Aberglasney in Black and White

 

     I love black and white photography.  They have such a different sensibility.  More poetic, I feel.  My favourite photographers - Fay Godwin, John Piper, James Ravillious, Bill Brandt, Cecil Beaton, and especially Edwin Smith - were masters of the monochrome.  So, while working on my last post I began to experiment with the photographs I took in the course of that day, turning them into Black and White images.  With the exception of the final image, the original of which was taken back in 2017, these are the results.

Coed Darcy II

The Coed Darcy development in south Wales stands as a testament to the transformative power of urban regeneration, with Neath Port Talbot County Borough Council leading on a project to convert a former BP oil refinery site into a thriving community.  With key stakeholders, The King's Foundation created a masterplan, Guidance and Town Code.  This once blighted landscape now boasts attractive housing, prosperous businesses, and a cutting-edge University campus.  The business district has already created 1,500 plus jobs, and the university has secured 183 contracts.

     I didn't realise until Thursday that I was so out of the loop on this subject.  I really should have been more aware when the story hit in Jan/Feb this year, after all there was a massive spike in the number of page views that my post on the Coed Darcy development was getting.  So, what caused this?
     At the beginning of the year, a local Swansea man, Jay Curtis, out filming with his drone, came across a group of abandoned houses he knew nothing about.  The subsequent video, posted on social media, went 'viral' sparking media interest.  Articles appeared on the BBC & Wales Online, and there were articles in the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail, and the Daily Mirror at least.  Quickly the story changed to talk about the whole redevelopment and it's very apparent failures.  Nor were these the first media reports of the problems at Coed Darcy; in November 2023 the Mirror published a lengthy article under the headline 'Newbuild Village Hell as 4,000 home development still has no school or shops'.

     As anyone who has watched Jay's atmospheric video can testify the houses are in a terrible state.  Not only that, there is something decidedly sinister about them.  Some of the garden walls, in particular, look like they have been witness to mass executions.  At the time the origin of this small cluster of houses was presented in the media as a bit of a mystery.  In fact, some of them (not the Telegraph) were really rather coy about the origins of it all.  

     However, before I get started, I need to say - for the record - that I know several people who were involved at the early stages of the development and now, as far as I aware, no longer are. I should also say that I am an alumnus of the Prince of Wales's Institute of Architecture (now The King's Foundation).

     It's probably best begin with a brief recap of the 20th century history of Coed Darcy.  From 1919 until its closure in 1998 the site was occupied by what was eventually called the BP Llandarcy oil refinery, what was, by the 1960s, the 3rd biggest refinery in the UK.  The following year, 1999, the Welsh Government called in the then Prince's Foundation to draw up a plan for the redevelopment of the site.  A Masterplan was drawn up by the Foundation in collaboration with Design LK and Alan Baxter Associates.

    In 2008 ten years after the closure of the refinery, and after a five year project by BP to clear the site of structures, the site was sold to the property developers St Modwen, and work commenced on a three year environmental remediation. In retrospect this seems an optimistic timetable.  It is more than likely that the developers found the site in a worse condition than they expected, such is the nature of such sites

     At some point in that process, that small hamlet of houses - some eight in all - which Jay Curtis came across one winter's day at the beginning of the year, was constructed (about the same time as construction began on the mass market housing at the further end of the site).  This 'Demonstration Village' was funded by BP.  And very good it was; the scheme even going as far as to furnish one of the houses in impeccable style.  Tom Gough from St Modwen announced the houses 'sat there ready to be occupied.'*  There was even talk of artists living there.  In July 2013 the Prince of Wales (as was) visited the scheme to give it his imprimatur.  It was a moment of quiet celebration, a milestone in the rehabilitation of the site had been reached. The event was filmed by the Prince's Foundation and posted on YouTube. On the video, Ben Bolgar, head of design at the Foundation, said:

     'The Prince of Wales is today visiting this part of Coed Darcy Development which we call the Demonstration Village.  And it was designed specifically with the idea of setting a standard and a vision and aspiration for the site as a whole.  So it uses ecological materials - clay block, lime renders and mortars, Welsh slate, Welsh stone - and is here to show really what people can do when they put their mind to it in terms of clearing up after activities of refining.  This really is for us a poster-child - saying when you're standing on a former tip of an oil refinery, probably the most polluted part of the site, and then you end up with something as beautiful as this, as clean as this, and you watch nature coming back - cormorants fishing; swans, ducks we've had this morning - then you really begin to believe that human beings are capable of living in harmony with nature.'

