We went to Port Penrhyn to buy fish – it’s the small harbour between Bangor and Penrhyn Castle, laid out by Benjamin Wyatt in 1790 and used for the transport of slate, still a small working harbour:-

For those with an appetite for reading old National Audit Office reports, I have kindly been sent a link to the 1988 report on the British Museum:-https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20220801195653mp_/https://www.nao.org.uk/pubsarchive/wp-content/uploads/sites/14/2018/11/Management-of-the-collections-of-the-English-National-Museums-and-Galleries.pdf

I have been asked for more information on the 1988 National Audit Office report on ‘Management of the Collections of the English National Museums and Galleries’.

As I remember it (I haven’t located a copy online), it was deeply – and, I’m afraid, correctly – critical of the stores at the V&A and led to a hearing at the Public Accounts Committee in which the then directors of the British Museum and the V&A were grilled pretty brutally (it was not long after Elizabeth Esteve-Coll was appointed Director of the V&A). This led fairly directly to the deeply controversial restructuring of the V&A which concentrated more resources on the management of back-of-house facilities at Blythe House and the creation of a systematic inventory, which, from memory, was completed in the mid-1990s.

So, one of many questions which the independent enquiry into the thefts at the BM might answer is whether the BM managed to escape these pressures. I doubt it. But I can’t help but notice that much of its online catalogue of Greek gems is unillustrated and I wonder why.

Also, if the independent enquiry, so called, is being led by the former deputy chairman of trustees who is still on the audit committee, it may do good work and be well placed to undertake the necessary investigations, but can scarcely be described as independent – indeed, this could be part of the problem, that the museum has resisted, or been unwilling to countenance, properly independent enquiry.

I devoted my most recent monthly column in The Critic to the new look NPG, not a straightforward task because I spent quite a bit of my life on its previous reconfiguration and am still a great admirer of what Jeremy Dixon and Edward Jones did then; but what Jamie Fobert has done is pretty impressive, including, particularly, the grand new north entrance. I have also been impressed by the new re-hang on the top floor, widening the range of portraits more than I thought possible:-

https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/august-september-2023/a-triumph-of-light-and-space/

I have now had a chance to read the very full account of St. Philip, Caerdeon, which accompanied its Grade 1 listing in 2018 (see below). It is indeed a building of exceptional interest because its architect, the Reverend John Louis Petit, was so exceptionally knowledgeable about European architecture, having travelled widely all over Europe and written two books to counter Puginian orthodoxy, advocating less strenuous restoration in order to retain the atmosphere of the original. I feel I should have known about him, but this is his only building: a building of great and original force, up a tiny road not far from Brithdir:

https://cadwpublic-api.azurewebsites.net/reports/listedbuilding/FullReport?lang=en&id=5249

I have been meaning to go to St. Philip, Caerdeon, which is looked after by the Friends of Friendless Churches, on the estuary near Dolgellau. It’s remarkable – looks like a minor work of Frank Lloyd Wright, but turns out to be fifty years earlier, dated 1861, designed by a vicar, J.L.Petit, who was an expert in church architecture. The Ecclesiologist described it as ‘something between a large lodge gate and a lady’s rustic dairy’, which seems unfair to a building of such strong and early rustic vernacular:-