1963: "The Friendly Border" Between England and Wales | BBC Archive

[00:00:18]We're going to take a journey along the actual borderline that separates Wales from England. And a wonderful twisting borderline it is too. So we are starting at the point where the main road from England comes into southwest and Mmasha in the very center of the bridge over the river Y here at chepsto.

[00:00:36]Now a border even such a friendly one as this does mark a division between two ways of life and that's what gave zest to our journey.

[00:00:47]My traveling companion was Roland Lucas of the BBC in Wales and not long back we'd bicycled over every inch of the way. Chepsto itself a dramatic place to start a journey. The pride of Chepsto is the castle perched on its rock above the Y. The first of the great castles with which this Mmasha section of the borders peppered. I think Mmasher is the most castled county in Britain and Chepto town shoots up the hill from it with the houses hanging onto the slopes by their eyebrows.

[00:01:18]A gem of a place. If only the traffic didn't thunder through it and full of curiosities.

[00:01:26]such as this pub with the five alls ending of course with John Bull paying for all.

[00:01:32]Now out through the walls of the town north into the Y valley itself and to curiosity number two that we found 2 miles out this fine piece of Victoria at St. ovens.

[00:01:56]Now, who puts up ornamental fountains these days? I suppose you could bequee the community petrol pump.

[00:02:04]Ah, but it wouldn't have the same charm or fit into this entrancing landscape of the lower reaches of the Y. The border is running now right through the center of the river. Of course, this is a bit of a showplace, and didn't we all learn Wdsworth's lines on Tinton Abbey at school? Again, I hear these waters rolling from their mountain springs with a soft inland murmur.

[00:02:28]Well, Tintan Abbey is still there, but I think Wsworth would get a bit of a shock if he saw it to the buses outside on a a busy summer's day.

[00:02:47]But Tinton can spring a surprise on the modern visitor as well. This plaque in the wall is set there to commemorate the place where brass was made in 1568 by alloying copper with zinc. You can really associate tinton with industry.

[00:03:11]From Tinton, the Y now twists north and remains as the boundary until you come to the county town of Manmouth.

[00:03:30]Well, dare I say that Mmouth is in Wales? Of course, I think it is as a Welshman, but there's a lot of the locals who will stand in a court square before the statues of the town's two favorite sons, Harry of Manmouth, King Henry V, and the honorable CF Rolls, the great motor, an air pioneer, and they'll claim that they're almost independent of England and Wales. But we didn't argue, but slipped out under the old arch on the bridge across the river Mono. It isn't unique. There are other towers on bridges in Britain, but this is the only one in Wales, and I do hope that the traffic experts haven't got their disapproving eyes on it.

[00:04:11]Of course, the mono tributary, the Y, now becomes the boundary, and we followed it up to that delight of a border village, Skenfrith.

[00:04:21]I can sum up Skenfrith with a catalog, one castle, one watermill, half a policeman, half a vicar, the chairman of the local branch keeping the roads tidy, and two artists.

[00:04:33]The watermill belonging to Mr. Edwards mentioned in Doomsday Book and still working.

[00:04:51]The mill making its cool splashing sound right alongside the broken walls of the castle.

[00:05:06]I said that little Scentrith has two artists. Major Griffith is a traditionalist.

[00:05:12]Mr. Reed is modern.

[00:05:15]But both draw their inspiration from the village.

[00:05:19]They work together and they exhibit together too, and the picture somehow seemed to fit, modern and traditionalist.

[00:05:29]Major Griffiths began painting when he retired to Skenfred to read. Well, he paints in off days from his business. And it's strange how two painters can see a place with totally different eyes. And where do they exhibit? In the local, the bell in 50 yards inside the Welsh border. And the church is close by and that contains a treasure with which any artist would delight.

[00:05:58]In the churchyard, we met the vicer, the Reverend AW McAdam. He'd been cutting the grass in the churchyard himself, and it certainly grows rather lush in these parts. And he took us into the church.

[00:06:11]It's one of those lucky buildings, and we found quite a few along this border that dodged Victorian restoration on a big scale. And I suppose that's why it possesses a surprise packet. We walked from the altar past the old woodwork and then we stood before it. The Skenfred Cope, 15th century needle work at its best. The figures are embroidered in gold on rich velvet. It used to be an alter cloth until quite recently, and then it was recognized as one of our finest medieval vestments and placed in a carefully designed sealed case. But Skenfith Churches rescued other delights too from the past. and these giant pews that allowed the squire and his family to sink out of sight and dodge the two-hour long sermons of the 17th century.

