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.

What's Notable About Port Talbot 5: Places of Worship

In the middle of the 20^th century, Port Talbot had an abundance of at least three types of buildings. It had an abundance of cinemas. Now there’s actually four cinema buildings left that I know of – The Regal in Taibach, which is now the Warehouse Gym, the Picturedrome which has been converted into residential properties, the Plaza which is currently being converted into a cultural hub and commercial and residential properties, and the Reel Cinema on Aberavon Beach. The Reel is a pretty typical example of out of town retail park architecture – perfectly inoffensive but with little to make the heart sing. Port Talbot also had an abundance of hotels and pubs. There’s still a lot of pubs, but when you think of what we lost in the 70s developments and later ones, you can see that we’re poorer off there than we were. Port Talbot, though, also had a lot of places of worship, and a lot of these are still there.

It’s maybe a little odd for me to write about places of worship as notable features of the town, since I don’t attend one, and my attitude to religion is probably best described as agnostic-haven’t-got-a clue-what’s-right. I’m honest enough to admit that I have nothing better to offer anyone else than what they already believe in, and I have respect for anyone who does sincerely follow any faith. But I’m interested in church and chapel architecture, and I think it does add to the appeal of a town or city.

Port Talbot can still boast a wealth of different styles of ecclesiastical architecture, as we’ll see. Still, one of the things which is fairly constant is the human scale of it. There’s very little in the area which I’d call shock and awe style church architecture. O let’s start off with one of the more bombastic – St. Theodore’s in Talbot Road.

The church, which is an example of the tail end of the Victorian Anglican Gothic revival, was consecrated in 1897, and built with financial assistance from Miss Emily Charlotte Talbot in memory of her brother Theodore – hence the dedication to Saint Theodore. It’s one of the largest churches in the town, and I think it shows some of the virtues of this particular style.

One of the sketches I sold to raise money for Oxfam is this sketch of St. Mary’s, close by the Bus station and shopping centre.

There’s been a church on this site since the end of the 12^th century, but the current building is just a little earlier than St. Theodore’s, dating from 1859, although the tower was built a little over 10 years earlier. This too is built in a gothic revival style, but while St. Theodore is like a miniature cathedral, this owes more to a country church, and is none the worse for it. I particularly like the churchyard around the church, and I tried to bring this out in the sketch.

I did say that there’s a variety of styles you can see in Port Talbot, didn’t I? 

This is Margam Abbey Parish Church. Margam Park stands on the site of a former 12^th century Cistercian Abbey. You can still see the ruins of the Chapter House in the Park.

The current Abbey Parish Church was built on the nave of the old Abbey Church. I’m not sure when it was put into its current form, but I really like the Italianate design of the façade now.

Since we’re talking about variety – how about this?

St. Peter’s is the only public building of any kind in Goytre. Goytre is a small community about a mile inland from the centre of Port Talbot. For another thing it was actually moved from where it stood previously in Morfa, when our old friend Miss Emily Talbot paid to have it re-erected in Goytre, concerned that there was no place of worship in Goytre itself. The main reason, though, is that the walls of the church are constructed from galvanised metal, which somehow seems remarkably appropriate, bearing in mind the importance of the steel industry to the development of the town. The church, opened on this site in 1915, was renovated in the early years of the 21st century, and reopened in 2003. When I made this sketch it was looking a bit tatty and a bit sorry for itself.

If you’re not all churched out yet, have a look at this

The darker brown building is St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church. It’s a striking building, and all the more striking in as much as it was built in 1930. You can see that it owes a little to church architecture of earlier decades. I particularly like the tower – that small roof on it makes it work for me, as does the little bit of ornamentation underneath the roof. I believe that it was built largely through the efforts of Port Talbot’s Roman Catholic community, including my wife’s grandparents.

This is St. Catherine’s in Baglan, and it’s the first successful sketch I made using an ink pen. For me, St. Catherine’s is a rather lovely building, not least because it has the best spire in Port Talbot (alright, just my opinion, feel free to disagree)

I’ve no doubt it’s not that remarkable when you compare it to other churches up and down the length and breadth of the country, but I like its unfussy quality, and the fact that it has the air of a simple country church despite being situated so close to the M4 Motorway.

I’ll single out just a couple more ‘still in use’ churches, as opposed to chapels. Way up in the Afan Valley, but still within the Borough of Neath and Port Talbot, is the village of Glyncorrwg. Glyncorrwg is the home of the rather lovely, and very striking little church of St. John. I have no dea when it was constructed and haven’t been able to find out, but I like it. This was recommended to me by a friend and fellow member of the Afan Nedd Artists’ Group who knows I love buildings, and interesting churches. I sketched it on a wet and miserable summer’s day, and it still looked this striking and interesting. I’m intrigued by the steepness of the roof considering how small the walls are, and I really like the unique bell tower.

