Recent Sketches

 

Level Crossing Station Road

This is one of my favourite Port Talbot subjects for a sketch - the level crossing in Station Road. The crossing went when the centre of the town was redeveloped in the 1970s, and it's hard to argue that this was not a good thing to do - traffic apparently used to crawl through the centre of town due to this. I'm not sure when the photograph this one was based on was taken - 1950s I'd guess judging by the cars.

The rest of the pictures on this post are all of Baglan Past and Present. The art deco/modernist house above is currently owned by Britain's Got Talent winner Paul Potts. Its proper name is Sunray House.

McDonalds - A48 Baglan

The building in this picture still stands, but sadly it's not the Travellers Rest pub any more. This is a shame. I played in quizzes there when we had a quiz league in Port Talbot, and it was always a good evening when we played in the Travellers Rest.

This is the lodge adjacent to Baglan Park. 

I like this building a lot. I'm guessing that it was the lodge for the old Baglan Hall, which was originally a Jacobean manor house. 

Baglan Hall was originally built in the 1600s, although it was extensively remodelled more than once, It was eventually acquired by Port Talbot Corporation, and demolished in 1958, to make way for Baglan Park.

The Baglan Bay Hotel is another much missed venue, which was demolished c. 2005

Baglan shops

The West End Garage on the Pentyla Baglan Road - built before the M4, when this was the main route west out of Port Talbot. 

The former Baglan Community Centre. A few years ago it was a sad, unlovely run-down concrete block. Acquired by Baglan Community Church, it is now a smart, sleek and welcoming place. 

Cavalli's Transport Cafe stood where McDonalds now stands on the A48.

Sketches for Oxfam 2021

 Forgive me if you’ve seen previous posts on this subject, and you already know all of this, but in case you don’t . . . Way back in the mists of time, back in 2019 before lockdown, my daughter, Phillippa, who manages the Oxfam shop in Port Talbot came to me and said this. She’s had a line drawing of part of Port Talbot – it escapes me which now – in the shop, and sold it for £30. Her immortal words were , “Yours are no worse than that. Can yo do some for me?” Well it’s hard to turn down a request when you’re asked so nicely.

That initial tranche of sketches did very well for the shop, raising several hundred pounds. So when the shop reopened last summer after the first lockdown, I did some more, and without going into the actual figures, they raised a lot for the shop.

So, here we are again, shops opening all over the place, and with only a couple of sketches from the 2 dozen or so I made last year still in stock, Phillippa asked me to do some more. So here they are.

1) The Big Apple Aberavon Beach.

If you want to see a kiosk like this you have to go to Mumbles, the other side of Swansea, where there’s one in the car park right above Mumbles. This one used to stand on the prom in Aberavon Beach. I’ll be honest, I never saw it in person. I don’t know when it was removed, but it had certainly gone by the time I moved to Port Talbot in 1986. I’ll say more about this when I get onto the funfair, but it is difficult to understand what the local council were up to with Aberavon Beach on the 70s and 80s.

2) Ore Cranes

I’ve sketched Port Talbot’s iconic dock cranes several times before. I will come clean and admit this was purely a commercial decision. Don’t get me wrong, I love drawing the cranes, but also, they sell. We sold drawings of these cranes in both previous Oxfam selections, and during my first raft fair I sold one to our local MP. The sketch for Oxfam in 2020 is one of my best selling prints as well.

3, 4 and 5) Miami Beach Funfair Aberavon

The funfair was opened in 1963, I think, and closed in 1983, so for me it was a near miss – I was only 3 years late. I don’t know why it was closed down – although I can hazard a guess. Businesses rarely close because they’re doing well and making money. It’s a shame though – nearby Porthcawl’s Coney Beach has managed to keep going. The funfair is still very fondly remembered by a generation of Port Talbot’s citizens though. The second of these pictures was sold for the shop even before the shop reopened! One of my previous Oxfam sketches of the fair is amongst my best-selling prints.