[00:07:04]We said goodbye to the vicar and then made from Skenfrith 5 miles northward to Gmont.

[00:07:11]Out came the recctor to greet us and he turned out to be none other than the Reverend McAdam again. Well, he's half vicar of Skenfred and he's I suppose half recctor of Gmont. lucky man to live there. A houseman talked of Clungford and Clun as the quietest places under the sun. Well, he never saw Grossmond on a summer's evening. And yet, it was once a burough. Here's its old town hall. It had a deputy mayor who rejoiced in the title of ale taster. But all that was back in the brave days of the 18th century. I suppose now Grossman's one of the few places where cats can sleep in the streets and not get run over and the market stone. But alas, the market has long since it's disappeared.

[00:07:55]Beyond Gmont, we started to enter a new wild exciting country. The border runs slap over the tops of the black mountains alongside the deep, mysterious trench of the Clanton Valley. I always think of this valley as the veil of amazing churches.

[00:08:13]First, in lonely Kumoi, you come across what I call the seasick church. You hardly believe your eyes when you look down on the roof from the tower. And nobody knows how it came to be so completely cockeyed.

[00:08:27]A landslip. Well, there's no record of one. When you enter, there's not a wall.

[00:08:32]There's not a a floor that isn't a skew.

[00:08:36]And I wonder how Thomas Price would fare, whose charming epitav is in the churchyard, saying, "Thomas Price," he takes his nap on our common mother's lap, waiting to hear the bridegroom say, "Arise, my dear, and come away." But how would he know which way to go in corkcrew kum yoi on the day of judgment?

[00:08:56]A few miles further up, deeper into this dark slot of a valley, carved in the 2,500 ft mountains, is itself. Well, I call this the church's coffee house. Of course, this was famous one time as the resident of the poet Walter Savage Landor. But nesting like a swallow among the ruined arches, you come across the Traveler's Rest, an old inn, the old prior's lodgings, still offering hospitality to the modern visitor. I rather prefer this to the two carefully tidied up ruin you get today. There's a pleasant continuity of living about it all.

[00:09:36]And at last we got to the top of the valley itself to the little bandbox church of Capilline.

[00:09:45]Lonely as few churches can be even in Wild Wales and so small that you wonder how any congregation could have been squeezed into it. The farmers listen to the sermons with their sheep dogs underneath the pews. And the great u trees in the churchyard must be at least 400 years old.

[00:10:06]But from here we climbed out of the valley onto the highest point that the road reaches following the border. The gospel pass they call it Bulkar Revenil in Welsh. You go up 1,400 ft. Great hills tower around you. This is sheep country on a big scale.

[00:10:26]And at the summit we reached a turning point in our border journey.

[00:10:50]Well, I just had to stop at the summit of the past because here I feel emotionally South Wales ends and mid Wales begins. Here the Black Mountains take a tremendous plunge down from the summit to the green lushness of the Y valley 1,500 ft below. And of course in mid Wales the border goes wild. It goes through hay and Y past Cairo and then in that lovely tangled group of hills that you find around New Radnaugh and old Radnaugh. And finally we come to that strange tongue of Radnasher that shoots out to a next for Wales the old county town of Prestine. Quiet, pristine, and two miles further on at Norton, a surprise. Now, would you expect to find this?

[00:11:45]These magnificent pieces of armor and rare weapons belong to the collection of that great expert, Dr. Richard Williams.

[00:11:51]And he's built up the collection over 50 years. I asked him what a a clash of armored knights must have sounded like.

[00:11:58]Just like a maid dropping a couple of tea trays, he said. Then we went into a room where the past became startlingly alive. Uniforms, weapons, armor everywhere, some of them belonging to the bodyguards of James I.

[00:12:13]And Dr. Williams helped me to put on one of these bandeliers of the Civil War period. I imagined it might have been worn at Nazby. You know, this would be the way to teach boys history. If only they could wander through a collection like this marvelous tilting armor of the early 16th century. Many from famous German and Italian craftsmen. This is English armor.

[00:12:42]And these little miniatures, they were sent by the craftsmen of the day rather like trade samples to prospective customers.

[00:12:53]He's got some puzzles, too. You threw this iron spike under horses hooves. A gauntlet, a locking gauntlet, and a Highland Taj from the 45 rising.

[00:13:04]And a finale in a glorious and most rare piece. This is tilting armor made in Nuremberg in the early 16th century.

[00:13:13]And all this in a quiet house in a quiet village lost in the peace of the border.