Before we move onto churches that now serve different purposes, I’d like to to show you one of the more modern churches in the town. 

This is Sandfields Methodist Church. As you can see from the picture, it’s currently undergoing some renovation. At the apex of the roof it used to have a row of asymmetric crosses, which I rather liked, but they seem to have been removed. Now, when I tell you that the church dates from the end of the 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s, you’re maybe expecting a tirade from me. Well, actually, I don’t think it’s a beautiful church. But I think it’s an interesting one. The geometric designs – the fact that a whole side of the church is all roof, mark it out as a child of its era. But at least it’s sincere. It’s not half hearted. Of course, it’s concrete, and does show some rather ugly typical concrete weathering on the slabby side of the building. But still, I do like this building, and I’d be sad to see it go.

There’s a couple of fine church buildings that are still standing, but no longer in use as churches. Let’s start with Holy Cross Church. 

Holy Cross is on a little rise, very close to the Motorway. Like St. Mary’s, I think the best views of it are through the churchyard, like this one. I believe that the building is currently home to an undertaker’s – somehow grimly appropriate, that.

This next former church was an unexpected discovery during a sketching expedition in Pontrhydyfen. This used to be the church of St. John, Pontrhydyfen, and it’s been converted into a rather lovely looking residential building. Let’s be honest, if the church had been demolished and an ordinary residential building been put up in its place, could you see a passer by ever stopping to make a sketch of it like this? Well, put it this way – if someone had, it wouldn’t have been me.

This is St. Paul’s Aberavon. I don’t know that the building itself is currently being used for anything, but in the church grounds is the St. Paul’s Centre, which is a very fine resource for the people of Aberavon. I hope that the church building itself will stay. Yes if you look at the sketch, the rear of the building, on the left, is rather unremarkable. But look at that curved and rounded front end. It’s slightly reminiscent of some of the more elegant buildings from the Conquest period in Normandy. Sorry – I’m going up myself a little there. Let’s calm down a bit.

If Port Talbot is not short on churches, then it’s certainly not short on chapels either. Which is what you’d expect, to be honest. The non-conformist tradition has always been strong in Wales, and Port Talbot is typical in the number of chapels still standing here. Let’s begin with one of my absolute favorites. 

This is the Beulah Calvinistic Methodist Chapel – commonly known as the Round Chapel. It’s actually not round at all. It is in fact octagonal. It was one building which really grabbed my attention when I first moved to Port Talbot in 1986, partly because of its unusual appearance, and even more so because it inhabits a quiet corner of a small park, minding its own business as it there’s nothing unusual about it at all.

The  chapel was constructed as part of the "planned village" of Groes, created by architect Edward Haycock, Sr. It was built by Thomas Jenkin in 1838 at the cost of £800. In 1974, the government inn their wisdom decided to demolish the village to make room for the new M4 motorway. The chapel was the only building in the village to be saved; it was re-located in 1975–76 to Margam, in an area called Tollgate Park. It was Grade II*-listed as early as 1976 as the only surviving octagonal chapel in Wales.

One of my worst early sketches – which you can see below, is the Ebenezer Chapel.

I think we should celebrate the Ebenezer Chapel because it’s the only building from this particular part of the centre of the town to have survived the redevelopment of the 1970s. Sited to one side of the Civic Centre, it’s one of those buildings you see all the time when you go into town to the shopping centre, and it’s very easy to ignore it and be blasé about it. Yet it’s a building which rewards anyone who stops to take a close look at it. There’s a lot of intricate work on the façade. I also like the almost Romanesque windows. Built in 1881, the chapel was grade II listed in 1980.

I didn’t get the perspective right when I made this sketch of the Gibeon Chapel behind the main road in Taibach, hence it looks as if it’s drunkenly leaning over.

This building replaced the mid 19^th century building in about 1910. It’s nice that it’s still in use as a chapel too, since most of the rest of chapels we’re going to look at are not in use any more.

So we come to the Dyffryn Chapel, in Ffrwdwyllt St. I don’t know if you get the scale of it from my line and wash sketch below, but this is a big impressive building – and that’s when it’s been out of use for a long time. It raises the question in my mind exactly why it was built here, in a quiet side street. 

The original building was put up in the 1840s, but the chapel’s current appearance dates from 1893. I don’t know when the chapel fell out of use, but I do know that it has had a bit of  a chequered history since. I know that there were plans for conversion into residential properties which didn’t come to fruition, although I’m not sure why. It’s a shame. It’s a lovely building, and surely that space could be put to good use. I’m not critiising the council in this – in my last post I showed that the council have been forward looking and ambitious in their recent attitude to buildings of note. Still, maybe at some time in the future?