     So just what is going on at Coed Darcy now?

     To be honest, like so many other people, I don't quite know.  Let me, however, qualify that; it is apparent that the reality is a long way from the glowing statement from the King's Foundation with which I started this post.**  It doesn't say, for instance, that construction has ceased, has been stopped for years now, with only 294 houses have been built out of 4,000, and that the promised amenities - such as shops, doctor's surgery and schools are yet to appear.  No mention is made either of the developers successful attempts at changing the Town Code.

     Apparent also, that that 'poster-child', the 'Demonstration Village', a folie de grandeur, a Potemkin Village that was used for a few hours on a single July morning, was abandoned almost immediately afterwards and has been left to slowly rot over the past 13 years.  That is shameful, particularly when you consider it has been estimated to have cost up to £5m, but then, apparently, no effort was ever made at the time to connect it to the rest of the development or the world around it.  Regardless of what was said at the time, I doubt that St Modwen had any intention of letting anyone live there.  I also know from personal experience, that the company were very reluctant to allow potential visitors access.  And who could blame them, when less than a hundred feet to the east of the village, the remediation of the land was still continuing, and judging by a Google Earth image I found easily enough while researching this blog, it most likely continues today.

     The ongoing costs of remediation contributed to the financial difficulties of St Modwen.  The Coed Darcy site was, and remains, essentially a 'money-pit'.  Rendered therefore vulnerable to takeover, the company was acquired by the American Private Equity firm Blackstone in 2021.  St Modwen was then split into three subsidiaries: St Modwen Homes, St Modwen Logistics and Brighton STM, managed by another subsidiary of Blackstone, Revantage.  St Modwen Homes was then sold to the Scottish developer Miller Homes, which is in turn owned by Apollo, another American investment firm.  Wisely, at the time of purchasing St Modwen Homes, Miller refused to have anything to do with Coed Darcy.  Putting aside St Modwen Logistics, this leaves Brighton STM, and here things get even more labyrinthine (if things weren't labyrinthine enough at this point).  Brighton STM is a corporate shell company.  It does no active external business.  It is just a way of tidying up the legal liabilities and all the other leftover bits from Blackstone's acquisition of St Modwen and its subsequent sundering.  It does, however, have two direct consequences for the Coed Darcy development, and much more importantly for the residents. Firstly, there is the ongoing corporate administration and estate management functions of the site, and which are actually done by Revantage, and secondly Brighton STM has 'inherited' St Modwen's legal role as responsible developer.

     The combination of all these factors, and the continuing on-going remediation, has resulted in almost complete inertia, a standoff between the various 'stakeholders'.  Certainly nothing has changed since the Mirror article of November 2023.  Current residents have been left in stasis, and the built environment is beginning to fray at the edges.  Some of the residents have talked of the place as a 'war zone'.  Their disquiet is highly understandable.  People cannot make plans when the future is so uncertain.  'Stakeholders' - council, developers and the like - are almost silent and when they do speak, the emollient, dead-behind-the-eyes press statements do little to help.  Everything just seems to go round in circles.

     I honestly can see no way forward out of this mess at present.  It is unlikely that either Cardiff or Westminster will step in at this point with a Compulsory Purchase Order and thereby be saddled not only with the cost of compensation but the seemingly never ending environmental remediation.  Further, I don't see how any of the so-called 'stakeholders' come out this very well, be they the Welsh Government, Neath Port Talbot council, the King's Foundation or the developers.

* He went on to point out that this was reliant on the provision of services. 

** '35 years of Impact', published 2025.  There were meant to be a number of events to mark this occasion, but, I believe, they were all(?) shelved.  To be honest the quality of the architecture at Swansea Bay Campus is so poor, I hardly be inclined to chalk that one up as a win either.

The Royal Welsh Show 2026

    Back to Le Pays Des Galles Profond, and the Royal Welsh Show 2026.  This time, instead of taking the train, we drove over from the Infernal City, over the Brecon Beacons and down into the Usk Valley, past Brecon and down into the valley of the Wye to Builth Wells.

     The show site, lies, a great festal city of tents and caravans, over the Wye from the town.  For the farming community of the principality and beyond a place of pilgrimage - almost.  For the younger members of that community a passage rite.

