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.

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. 

Port Talbot Civic Centre

 

The Civic Centre in Port Talbot is a building about which my feelings are decidedly mixed. I first moved here in 1986, and they were in the process of building this at the time, and it opened a couple of years later. The building actually incorporates Port Talbot’s only really sizeable entertainment venue, the Princess Royal Theatre, which occupies the wing on the right hand side of the picture.

Even if you didn’t know, by looking carefully at the building you could probably tell when it was built. Room for the whole complex was created when the guts were ripped out of the town in the redevelopment of the early 70s, when much of the character of the town was demolished along with the buildings that were there previously. The first real fruit of that was the Aberavon Shopping Centre. Now, had the Civic centre been built in the early or mid 70s, I guarantee it would have been a quite different beast. I’d say the thousands of yellow bricks with which the building is faced wouldn’t have been used for a start. But by the 80s even the most devoted apologists for brutalist architecture were forced to admit that to most of the population, the only difference between the typical brutalist civic buildings vomited up by local councils in the UK and a steaming bucket of shit, was the bucket. What resulted, though, was a void in which the civic architectural departments (if such a thing existed) across the land were forced to scratch their heads and ask the question – if not more concrete boxes, then, what next?

The solutions, as shown in this particular building, were not necessarily that inspiring. Concrete goes crappy in the British climate? Face it with brick, then. Flat roofs don’t work in Britain because, du-huh, it rains occasionally? Give it a pitched roof then. However, what you have in buildings of this time, though, are very unimaginative uses of more attractive elements. Take the main entrance. It’s lumpy, and slab-like. There’s more than a hint of the architect here clinging stubbornly to his brutalist principles. Curves? Brrr, we don’t want any of those, here. Yes, the Princess Royal Theatre Wing looks better, but even there, using the columns so that the ground floor could be inset to give an arcade feel, seems to have been done very grudgingly. There’s no ornamentation, not variation at all to those square columns – the only way they could be more blank and featureless would have been to not face them with brick. Like a lot of buildings from this period, the architect has somewhat grudgingly eschewed full blown brutalism, but not really known what to do with the building instead, thus falling back on incorporating elements of an earlier vernacular without really having any idea of how to use them effectively. Take the roof. On civic buildings, the roof could and probably should be a notable feature. Not here. Here’ it’s just a roof. It’s a pitched roof because pitched roofs give more protection from the elements than flat ones, but that’s about it. 

However, I don’t want you to get the idea that I hate this building. I don’t, and I don’t even dislike it. Which to be honest, I think must have been what the architect had in mind. Brutalist buildings, to me, often shout “Yeah, go on, hate me. I don’t give a shit!” This one doesn’t. This one says, “Don’t hate me. Please, please, don’t hate me!”  and I’d be surprised if anyone does. The problem is that it does so little to make anyone feel any real affection for it. The clock above the entrance encapsulates this. Above the entrance there is this huge, slabby, flat expanse of brick. It is the perfect place to put some ornamentation, something to relieve that impersonality of the entrance. So the architects and designers put a clock there. Good idea. Okay, they say, you can have your clock, but we’re damned if we’re going to give you anything fancy!- and let’s be fair, they lived up to that promise. We have the hands. Then we have the numbers arranged  on the brick wall where anyone with a soul would have put some kind of clockface, at the very least. Personally, an oversized cuckoo clock, where a life sized statue of Richard Burton springs out on the hour to announce what o’clock it is, and whether all is well,is what I would have chosen to put there. Another opportunity missed by the council. 

With regards to the sculpture, this was, if I remember correctly erected an unveiled a couple of years after the building opened. High wooden fences were erected all around it. The nature of what was being erected was so secret that only half of the town knew what it was going to be. I remember upsetting a colleague of mine at work, who reckoned that they would be putting up a statue of her relative, the late Lord Heycock. I knew nothing of him then, and little of him now, so can’t comment on her assertion that he merited a statue because he had done a lot for the town. Whatever the case, this was what was revealed. I don’t know the name of the artist who created it, but it’s supposed to be based on an astrolabe, and it represents the world – with the ship obviously symbolising the town’s Port status. Less obviously, the whole thing is meant to symbolise that the borough of Neath and Port Talbot is forward looking and ready to accept new advanced developments – although as the building behind it shows, in architecture, nah, not so much.

Municipal Buildings

I'm informed that the Afan Shopping Centre stands roughly where this magnificent Victorian building once stood. The 1970s redevelopment of the centre of Port Talbot and Aberavon is often criticised. Playing Devil's advocate. I'm told that the old level crossing in Station Road made the centre of town into a permanent traffic jam, and the opportunities offered by the shopping centre may well have attracted businesses and jobs to the town. But the price paid, in losing buildings like this, was a heavy one. 

