Ty'r Orsaf , Station Road Port Talbot

 

This is Ty’r Orsaf. It’s a residential and retail development on the site of the old Port Talbot Police Station in station road, which I sketched in 2017 just before it was demolished. It’s not the sort of building I’d normally choose to draw for pleasure, and I’ll come back to that a little later, if I may.

 I will try to be objective about the building. It’s brick clad, which is better than bare concrete. At least the roofline has a little bit of interest because of the combination of different levels. There are no huge unrelieved expanses of brick, as there’s plenty of windows. On the front of the building, the asymmetric arrangement of the windows is more appealing to me than the symmetrical arrangement of the windows on the side of the building.

So, I like the building then? No, sorry, I don’t. Let me stress that I don’t actively dislike it, no. Although there’s about 30 years between the Civic Centre and this one, this building presents a very similar attitude to the passer-by – “All I ask,” it seems to say to me, “is that you don’t dislike me.” And I think it’s fair to say that it does enough to achieve this. But why don’t I actually like it? Well, let’s start with that flat roof. The building has only existed for a couple of years, and you can already clearly see patches of damp below a couple of the balconies on the side of the building. If there were some simple pitched roofs on the different roof levels, then not only would they make the drainage a lot easier, the building would look better as well.

If you look at the sketch, you can see there are areas of panelling on both the side and the front of the building. I really am not a fan of this. If you have to do it, then be bold! Go for scarlet. Go for deep purple. Go for viridian green. These, though, are copper coloured. There’s no sign of weathering, which is good, but hey, the building is only a couple of years old. What these will look like in a decade is anyone’s guess.

The building, to my mind, suffers from grudging ornamentation. Yeah, okay, said the architects, we’ll liven the building up with some balconies then, but all we’re prepared to give you are minimalist buggers, and don’t even think of getting some curves.  The result is that we’ve got a building that is arguably better than the police station that was there before it, but not much.

We could do so much better.  There’s an example of the kind of thing I’m talking about only a brisk walk away. I’m talking about Jubilee House on Victoria Road, which is also a retail and residential development. This was erected about 10 years ago. Just try to imagine what it would look like with flat roofs, then try to imagine it with blocky square balconies, rather than the curved and gleaming chrome that it sports. I like Jubilee House, and I don’t mind saying it. The ironic thing is that unlike Ty’r Orsaf, there was actually a more interesting building on the site before, the Vivian Park Hotel. Well, that’s gone, sadly, and I’m not holding it against Jubilee House.

 

I did say earlier that I’ll explain what it is that made me want to draw this unoriginal, unexciting building. In December 2018, one night a Banksy painting appeared on a garage a few streets away from where I live. Very quickly it made national, and soon after, international news. To give you an idea how much of a story it was, it can’t have been more than three days later I went early to work so that I could look at it on the way. There were crowds from all over Britain and some from places as far afield as the USA, and this was 6 o’clock in the morning! 

An art dealer bought the painting – well, the whole wall of the garage actually for a reported 6 figure sum. A deal was made with Port Talbot council so that the work would stay in the town for 3 years. Originally it was planned for a gallery to be built, but I don’t know that this was ever more than a plan. So where did it end up for its 3 year stay? Why, one of the empty retail units in Ty’r Orsaf! You have to look at it through the window, mind you, you can’t go in. I wouldn’t want to. Those retail units look dark and uninviting. 

I have mixed feelings about the Banksy though. You see, there was such a fuss about it when it was first found, and the almost universal reaction was – isn’t it wonderful that our town has been gifted this amazing thing? To which I can’t help thinking – gift? Really? Have you really looked at it, then? Because what it shows is a child, with a bobble hat and an anorak, close to a sledge, opening its mouth to taste the snowflakes falling all around it. Only they’re not snowflakes, for when you look around the corner of the wall you see that it’s the ash from a fire in a burning metal bin. Let’s think about that for a minute, fellow citizens of Port Talbot. Banksy was supposedly inspired to visit Port Talbot and leave this mural after reading that Port Talbot was measured with the worst air quality in the UK earlier in 2018. Yes, that mural is telling the world that not only do we in Port Talbot have the worst air quality in the UK, but we are so accepting of it, we care so little about it, that our children even mistake ash for snow. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a brilliant piece of work. But I just think that the huge outbreak of pride in Port Talbot that it created at the time really wasn’t what Banksy intended. 

Station Road Level Crossing

 This is another example of me producing two sketches based on the same photograph. They show the level crossing on Station Road, which was removed during the town centre redevelopment in the 1970s. The sketch imediately above this text was the earlier one, and was sold in 2019 for Oxfam.

106) Santa's Grotto - Aberavn Shopping Centre

Yes, the year moves on , and the decorations are already out in the Aberavon Shopping Centre. To be fair, Santa's Grotto, although ready, isn't actually open yet. When I first moved to Port Talbot there would always be a parade on a Saturday at the end of November, when Santa would arrive at the station, then make his way along station road to his grotto on a float dressed up to be like Thomas the Tank Engine. That has happened for quite a few years sadly.