     This was our second visit, and it was both busy and hot.  We must have spent about four hours there and yet I realise we barely skimmed the surface.  How could it be otherwise?  The show lasts for four days, and there are a good twelve hours of events each day.  Like all the other visitors we were merely spectators while the 'Great Work' of show, the judging of livestock etc continued around us.  Two worlds rubbing along amicably, but with some element of incomprehension.  Sadly for us, and a great many others, this is our one connection to the farming community.

     Lunch at Hafod a Hendre.  Where the exhibitors eat.

     But for me it was not always so.  I was raised

in a small market town in s Lincolnshire.  My grandfather was a local butcher (at one time, he had to slaughter the animals he bought to sell in his shop).  He had a flock of sheep and owned a few fields.  Chickens were kept.  The town then, in the Late 60/early 70s, had a weekly cattle market, and a busy twice weekly street market.  There were also a number of farm supply shops, places to buy tractors and other kit, a grain merchants and a straw & fodder merchants - the later had a Royal Warrant.  And then, over a couple of decades or so, perhaps less, it all went.

    The livestock market was the first to go - the victim of what?  The EEC CAP farming policy, which in East Anglia and the East Midlands, at least, encouraged massive over-production of cereals, or a desire to tidy things up and centralise that sort of messiness?  It resulted, eventually, to a whole area, being redeveloped.  A long length of North St was demolished - a smashing if domineering Victorian office block, a Georgian shop and a long building - Judges - with a Georgian Gothick stone front concealing a Medieval timber structure.  Listed Grade II in 1977, and left to rot for a decade by the developer.  Gone.  All of it gone.  And in their place a cheap hideous shopping centre that has never really had a full occupancy except for the expediency of charity shops.  All the worse considering that in London the 'Comyn Ching Triangle' was then just about complete.*

     Next to fall was was the twice weekly street market; for understandable reasons it was moved to a car park but within a month it had collapsed, the Saturday market often reduced to single stall.  And with it and the other changes the whole social life centred around the market collapsed too.  For people living in the surrounding villages life became smaller.

    I suppose one can understand some of the councils actions but the effect was deadening, a sort embourgeoisement of the public space.  It became 'safe', but I prefer the cabbage stalks, the straw, and the dung.

* I once tried to introduce one of our councillors - a friend of the family, too - to the New Urbanism, but it was like talking to a brick wall.

  

     

Effi o Blaenau

     An unexpected trip to the Odeon Cinema in Swansea yesterday evening to watch the Welsh language film 'Effi o Blaenau' directed by Marc Evans.  It's all a bit complicated but the script is an adaptation, by the producer Bronwen Cennard, of a one-woman play, 'Ipigenia in Splott' by Gary Owen.  It is based ultimately on Euripides' play 'Iphigeneia in Aulis', but how one gets from Aulis to Splott and then Blaenau Ffestiniog we couldn't work out.  An intellectual leap too far for us - even after having it explained to me via ai it takes some swallowing.*  In fact, I would go so far as to say it is incoherent.  Anyway, the bf liked it very much but I was circumspect in my praise.  I found it interesting.

     My reservations rested almost solely upon the rather cliched imagery - the shot of the main character laying face up in the bath, the ubiquity of the drone shot.  The inert camera. We've seen enough of them by now.  But then, I suspect, this film isn't about setting out a new direction in cinematography.

     The film opens with Effie and her friends preparing for a night out in Llandudno, getting shit-faced on vodka and perhaps pulling.  All three of them are essentially solipsistic hedonists, living from weekend to weekend.  Perhaps there is nothing else to do in Blaenau Ffestiniog - where apparently is is always winter and always wet, but Snowdonia is not Splott.  The urban landscape, the alienation and the grittiness may always be with us, but the rain is not. We can assume they are unemployed, but they can still find the cash for a Saturday night on the tiles.  Effi is certainly no example of the Jungian individuated person, she is self-regarding and callous.  Here is the Meaning Crisis.  The substance abuse is simultaneously both destructive, and a search for transcendence.  

     And then something happens and meaning presents itself to Effi.  In fact, it presents itself three times.  The first time in the form of a former soldier, Lee.  Lee has lost his right leg in either Afghanistan or Iraq.  At this point Effi ' has a sort of epiphany and we see her in a different light.  She is shown as kind, softly spoken and loving.  She gathers meaning to herself in his vulnerability. (I thought that perhaps Lee would be her salvation but realised soon enough that it was too early in the film for this to happen.)  Her second epiphany is during her pregnancy, with another vulnerable body to care for.  Finally, for a third time meaning is presented to her, and this time is not snatched away, in the person of her neighbour's young daughter.  It is in the last place she would look, being on her own doorstep, and the offspring of woman she despised.  Each time she chooses to take on responsibility and find meaning there.

