A REPOSITORY OF OUR COLLECTIVE MEMORY - Earls Court 1937-2014 R.I.P.

The Earls Court exhibition hall is to be demolished and replaced with a 70 acre ‘super village’, the villagers occupying ‘penthouses with floor-to-ceiling glass and roof terraces’ which the media reports as already being sold with prices beginning at £1.5m. God knows the poor huddled masses within the M25 desperately need housing and the promises of a public library, a new high street and a park are to be seen as welcome relief for them. As selfish and anti-social as it may then seem in this season of goodwill I nevertheless mourn the loss of yet another place which features so strongly in my personal memory. In this instance, given the scale of the building and the range events of events it has hosted, I would imagine that thousands will also regret its passing. For that reason alone I was surprised that the 1937 art deco building known, in recent years as Earls Court 1, was not listed. Clearly it was not recognised as a national monument but it should perhaps be remembered as having been a national institution.

It was, for example, the venue for the Royal Tournament an event which in its day may certainly be described as such an institution. As a child I recall that we watched it as a family year on year and admit that, for me, the only item of any real interest or excitement was the Field Gun competition. That, much like the varsity Boat Race, generated vocal and partisan support for the rival crews around the family hearth, despite the fact that no one knew or cared where Gosport might be. Those who weekly scratch away at the bottom of the barrel called televised light entertainment might well consider reviving the Field Gun Competition with teams comprising so-called celebrities and live ammunition.

The first time I can recall visiting Earls Court was for the International Cycle Show around about 1967 as the pubescent part of a small and unruly delegation from the Port Talbot Wheelers. I cannot recall what logic informed the day trip to London where we looked at state of the art equipment that we could not afford because we had spent the money on train tickets, refreshments and admission to the International Cycle Show. I then recall we walked for several hours trying to find Paddington Station, probably because we had no money left for Tube tickets, and caught the last train home.

Prior to that Earls Court had featured as the first real landmark you saw on a car journey to London, a looming grubby white monolith glimpsed from the A4 as you left Hammersmith and crossed the bridge to the West Cromwell Road.  It was something you looked out for, a nice shiny sixpence on offer for the first one who spotted it. Then, if travelling onward to Greenwich via the Chelsea Embankment and Vauxhall Bridge, we would pass the front of it and never failed to be impressed by the sheer scale of the façade. We might have compared it to an Odeon on Steroids but I’m not sure steroids had been invented then. It was that abiding memory of scale and solidity that perhaps led me to make the presumption of permanence- the erroneous assumption that it was as inviolable an object as Buckingham Palace.

But it was that oblique view from the A4 of Earls Court against a London sky which resonated later. When Pink Floyd released the Animals album with Battersea Power Station on the cover against such a sky it could just as well have been Earls Court, which had the same Pharaonic scale and the more direct association with the band. We probably saw them as often, if not more, at the Wembley Arena but the abiding memory is always one of Earls Court. Certainly that is the recollection of the early 70’s and the peak of their achievement with Dark Side of the Moon. It was of course where they then did The Wall which everyone thought was amazing at the time- but now realize was not really. Then later, the final Waterless shows in 1994 which dispensed with all his My Dad Died In The War For You material and served up the goods with Earls Court as a massive psychodisco. Then that was pretty much it until the one-off reunion in Hyde Park for the Bob Geldof Pension Fund in 2005.

So, the memories are there and are obviously coloured by the occasions and more than a dram of nostalgia. Leaving aside that sentiment and its indisputable place in popular culture in this country for 77 years one might still conclude that Earls Court deserved to be recognised as a piece of Britain’s heritage. My more objective memory is that it was, in truth,  a bit of a shithole with unpleasant staff and lousy, overpriced catering which, for the provincial visitor, distilled the principal features of London itself. English Heritage should have given it Grade II* as being an exemplary building of its time. 

The 'I was there' image. Their very last show (until of course the last, last one...)

