Hit List 6: Former Magistrates Court

 

Today I decided to leave the churches to one side for a while – there’s plenty left, don’t worry – and sketch one of Port Talbot’s grander buildings. This is the former Magistrate’s Court, which began life as the headquarters of the Port Talbot Steel Company.

This is another of those buildings where I’ve found it difficult to find out the exact year that it was built. The closest that I’ve got is a document which lists it as ‘early 20^th century’. Well, thanks for that.

It’s in an interesting style – I suppose that ‘neo-Georgian’ would be an accurate description. Those square windows, and the ashlar-style blocks on the corner, contrasting with the red brick work certainly speak of a vernacular style owing more to the 18^th century rather than the 20^th. However it is not quite as elegant as a true Georgian building of similar size and statues would have been. It is quite impressive though.

I believe that the building had already been turned into Port Talbot Magistrates Court before I moved here in the mid-80s. The court left some time ago, and it has recently been reopened as a business hub for technology companies, I believe. Well, you know me, I’m all for re-using and repurposing old buildings where the building itself has some architectural merit.

The building sits just on the opposite side of the railway line from the station. There was a level crossing between the station and the pub which is now called the Red Lion, and this was closed off for the rebuilding of the station a few years ago. I always hoped that it would eventually be reopened, but that now looks unlikely, since the station is built and there is no sign of it being reopened. To an extent I can understand it. However carefully you build in safety features, level crossings are dangerous, because human beings do silly things from time to time, however much you try to save them from themselves. Still, it’s a shame, because if you use Harbour Way when you’re coming from the Afan Way, you have to go pretty much all the way to Margam, and then back track home to Taibach. Well, unless you use the exit onto Upper West End - which the signs make clear that you absolutely must not do unless you’re a resident.

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.

Hit List 3: Reel Cinema and Bay View houses

I’m not an expert so I could well be wrong about this, but there are four buildings left in Port Talbot that I know of that either are or have been cinemas. The ones I know about are the former Plaza cinema, the Warehouse gym in Taibach, and the residential properties which used to be the Picturedrome. I’ve sketched all of these. The only one I haven’t sketched is the only one that is still a cinema, the Reel Cinema. 

At the risk of sounding like a stuck record, let me state from the start that I don’t hate, or even dislike this building. As a cinema it is a perfectly functional building, and if I have a hankering to see a particular film when it comes out without waiting for DVD release, then I wouldn’t think about going anywhere else. As a building to look at as you walk past, though, it’s meh. The entrance is okay, although frankly there’s nothing particularly friendly about those large triangular bits pointing out on either side of the glazed panels. But for the most part, well, this is retail park architecture and believe me, there’s more than enough of that around as it is.

 Finishing off the buildings I felt that I should sketch around Aberavon Beach, there’s these houses which were built on the former site of the Bay View Social Club.

Now, I did actually rather like the Bay View. That’s party a matter of sentiment – when I started my quizzing career playing for the Railway Club behind the station in the late 80s, the Bay View ere our most serious competition in the old Port Talbot Quiz League, and we had a number of good matches at their place. It had just a wee bit of character about it, and it was one of the buildings that I sketched for Oxfam. But it was gutted by fire, and left empty for a couple of years before the inevitable demolition. As for the houses which have been built on the site, well, I have to say that I rather like them. I like the roofs, and the additional little roof which stretches just above the porch line. See – I’m not quite such a fussy git as I might sometimes appear. It really doesn’t take a great deal to make me happy.

That’s about it for the beach area for now. For my next post I’m going to take a look at a couple of churches that I’ve never sketched before.

The Hit List 2: Naval Social Club and the Four Winds

 Okay, so let’s recap. First building on my hit list was the RNLI Lifeboat station. This is just one of a number of buildings on or near Aberavon Beach that I could have sketched for my 100 faces of Port Talbot, but just didn't. Let’s begin with the Naval Social Club.

 First I first moved to Port Talbot in 1986, you had the Naval Club here at the Baglan end of the beach, and the RAFA Club at the Victoria Road end. The RAFA Club was in a rather lovely older building – and the Naval Social Club isn’t. When I first moved here the RAFA Club had a huge RAF roundel painted on the side. Well, the building is still there, but has moved through a couple of different guises since the RAFA moved out, leaving just the Naval club.

If you’ve been with me for any great length of time, you’ll probably be able to guess my feelings about it. It’s a 70s building, and it looks like it. To get down to specifics, it has a chunky flat roof. Bad. The upper floor is largely built from breeze blocks. Bad. These breeze blocks, incidentally, are the ornamental blocks which have cut out star shapes in them. That’s better than plain breeze blocks, for sure, but it’s still concrete. Bad. I also don’t like the lack of windows on the bottom level. Bad. Yet for all that, I have a respect for the place, partly because it’s still here. I do like the way that the window panelling looks out across the sea. It seems like common sense to have built it this way, but then common sense wasn’t always in plentiful supply in the 70s.

Moving towards the town end of the beach, on the other side of the roundabout from the lifeboat station is the Four Winds restaurant.

