CARDIFF CASTLE (p. [166]).
As a village, Llandaff is now hardly aught except a flourishing suburb of Cardiff. Still, it keeps its individuality, and declines to be incorporated with the great invading town. The remains of the old episcopal palace and the old market-cross consort amicably with the one or two single-storeyed thatched cottages of the village square. The palace gateway has quite a baronial look, but it leads to nothing of particular interest. Bishopscourt, the modern palace, is a more cosy residence than that built by Bishop John de la Zouch early in the fifteenth century, of which this gateway is the most conspicuous relic.
Photo: Valentine & Sons, Dundee.
ST. MARY STREET, CARDIFF.
Of Cardiff, what can be said adequately in few words? It began the century with about a thousand inhabitants; in 1881 its population was 82,671; and now it is about double as much. The Romans had a fort here, which the Welshmen called Caer Didi, or the fort of Didius (Aldus Didius): hence, Caerdydd and Cardiff. Fitzhamon the Norman, about 1095, erected the castle, the substantial fragments of which adorn the grassy courtyard of the mansion of the Marquess of Bute, who—more than Morgan ap Rhys, or Fitzhamon, who dispossessed Morgan—may well be called the lord of Cardiff. The prosperity of the present town began with the canal and sea-lock, early in this century, which enabled Merthyr to send its coal abroad; but it was guaranteed by the enterprise of the father of the actual Marquess of Bute, who expended millions in the construction of docks. Within the memory of men still living there was tidal mud close to the stately, if bizarre, outer wall of the Marquess’s residence, with its glass-eyed effigies of wild beasts perched on the stones. But the “Welsh Metropolis,” as Cardiff loves to call itself, will not again see those times.
One cannot conscientiously say that there is much of romantic or even artistic interest in this thriving town—the castle, with its Asiatic richness of decoration, apart. But the place is at least interesting, in its acres of docks, its prodigious machinery for the control of water-power and for the lading of vessels, and even its long ugly road of mean houses connecting it with the town of Bute Docks. This last is a cosmopolitan district. Coal is in demand everywhere, and it is pre-eminently coal that Cardiff thrives on. In 1849, only 162,829 tons of it were exported hence; in 1895, the amount was 11,067,403 tons. One of the astonishing sights of the Docks is to see a railway truck full of coal lifted by machinery as easily as if it were a penny loaf, emptied into the hold of a ship, and then, in less than a minute, be succeeded by another truck.