My name is Frank Banks, and I'm one of the welcomers at the cathedral in Brecon. It's a tremendous heritage that we have in the town. And we have visitors there from all around the world and all, they all bring their own background to it. And they go away from the cathedral with many of the interesting I think, anyway, stories that are able to be picked up there. For example, people go in and they're all puzzled about why we have two doors halfway up the wall that no one could ever get into.
And, and so they they stand in the aisle pondering the two doors, and they wander down and say, Excuse me, do you mind? Can you tell me why do you have two doors, halfway up the wall, that if someone comes through they're going to break their neck or they if they go from the other end they can't possibly reach. And then I asked to give them the answer course I say, Well, what do you think might be two doors facing one another across the aisle there? And they they think of various things. You might be a priest hole so well, it's not hidden very well, if it's a Priest Hole is it? and anyway, they ponder what it might be. And they come up with something bridging the two doors on one side of the aisle to the other. And that was a screen, a rood screen.
And in medieval times, the pilgrims used to come up, pay a little bits to the monks who used to be in the cathedral because before it was a cathedral, it was a priory, a Benedictine priory ,and the Benedictines got their penny and the pilgrim walked up a staircase which is still in the wall there in the cathedral, they went to the to the door, they opened the door. And rather than fall into breaking their neck, they had a bridge, a rood to walk across, and halfway across was a golden cross. And they would touch the golden cross for healing, for a blessing, for good luck. And they would go through the other door, down the staircase to send that wall and away.
And so in medieval times, and the cross was there for centuries, until the time of the dissolution of the monastery where kings eight King Henry the Eighth commissioners came to Brecon and was rather taken with the gold cross that was halfway across the rood screen and decided that they would have it and That was stolen well taken, commandeered. And therefore, the town lost its gold cross.
And in fact, it lost the the priory, they took the gold cross. They also want to take away the bells. And the townspeople in Brecon were very keen to insist that those bells belong to them. And they resisted the commissioners taking those away. So they got the gold, but they didn't get the bells.
One of the sheets that we give out is a sort of an eye spy sheet for children. They get points for finding things, and some of them are obvious, like doors halfway up a wall, and some are less obvious, such as a white mouse. And that's probably the hardest thing to find. In fact, when I produced the sheet. And I gave it to various people to try out. The Dean himself didn't know where this why to mouse was. But in fact, it's a children's story in its own right. And it's to do with the saint called St. Cadoc one of the Welsh saints, and there's a great number of the Welsh saints, some of them commemorated in the cathedral by some 19th century, stained glass windows. And one of them has a white mouse and the children desperate to find where this white mouse they're looking for would be. And I believe it is unique. That being the only ecclesiastical stained glass window that contains a white mouse as one of the panes of the stained glass. And the reason for that is the story of Saint Cadoc, he was setting up his monastery. And the disciples that he gathered around him were actually starving. And a rather plump mouse came along, sat on his desk and dropped a corn, a small wheat corn on the on the desk, which the saint quickly ate. And then the mouse went away brought another and dropped it in the same place, picked it up. And he thought, why is this mouse so well fed?
He tied a piece of cotton thread to the mouse's tail, the mouse ran underneath found it and he followed the, the string, and he came upon a sort of a cabin a stash of corn which had been put there maybe five or 10 years earlier, but because it was protected from the weather and from the air pretty well, it was perfectly good to eat. And so the monks didn't starve. And the mouse the white mouse, had saved the community and therefore saved Saint Cadoc this particular Saint, Saint Cadoc, very much associated with the area sometime not exactly in Brecon itself. Sometimes he lives in a surrounding village, but he, through the intervention of his white mouse, commemorated in the glass window, he was able to make sure that either his disciples in one story or the town of Brecon didn't starve.
Well, the most unusual and intriguing question I was asked was about two of the memorials at the back of the church behind the font. The font itself is a source of of interesting stories, but the two memorials are about the same family or two deaths in the same family. And this and the wife and the daughter are both on the two memorials, and the dates are completely different.
And so somebody came and I was scratching my head, as well as to why that memorial is completely. Obviously the same. This style is exactly the same. The shape of them, they, the writing on them, refers to the same people but they apparently died at different times yet they're the same people so it's very intriguing. That font is the other thing that people always ask me about. Because as you look at this, they there's a rather interesting figure that looks almost Aztec like, even though this is clearly a font, going back about 800 years, maybe maybe a few few more years on that. It's it's got what look like Aztec figures seems to be something coming out to the bath. People suggest that maybe it's a green man but it doesn't look like the usual sunset type shape of a Green Man with the leaves, it just looks like nasty figure throwing up.
And I know that certain people suggest that when you baptised then sin leaves the body. And this is indicative of this. This actually vomiting image is the sin leaving the individual.
But there's also there if you read the the the information sheet that's near the font, it will tell you that you can find the tree of knowledge. But you certainly can. It'll tell you that you can find a fish, which you certainly can. And it will say that you can find a scorpion, which I think is being a little bit disingenuous, because when you look at it, it's a dragon.
And anybody looking... pointing, it must be a dragon! Though somebody once told me, I don't know it's a dragon. It looks like a dog that might be eating its own tail, which is another symbol. So in other words, a lot of people come with questions about the found, and they go away, actually, with their own ideas about what it might be.
Well, my secret place in Brecon that I would take people to see would be the gallery at the theatre, which has a series of changing exhibitions. Sometimes it's high art, sometimes it's contemporary pictures and sculpture that are maybe not my taste but it's so it's still worth people going to visit and give their opinion and and similar just contemporary photographs of of Brecon life. So you can in just a few minutes, find out what Brecon has got to offer but also what the villages around her got to offer too.
Brecon is special because of the way that these gems are hidden. And people... it works two ways because they're hidden they're not overpopulated by tourists they're not like Yorkminster away You can't ever be on your own. You can walk into various places in in in Brecon and be the visitor. So this is real gems here. And that's why I think it's great to recommend people to come there of course the walking in the hills, but there are these when it's raining - and it rains quite a bit around here in Brecon I have to say - that these places like Y Gaer where I'm sitting in talking now like the theatre with the gallery like churches and cathedrals they are all wonderful umbrellas at the time when they were walking up Pen Y fan doesn't seem to be quite the thing to do.