I haven’t actually sketched the building before, although in my recent post about public sculptures in Port Talbot I did share a sketch I made of the stature of a reclining sunbather which used to adorn part of the roof of the building.

I can’t be 100% sure of when the Four Winds was built, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it dates to within just a few years of the Naval Club. It too has its share of unlovely features. For one thing there’s that horrible chunky flat roof above the ground level. The flat roof above the upper level isn’t as chunky, but it isn’t a great deal better. There’s no bare concrete, which is good. However there is an awful lot of grey here – if you look at my sketch, basically anything with hatching or crosshatching that isn’t a window pane is grey. That’s offset to an extent by the cream paintwork on the rest.

What really saves this building, though, are a couple of features. Firstly the curve of the building at the near side. There’s very little in a 70s building that a curve can’t improve. Secondly is the way that the roof of the curved section does provide a roof patio garden, which is an attractive feature.

The Hit List 1) RNLI Station, Aberavon Beach

You know what? I really enjoyed making the last 7 posts about buildings which I think are worth seeing in Port Talbot. Over the last 3 or 4 years I’ve made a lot of sketches of places in Port Talbot, but for each of these 7 posts I ended up making at least 1 new sketch, some of them of places I’ve never sketched before. So obviously there’s still places out there I haven’t sketched. Hmm – we ought to do something about that.

Of course, I’m not saying that I’m going to sketch every building standing in Port Talbot, every house, every shop – the lot. That would be silly, and as boring for me as it would be for you. No, all I’m going to try to do over the next few weeks is try to catch up on some of those places that I’ve missed over the years, regardless of whether I think they’re good, bad or indifferent buildings. Let’s start with the beach area.

I’ve sketched quite a few of the buildings on the sea front. Some of them are still there – Francos, Remos, Aberavon Hotel and the Leisure and Fitness Centre, and some of them are gone – the Afan Lido, The Bay View, the Jersey Beach Hotel for example. So let’s start with the RNLI station.

The first lifeboat station here was built in, I think, 1966. My late father-in-law was a volunteer crewman for many years, and even after this came to an end he stayed connected with the lifeboat through making sure that the lifeboat was fuelled and other duties. In his spare time he also ran more than one local cub pack , and so when the previous station was replaced in the 1990s, he received permission to help himself to some of the paving slabs around the station, for a scout and cub hall he was rebuilding. I helped him pull up some of the stones (and my hands are still aching!) As for the new station, well, it’s rather nice isn’t it. It’s yellow brick, and that’s far more appealing than grey brick. I like the shape of it, and there are just enough windows to offset the plainness of the brick walls. Of course, the aesthetics of the building pale into insignificance when set against the function of the building. But I’m glad that I took the time to sketch it. We’d be much poorer without it.

What's Notable About Port Talbot: 7: Miscellaneous

 I thought I’d make this last post on the notable buildings and sites of Port Talbot a sort of round up of places I like, which don’t necessarily fit into any category, other than they’re there, and they don’t shout about what they are, yet seeing them can just brighten your day a little bit. Many of these I have sketched before, but not all of them.

So let’s start with Taibach Library. This lovely building, which houses the local library which is run by volunteers, is a Carnegie Library. What’s a Carnegie library? Well, it all goes back to Scottish American industrialist and philanthropist, Andrew Carnegie. Carnegie, born in Dunfermline, emigrated to the USA with his parents when he was 12, and his is a real rags to riches story. He worked hard as a very young man, and spent his money building up stocks and shares, and becoming rich in the process. Carnegie became a steel magnate, and his steel company, which he sold in 1901, would become the giant US Steel. From then on Carnegie switched his efforts from mega-scale industry to mega scale philanthropy. In particular, he funded the building of hundreds of public libraries in the USA and in the UK. This is one of them. I think it’s a lovely little building, and I don’t mind the grandeur of the face it presents to the world one little bit. I’m all for balustrades on the roof of a building like this one.

There’s a real joy to be had when you walk down what you think of as a side street, or a back street, and find something out of the ordinary which seemingly has no reason to be there. The Kash Supermarket in Bailey street is just such a building.

In terms of size and style, this is the sort of thing you wouldn’t have been surprised to see on a high street in any town, but a back street? Most of the old shops and commercial buildings in Aberavon were demolished during the 1970’s remodelling of the town centre I believe that the building was built before World War II as a Co-op originally. Incidentally, Bailey Street is so named because it stands on the location of the bailey of the medieval castle which stood there once. This also explains how nearby Castle Street got its name.

I have a thing about bridges. I make no bones about it. I like a good bridge. I’m not entirely sure that you could describe this little plate girder bridge over the River Afan as a good bridge at the moment, because it is in a state of disrepair. Thankfully, it is a grade II listed structure, so hopefully there could be some restoration work on it at some time in the future. To me, it speaks of a time when Port Talbot was an important dock town. Other than that, well, I don’t know, I just like it. It was part of a very pleasant cycle route from home to the beach.