Probably the most prominent disused chapel in Port Talbot is the Bethany Chapel on Bethany Square in the town centre. The foundation stone was laid in 1879. It’s been difficult to find out when it stopped being used as a chapel. One website I found said it was around 2000, however I myself distinctly remember going into it in about 1990 when it was the temporary town central library. After the library moved out, it’s been disused since, for the best part of 2 decades, I would guess. It was listed for public auction in the summer of 2019, but I don’t know if it was sold or not. At the moment it remains empty. I hope that eventually it will be redeveloped and used, without being demolished completely. It’s not as fancy or ornate as nearby Ebenezer Chapel, but it’s very position, on the corner of the square, slightly elevated above the roadway level and accessible by steps, make it an imposing building.

If you follow the road round from Bethany Chapel into Forge Road, you can see the last building I’m going to write about in this post. This is the Tabernacl Newydd, built in 1909. 

I believe the chapel was still in use at the turn of the Milennium. However it has been ut n the market at least once since, so I don’t believe that it is still in use. I have mixed feelings about this building. It certainly isn’t pretty. It’s unusual to see a Welsh chapel built in such a Gothic style. It’s dark and I find it a little threatening. But it is a building that you can’t ignore, and I’d hate to see it gone.

Margam Park

I've sketched the buildings of Margam Park on a number of occasions. It's the site of the medieval Cistercian Margam Abbey. There are few remains, although the second sketch down from the top of this page shows the remains of the Chapter House. The top picture shows the Abbey Church which was constructed around the nave of the former Abbey church.

 In the 19th century one of the richest men in the world, Christopher Rice Mansel Talbot built the gothic mansion, Margam Caste, which is in the third sketch. He also built the Orangery in the 4th photo. 

The top picture was sold privately, while the third sketch of the gothic castle was sold for Oxfam.

86) St. John The Baptist Church, Glyncorrwg

Glyncorrwg is a small community in the valley of the River Corrwg, quite close to  Cymmer. Up until the 1970s it was very much a coal mining community, but since the decline of the industry, and a lot of people left the area to seek work elsewhere. Since the 1990s when the local community decided to take advantage of the local scenery and complemented it with a series of ponds along the narrow valley, and there’s a growing leisure industry based around mountain biking, canoeing and fishing.

As for St. John the Baptist, well, I haven’t been able to find out when the current church was built, but there’s been a church in the community for centuries. One suggestion for the derivation o the name Glyncorrwg suggests that it may be derived from St. Curig.

I like this building, and I was surprised to learn that it isn’t a listed building at all.

76) Gibeon Congregational Church, Taibach

I found this building while I was looking at the former Picturedrome Cinema (Number 71) Former Picturedrome Cinema, Taibach).

To be fair, Port Talbot is not short of a choice of places of worship, but of the older ones, this is one of the best looked after – well, judging by the exterior, anyway. Sometimes you start to research the places that you’ve sketched and it’s relatively easy to find basic details about when it was  built, and any significant happenings involving it. Then other times you just end up drawing a blank, as I did with the Gibeon. I used this sketch for a demonstration of method that beginners could use to construct a sketch of a building, which is why you might notice pencil lines on this one. Normally I don’t use pencil at all when I make a sketch now.

75) Margam Abbey Chapter House

Well, look, I know that I already sketched quite a similar subject(Number 65) Margam Abbey Ruins and Margam Castle) I have to justify it to myself for two reasons. That particular sketch wasn't a real study of the ruins as such, they may have been in the foreground, but it was more a case of making one part of a frame for Margam Castle and steps in the distance. The other reason is that it's another attempt at line and wash, and in some ways I quite like it, I think it's got enough for me to be able to tell myself that I'm making a little progress with line and wash. 

69) St. Peter's 'Iron' Church, Goytre

There are several things about St. Peter’s, Goytre, which make it an easy choice for me to sketch as one of my 100 faces of Port Talbot. For one thing, it is the only public building of any kind in Goytre. Goytre is a small community about a mile inland from the centre of Port Talbot. For another thing it was actually moved from where it stood previously in Morfa, when Miss Emily Talbot, whose largesse to the people of Port Talbot has already been mentioned in connection with other buildings in the 100, paid to have it re-erected in Goytre, concerned that there was no place of worship in Goytre itself. The main reason, though, is that the walls of the church are constructed from galvanised metal, which somehow seems remarkably appropriate, bearing in mind the importance of the steel industry to the development of the town. The church, opened on this site in 1915, was renovated in the early years of the 21st century, and reopened in 2003. When I made this sketch it was looking a bit tatty and a bit sorry for itself. Shame.

