Announcement

Tabernacle, Aberystwyth, the chapel that Sparrowhawk was almost killed outside back in 1997, is no more on 4 July, the chapel was set alight by arsonists, and on 11 April, the remains, having been declared unsafe, were demolished. The church had been empty since 2002, when the congregation of 70 ceased using the massive building, which had been constructed for 1800 people. The fourth chapel on the site, it is likely to be the last. The intention was to turn the building into flats. Now both exterior and interior are lost.

The building looked unloved, even in 1997, when it was in use. Entered from a side-street, the chapel presented a starkly classical aspect to the town by the station, from which is was the most obvious building, jutting out into Mill Street. The Green Man would have seen it above everything else, and Sparrowhawk, spotted by the man she had been pursuing for so long, must have headed there in the hope of finding some sort of sanctuary.

Now the chapel is gone, leaving a gaping hole in the town's skyline, probably to be replaced by an anonymous block of flats. A little more of the romance has gone out of the life of this lovely town in Mid-Wales. And, like Sparrowhawk, I suppose that this adds a nother reminder that the past is a place to which we can never return.

In Memoriam, Y Tabernacl, Aberystwyth.