Welsh Journals

Uvedale Price in 1796. It became the nucleus of a large hotel complex in 1864 under the direction of the property developer Thomas Savin, who hired John P. Seddon to design wings and upper stories to the core building. Sedddon's plans were never fully realised, since Savin quickly went bankrupt, unfinished ornaments can still be seen here and there in the buildings where the craftsmen put down their tools. It was bought for a song by the founders of University College of Wales and opened in that role in 1872. The building had to be considerably altered following a drastic fire in 1885. Seddon was asked to submit a new design which had a modified central tower. Further changes were made when the Castle Hotel part of the building became a tall central block designed by C.J. Ferguson. (See the history of the building written by Roger Webster.) The party then moved on to the Ceredigion Museum. This had been opened in 1973 in a house in Vulcan Place by the Ceredigion Antiquarian Society and was later transferred into the care of the Ceredigion District Authority. It was then moved to the Coliseum Theatre building in Terrace Road allowing the museum to expand, and also finding a new use for an interior of interest. After lunch party A ascended Constitution Hill by the cliff railway to the camera obscura, unfortunately in heavy rain. In the meanwhile party B had started the morning, amidst rain and strong winds, by climbing Pen Dinas to the hill-fort. This occupies a fine position on the top of a ridge rising into two knolls at the north and south ends, connected by a saddle and dominating the Rheidol and Ystwyth estuaries. It was excavated in 1933-37 by Professor C. Darryll Forde. See Arch. Camb. CXII (1963), pp.125 -53. The rain had eased slightly at the next site, that of Hen Gastell, where the speaker was its excavator, Christopher Houlder. The first Norman castle of Aberystwyth, a compact oval ringwork with bailey built in 1110 on a prominent ridge overlooking the former mouth of the Ystwyth, was the base from which Gilbert FitzRichard, followed by his son in 1117, controlled for twenty-five years the lands granted to the Clare family by Henry I. The Chronicle of the Princes records in vivid detail a battle fought on ground between Antaron and the castle in 1118, a vain attempt by the Welsh under Maelgwn ap Rhys to storm the site at the end of a campaign of destruction through Ceredigion. Political unrest at Stephen's succession in 1135 resulted in Welsh occupation of the castle till Ceredigion was restored by Henry II to the Clare family in 1158, but there is little evidence of use of this castle till its reconstruction in 1211 for Llywelyn, whose occupation then lasted only ten years. Evidence from excavations in the 1950s confirmed two main phases of occupation, the first covering both Norman and Welsh use for some fifty years in a ringwork mainly of timber construction. The second, probably only half as long in the early thirteenth century, had defences restored with stone revetment. After lunch party B visited Aberystwyth castle, Old College and the Ceredigion museum, under the guidance of Jack Spurgeon and Michael Freeman, before joining party A for a visit to Seion Chapel, where a 'chapel tea' had been arranged by the President and his wife, Mr and Mrs Glyn Lewis Jones, who together cut a commemorative anniversary cake. Cambrians were able to visit the chapel interior, which had been recently redecorated, its architectural and decorative features picked out in bold pastel colours, while the exterior renovation was proceeding. The Association's Annual General Meeting was held in the evening. FRIDAY, 22 August 1997 The first site of the day was the mansion of Gogerddan, viewed from the outside. From the sixteenth to the twentieth century this was the home of the Pryse family, landowners in Cardiganshire, Montgomeryshire and Merioneth, and influential in the political and social life