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.

62) Ware House Gym

It’s fair to say that this building sits rather uncomfortably between the 1920s houses and shops on either side, and the 1990s supermarket a little further along the road. It certainly looks as if it has not been a gym, or indeed an ordinary shop all its life, and this impression is correct. Does it look all that much like a former cinema, though? Maybe when you see it from the back, and get an impression of the real size of it. This was opened in 1936, although it closed as a cinema decades before I moved to the town. I look at the building and it makes me wonder how a town the size of Port Talbot ever supported the number of cinemas it once had. To give you an idea, when I first moved in 1986, the town had one working cinema, the Plaza, one cinema about to reopen before the end of the year, the Picturedrome, one converted former cinema, the Regal (this one), and one completely derelict cinema, the Odeon. At least a couple of other former cinema buildings in Aberavon were demolished in the rebuilding of the town centre in the 1970s. I’m not certain of this, but I think that in the late 1940s, after the war, there may even have been as many as 6 cinemas working in Port Talbot. Cinema going was at an all time high at that time – television ownership didn’t really start to soar until the Coronation in the 1950s. Even so, though, 6 cinemas! I’ve never been inside the building – well, it is a gym, after all – but as an exterior it isn’t that striking. But I’m drawn to it because of the way it’s been repurposed. It’s fairly obvious if you look at my sketches and read the text that I like striking, pretty, or impressive older buildings, but I’m not so blind that I can’t see that an empty building quietly mouldering away does nobody any good. As an alternative to demolition, repurposing a building like this works for me.

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.

60) Baglan Shops and library

Baglan is a very nice residential area, largely perched on a hill side at the west of the town. In fact Baglan touches onto Briton Ferry, which is the easternmost part of Neath, the neighbouring town. These buildings are in the centre of Baglan, together with a social centre, Baglan library and a park. Baglan is one of those areas of the town which has the feeling of a leafy village, although a much larger village than Velindre, since there are over 6000 people who live here.

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.

57) Talbot Memorial Park Gates and Lodges

The Talbot Memorial Park is next door to St. Theodore’s Church, which is significant since I believe that this was also largely the creation of the Talbot family of Margam Park. The inscription shows that the Park was first opened in 1925. It’s a grade II listed structure, as are the two lodge houses on either side of the gates. As you enter the park, the house on the right is occupied, but the house on the left is in need of some renovation, and is fenced off to prevent access.