[00:13:23]Time stands still too further north in Nighton. The local clock sees to this.

[00:13:29]It was presented in 1872 and Nighton waits for market days before stirring.

[00:13:34]And isn't that the sensible way to live?

[00:13:38]The border now cuts back into the hills a bit following the team. Even the waters of this stream don't really seem to be in a hurry.

[00:13:48]This is country which grew up along the 19th century railways and they built Nucklas Vioadc to look like a baronial castle. Dr. Being alas has arrived to put an end to such pleasant railway follys. Sanv waterdine.

[00:14:04]John Hunt has his home nearby. Somehow you hardly link grim Everest with this gentle country. But the hills do reappear. The Kerry Hills. And on the top of them, you'll find it marked on the map, is the Kerry Pole. That buoyant sportsman who keeps the mountain in at anchor nearby, Mr. Dorsy Perry, who led the effort to keep John Peele's hunting horn in Britain, arrived with Roland Lucas to toast it because he said, "On every hilltop around here, they had a poll in the old days. We must restore tradition. We must mark the highest point of a countryside with something better than television masks and the rest of the modern clutter." and so say all his neighbors.

[00:14:46]At the Kerry Hills, the border crosses over into a new county, Montgomery.

[00:14:54]It old county town is my favorite of all the quiet places we came to on the border. A perfect Georgian gem.

[00:15:17]They've hardly altered a detail since the coach arrived to give them the news of Waterloo.

[00:15:27]Some go-getters have sneered at the square as the only unused car park in Wales. But others say we're lucky. We're not on the road to somewhere and no one here wants to go anywhere.

[00:15:49]In the churchyard, they still show you the robbers's grave. As a proof of his innocence, a thief condemned over a hundred years ago swore that there would always be a cross in the grass over his grave. And of course, it's still there and utter quiet.

[00:16:16]But you can overdo this illusion of the utter peace of the countryside, especially if you find yourself among the battery hens at Stallow Farm.

[00:16:29]Stallow is right on the border a few miles north of Montgomery town and Philip Davis who owns the farm has his land at the very point where the official border almost coincides with the great earthwork of offers dyke. In fact, Mr. Davis's father used to have two votes. One for his fields in Wales, the other for the land he owned in England. But you can see the great earthworks of the dyke built over a thousand years ago by offer of mercier to mark the limits beyond which no Welchman should venture. In Wales we still speak of going dross cloud offer beyond offers dyke as if we were going off to the wilds of Africa.

[00:17:08]Following offers dyke has brought us up to the slopes of the long mountain. Now this is just behind Welshpool. I suppose we've now reached the edge of North Wales and this is one of the most intriguing parts of the whole border.

[00:17:20]The border itself plays very strange tricks here. It zigzags all over the place, shoots out into England and comes back again. The dasis of Herafford ecclesiastically as a next the long mountain although politically it's still in Wales but it's littered with all sorts of curiosities. You take this Canadian log cabin that I've stopped to sit in. Expect to find that in the middle of Wales. And behind me I've got one of the first phoniculars set up in Wales on the Swiss pattern disused at present. But there are plenty of other curiosities. This one for example.

[00:18:19]the giant redwoods, the most impressive grove of trees in the whole of Britain.

[00:18:24]The first seedlings were brought here from California over a 100 years ago, and there have been additional plantings since. The redwood isn't exactly the biggest tree in the world. I suppose the Wellington grows taller, but nothing surpasses the redwood in dignity and in color.

[00:18:42]The late Charles Akers, a great tree lover, saved the grove for posterity.

[00:18:48]And the bark of the tree is very important. When the sunlight filters down on it from overhead, I always feel it takes on the hue of vintage burgundy.

[00:18:57]It's thick and it houses a whole colony of small creatures, mice, insects. But please, you must not pull any bit of it off. The tree depends on it for its life. So hands off. just admire and look up and up to the treetops. They're still growing, for this is a tree with a fierce lust for life. Out of a a fallen trunk, the branches start to spring immediately as new redwoods. The technical name of the tree is Sequoia seer bevens, always living. It also must be one of the oldest of living things on this planet.

[00:19:59]It seemed right somehow after the redwoods to find a church on the top of the long mountain entirely constructed of wood. No direct road to it either.

[00:20:07]St. Mary's in the wood trust. And the vicar has the strangest accompaniment indeed to the singing of the services.

[00:20:15]>> We're going to sing hymn 165. Oh God our help in ages past.

[00:20:49]Oh God, our help is a yes to come.

