We were driving along a minor road in the centre of Anglesey when we saw a sign to a church. It led into a road through the remains of parkland with a seventeenth-century dovecote in a field with a bull:-

The church itself, most of it twelfth century, was at the top of a deeply wooded track in a small, well-kept cemetery full of Victorian tombs. The church itself, St. Eugrad, was locked, but there was something deeply attractive about the sense of a tiny church in a lost landscape, surrounded by woods:-

For some reason, a pheasant is very keen on our garden:-

Above the Church Institute is The Close, a road which loops up the hill: a model estate of the 1920s, mostly, but not entirely well-preserved:-

It’s a while since we’ve been to Llanfairfechan, the remarkably well-preserved Arts-and-Crafts village laid out by Herbert North, who had worked with Lutyens, as a model estate.

We started at the Church Institute, a fine, slate-hung village hall, with a stage, opened in 1912 and redolent of community activity between the wars:-

Tucked away down a path alongside it is the Churchmen’s Club, equally atmospheric, and in dire need of some tender living care:-

I feel it ought to be eligible for HLF funding, as a way of protecting it. But there is presumably no longer a call for snooker. Maybe the National Trust should consider it as a visitor centre to help the preservation of the village as a whole – a way of extending their activities into the early twentieth century.

I have been reading more about Wrexham. Population 65,000, the fourth largest town in Wales and the largest in North Wales. Recently made a city, although St. Asaph has the cathedral, not Wrexham. Elected a Tory in 2019, so part of the Red Wall. It felt like a classic large, reasonably prosperous market town, which suffered badly from de-industrialiation in the 1980s and from the hollowing out of the city centre because of out-of-town shopping (it remains an important regional centre). So, Ty Pawb is an attempt to re-invent city centre shopping through creating space for market stalls; but at the moment most of the city centre looked like being pubs and barber shops. Gentrification doesn’t feel like an option. An interesting problem.

Wrexham was obviously once grand: a market town with fine Victorian buildings, two markets and a big perpendicular church.

There was a surprising amount of good lettering:-

St. Giles’s Church in Wrexham has the most sensational and unexpected monument by Louis-François Roubiliac, commemorating Mrs. Mary Middleton, the sister of the owner of Chirk Castle. The inscription is unusually sententious, ‘By a life of true religion and virtue, illustrated the eminence derived from birth, and the advantages flowing from an excellent education, her superior understanding and great politeness…’ The carving extraordinarily dramatic, even melodramatic, astonishing for its time, more art nouveau than rococo:-

We went to Wrexham to see Ty Pawb, the multi-story car park which has been converted into an art centre, now shortlisted to be Museum of the Year. By bad luck, it was between exhibitions, but we were shown the fine space, with two exhibitions currently being mounted – one on the Wrexham Quilt, being lent by the National Museum of Wales, with accompanying work inspired by it, including work by Mark Hearld and Alexander McQueen, and another a travelling exhibition of blankets. If the prize is awarded on the basis of energy and enterprise and community activism, then Ty Pawb definitely deserves to win:-

The long list for the Stirling Prize has been announced. They are selected from the regional awards, but it is not clear on what criteria and by whom. There are twelve projects in London and none in Wales and only one in Northern Ireland. Does this reflect the realities of the profession – that worthwhile new architecture is concentrated in the metropolis – or does it reflect the prejudices of the judges who pay more attention to what is going on in London, but less so in Edinburgh and Cardiff ?

It’s a somewhat opaque process in spite of the prestige attached to the awards.

https://www.dezeen.com/2022/06/23/riba-national-awards-best-british-buildings-2022/