SOCIALLY COMMITTED (not Socialist) - David Mackay and Cardiff Bay

“Architects have given up too easily their role in the architecture of cities, of the public space. It has been left to planning ... Most public space is addressed by engineers, trying to get a car somewhere as quickly as possible.” David Mackay 1913-2014

A tip of the hat and a fond farewell to David Mackay, who died last week. Mackay was a partner in the Barcelona architecture practice MBM (Martorell, Bohigas & Mackay) and had what proved to be as short and frustrating a connection with Cardiff as Zaha Hadid. Through his design of the athletes’ village and harbour for Barcelona’s 1992 Olympic Games, and elsewhere, he gained an enviable international reputation for repairing and shaping cities. He was commissioned by the Cardiff Bay Development Corporation to design the square and avenue that would physically and symbolically re-unite the city centre with its waterfront. His vision was never realised but the misappropriation, dilution and perversion of his master-plan took place over a period of time and did not attract the same degree of attention as the spectacular collapse of Zaha Hadid’s Cardiff Bay Opera House.

It is worth then considering David Mackay’s involvement with Barcelona which started in the 1960s and, as recorded in the Guardian obituary of 23 November “….he took a stand against the neglect and speculation that ravaged the city under the Franco dictatorship. It blossomed in the 1980s, when the Socialist party that ran the city council responded to pressure from below to create more public space and convert post-industrial wastelands to housing and social use.” [i] 

It may then be remarked that Mackay’s principles can be compared and contrasted with those who failed to implement the aspirational vision for what became Callaghan Square and Lloyd George Avenue in Cardiff.

Mackay moved to Barcelona in the 1950’s with his Catalan wife and in 1959 he started working with Josep Martorell and Oriol Bohigas, becoming a partner of MBM in 1962. The two older architects were committed to the re-introduction of rationalist, social architecture to Catalonia and opposed, on social and ethical grounds, the uncontrolled speculative building boom of the 1960s that destroyed much of Barcelona. Their emphasis was on the social role of architecture, its integration and relevance to the urban environment and public space. Theirs was not a mission to leave individualistic monuments to their architectural talents but a careful and considerate response to the social requirements of each commission. They operated in that space between town planning and architecture which we may call urban design. Their belief was that modern architecture could contribute creatively to the identity of a city, enhance its cultural landscape.

Mackay and his partners also sought to achieve mixed-use of activity that ensured that people could work, live and play in districts and bring life to its streets and squares through the whole day. In the event this was not achieved in the Olympic Village at Barcelona, where it was originally intended that affordable housing would be offered after the Games. It was perhaps a victim of its own success, market forces and lack of resolve on the part of the Socialist city government resulting in it becoming an up-market residential ghetto. With the exception of the marina area, few businesses occupy space at street level and away from the coastal frontage it can appear dead and dreary. This will of course sound very familiar in the context of Cardiff Bay. It must be stressed, however, that in Barcelona the original design concept was realised and it was the end use that was betrayed in the failure to properly implement stated social objectives. In Cardiff the kudos – or Cultural Capital- represented by MBM and the Barcelona development was acquired and is perceived by some to have been cynically used in the marketing and promotion of an urban redevelopment that did not have the resources for it to be fully implemented. A visionary project was promised which was originally intended to replace the railway embankment with a broad tree lined boulevard and an integrated tram system.

The importation of internationally recognised design talent to master plan this and other projects was central to a strategy intended to establish Cardiff's place among regional capitals and assure its recognition as a centre of excellence in the reclamation and revival of post-industrial waterfront cities. The stated objective at the time was for a 'ceremonial avenue' and references made to 'Cardiff's Champs Elysees'. In short, not a mere piece of road infrastructure but a PLACE, a civic space with a distinct character and identity. 

By association the rhetoric and marketing alluded to Barcelona and the virtues of a thoroughfare and public space which would be, in itself, an object of universal admiration. 

