Iron Church

St Matthew, Abernant

                      




Corrugated iron first patented in 1829 soon became the material of choice for prefabricated buildings throughout Britain and the Empire. By the 1850's specialist companies produced catalogues advertising a wide range of buildings for use in farming, mining, railway and manufacturing  industries as well as residential cottages, village halls, boat houses, billiard rooms and churches and chapels.

Corrugated iron buildings provide us with a reminder of the  speed of the industrial revolution, with fluid labour markets willing to travel to find work, causing massive social change. As a result settlements near the new industrial centres needed buidlings that could be quickly and cheaply erected. Buildings like this church would have been delivered to the nearest railway station and erected using relatively unskilled labour.

This church, from 1888, was built around a timber frame and lined with timber tongue and groove boards for the walls and ceiling. It cost £254 to build. The only indicator from the outside that this is a religious building is the use of  arched lights in the upper part of the wooden windows on the side walls.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/making_history/making_history_20061205.shtml

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_tabernacle#Examples_in_Wales

Also Jones, A.V (2012) Churches of the Cynon Valley  Dinefwr Press

Original terraced house

Interior with fire place and solid stairs

Last year one of the last unmodernised south wales valley cottages was bought by Cadw. Situated in Cwmdare, the house has its original windows, slate roof and range. 


House front

Dating from 1854 the building has  a certain charm, you can clearly see the construction of local stone with large dressed corner stones and rubble infill. The well proportioned sash windows are topped by shallow arched brick lintels and the cills are made of slabs of stone. The front door is also very plain and honest in its construction. The roof is slate and the chimney stack survives.

Cadw has described what it is doing with the building below
Many people recognise the importance of listed buildings and conservation areas and understand that care must be taken to ensure that traditional materials are used in their repair and maintenance. However, many of buildings in the south Wales Valleys have suffered decades of alterations which mean the distinctiveness of our Valleys towns is at risk of being diluted or lost completely.

The Cadw building will also become a learning resource for those who work or live in traditional Valleys housing in Wales. The project aims to promote understanding of the importance of retaining the character and history of Valleys housing. It will also provide practical advice on technical issues such as thermal performance to demonstrate that keeping original features in good repair really does pay, environmentally and economically.

http://cadw.wales.gov.uk/about/news/6456503/?lang=en

Pontypridd Station

Egyptian revival

Described by Cadw as being built in the free Egyptian revival style of architecture, from 1907. Here the recently renovated station canopy with its cast iron supports provides a wonderful contrast to the patterned red brick and terracotta decoration of the building itself.

Terracotta and brick detailing
 

http://www.coflein.gov.uk/en/site/34863/details/PONTYPRIDD+RAILWAY+STATION,+TAFF+VALE+RAILWAY,+HIGH+STREET,+PONTYPRIDD/

Signs of the times

Old street sign

Looking around Aberdare its actually quite hard to find older styles of lettering. Apart from words actually carved into buildings or tomb stones, street signs are one of the few remnants of what would have been at one time ubiquitous.

These appear to be cast signs and are still quite common apart from, ironically,  the conservation area of the town where they must have been removed some 20 years ago. The typography here is of varied line width and characterised by serifs with brackets. The gaps betwen the letters are not entirely regular.

Pressed steel sign

 

This sign still has something of the shape of the older ones with its indented corners and raised border. The letters are however all sans serif without any variation in line width or spacing.

Modern sign
 

This modern sign, I'm not sure what its made of, is free standing but has an interesting typeface with very fine angled serifs and subtle variation in line thickness.

Bench decoration in Commercial Street
 

The most modern lettering in the town (in that they were only put up a week ago) belongs to these benches which are each decorated with 2 letters, together spelling out the phrase, ABERDARE QUEEN    THE VALLEYS. (The bench with the OF is missing at present) The letters are all upper case and decorated top and bottom with wavy lines. They have bracketted serifs and appear very similar to Times New Roman, which you can probably find a version of on your computer.

A bit like this    E

Architectural Terracotta

YMCA Building, Merthyr

South Wales has a number of terracotta buildings, including the derelict YMCA building in Merthyr. This was voted by the Victorian Society as being in the top 10 of threatened old buildings in the UK in 2011. Meanwhile the nearby Town Hall, another terracotta gem, is being lovingly restored to create a new centre for arts and culture.