 

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.

Glanafan School

 I sketched the school while it was in the process of being demolished in 2017. This is based on an old photograph. 

The school opened in 1896 as the Port Talbot County Grammar School. In 2016 the school closed for the last time after being amalgamated with Sandfields and Cwrt Sart Schools to form the Ysgol Bae Baglan Super School. Much of the school was demolished, but the frontage preserved in the site’s redevelopment.

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. 

91) Masonic Hall, Forge Road

People can get a bit funny about the Freemasons. I'm not a member, and am unlikely to ever be invited to become one, but that doesn't mean that I have any axe to grind about what is, I honestly believe, first and foremost a charity organisation. As for the hall itself, it's on the NPT register of listed buildings, and is Grade II listed. That's about all I could find out about it. A website suggests that it was built between the two world wars, and looking at the architecture I'd concur with that, although would suggest the 20s rather than the 30s. There was an extra pleasure making this line and wash sketch, since I made it on the first day of the summer holidays from the school in which I teach. 

59) Town Centre Stone Bridge Canopy and Tescos

Here we are then, the first sketch I've made since making the blog. 

You can't really see it from this picture, but the canopy in the centre in the background of this sketch was erected over the Aberavon Bridge as a Millenium project. The bridge itself was originally buit in 1842, and widened in 1893. It was grade II listed in 1979 as a particularly good example of that type of 19th century stone bridge. The bridge links what was once Bethany square, and the junction of Station Road and Forge Road with the open area flanked by Ebenezer Chapel, the Civic Centre/ Princess Royal Theatre complex, and the Aberavon shopping centre. The building under the scaffolding on the left is Aberavon House, a dour 1970s office block and one of my least favourite buildings in the whole town. It is currently undergoing renovation, and one presumes an attempt to improve its appearance. Good luck with that. There are things you just can't polish. You know what I'm talking about. 

58) Glanafan School Demolition

Glanafan School was Port Talbot’s Grammar School until the move to comprehensive education. It began life as the Port Talbot County School in 1896. Glanafan was one of the three schools which merged to form the school in which I now teach, Ysgol Bae Baglan. The school was important to me because it was in Glanafan I did my teaching practice while training to be a teacher in 1986. More than that, all of my children attended Glanafan for five years each.

This brings us up to date. From now on, every sketch has been created since starting the blog.

56) Bridge over River Afan to Aberafan Shopping Centre

The River Afan passes through the centre of the town, past the Aberafan shopping centre, and this bridge gives direct access into the shopping centre. It’s small and inoffensive, considering that it must have been built in the 1970s, and I rather like it. The building above the shopping centre is a tower block which was probably an eyesore from the day it was built. Certainly I don’t remember there ever being a time when I wouldn’t have rated it high on the list of Port Talbot’s ugliest buildings. It’s currently being refurbished, hence the sheeting and scaffolding.

52) Port Talbot Bus Station, Town Centre

Port Talbot bus station is one of those 1970s buildings which steadfastly refuses to look anything much other than tired and depressed, however much you try to tart it up with bright plastic and paint. When I first moved to Port Talbot it was open to the elements, and nobbling cold in the winter when there was a headwind. In the 1990s metal frames were erected between the concrete columns, and doors were installed which at least made the interior a little more hospitable

43) Aberafan Shopping Centre Interior

I sketched this one surreptitiously while leaning on a square column on a Saturday morning at about 9 am. I wouldn’t necessarily say that the interior of the building is extremely attractive, but if I can say nothing nicer about it, at least it’s a light and airy space, eve when it’s full of shoppers a little bit later on in the day.

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.

35) Tesco Car Park - Shopping on Sunday

I sketched this one from my car, while Mrs. C. was taking care of a little bit of Sunday shopping. When I first moved here it just wouldn’t happen – the supermarkets didn’t open at all. I like the sea of car roofs here. In the distance you can see the back of the Ebenezer Chapel, and the main building that you can see houses the Civic Centre and the Princess Royal Theatre. This Tesco was actually built on a huge open car park – they were able to build the whole supermarket and it still left them with a very substantial car park of their own.

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.

31) Aberafan Shopping Centre

Prior to my visit to Prague it would never have occurred to me that I might make a sketch of the shopping centre. Yet it seemed an obvious thing to do after I’d started sketching the town again after my return. The shopping centre is probably the most obvious result of the town centre redevelopment in the 1970s. When you look at books of old photographs of Port Talbot centre, it’s easy to become critical when you see the buildings that were lost. However, talking to people who lived in the town at the time, it is a fact that a level crossing not far from where the shopping centre stands now used to cause huge traffic problems in Station Road.