     The acting was excellent; the star Leisa Williams very good at eliciting sympathy for an, at times, repugnant character, Effi, without ironing-out her flaws.  The supporting cast too, is very good; credit in particular to Carys Gwilym as Effi's grandmother, and Owen Alun as the hapless Kev.

     It is at times this compelling film is very raw, and some scenes were particularly affecting.  Effi is no mere sacrificial victim.  She makes choices and she has agency, but she is also feckless.  It is all very well for a middle class reviewer in the Guardian, to see this a 'savage indictment' of the system, but Effi's chaotic life is downwind of the extreme bodily autonomy that the Guardian seems keen to promote.  In the end her life gathers some meaning when she becomes friends with her neighbour.  It's that simple.  When we accept to love and care, to take responsibility, we limit our agency.  What this film presents us with, perhaps, no doubt, unwittingly, is a spiritual journey in which Effi, through the most painful catharsis, learns to place the needs of others above the needs of her own ego and thereby finds meaning.

    Whisper it, but this film is quietly conservative.  Could almost have been written by Jordan Peterson.

     I honestly don't think I'd want a return visit to the Odeon.  Before the film there was half an hour of adverts and trailers.  It wasn't so much the adverts we disliked, but the trailers which seemed designed to discourage attendance.  The worst was that for Christopher Nolan's adaptation of the Odyssey, which looked terrible.  On the strength of the trailer, one to miss, I think.

Effi o Blaenau

2026

Producer:               Branwen Cennard

Director:                 Marc Evans

Cinematographer: Eira Wyn Jones

* None of this mythological framework is at all obvious in the film.  Like many will, and have, I came to this film without preparation.  As Lola Salem has recently said in The Critic, "Art is not about diversity, or access, or urban regeneration. It is not about measures that are ontologically extrinsic to it. Art is first and foremost about art, and the artefact owes us nothing".

St Paul, Plasmarl & St Peter, Newton: Part 2

     

     A blustery day, but sunny.  A bus ride (finally!) across the city to that most salubrious of Swansea's suburbs, Newton.  To a place of private roads, hidden villas, occasional glimpses of the sea, and St Peter's church.  Another Late Victorian/Edwardian church by that prolific architect Edward Bruce Vaughan, but in far better condition than poor old St Paul's up the valley in Plasmarl.

    St Peter stands on a corner amongst pine trees, solid, well-massed and not a little comfortable.  Quarry faced snecked masonry of Bridgend Sandstone.  Some rich detailing (Bath Stone) all in the best Bodley and Garner mode.  Some of it even put me in mind of Melrose Abbey, that remarkable Late Gothic building in the Scottish Borders.  Incomplete s tower, massive and intriguing.  As at St Paul's Plasmarl the e end more interesting than the nave.

     The rich detailing continues inside, but on the whole it's a rather dull interior - short nave of three bays and longish chancel, oddly the walls are in the same snecked masonry as the exterior.  Sedilia, otherwise no fittings of real note. 

     In all a bit disappointing, really.  Perhaps Bruce Vaughan can be thought of as a competent though pedestrian architect with, however, flashes of brilliance.

St Paul, Plasmarl & St Peter, Newton: Part I

This post, both text and photos, was created just before the second lockdown.  The plan was write a single post on both the churches.  Plans have changed.  I hope to write a post on St Peter's soon.

     A study in contrast this, and two churches by that prolific Late Victorian Welsh architecture Edward Bruce Vaughan (1856-1919), who until moving to Wales I had not heard of. Bruce Vaughan was based in Cardiff and specialised in ecclesiastical work, designing some 45 churches in Glamorgan alone.  According 'The Buildings of Wales' he built eight churches in Swansea.  All, I suspect. of quarry faced masonry.
     Every time I head into town I pass this sad sight, St Paul, Plasmarl.  It stands at the southern end of the main street in Plasmarl, Neath Rd, hard by a busy roundabout. I rather love this church, which is all rather Bodley-esque with some interesting 'free-style' detailing.  The placing of the octagonal bell tower is masterly. Alas as you can see the whole thing is beginning to give way to ruin.  The people of Plasmarl deserve better.  Since I wrote those words three years ago now, the deterioration has continued.  The top stage of the tower has begun to tilt to the north and large cracks have opened up in the masonry.  All is Ichabod.