Coming back into town, there’s the Grand Hotel. For me, it’s not a building that I would describe as conventionally beautiful, but it certainly has some presence. In days gone by, it was a bit of a dark, brooding presence. Photos from more than 100 years ago show it without it’s now familiar cream paint job, looking all dark and moody. In fact it looked just a little bit like a Victorian asylum, to be honest. Now, though, well, it looks just grand. Yes, okay, if you were in the wrong frame of mind you might end up describing it as a bit of a Victorian gothic monstrosity, but that’s far too harsh. It’s the sort of building that once a town loses, you’ll never get anything to take its place.

This next building, literally around the corner from where I live, is what used to be called the Afan Arts Centre. It’s now the Forest Veterinary Practice. I don’t know when it was built, but I’d guess it’s maybe a little older than most of Theodore Road.

I sketched this lovely building from the back, looking at it from Talbot Memorial Park, because I love the arrangement of the roof line from the back. It’s not bad from the front either. Mind you, on the same side of the road, at the other end of the street there used to be an even nicer old building, which was knocked down over 20 years so some bland and characterless flats could be built.

On either side of the main entrance to the Talbot Memorial Park in Taibach there are two rather nice little lodges. At least one of them is habitable, and it was on the rental market a few years ago. The lodges for part of the main entrance, and the main gate to which they are attached is dedicated to war hero Rupert Price Hallowes, who received the Victoria Cross in 1915. I didn’t know that, but found a website with information about the park which told me this. Most of the websites that mention the park date it to 1925, which is, I believe, when the war Memorial was first unveiled and dedicated. However, I can’t help thinking that some kind of park or gardens was here before. It’s just the style of the bandstand which makes me feel this way – it’s either Edwardian or late Victorian surely. It’s in a sorry state at the moment, but there’s enough left to convince me that you just didn’t get ornamental metalwork like that after the First World War.

For my next unexpected building, let’s head out of town, and take the top road up the Afan Valley to the community of Cymmer. Right on the main road there’s this rather grand building.

It was originally erected as parish council offices, I believe. In its last period of use it was the Bryn Siriol Senior Citizens Community Centre. It’s sad to see the building disused like this. From the roadway it doesn’t actually look to be in bad nick, but closer up you can see that the fabric of the building is deteriorating, and that’s a shame.

For more than half a dozen posts now, I’ve been picking out buildings and places that make our town notable – in a good way- and which I think are worth looking at, and worth sketching if you have the chance. So I hope I can be forgiven if I include one building that I feel stands out due to . . . well, for want of a better word, due to its ugliness. Looking for buildings that are actually ugly, as opposed to just not being very appealing, is harder than you might think. There’s a lot of blandness about – and I’m not singling out Port Talbot for this, because it’s true of a great many towns. With a bland building, the main points to make are about what they’re not, rather than what they actually are. But a genuinely ugly building shouts its ugliness in almost every fibre of its fabric. Rather like the Family Value building in Forge Road.

To me, this is one of Port Talbot’s few remaining truly brutalist buildings, and as such, I should really, really hate it. But, d’you know what? I have a sneaking regard and respect for it. I mean, I don’t actually like it, and if the town was full of buildings like this I’d probably detest it, but as a lone remnant of the architectural age that taste forgot, it’s fine. Well, I say fine – I think I really mean that it’s on the interesting side of hideous, but then that’s sometimes better than bland. Let’s start off by talking about what’s bad about this building. Flat roofs get the ball rolling. Then there’s the construction from bare concrete. If you look at the front of the building, the wall above the glass panels has these geometric designs to try to relieve the grey awfulness a little, but of course, it’s concrete, and concrete weathers badly. I do actually rather like the window panels across the front of the building above the entrance, which I think are one of the features of this building which works for me. However, why the corner above the entrance was done the way that it was, with the column extended from the ground floor to the roof of the first floor I really don’t know. There’s no need for it, and since the columns are not exactly picturesque it really doesn’t work for me. Or rather it wouldn’t, except some clever person has curved the name of the store around it. That’s a rather nifty bit of making the best of a bad job.

Those monochrome columns immediately make me think of a really grim 50s/60s department store in Ealing, West London, where I grew up. Of course, it didn’t help that Daniels, the store in question, always looked a bit of a mess to me when I was growing up.

Round the back of the building illustrates some of the problems with larger buildings from this period. There’s banks of windows, and below them the frames continue , slotted around panels. Well and good. However the materials these were built from don’t weather very well. Also, the colours that they were painted in, blues, greens and greys were pretty drab to start with. So the back of the building, which I see across Tescos car park every time I buy a paper on the way into work, is sad and depressing.

But I suppose it’s an underdog thing. The building, especially from the back, looks so forlorn, especially against the background of residential streets, and the fact it sits next to the Gothic bulk of Tabernacl Newydd, especially when compared with the cheery blandness of Tescos itself. In building terms, it’s a bit like a punch drunk old boxer, or John Cleese’s black knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail insisting it’s only a flesh wound. A building like this has no right to be doing anything other than hiding away in shame in this day and age, but the fact it’s still there at least deserves a minimum of respect from me.