Awkward

A difficult building to photograph. The land in front of it - heavily overgrown in any case - falls away steeply to the river Teifi below. To get here we have followed a precipitous hillside path, clawed at by rampant brambles and head-high bracken. There is road access, but it's both unpleasant walking and a long way round

It's a castle. Well, obviously it isn't, and never has been, in any true sense. But it has been referred to as a castle, and is marked as such on maps, for over a century. It has never had any military function (except for housing a some US troops for a few months prior to D-Day), has no battlements or turrets and isn't designed as a castle-folly

It was actually a purpose-built workhouse, housing women with illegitimate children, vagrants and anyone elae who had nowhere better to go. Planned in the 18th century, built in the 19th and used until the early 20th, at which point if was officially judged as 'the worst in Wales'. It is out of town, out of sight, intended to be out of mind. Perhaps its soubriquet was originally ironic, but it was adopted as the official address of the 'inmates' (as they are described) by the 20th century

It is now Grade II listed because it is 'the least altered workhouse in Wales' - is that the flip-side of being the worst? It's in private hands and let as 'luxury' holiday accommodation. Maybe it's lovely inside, but it retains the melancholy air of its past, and feels like a work-in-progress that has stalled at some (financial? health? enthusiasm?) break-point and not yet fulfilled someone's aspirations

The extra is in a shed outside, as it was when we walked this way a year and a half ago. Awkwardly symbolic