4) Jersey Beach Hotel

We’re still down the beach again with this next one, and yes, I have drawn the Jersey Beach hotel before. I’ve made well over a hundred drawings of Port Talbot so repeating myself is something that’s going to happen, I’m afraid. The Jersey Beach Hotel was a fixture on the Aberavon Seafront for a long time, and I remember it quite well. I played my first ever big quiz final in there in 1988, when my team completed the Port Talbot League and cup double, and I won the individual (because the two better players in my team didn’t want to play in it.) The hotel closed for good in 1999, and was destroyed by fire a few years later.

5) Station Road with Level Crossing

In the last couple of years I drew the same scene of the level crossing twice, so I fancied a different view of it. I’m still in the 50s/60s with this sketch, but it’s done from the street level, and from the other side of the gate in this one. Station Road is probably Port Talbot’s main shopping street, even if many of the main stores have now moved into the Aberavon shopping centre. As for the level crossing, picturesque as it is, older inhabitants of the town remember it as causing real traffic problems. Looking at old photographs, it’s hard to disagree that the 1970s redevelopment of the town centre to make room for the shopping centre and the civic centre ripped the guts and the heart out of the centre of the town. Still, removing this picturesque traffic impediment was at least one positive development.

6) The Plaza Cinema

This building is currently in the process of a major redevelopment. The 1930s original façade is still standing, but the original building behind has been demolished, and a new purpose built arts centre is going up behind. I’m gong to reserve judgement until the building is actually completed and opened. I think it’s going to be important to remember that the Plaza, like most cinemas of the same period, may have had a fantastic façade (it did), but behind the façade it was largely a huge concrete barn.

I’ve sketched the Plaza for each of the previous Oxfam selections. Last year I sketched it from the station. This year I used the same reference photo that I used for the 2019 sketch – which incidentally is by some distance my best-selling print – and I changed the film. I’m a massive fan of the Indiana Jones movies (even the Crystal Skull) so I changed it to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade since I first saw that one here in the Plaza.

7) Shift Change at the Steelworks

This one shows steelworkers at shift change, walking along Ffrwdwyllt Street. This street has greatly changed since the reference photograph on which I based the drawing was taken. The chapel and some of the nearer houses are still there, but this entrance to the steelworks has been closed off, and you have to go to Margam. My steelworks pictures have always sold well in Oxfam, while steelworks are another of my bestselling prints, along with the Plaza, the Funfair and the Ore cranes.

Hit List 6: Former Magistrates Court

 

Today I decided to leave the churches to one side for a while – there’s plenty left, don’t worry – and sketch one of Port Talbot’s grander buildings. This is the former Magistrate’s Court, which began life as the headquarters of the Port Talbot Steel Company.

This is another of those buildings where I’ve found it difficult to find out the exact year that it was built. The closest that I’ve got is a document which lists it as ‘early 20^th century’. Well, thanks for that.

It’s in an interesting style – I suppose that ‘neo-Georgian’ would be an accurate description. Those square windows, and the ashlar-style blocks on the corner, contrasting with the red brick work certainly speak of a vernacular style owing more to the 18^th century rather than the 20^th. However it is not quite as elegant as a true Georgian building of similar size and statues would have been. It is quite impressive though.

I believe that the building had already been turned into Port Talbot Magistrates Court before I moved here in the mid-80s. The court left some time ago, and it has recently been reopened as a business hub for technology companies, I believe. Well, you know me, I’m all for re-using and repurposing old buildings where the building itself has some architectural merit.

The building sits just on the opposite side of the railway line from the station. There was a level crossing between the station and the pub which is now called the Red Lion, and this was closed off for the rebuilding of the station a few years ago. I always hoped that it would eventually be reopened, but that now looks unlikely, since the station is built and there is no sign of it being reopened. To an extent I can understand it. However carefully you build in safety features, level crossings are dangerous, because human beings do silly things from time to time, however much you try to save them from themselves. Still, it’s a shame, because if you use Harbour Way when you’re coming from the Afan Way, you have to go pretty much all the way to Margam, and then back track home to Taibach. Well, unless you use the exit onto Upper West End - which the signs make clear that you absolutely must not do unless you’re a resident.