Terracotta was widely used by the Victorians and Edwardians to decorate buildings, perhaps the most recognisable building in Wales being the Pierhead Building in Cardiff Bay. Terracotta is made from high quality ground clay and sand which is cast in moulds and then heated at very high temperatures. William Morris apparently recognised architectural terracotta as a craft process, hence the term 'hand made buildings'.

Information about architectural terracotta can be found at http://ihbc.org.uk/context_archive/52/UNDERSTANDING_dir/UNDERSTANDING_s.htm

More about this building in particular is at http://www.alangeorge.co.uk/ymcabuilding.htm


 

Windows

This house was highlighted in the Aberdare townscape survey as having extravagant render detailing and being an example of the late nineteenth century trend towards middle class homes with bay windows. http://cadw.wales.gov.uk/docs/cadw/publications/urban_character_aberdare_EN.pdf
Unfortunately over zealous repairs to the bay window roof led to the collapse of the bay and its replacement with a plastic one.

This is a perfect example of the gradual loss of the small details that help make buildings and towns distinctive. Each change is small and relatively insignificant but the small changes add up so that soon it becomes impossible to find original features like doors and windows. Interestingly the  bays and other detailing on this terrace are actually made from cast stone. They were probably bought from a catalogue as there are identical bays in nearby Abernant.



 

The Welsh Cottage

'The Welsh Cottage, Building Traditions of the Rural Poor 1750-1900' Eurwyn William 2010. Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales(NMW)

This book by Eurwyn William 
'..is about the homes of the rural poor in wales during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and in particular the materials and techniques used to build them.' (p8)

Nantwallter Cottage at St Fagan's Museum. A 'clom' house made with walls of earth, dated from the 1770s.

Much of the evidence used in the book is that of the buildings themselves, based on surveys undertaken in the 1970's. The introduction looks at other sources of evidence such as writings by contemporary commentators, other books and research, drawings, paintings and photographs.

Chapter 2 is concerned with the history of settlement patterns in Wales with an overview of where people lived, (mainly in the lowlands but higher up than now, in periods of climatic warmth), types of tenure, including inheritance traditions and the rise of estates, enclosures and squatters concluding with the relationship of the rural populations to that of the new industrial settlements.

Chapter 3 provides an introduction to vernacular architecture and the history of gentry and farm house designs. Then the term cottage is defined followed by a lengthy discussion of the 'ty unnos' or 'one night house'. This is followed by an account of the plan type and the gradual introduction in the C19th of larger buildings making use of the new readily available materials of brick, slate and sawn imported timber.

Chapter 4 is about walls and the types of materials used including stone, mortar, earth and turf, timber, bricks, doors and windows.

Chapter 5 is about roofs with an extensive introduction to thatch including the historical distribution of different thatch styles. This is followed by a look at underthatch techniques including heather, straw rope and gorse. Other materials such as stone and later quarried slates are discussed as are chimneys which were often made of wicker.

Chapter 6 is about interiors, namely the floors and fireplaces etc.

Chapter 7 looks at the builders themselves and the life styles of the cottage dwellers.

The final chapter starts by discussing why these  humble cottages have failed to attract listed status and why so few survive.  It challenges the assumption that because these buildings were made from inferior materials that they were badly made which is why they have all but disappeared. The author instead favours the argument that these buildings have suffered from the vagaries of fashion in that the cottagers wanted more space and better facilities such as water and sanitation, in the same way that present day farmers are abandoning older farmhouses to build new bungalows.

Then the discussion changes to look what has happened to the buildings

'What pleasanter sight is there than a bright green or heather-blue hillside dotted with little white cottages, sparkling in the sun? Alas, too many of them now have breeze-block extensions, flat-roofed garages and picture windows, making them appear no longer comfortable and natural but brash and in conflict with their environment.' p255   

And then to look at how the more primitive building techniques of the past can provide valuable lessons for the future.

'Today we reuse little, and dispose of much. This is in total contrast with the past....Few cottages required the use of fossil fuels to manufacture their components; hardly any required transport of materials over longg distances or by any means other than by human or animal labour....Nothing was utilised that might cause pollution; no toxic exterior paints, no plastics, no asbestos.' p257

'Sustainable living in rural ares today can only happen on a demonstrable scale, perhaps, when it again becomes fashionable to think that less is more, and that happiness is not bought by the possession of worldly goods.' p258

William recognises that these modern middle class concerns of low impact sustainable living are in effect being lived out by the present poorest of the worlds population who are still dependant on nature and live in ephemeral homes that are built and maintained through communal effort. However he maintains that climate change will force a return to more low impact and communal living, and says these approaches and traditions may return.