65) Margam Abbey Ruins and Margam Castle

The building on the left is the ruined Chapter House of the medieval Margam Abbey, a Cistercian Abbey originally founded in 1147.  It’s very possible that there was a much older monastic community on the same site, or close by, since early Celtic stone crosses have been found on the site, and they are on display in the nearby Margam Stones Museum. In the background, the large building is Margam Castle, a 19th century gothic confection that I’ve sketched before. The view looking up the steps towards the castle is actually one of my favourite views in the whole of Port Talbot. I managed to get the figure in when she stopped for a minute, to have a breather, I think. It was a beautiful bright day sketching this, but there was a cold wind blowing, and the bench I sat on to make this sketch was in the shade. I know that we can get 4 seasons in one day in Britain, but come on, shivering in July?!

61) Former St. John's Church, Pontrhydyfen

Any urban sketching expedition can turn out to be a voyage of discovery. Or, to put it another way, I never set out intending to sketch this building. Pontrhydyfen, probably most famous for being the birthplace of Richard Burton, has two remarkably picturesque structures in the shape of its aqueduct, and its viaduct. Those were actually what I set out to sketch on the day that I made this one. There is a road, accessible to pedestrians, which goes across the Aqueduct, and I followed this one away from the centre of Pontrhydyfen, and round the corner, and lo and behold, I came upon this. It was previously St. John’s Church, but now it’s a charming looking residence, and I take my hat off to the people who have converted it. I couldn’t resist sketching it there and then.

29) St. Joseph's RC Church, Water Street. Line and Wash

St. Joseph’s is a Roman Catholic Church, which was built in 1930 to replace a building from the 1860s, and it belongs to the Catholic diocese of Menevia. For a 20th century church, I like this a lot. I believe that it was built largely through the efforts of Port Talbot’s Roman Catholic community, including my wife’s grandparents.I made a video, currently available on Youtube, which shows the different stages I went through to produce what I think is possibly my favourite line and wash sketch.

16: St. Theodore's Church, Taibach

This is a less successful line and wash picture, in my opinion. It focuses on the details of one of the side doorways of the church. I do live literally less than 100 yards from this church, and it's surely one of the biggest in the whole of Port Talbot.

In 1901 it became the mother church of the parish of St. Theodores. The building of the church was heavily subsidised by Emily Charlotte Talbot - a member of the family after whom the town is named - who inherited Margam Castle after the sudden early death of her brother Theodore.

12) Ebenezer Chapel

In retrospect this sketch, which is not that well executed, was a bit of a retrograde step, since I made no attempt to put in any of the surroundings, therefore leaving the chapel floating in mid air. The chapel is actually one of the buildings facing the square in front of the Civic Centre and the Princess Royal Theatre, although to be fair it was there before either of those buildings, or the Afan Shopping Centre which is opposite the Civic Centre. The chapel is actually the only building in the square which predates it - the only building to survive the demolition and remodelling of the town centre in the 1970s. The building itself was originally built in 1881, and received its Grade II listed status 99 years later.

11) The 'Round' Chapel, Margam

The ‘Round Chapel’ as it’s usually known locally is actually not round at all. It is in fact octagonal. It was one building which really grabbed my attention when I first moved to Port Talbot in 1986, partly because of its unusual appearance, and even more so because it inhabits a quiet corner of a small park, minding its own business as it there’s nothing unusual about it at all.

The  chapel was constructed as part of the "planned village" of Groes, created by architect Edward Haycock, Sr. It was built by Thomas Jenkin in 1838 at the cost of £800. In 1974, the government inn their wisdom decided to demolish the village to make room for the new M4 motorway. The chapel was the only building in the village to be saved; it was re-located in 1975–76 to Margam, in an area called Tollgate Park. It was Grade II*-listed as early as 1976 as the only surviving octagonal chapel in Wales.

Once again, this is a building I have also painted in acrylics.

4) St. Catherine's Church, Baglan - pen and ink

This was the first sketch I made using a specialist sketching pen with a very thin nib, and in retrospect I think that it's the first sketch I made where you can see what would become my urban sketching style starting to emerge. It's a very simple sketch, but it has a lovely graphic quality which the previous sketches don't. I like St. Catherine's a lot. I like a good spire, but also St' Catherine's, with it's leafy surroundings, has something of the aspect of a country church, despite being only a couple of hundred yards away from a busy junction with the M4 motorway.

St. Catherine's is built in 1875-82 is the mother church in the parish of Baglan, which lies in the Western end of Port Talbot, adjacent to Briton Ferry, which is part of the town of Neath. In the local government reorganisation of the mid 90s, Port Talbot joined with Neath and the Lliw Valley to form a Unitary Authority, a County Borough.