97) J.D.Wetherspoons Lord Caradoc

An impulse sketch this one. Two of my daughters told me that they were taking my grandchildren out to breakfast at Wetherspoons, and would I like to come. On a whim I took the A4 sketchbook with me, and I made this sketch of the interior of the bar/restaurant while the nippers were chowing down. I think my daughters were a little put out that I was concentrating on the sketch so much, consider my wrists duly slapped. As for the name of the bar, well Caradoc ap Iestyn was reputedly the first Lord of Fan, who built the original motte and bailey castle, commemorated in the names of nearby Bailey Street and Castle Street. 

95) Aberavon Bridge and River Afan

I sketched the canopy of this bridge and the Tesco store to the left of it before - 

Number 59) Town Centre Stone Bridge Canoy and Tesco

However I wanted to make a sketch where the bridge itself was featured more clearly. The stone bridge is a grade II listed building, and makes the link between the shops in Station Road, and the Aberavon shopping centre and the Civic Centre/Princess Royal Theatre. 

85) Barclay's bank building, Station Road

Yes, dearly beloved, we are back at Station Road again, and back sketching striking buildings again. I will admit that I have painted this Barclay’s Bank building in acrylic in the past. I like this. I like it because it’s a remnant, a reminder of what town High Streets used to look like when I was growing up. If you removed all of the signage, then asked people to guess what kind of commercial premises it was, I bet that most of them would tell you that it’s a bank. The whole thing was doubtless designed to give an air of safety and security, which you can see in the Victorian gothic styling, with those huge masonry window frames etc. When these buildings are all gone – which will happen one day, there will be nothing comparable to them built, and we will all be the poorer for it.

40) Nat West Bank Station Road - Line and Wash

I made a video of the way that I made this line and wash sketch. Some you win . . . I know it’s not great. As I said, sometimes I just don’t get colours, even though it’s not for the want of trying.

39) Old Police Station and Roadworks

Along with remodeling Port Talbot Parkway railway station, the whole area around it is being transformed into a transport hub which will include spaces for buses. I can see the sense in this. However, at the moment the massive roadworks on probably the busiest road route from one part of the town to another is causing massive disruption. So it seemed to me that I ought to be sketching at least one aspect of the roadworks. This sketch shows the old police station, which has been unoccupied for some time now. It’s a rather uninspiring blaock which I imagine was probably built during the dull as ditchwater 1970s, and I believe that demolition is due to start soon.

37) Brian's Fish and Chips

Like the market, I sketched this on a Saturday, originally intending to capture some of the boot sale stalls. However, I found as I began to sketch that I was far more interested in the backs of the buildings on Station Road than I was in the chap sitting in the boot of his car on the bottom right hand corner of the sketch. I love the higgledy piggledy arrangement of the roofs here.

36) Station Road and canopy

This side of station road has had its own steel canopy since the 1980s, although the original structure was replaced by this rather less obtrusive and more elegant affair.

34) Port Talbot Saturday Outdoor Market

This is one of the ‘busiest sketches I’ve ever made. Every Saturday morning a market takes place in the main car park behind the shops on Station Road. When I first moved here all those years ago the market was a big event. It’s a long way past its heyday now. A few genuine market stalls are still clinging on, but there’s a lot of blank spaces where there used to be stall, and many of the stall that are there are really car boot sale stalls. Still, the whole thing still made for a lively enough scene, in which the figures are just as important as the stalls, if not more so.

21) Station Road , Consitutional Club and figures

What the previous sketch lacked was figures. There is actually one figure walking along the road, but it’s really difficult to see unless you know where to look. This sketch of the Con club includes several figures, and it’s far better for it. It isn’t perfect – I wish I’d decided to edit out the foliage, but it is at least a truthful scene since the trees are there. I mentioned Urban Sketching as a concept and movement in the introduction post. One of the tenets of the movement, enshrined in its manifesto, is a dedication to capturing moments in time, and the figures for me do the trick of making this sketch just that.

You might also notice the figure on the right is cut off by the edge of the sketch. I like the feeling it gives of someone actually walking away off the page, and it's a feature I've used more than once since making this sketch. 

20) Station Road from the police station

Right after I returned from Prague I didn’t start sketching the town again straightaway. What I did do was to start going out in my car to places like Brecon, Laugharne and Cardiff, and to make sketches there, using the same approach that I’d used for many of my sketches in Prague. By the time I sketched this one I’d come to the conclusion that I should be sketching whole scenes, which placed individual buildings within their true contexts. I should be sketching the town, not concentrating on the pretty stuff to the exclusion of everything else. I should be using figures where possible. If you compare this one with sketch 7, my previous sketch of Station Road. This was sketched from the eastern end of the road, by the old police station

7) Station Road

This is the first of several sketches that I've made of Station Road, which was effectively the High Street, and the main shopping area of Port Talbot until the Afan Shopping Centre was built in the 70s. The main building shown here is Dewi's Estate Agents. I think that you can see that this is a development from the three earlier sketches, since it's going beyond sketching just one building, but instead using part of a whole street.

It's probably fair to say that Station Road has seen better days, but it still boasts a collection of quite imposing buildings from the 19th and 20th centuries. Personally, I think that this is what a town High Street ought to look like. As the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins once wrote - "Glory be to God for dappled things".