Fans of Victorian and Edwardian architecture go mad for Llandrindod. Leaf through the pages of a text book on the subject then take a look around town, and you’re guaranteed to see in the flesh all the classic features … and more. Balustrades, balconies, fancy brickwork, ornate gables, eaves, gargoyles, bay and dormer windows, decorative ironwork, turrets and glass-roofed canopies festoon the streets in an orgy of Victoriana (if that’s the correct description for this prim and proper era). It’s little wonder that the centre of town is an architectural conservation area with lots of listed buildings.
The good old days
You can almost imagine gentlemen in frock coats and top hats accompanied by ladies in elaborate crinolines or bustles, parasols in hand, promenading its streets. Actually, you don’t need to enlist your imaginative powers, for every year Llandrindod hosts an esteemed Victorian Festival where dressing up is de rigeur.
Like its smaller relative, Llanwrtyd Wells, Llandrindod’s overpowering uniformity and sense of place derive from its single-minded creation as a purpose-built – identikit, if you like – spa town to coincide with the coming of the railways in the 1860s and the birth of Britain’s inland resorts. Located in the heart of Mid Wales, it presented itself as the perfect escape from the dirty, crowded cities and industrial towns of the time.
People flocked here not just to ‘take the waters’ but to enjoy a busy social life and entertainments scene provided by theatres, parks, gardens, a boating lake and sporting facilities.
A great escape
Today, Llandrindod still has that sense of escape. The town’s original visitors came for the novelty of ‘taking the waters’ plus a busy social life and multitude of diversions provided by theatres, parks, gardens and sporting facilities Today’s clientele appreciates the way the town still goes its own way, preserving most of its 19th-century features and avoiding the ubiquity of the modern, formulaic high street.
The shops and stores here are mainly independent, sometimes quirky (like the town itself). Middleton Street is the main shopping thoroughfare, retaining many Victorian shopfronts with giveaway features like elegant cast-iron decoration, curving windows and neo-classical façades.
Bradleys, a grand three-storey former hardware store and landmark building along the street, is being reborn as a recording studio, gallery, mixed-use space and café. It stands amongst shops selling veggie food, bikes, home furnishings and antiques.
Museum pieces
Close by there’s the Radnorshire Museum, housing an eclectic range of exhibits linking Llandrindod’s Roman past with its spa heritage and experiences during the two world wars. It was World War Two that turned the tide for the town, when ‘taking the waters’ as a pastime dried up to be replaced by a new travel market based on conferences and tours by coach and car.
In the vanguard of this move was the Metropole, one of Wales’s most iconic hotels and a major meeting places in Wales thanks to its location more or less equidistant from north and south. It’s a quite monumental, typically Victorian building adorned with gables and soaring copper turrets that wouldn’t look out of place in the Scottish Highlands.
Mind you, the hotel has moved with the times. Its modern spa, kitted out with all the contemporary luxury features demanded by today’s visitors, would have been unrecognisable to the hair-shirted Victorians who endured those original, often harsh spa treatments.
Further down the street there’s a place that, for once, doesn’t conform to Llandrindod’s architectural norms. It’s an alien, curved corner building of streamlined white stone in art deco style, topped with 22 lions. Forever known as the Automobile Palace and an important early example of the use of concrete and steel, it has been earmarked for major planned refurbishment.
Though car and petrol sales have long since ceased, it still keeps the wheels turning as a base for the excellent National Cycle Museum, where over 260 bikes chart the evolution of cycling from the early 1800s to the present day.
Garden delights
Another pleasing feature of Llandrindod is the way in which greenery spreads its leafy fingers into the town. The focal point of the town centre is its Temple Gardens (complete, of course, with obligatory bandstand). Head one way from here and you’ll soon come to more generous green spaces surrounding a large boating lake (another Victorian must-have).
But the pièce de résistance lies in the opposite direction, where you’ll find the Rock Park and Spa, an enchanting mix of gardens, winding paths, mature woodland, sculptures and intriguing features such as the original pump room and bath house. Dating from the 1860s and one of the first public parks in Wales, it’s a verdant 12-acre/4.9ha oasis, just a stone’s throw from the town centre.
Near the entrance to the park look out for the Gwalia building. You can’t really miss it. The vast, red-bricked Gwalia was built as a hotel. In its day, it must have rivalled the Metropole for top honours in the town. Sir Edward Elgar and Lloyd George stayed here in 1927 in some considerable style.
Now a library and council offices, it’s well worth peeking inside the revolving doors (the library is open to all) to glimpse its former grandeur (the tiled floor and stained glass are particularly impressive).
Back in town, another notable survivor from Llandrindod’s heyday is Pavilion Mid Wales. Now a multi-functional events and conference centre, the ‘Pivi’ was built in 1912 and in its time served as a dance hall, cinema and theatre. If you’re a local, you come from ‘Llandod’. And as a local, you know it as the ‘Pivi’.
