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.  

63) Ysgol Bae Baglan School

A personal one, this one. Ysgol Bae Baglan is Port Talbot's new, state of the art 'Super School', created with the merger of two comprehensive and a primary school in Port Talbot, and one comprehensive in Neath. Mine was one of them, and so I became one of the very first teachers in the school. It is a remarkable looking building - from some angles it reminds me slightly of the Millennium Falcon. Ysgol Bae Baglan - YBB for short, first opened in 2016.

54) Vivian Park Lodge, Sandfields/Aberavon

I would guess that this rather appealing house was something to do with the park itself once upon a time , since it’s set back from the road and actually within the boundaries of the park so it seems, although it is fenced off from the rest of the park. Vivian Park is home to one of Sandfields’ only listed buildings, the War Memorial.

50) Neath Port Talbot Hospital Car Park Sunday Car Boot Sale

This sketch brings up the halfway mark.I remember talk about building the hospital here on Baglan Moors as early as 1986 when I first moved to the town. A mere 17 years later it was opened, in 2003. The hospital car park hosts a car boot sale every Sunday morning from the late Spring until the early Autumn. This is another busy sketch, but that’s par for the course considering the subject matter.

49) Arriving at work in Ysgol Bae Baglan - 7:15 am

This is another personal sketch. It shows the edge of the school building, and gives you just a hint about what a remarkably modern piece of architecture the building is. My two colleagues were unaware that I was sketching them as they walked.

41) Ysgol Bae Baglan Car Park

This is a more personal one. I am an English teacher by trade, and I spent my whole career up to this academic year in a school in Neath. It has been amalgamated with two Port Talbot comprehensive schools and a Port Talbot primary school, and we are all now teaching inside Ysgol Bae Baglan, a brand new, state of the art facility. This is the view of the car park and out towards the hills and Swansea Bay which you can see from my classroom window. I hasten to add that I sketched this on a lunchtime and not while I was trying to teach a lesson!