As to how realistic this was, in principle and practice, needs to be considered. Looking, for example, at the promise of ‘our very own Ramblas’ it is questionable whether this was a tenable proposition from the outset. The Ramblas has 1.6m people at one end and the Mediterranean at the other. That population is concentrated in an area 100km2, an urban population density of 16,000 km2. That may be compared to the density of Cardiff which, even now, is only 5,900km2, the city having fewer than 350,000 souls in an urban area 75.72 km2. Given the advantages of climate and the relative lack of private gardens it is perhaps unsurprising that the inhabitants of Barcelona are more inclined than those of Cardiff to take their recreation in public space. That said the frontage to Cardiff Bay will now, on a sunny day, evidence many strollers but, it may be said, simply not enough of them inclined to populate a 1km avenue.

It may also be added that it is the claims made upon it that might have been contested rather than the aspiration. Ambitious it certainly was but the promoters of the project should perhaps be commended for that. Precious little vision and ambition has been displayed in urban matters by those who constrained the budget then terminated the life of the Development Corporation before such works were completed. The political context in which Mackay was working in both Barcelona and Cardiff may be loosely described as ‘socialist’ and their civic leaders publicly committed to urban renewal. There, however, the resemblance may abruptly end. The internal priorities and external pressures on CBDC may be attributed to politics which were more Byzantine than Barcelonan. The Development Corporation itself may be considered the bastard offspring of an unholy coupling of One Nation Conservatives and oligarchic Labour Party leaders. In any consideration of the redevelopment of South Cardiff at the end of the 20^th century the Cardiff Bay Barrage will always be the White Elephant in the room. That project focussed opposition to the Development Corporation from politicians within and without Cardiff. It created divisions of those who claimed to be of a ‘socialist’ persuasion, some of whom formed curious alliances with those of other faiths. That said, the barrage perhaps merely served to focus the antipathy of Valleys Labour towards the perceived disproportionate investment in Cardiff, Old Labour towards Quango’s and New Labour towards Old Labour. Most of the foregoing were challenged by an emergent cadre of aspirant career Labour politicians who didn’t leave school before the age of 25 and who formed a loose alliance with The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. Such alliances then shifted further at the end of the Millennium and those lucky enough to have drawn a winning ticket in the Assembly Election Lottery had to translate their vocal opposition to CBDC and all its works into responsible governance. And failed.

In practical terms the barrage drained the administrative and financial resources of CBDC and diverted them away from the strategic (physically and symbolically) objectives of re-uniting the city centre with the waterfront. In the final assessment what was eventually produced bore little or no resemblance to the designs produced by David Mackay. The concise appraisal is offered by Geraint Talfan Davies;

“…the sad, misplaced suburbanism of Cardiff’s Lloyd George Avenue; the linked Callaghan Square that could have been a treasured public space but is, in fact, a rectangular, furnished roundabout. All of these have occasioned deep and obvious disappointment among citizens.” (Talfan Davies 2008 p289).

Coupled with that is the continued physical separation of the community to the west by the railway embankment and the failure to deliver the levels of social integration advocated by MBM in their work elsewhere. Talfan Davies goes on to comment that these places are the antithesis of urban design, a process which assumes the purpose and intent implicit in the original appointment of David Mackay. The objectives of reshaping the city for the better were compromised by many factors and culminated in the implementation of infrastructure works through a private finance initiative. Inevitably the procurement of public works by such means places priority on the lowest bid not the achievement of the superlative design standards that were central to the mission originally stated for CBDC by the Secretary of State. In the course of that process social responsibility is to some degree abrogated and, following the dissolution of the Development Corporation, the City Council permitted the construction of a series of ghettoes in South Cardiff. I was going to refer to that as a ‘free for all’ but it was, of course, not. It was an opportunity for those with the financial means to develop or acquire apartments in gated blocks.

I am not aware of David Mackay making any public condemnation of Cardiff and, if he did, it certainly did not attract to the city the unwelcome attention of the international design community as the Zaha Hadid affair continues to do. Privately he expressed some frustration with the procurement of public works in Britain and, in particular, practices such as private finance initiatives which would invariably mean that the designer would be alienated and lose control over the final quality of projects. That such disappointment was expressed quietly is another measure of the man. Others in his position might have complained more loudly about the responsibility without power of the designer and the betrayal of trust by those who commissioned them. Far better that his association with Cardiff be quietly forgotten and little connection made between his designs for Bute Avenue and Square  and the travesty that now sits in their place in the form of Lloyd George Avenue and Callaghan Square.  