[00:21:01]A shelter from the stormy blood and a home.

[00:22:00]A place of many surprises, this long mountain ending in the bold brian hills.

[00:22:06]Right on the borderline, they've got quite a volcanic look leaping up from the flat 7 valley. And here the engineers of the Kraion station of the GO have built one of the biggest stations in the country. It was very important during the war. And for the other sections of these mast, well, the engineers have simply used the hills themselves.

[00:22:30]The ancient brians are now helping to radiate stock exchange prices to America. And a few yards inside the border to the east of the hills an oak tree looking a bit frayed but known as Prince's Oak for it marks the spot where in 186 the Prince of Wales afterwards George IVth dained to put one toe into his principality and promptly retired over the border again. The border now swinging back into the hills into wild lonely country, a land that's very Welsh in feeling and speech. Although it's only a mile or so from the English-speaking upper seven plane, it couldn't be otherwise. For here is Sakarth, the old home of Owen Glendur, and a string of lost and lovely valleys that bring you over the moors to Churk, the gates of Churk Castle, one of the wonders of Wales, early 18th century, of course, the golden age of ornamental iron work. And the strange thing about them is that they were made by a local man, Smith of Burham, a village outside Rexom, only a few miles down the road. But of course, he was already a famous man from a famous family of iron workers. So this was no peasant craftsman at work, a sophisticated artist rather, who was full of the spirit of the barack. But it's pleasant to think that Wales could support an artist of this caliber in 1719 when the gates were first made for Richard Middleton of Churk Castle.

[00:24:06]Churk built by Edward I as part of his great ring of castles to dominate all Wales after the death of Llewellyn. And the Middleton family have lived here since Elizabeth's day.

[00:24:19]The castle is perched on the very edge of the mourn looking out over a part of Flint called English Milo which seems totally unwelsh. It's out there on the flat Cheshure plane. Unwel for this Greington where Lord Kenyon has one of the finest studs of Welsh ponies in the world. And here they come out on parade, the stallions led by the pride of the stud, the champion Kaid C planed.

[00:24:47]He does seem to bring the fire of the Welsh hills into this rather low plain country of English Milar and Flint.

[00:25:00]Lord Kenyon showed us his paces on the turf before the house.

[00:25:05]And where does the Welsh pony get his spirit and fire from? A touch of Arab, perhaps? Arab stallions were turned out onto the moors to improve the breed in the 19th century. Or I like to think it's the original Celtic pony, the descendant of those who drew the chariots of Bodisier and struck such fear into the Romans. But I think I better leave this theory to the experts.

[00:25:28]All I know is that these stallions that Lord Kenyon put through their paces on the lawn at Greington were things of wild exciting beauty.

[00:25:39]And finally, when Ky Cork Planned was handed over to Roland Lucas to show his paces, I think Roland had everything he could do to hold him.

[00:25:50]But these are the points to watch for as he moves. He's got as good a head as any pony alive. Small ears, large eye, well sculpted jaw, well-laid shoulder, and short back, well set tail, and his courage. Well, look at the way he's moving. that stride, the freedom and the the length of his pace.

[00:26:16]I think Ron was glad to hand him back to Gordon Jones, the stud groom.

[00:26:23]But Ky Cork and his fellow stallions, Ky Planet, they've won over £4,500 in prizes at all the leading shows.

[00:26:33]The Welsh pony since the war has soared in popularity.

[00:26:38]It's come with the the boom in riding and America has been a very important market and may come to this stud from all over Britain.

[00:27:00]Planet very well behaved as you can see.

[00:27:04]But here's the fo of Sarin Wen. Charming name for a mare. It means bright star.

[00:27:21]I love the gawky grace of this colt.

[00:27:25]Let's see if he can go.

[00:27:27]Championships class, I think. Look at him moving.

[00:27:47]And then we got Gordon Jones, the stud groom, and his men to give us a wonderful Wild West finale. 40 mayes and their foss racing past us under the great trees of the park.

[00:28:37]at Greington. We were near journeys end.

[00:28:40]20 mi to the north. The D starts to widen out. It's the border between Flincher and Cheshure. And as we started with a castle, we felt we had to end with one. Flint Castle and Roland Lucas and I walked out to lean on the walls to look out over the sands of de towards England and we thought of what we'd done. We've covered the border and I think we're going to remember it as the green lost border for until we got into Flincher there was hardly a factory chimney in sight and a friendly border.

[00:29:13]There's been no struggle across this boundary for 500 years. Not a bad thing if all borders could be like this one.