Parlour visit by delegation from Beijing

One of the many pleasant duties of being Lord Mayor is meeting and greeting visiting groups to the City. Many of them come from abroad and relish the opportunity to meet the civic head and be shown around the historic Guildhall.

Due to the non-availability of the Lord Mayor, I was initiated into this role this morning when we were visited by a group from Beijing, who I believe form part of an infrastructure commission for that City.

We started off the visit in the Lord Mayor's Parlour, where our guests signed the visitors' book and we exchanged token gifts. I then took them into the Council Chamber which was constructed in 1934 with the rest of the building and panelled with Australian walnut, shipped over from Australia specifically for this purpose.

The columns in the Council Chamber are also Australian walnut and are one continuous length of wood, 22 feet tall with no join. There is a tapestry that runs around the chamber just below the ceiling, which depicts a scene from the National Eisteddfod and which is reputed to be the longest tapestry in Wales. As well as being decorative it is quilted and therefore helps with the acoustics in the room.

We then went onto the Brangwyn Hall to see the famous Brangwyn panels. These 'Empire panels' were commissioned in 1920 by the House of Lords to represent the British Empire and serve as a memorial to those who lost their lives in the First World War.

The artist commissioned was Frank Brangwyn, who was born in Bruges, Belgium in 1864 and who had a Welsh father and English mother. After 7 years of work, the House of Lords turned down his work reputedly because they objected to the bright colours and bare-chested native women. They still had to pay the £20,000 cost of the commission.

Both Swansea and Cardiff showed an interest in housing the panels but Swansea won out as they were still constructing the Guildhall and were able to raise the ceiling of the proposed Assembly Hall by 44 feet to accommodate them in what became the Brangwyn Hall.

The Brangwyn Hall was what our visitors had come to see and there were lots of photographs taken of the party and the panels themselves.