Tower Hill

‘Two pilgrimages to St David’s are worth one to Rome’

We took on Tower Hill because of its most important site. It is built just above the close wall at St David’s and has an astonishing view of the cathedral, facing it squarely at tower level. To arrive here is to feel that you have completed a pilgrimage, drawn down the long Pembrokeshire peninsula towards a place of worship that was already ancient when the Normans built their cathedral beside it. There is still much of the monastery here, in the actual buildings that survive, in their sense of enclosure within the valley and in the warmth of their welcome when finally you top the last hill and obtain your first full view of them. A monastery was founded here in the 6th century, a far-flung outpost of the early church that survived many Viking raids in its early days. In 1123 St David’s received ‘Papal Privilege’ as a place of pilgrimage, Pope Calixtus awarding this remote place the accolade that ‘Two pilgrimages to St David’s are worth one to Rome.’ The monastery suffered the usual depredations during the Dissolution and it was more than 200 years before Welsh architect John Nash restored the West front. Nash had not the medieval masons’ skill, however, and George Gilbert Scott had to do a second rescue job 60 years later.

A relatively new Landmark

The living-room of our house has great serenity, with the sun on one side and the sunlit cathedral on the other. At your door is the reassurance of cathedral life, its services, the bells and the building itself, and also a lively town. The sea is about a mile away in most directions, the Pembrokeshire coast renowned for its wide beaches and Atlantic surf. The coastal path, with stunning views, encircles St David’s – ‘a long way, but very good for you’. In 1965 the current building did not exist and the site was occupied by two tiny cottages in an extreme state of dilapidation. Our policy has always emphasised the pre-eminent importance of conservation, but in this case no restoration was possible. The architect Leonard Beddell-Smith reported that the cottages were hopelessly decayed and so ruinous as to be beyond saving; he gave his opinion that the only appropriate way to preserve the integrity of the site was to demolish them and to rebuild. 15 Tower Hill is thus unique among Landmark Trust properties for its relative youth.

Two decisions were taken at this point: firstly to rebuild as a single property, not two, and secondly to raise the new buildings some five feet higher than the old in order to exploit fully the view from the front windows. Mr Beddell-Smith designed the new building to blend in with the older stone buildings of the city in its style, following John Smith’s instructions that ‘the job must look like ordinary local work of the old type’ and specifying to the builder that the masonry was to be ‘equal in quality to the general walling of the Cathedral’. Leslie and Idris Evans of St David’s, trading as Evans Brothers, were awarded the contract and Mr Maurice Riley, a local mason and an outstandingly fine craftsman, took on the preparation and laying of the stonework. The restoration was hindered by an extreme shortage of local labour due at least in part to the simultaneous construction of the new oil refinery at Milford: workmen were unenthusiastic about taking a few weeks’ employment on one small contract when two or three years of continuous employment were available within a short drive.

Materials

Mr Beddell-Smith specified that should any materials from the demolished cottages prove appropriate for re-use they should be set aside for that purpose, but in fact relatively little seems to have been found suitable.

The design provided for grey stone rubblestone facings with dressings in a contrasting colour. Many of the older St David’s buildings were built of sea-washed stone, but this was no longer available. The grey limestone chosen is not native to the district but came from some old stables that had recently been demolished at Mr Beddell-Smith’s home, Pantgwyn Mansion, Llangoedmor, together with the remains of a cottage on his neighbour’s land, which had been built of the same stone.

The purple stone for the window dressings and quoins is of a type seen in many of the older buildings in the city, although where it had been used for an entire building the effect is thought to be somewhat grim. It formed part of the Caerbwdy Sandstone which forms a layer up to 500 feet thick beneath the peninsula and outcrops in the cliffs at Caerbwdy Bay about two miles south-east of the city. It is an unusually hard stone and difficult to cut and was only obtained with some difficulty, having to be levered out from the cliff face on a rope and then collected from sea level at low tide. Until the National Trust gave the Landmark Trust permission to carry out a limited amount of quarrying none had been extracted within living memory. The same stone appears in Sir Giles Gilbert Scott’s west front of the Cathedral, built in 1863, which was probably the last time it had been used. At some stage during the restoration the Dean of St David’s offered the Trust some surplus blocks of this stone from the Cathedral’s own masons’ yard, but it is not clear whether these blocks were ever used.

The roof slates were specially quarried at Precelly Quarry, Clynderwen, Pembrokeshire.

The enormous stone slab on the terrace was a gift to the Trust from the owners of the site of the long-gone Pentre Manor, near Blaenpant, of which it once formed a part: it required a JCB to lift it on to the lorry that brought it to Tower Hill.

The pebble paving was laid by preparing a bed of mixed sand and dry cement powder, into which fist-sized stones (obtained from Caerbwdy beach) were pressed by hand. The whole was then well watered with an ordinary watering-can, a process that left the stones clean and free from adhering cement.