Hit List 5: Some more Churches

 The last post I made on my hit list concerned a couple of churches. Well, let’s not forget, Port Talbot still has more churches than you can shake a stick at. So I hope I’ll be forgiven if the next few buildings on my hit list are also churches. This is Margam Road Evangelical Church. I did an internet search, but I wasn’t able to find out a great deal about it. There are some commemorative stones on the exterior of the building which were laid in 1926, so it seems reasonable to think that this is when it was built. This makes it a little bit of a Victorian Gothic revival hangover. For style wise, it’s gothic as far as I’m concerned. The windows on the front, and the buttresses certainly wouldn’t have looked out of place on a church building from pretty much any time in the previous century.

While it is fairly imposing, I can’t say that I’m in love with this building. Even at the best of times, in bright sunshine at the height of summer, it has a little bit of a dark and brooding atmosphere. It’s obviously been well kept and well looked after, but, I don’t know, when I look at a church building I’d always like to feel it lifting my spirits a bit, and I’m afraid that this one just doesn’t do that.

The next on this exclusively ecclesiastical buildings post is the Grange Street Congregational Church. Usually when I sketch a church I do it so that it at least includes a view of the entrance. But I’ll be honest, it’s difficult to get far enough away from the entrance on Grange Street to get a good photo which gets it all in – and I know because my daughter used to rent a house just opposite the church.

From this angle, then, you can see that this is a large, barn like structure. You can also see that while it’s not as ornamented as the front of the building, but you can still see a couple of gothic features, namely the arched door and the window above the side entrance, together with some of the ornamental stonework. In some ways this aspect of the building is very reminiscent of school architecture from the immediate pre first World War period, as in the nearby Dyffryn Lower school, which is hardly surprising since the church was built I the same period. It’s not necessarily the finest church in Port Talbot, but its position on the street corner makes it surprisingly imposing.

Let’s finish this particular post with a sketch of what may just possibly be the newest church in Port Talbot, the Holy Trinity Church in Sandfields. Sandfields is a large community in Port Talbot, between Aberavon, the Beach and Baglan, which was built after the second World War. The first church was in a canteen provided by Wimpey (the builders, not the fast food company of days gone by) in 1953. In 1959-60 a church was built, but this was superseded by a new building in 1969. I don’t know exactly what was wrong with it, but by the noughties it was clear that the building needed to be replaced. I’ve searched online for pictures of the 1969 building, which I remember, although I never actually went inside it, and I haven’t been able to find any.

The current building was consecrated in 2018, and I have to say, I rather like it. Normally I tend to favour the ‘more is more’ approach to ornamentation and church architecture, but to me, Holy Trinity has a very clean, harmonious appearance which seems a little Scandinavian in approach. That may just be the colour scheme, but hey, don’t knock it if it works. Out of interest, the interior looks just as effective as well, minimalist, but the clever use of white and light blue lifted my spirits, and that’s just from a photograph.  

Hit List 4: Riverside Church and Carmel Bethany Church

 Right, for this post I moved back to town. I recently made a post about churches in Port Talbot. One of the things I noted was that, especially if you include disused buildings, there are still a lot of them. I’ve drawn many of them in my time, but there are two, just behind the main road beside the car parks in the town centre, which I thought I should sketch now.

This first of the pair is the Riverside Baptist Church, although just behind it, in this sketch, you can see the roof of the other, the Carmel Bethany. Both of these churches stand on land which was cleared with the demolition of the streets behind Station Road for the redevelopment of the Town centre in the 1970s. Both of these look as if they could well have been designed by the same architect. Especially in the case of Bethany Chapel, both of these seem to follow a style of post war church architecture typified in buildings such as the Liverpool Roman Catholic Cathedral and the new Coventry Cathedral. Both of them are brown brick faced, which is all to the good, both of them have dramatic roofs, which is also good, and I also rather like the triangular topped window bays too.

If I were launch into paeans of praise for both buildings, you’d know that I was being hypocritical from the simple fact that I haven’t sketched either of them before. Once you look beneath the striking roofs, both of them are a little bit blocky and boxy, although I do appreciate the fact that they are at least brown brick boxes, and not grey brick, or, heaven forbid, concrete boxes. They don’t. in all honesty, make the heart sing in the way that a lot of church architecture from the mid 19^th century and earlier do, but they have some character, and that at the very least, is something.

