Woolly says – As I opened the curtains, I was glad to see that the slight overnight frost was disappearing quickly with the warming sun in the sky. We were all looking forward to our day out and Hansome Jack’s first blogging day where he would also get the chance to meet up with my bestie Sion and his carer Jen. We had been saving this attraction for a while as we are running out of new places to go for blogs in the areas we all lived in, so I was hopeful of a great day.
The drive for us was only a short one and arriving early we released Mad Jack from the back seat and wandered round taking in the exterior of Llanfyllin Union Workhouse.
The workhouse is a Grade II listed building which was completed in 1840 and intended to house 250 paupers. Its plan is based on designs by the architect Sampson Kempthorne for the Poor Law Commissioners and published by them in 1835. Four wings radiate from a central, octagonal Master’s House, enabling segregation and control. As with many workhouses and prisons the design stems from the Panopticon: an institution conceived by the philosopher and social reformer Jeremy Bentham in which inmates are supervised from a central point. The Workhouse is known locally as Y Dolydd: a name bestowed to alleviate the shame of being born there. The times of the workhouse started to decline following the introduction of financial benefits and by 1966 it became an old peoples home before closing completely in 1982. It is now a charity run education centre.
It was a lovely building set in the beautiful Cain Valley which seemed like a wonderful place to stay unless of course you were a pauper in which case the conditions would have been pretty grim.
We passed two green painted doors, the twin front entrances, one for the Guardians and supporters of the workhouse and the other for the paupers arriving to declare that they could no longer support themselves and their family. It must have been so hard to walk through the right hand door knowing that the chances of coming back out where slim.
Turning back on ourselves I saw Jen’s super mini pulling into the car park and raced back to greet Sion and drag him into the onsite café for a warming drink, if we could find it of course. We headed into the courtyard where the workhouse boys would have once exercised and possibly enjoyed some sunshine following a sign for the café. Inside was a door which was firmly looked, we trotted up the stairs and wandered through several rooms which were obviously being repaired/repainted and maintained and by the looks of it somewhere we probably shouldn’t be. Back down the staircase and we arrived back at the locked door which was now strangely open.
We crept through hoping that we were heading in the correct direction and passed through a messy looking room with some lovely art exhibits on the walls, at which point my tusk picked the wonderful aroma of coffee and I led the way into the café. Warmed and having caught up on some of our plans and what we had been up to we decided to see what else the centre had to offer.
First up was the visitor centre which had walls brimming with information boards and a very funky looking phone that Sion and I took great delight in inspecting. A smaller room led off and we found ourselves in the video room, having pressed the button to play in English we sat down to watch a film called the ‘Ghosts of the Workhouse’, I tried to settle in to watching it especially as Jo gave me one of her don’t fidget stares but the room was cold and the film a bit slow moving, Handsome Jack then got distracted and started to let out little barks saying there was something in the other room. He settled back down, and we continued to watch but it wasn’t getting any warmer and my bum was now numb, I was hugely grateful to hear Jo ask Jen how long the film was on for (half an hour) deciding immediately that it was time to leave. We headed back outside and out of the boy’s yard.
Passing the two green doors again we turned into the girl’s courtyard which really didn’t inspire as well as needing a good tidy up and bin emptying exercise.
Around the side of the building, we arrived at what had once been the women’s outside space, the building was lovely and the copula in which the master would have lived was splendid but it didn’t appear to have anything else to look at.
Passing into the men’s area we seemed to have arrived in someone’s garden with some children’s toys littering the grass and no access to anything else. And that appeared to be that as far as anything to see, it certainly didn’t live up to the hopes that I had and Sion, Jen and Jo appeared equally unimpressed. Nothing for it but to go for plan B.
Getting back into our separate vehicles we drove the short distance into the small market town of Llanfyllin (the town’s name means church or parish (llan) of St Myllin, ‘m’ frequently mutates to ‘f’ in Welsh). Parking was easy and we set off to have a look round as I knew that Llanfyllin had a famous link to the well-known classical book, The French Lieutenants Woman and wanted to see if we could find out more.
There were some lovely buildings on the main through road mixing the Tudor black and white with the more formal Georgian facades.
Our first stop was the parish church of St Myllin founded in the seventh century, according to the traditions of St Myllin. The present building which dates to around 1706 is mainly of locally made red brick with battlements and a Welsh slate roof. It was adapted and extended by 1863 in the neo-Norman style and restored again in 1959. It was an impressive structure although quite plain in design, it also had a front door that was locked so no chance of seeing inside.
The tower with its with six bells loomed over us with its bright blue clock and a number of large graves sat under the yew trees that seemed to fill a lot of the grounds.
We continued our walk along the high street passing a sign from the former prison that had once graced the street and a lovely George VI letter box, finally arriving at the small chapel of Pendref. Said to be the oldest Welsh independent church in Powys, it was initially built in 1708. The chapel was destroyed in the Jacobite rising of 1715 and was re-erected at government expense. The present building dates from 1829.
It was small but beautiful set in a well looked after graveyard in a stunning location. As we peered at the windows, we could see the most beautiful looking stained glass which would look amazing inside, if only the door was open. Sion and I sat down on the path it seemed that everything today was either closed or not the most inspiring and where was the information on the famous book!
The humans took pity on us and herded us into a nearby community pub/café for warming drinks and some excellent Welsh Rarebit.
So, what is the story behind the book, The French Lieutenants Woman, which has a link to such a small place in Mid Wales, I hear you ask. Well, our day didn’t give us any answers but google did, the actual women that the original book had been based on was born in the town and we believe that the French Lieutenant was held in one of the buildings during the Napoleonic Wars. No actual evidence but a good fun fact for the day.