentioned in the Bardic poetry of the period.

Firstly we have Res ap Phelpot of Whitney, a bachelor who associated with a married woman called Joan in Staunton, and who appeared before the court in 1469. There has to be a good chance that this is Rhys ap Phelpod, the subject of this bardic poem by Lewis Glyn Cothi. Rhys appeared before the court claiming to have married Joan in Beguildy but before the matter could be proved, both had left the diocese. Secondly in Eardisland on 26th April 1475, an Agnes Holl of Old Radnor was accused of contracting a secret marriage in Bryngwyn. There has to be a chance that this is Elis Holl, another of Lewis's patrons, see here.

Up For The Cup!

OK, it's 1927 and Cardiff City have just won the FA Cup. So where better to parade the trophy than that home of the Bwgyites ...... Rhaeadr Gwy! Um ... we are sure that's not the Aspidistra Cup aren't we?