Overlooked Britain: Cardiff

Overlooked Britain A castle for the world’s richest man

lucinda lambton When the Marquess of Bute met William Burges, they turned Cardiff Castle into a medieval, Welsh, Biblical fantasy

Cardiff Castle is a sensational, superb, decorative triumph. The Roman and medieval castle was transformed by the 3rd Marquess of Bute (1847-1900) and his whizz-bang adviser and friend the architect William Burges.

They created a town of towers – not a small town, either. Each tower is jam-packed with jewel-like rooms, ablaze with the rarest of architectural riches. As you cheer on their glories, I defy any of you readers to find a building of equal excitement, rarity and splendour.

Gold shrieks at you from every wall, along with myriad architectural oddities inlaid into a variety of woods, often enhanced with a wealth of mother-ofpearl. A cockatoo twinkles with a tail and crest shining bright. An armless and bespurred lion boasts a long, motherof-pearl tongue.

Lord Bute was only 18 when he first met Burges. Bute’s coal fortune was said to make him the richest man in the world. Together, Bute and Burges created brilliantly eclectic architectural schemes.

Both were raging romantics, obsessed with medievalism and craftsmanship. Every room is encrusted with rich and intricate decoration, designed with serious scholarship, yet riddled through with veins of humour that make you laugh out loud with delight at the good fun on show. The clocktower, begun in 1869, is a study in the theme of time. Outside, figures representing the planets flank its four gilded faces.

After you’ve toiled up 101 steps to the Summer Smoking Room, its riches burst upon you. It is a room as gay as it is lively; as colourful as it is light; all shone over by a great gilded Apollo on the chandelier, with the rays of the sun beneath him.

This gleaming room represents the universe, with a map of the world in silver, copper and bronze in the centre of the floor, surrounded by tiles of man, mammals, birds and fish.

The god of love, with a lovebird on each wrist, sits on the handsome hood of the fireplace, above a frieze of romantic

Above: Cardiff Castle’s south gate Left: a bear clambers over the Animal Wall

summer pastimes. The eight winds of Greek mythology act as corbels over a great tiled frieze of legends of the zodiac.

So much for the Summer Room’s splendours. Now for the wonders of the Winter Smoking Room (pictured), which glow away at the bottom of the tower. Plunge in and you pass under the grotesque head of Typhon – representing chaos – his ivory fangs at the ready. Tiptoe over the Hounds of Hell inset into a mosaic floor and you are surrounded by shining walnut and boxwood panelling, with mythological creatures set a-shining with mother-of-pearl.

The door itself is inlaid with entrancing musical animals: a mouse beating a drum and a parrot reading a score. Burges particularly admired this bird, describing its ‘great intelligence’. The door handle is adorned with the same decorative bird; many more perch and fly all over the castle’s walls, floors and ceilings.

The massive fireplace is stupendous, as indeed are all of them; each a beautiful little building in its own right. The Smoking Room’s was hewn from Forest of Dean stone in a single block, brought to Cardiff and carved on the spot. Under the Latin words by Virgil, meaning ‘Love conquers all and let us yield to love’, the pleasures of winter are paraded above the fire. Great hounds lie at the hearth,

while a figure loads his crossbow and a berobed woman prepares to fire an arrow. Another, bedecked in mauve, pink and gold, is skating on shinbone blades. TERRIFIC!

Four giant corbels, representing ‘Sunrise’ and ‘Sunset’, ‘Day’ and ‘Night and Day’, support gold and black-andwhite checked arches which soar ceiling-high at each corner.

The castle was a veritable cauldron of inventive talent. Bute workshops were established in Cardiff. Burges had a tried and trusted team of men, whose names should be cheered to the skies. Horatio Walter Lonsdale, Fred Weeks, Charles Campbell, Nathaniel Westlake and Frederick Smithfield were the decorative artists. Thomas Nicholls, Ceccardo Fucigna and William Clarke were the sculptors.

The wood carving and the marquetry in at least a dozen different woods, such as avodire and French Charbonnier walnut, were wrought by Thomas John and his sons Thomas and William. (Three cheers for Thomas and Thomas!)

The tiles were produced by W B Simpson and Sons, William Godwin and George Maw. Three architects worked under Burges: William Frame, John Starling Chapple and his brother-in-law, the euphoniously named Richard Popplewell Pullan. How supremely satisfying it is to record all their names.

The Arab Room in the Herbert Tower, with its scarlet and gold-leafed Islamic ceiling, is the most exotic creation of them all. With its walls and floor entirely of gilded marble, with golden parrots in niches and wall cabinets mounted in silver, its decoration defies belief. It was all built in 1881, the year of Burges’s death. Inscribed in alabaster over the fire are the words ‘John, Marquess of Bute, built this in 1881. William Burges designed it.’ HURRAY!

With it delivering historical lessons about the place, the overmantel in the Banqueting Hall also demands admiring attention: its decorations include figures blowing trumpets from a castle – obviously Cardiff – with the gloomy figure of a prisoner Robert ‘Curthose’ (short-legged) Duke of Normandy gazing at them from behind bars. The eldest son of William the Conqueror, he was the unsuccessful claimant to England’s throne, incarcerated here until he died in 1134.

Creatures from the Mabinogion, a collection of Welsh folk tales, embellish the walls: a giant frog, a boar and – one of the most beguiling of all the details in the castle – a salmon swimming through the wall, with its head and its tail carved so as to appear to be lashing forth from the body of the building.

And so it goes on, stuffing the senses with medieval lore. The Chaucer Room has all the quality of fairyland, with every inch most delicately decorated, soaring up to the lantern of the octagonal tower. The great writer presides overall, surrounded by the birds of his Parlement of Foules, along with a series of paintings and sculptures of The Legend of Good Women. There are 32 stained-glass windows illustrating The Canterbury Tales.

The small dining room has a richly splendid ceiling and fireplace, with little oaks growing up through its hood and their roots splaying out below. Tiny mice nestle in flowers. Particularly bewitching is an elaborately carved wooden monkey with white ivory teeth and a bell push in his mouth disguised as a tasty morsel.

A Greek inscription meaning ‘Entertaining Angels Unawares’ is carved amidst grotesque faces, some with their tongues sticking out. Meanwhile, the three angels tell Sarah and Abraham they are expecting a child. Sarah, aged 92, sits laughing with her hand over her mouth.

Any look – even a glance – in any direction, at Cardiff Castle, will give you surprise, delight and pleasure.

Top and middle: The Winter Smoking Room: the inscription means ‘Love conquers all and let us yield to love’; ‘Sunset’ below the ceiling corner Bottom: A salmon swims along the wall of the banqueting hall