Peter Finch: Real Cardiff | Event Review

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Cardiff Central Library, Cardiff, Thurs 19 July

That Peter Finch is here today is doubly appropriate. Not only is it nearly two years since he was the guest speaker at the Central Library’s inaugural Open Space event, but the building itself is a potent symbol of Cardiff as the “flourishing city” of the prolific local author’s latest book, and indeed features on its cover. Seren’s Real series – a beguiling blend of history, (psycho)geography and personal memoir – kicked off with Finch’s Real Cardiff in 2002; since then, its scope has extended across the border into England and beyond consideration of only sizeable conurbations – but it has regularly returned to the Welsh capital, such has been the pace of change here. Real Cardiff: The Flourishing City is Finch’s fourth contribution on the place of his birth.

This evening, at least, that subtitle ends with a question mark; over the course of 45 minutes, Finch interrogates what “flourishing” actually means. He refuses to be seduced by the superficial dazzle and gleam of glass and metal, bemoaning the construction of countless buildings that thrust themselves ever higher, built hastily and with profit rather than durability in mind. The tone of his talk is not predominantly triumphant or even celebratory, but elegiac. Development, he notes soberly, often (if not inevitably) entails erasure. Roath Mill, for instance, had stood for over 1,000 years when it was obliterated in 1897 to make way for a public park; likewise, there remains no trace of several different town halls, or of the cursing stone that once stood on St Mary’s Street. Precious little of the pre-Victorian city survives; Cardiff is physically as well as economically very much a product of the Industrial Revolution – though even its industrial heritage is now fast becoming a distant memory, as disused docks are crowded by new flats and the Coal Exchange has been converted into a swanky hotel. Only on rare occasions does there appear to be any official admission of regret at acts of cultural and historical vandalism committed in the pursuit of progress, such as the misguided decision to fill in the Glamorgan Canal. Had it survived, the Canal would now no doubt be a popular tourist attraction; sadly, today it functions only as a cautionary tale, a warning as to the perils of myopic planning. At least, Finch concedes, the city was spared the sort of fate that befell Birmingham: the implementation of a 1960s utopian vision that would have tarmacked it over and transformed it into a giant car park.

Finch’s antipathy to the automobile is also evident when he speaks about his methodology and approach. To really see and know a place, he argues, you need to pore over old maps and walk around it (or at least cycle). He talks of leading walking tours, and tonight, without us having to leave our seats, he takes us on a ramble behind pubs, through gates, over fences, down lanes and into the past, pointing out the barely discernible outlines of motte-and-bailey castles, ancient standing stones hidden in plain sight in cottage gardens, and what remains of the vast heath that stretched north from Death Junction (where Albany Road, City Road, Crwys Road, Richmond Road and Mackintosh Place meet, so called because it’s where the city’s gallows once stood).

Nearing the end, Finch brings us back to the present to look into the future. Cardiff has grown exponentially since the first official census in 1801; how might it continue to grow in the years to come, constrained as it is by the estuary to the south and Caerphilly Mountain to the north? Perhaps with the development of artificial islands and protective sea walls; almost certainly with expansion to the west, beyond Culverhouse Cross, and to the east, towards Newport. Green belt land has already been downgraded, preparing the ground for the bulldozers to move in, and Finch fears that, like the Great Heath, it will be destroyed. He accepts that development is an inexorable process – “Cities are never finished – they are built, then rebuilt and then rebuilt again” – but makes a passionate case for proceeding with caution, sensitivity and an acute awareness of what will be lost as well as what might be gained.

words Ben Woolhead

Real Cardiff  by Peter Finch. Price: £9.99. Info: www.serenbooks.com