Part 2 'Elucidare Arcanum'

Moramber's vision for Treve was to create a new wonder for the modern world. A building of such energy and creativity that it would be a milestone in the annals of history. Architects and craftsmen, sculptors and artists had taken Moramber's dream and given it flesh of stone and bones of oak. They had turned their benefactor's inspiration into feats of architecture and engineering the likes of which had not been seen before and rarely since.

The front of Treve was dominated by a four storey, timber framed, gothic style country house. It bore many classic features of the period from its high, steeply angled eves finished with elaborate wooden fretwork; to tall, narrow windows with church like arches and stone mullions. Ornate stone friezes adorned the building and gargoyles of every size perched on corners and gutters everywhere. The chimneys were tall, dark erections with geometric patterns and shapes created by the bricklayers’ art supporting tall, dark pots of varying styles.

The whole creation was painted in shades of night. The wattling between the exposed black, timber frame was a dark grey; the eves, doors and window frames were a once glossy black and the roof was tiled with a dark grey slate. Black wrought iron pipe-work hung solidly from wall and roof and the stone gargoyles were carved from numerous shades of grey and black stone.

Despite the building's sombre colours it somehow managed to project itself from its surroundings. Even with peeling paint and missing tiles it was an awe inspiring sight. No amount of broken windows or fallen guttering would stop this imposing structure from humbling any mere flesh and blood visitors.

This huge, gothic extravagance projected from a light grey stone wall that towered above its tallest chimney. The wall was the lower level of the faux castle that constituted the bulk of Treve. The gothic house was designed to fit around the castle gate house with its imitation portcullis and permanently lowered drawbridge which spanned the once decorative but now green and stagnant moat. Many of the forward facing windows of the gothic house were broken and, as has already been witnessed, a section of wall had been brought down by the steadily expanding growth of an Elm Tree.

When the voyeur's eye rose above the main frontage there were more delights to behold in the towering castle beyond. Standing tall above the tree tops, the towers and turrets of the Treve fairytale castle looked equally out of place against the Welsh countryside as it did atop the gothic mansion below, and yet the two buildings, created as one abode, seemed to merge seamlessly and compliment one another rather than clash on the eye. Together they created an amalgamation of styles that produced a third, new vision of architectural brilliance never attempted or repeated elsewhere.

The lower light grey stone gave way to a much brighter construction that shone almost white in the morning sun. Polished stone parapets still gleamed even though their banners and colours now hung ragged in the breeze. Tall clusters of windows populated what would otherwise have been huge expanses of plain stone.

Numerous towers reached ever skyward from the castle's square body like the shoots of a stone plant seeking the light high above the valley. Some seemed impossibly thin like they would snap under their own weight whilst other, more solid looking towers, sprouted smaller turrets and towers growing from their sides in clusters like fungus growing on a tree trunk.

The widest tower dominated the front of the castle and stood at twice the height of the gothic house from which it grew. What began as timber and slate rose in ever decreasing tiers to become grey stone blocks, polished marble and white tiles. An iron balcony encompassed this wide tower and narrow footbridges hung like dew laden cobwebs between it and several of the other pointed erections.

GOLGOATH

by PHILIP E TINSLEY

Excerpts