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.