Alittlebitoutoffocus

St David’s Cathedral and Bishop’s Palace, City of St David’s, Pembrokeshire, Wales

I have a confession to make… I’m a bellringer! Yes, I know it will come as a bit of shock to some of you, but it’s true. I learnt to ring when I was about 11 or 12 years old but, once we’d moved house to another area, aged 14, I gave up. OK, I did ring again many years later (at York Minster, no less) when another ringer joined my team in the office but, for reasons I’ll not go into here, I soon lost interest again.

That was until my wife, Jude, and I moved to Llanfyllin last year and I heard the church bells ringing… I thought it might be a good way to get to know a few locals and give me something to do (other than play golf and take the dog for a walk) and, since late last year, I’ve been going down to the Monday evening practice sessions and ringing before the Sunday church services.

So ‘What has this got to do with St David’s Cathedral?’ I hear you ask. Well, Jude and I have just been on holiday for a week in Pembrokeshire. Before going I contacted the captain of the St David’s band of ringers to see if I could go down to their practice night and maybe join them before the Sunday service. Bellringers are a notoriously friendly bunch and I was made extremely welcome.

It also meant that I had the opportunity to wander around the grounds and take a look at the neighbouring Bishop’s Palace (ruin) and to look inside the Cathedral itself. Quite unusally, though, the bells are not actually in the Cathedral itself, but are hung in the nearby gatehouse, called Porth-y-Twr. (See pics 4 & 18). I was told that this was because the cathedral was built on slightly unstable foundations and having 10 bells, (the heaviest of which is over 24 cwt or 1200kg) swinging around in the main tower wouldn’t be a good idea.

My apologies for not knowing exactly which bits of the Cathedral I’d photographed. I walked around so quickly and there were so many nooks and crannies, I can’t recall which area was which.