Hit List 3: Reel Cinema and Bay View houses

I’m not an expert so I could well be wrong about this, but there are four buildings left in Port Talbot that I know of that either are or have been cinemas. The ones I know about are the former Plaza cinema, the Warehouse gym in Taibach, and the residential properties which used to be the Picturedrome. I’ve sketched all of these. The only one I haven’t sketched is the only one that is still a cinema, the Reel Cinema. 

At the risk of sounding like a stuck record, let me state from the start that I don’t hate, or even dislike this building. As a cinema it is a perfectly functional building, and if I have a hankering to see a particular film when it comes out without waiting for DVD release, then I wouldn’t think about going anywhere else. As a building to look at as you walk past, though, it’s meh. The entrance is okay, although frankly there’s nothing particularly friendly about those large triangular bits pointing out on either side of the glazed panels. But for the most part, well, this is retail park architecture and believe me, there’s more than enough of that around as it is.

 Finishing off the buildings I felt that I should sketch around Aberavon Beach, there’s these houses which were built on the former site of the Bay View Social Club.

Now, I did actually rather like the Bay View. That’s party a matter of sentiment – when I started my quizzing career playing for the Railway Club behind the station in the late 80s, the Bay View ere our most serious competition in the old Port Talbot Quiz League, and we had a number of good matches at their place. It had just a wee bit of character about it, and it was one of the buildings that I sketched for Oxfam. But it was gutted by fire, and left empty for a couple of years before the inevitable demolition. As for the houses which have been built on the site, well, I have to say that I rather like them. I like the roofs, and the additional little roof which stretches just above the porch line. See – I’m not quite such a fussy git as I might sometimes appear. It really doesn’t take a great deal to make me happy.

That’s about it for the beach area for now. For my next post I’m going to take a look at a couple of churches that I’ve never sketched before.

The Hit List 2: Naval Social Club and the Four Winds

 Okay, so let’s recap. First building on my hit list was the RNLI Lifeboat station. This is just one of a number of buildings on or near Aberavon Beach that I could have sketched for my 100 faces of Port Talbot, but just didn't. Let’s begin with the Naval Social Club.

 First I first moved to Port Talbot in 1986, you had the Naval Club here at the Baglan end of the beach, and the RAFA Club at the Victoria Road end. The RAFA Club was in a rather lovely older building – and the Naval Social Club isn’t. When I first moved here the RAFA Club had a huge RAF roundel painted on the side. Well, the building is still there, but has moved through a couple of different guises since the RAFA moved out, leaving just the Naval club.

If you’ve been with me for any great length of time, you’ll probably be able to guess my feelings about it. It’s a 70s building, and it looks like it. To get down to specifics, it has a chunky flat roof. Bad. The upper floor is largely built from breeze blocks. Bad. These breeze blocks, incidentally, are the ornamental blocks which have cut out star shapes in them. That’s better than plain breeze blocks, for sure, but it’s still concrete. Bad. I also don’t like the lack of windows on the bottom level. Bad. Yet for all that, I have a respect for the place, partly because it’s still here. I do like the way that the window panelling looks out across the sea. It seems like common sense to have built it this way, but then common sense wasn’t always in plentiful supply in the 70s.

Moving towards the town end of the beach, on the other side of the roundabout from the lifeboat station is the Four Winds restaurant.

I haven’t actually sketched the building before, although in my recent post about public sculptures in Port Talbot I did share a sketch I made of the stature of a reclining sunbather which used to adorn part of the roof of the building.

I can’t be 100% sure of when the Four Winds was built, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it dates to within just a few years of the Naval Club. It too has its share of unlovely features. For one thing there’s that horrible chunky flat roof above the ground level. The flat roof above the upper level isn’t as chunky, but it isn’t a great deal better. There’s no bare concrete, which is good. However there is an awful lot of grey here – if you look at my sketch, basically anything with hatching or crosshatching that isn’t a window pane is grey. That’s offset to an extent by the cream paintwork on the rest.

What really saves this building, though, are a couple of features. Firstly the curve of the building at the near side. There’s very little in a 70s building that a curve can’t improve. Secondly is the way that the roof of the curved section does provide a roof patio garden, which is an attractive feature.