If there is to be a verdict in this piece it is that the Cardiff Bay Development Corporation definitely appointed the right man, but possibly for the wrong reasons. By my reckoning the blame cannot be attributed solely to the Corporation but, as was the case with the Opera House fiasco,  the (dis)credit must be shared more widely. Put bluntly, it takes a lot of people a lot of time and effort to fuck things up as frequently and as badly as we do in Wales. To some extent it is institutionalised, many of the participants outlined above having subsequently been at the epicentre of the concentric circles of self-interest that we call ‘government’ in Wales. It is those, who were critical of CBDC, who may suggest that the Corporation only ever intended to rent from David Mackay his reputation. To simply draw upon and then disburse for their commercial ends the cultural capital represented by that man.  

Mackay’s personal commitment to social justice was attested by his actions in opposition to the Franco dictatorship, assisting activists to contact the foreign press and he was a founder of Amnesty International in Spain. Given the earlier comments about the political context of his abortive work in Cardiff it is perhaps a shame that he didn’t stick around here longer.

Talfan Davies, G. (2008). At Arm's Length. Bridgend, Wales, Seren.

              

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[i] http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/nov/23/david-mackay

CARDIFF - 'The City of Dreadful Knights'?

The Philosophy Café, Cardiff Tuesday 21 October 2014

The proposition will be put that the development of Cardiff has, historically, been shaped by those described as patrons and by actions and behaviours termed patronage. The terms ‘patron’ and ‘patronage’ appear frequently in writing on architecture and the built environment but are seldom clarified in such use. The characteristics of patronage will be defined as used in that context and the presentation will also explain how behaviour so described may merge with other common definitions of that term. These, and the relevant powers commanded and deployed by those termed patrons, will be illustrated by reference to the development of Cardiff which may be described as being ‘founded on patronage’.

Such powers can be initially defined as: “the possibility of imposing one’s will upon the behaviour of other persons” (Weber 1954). However, references to patronage frequently mention the ‘rich and powerful’ or ‘powerful and wealthy’ patron and the command of economic resources will be discussed as but one source of power together with the relevant instruments of power which may be deployed by those described as patrons of architecture and the built environment.

A further quotation which will be discussed is that;

“There is no absolute correlation between the powers that shape a space and the relationships of power that space shapes. There is no fixed form of power, no formula…….mean people can make generous places, and vice versa.”(Moore 2012)

Some consideration will then be given to the motivation and intent of those described as patrons and, in so doing, the positive connotations of patronage in urban development historically contrasted with other meanings of the term. Reference will be made to other derivatives of the Latin root pater which will include paternalism, patrimonialism and patronisation which can have more negative association in writing on the built environment. Such characteristics will, hopefully, be more than amply demonstrated by those who have shaped the historical development of the city of Cardiff.

Among the themes that will hopefully be explored by open discussion following the presentation will be whether the forms of patronage which have enabled architectural and urban development historically are possible in a democratic polity like contemporary Britain and;

·        How the aspirations of urban regeneration policy and design control are affected by commercial development practice and realpolitik with consequent impact on the quality of such development.

·        The influence of culture as an aspect of conditioned power and the persistence of personality and coercive power in the development process

·        Whether probity, expressed as public accountability, has inhibited innovation and contributed to the mediocrity of architecture and public spaces. 

A short presentation will be given at the Philosophy Café, The Gate, Keppoch Street, Roath Cardiff at 8pm on Tuesday 21 October 2014 followed by discussion of the themes until 10pm.

Refs.

Moore, R. (2012). Why We Build. London, Picador.

              

Weber, M. (1954). Max Weber on Law in Economy and Society. Cambridge,Mass., Harvard University Press.

               

CARDIFF COAL EXCHANGE

As a coincidental footnote to the previous blog (Nairn’s Cardiff) a new campaign to save the Cardiff Coal Exchange has been called for by the local MP, Stephen Doughty. In his commentary on Ian Nairn’s 1960’s essay on Cardiff Owen Hathersley noted of Butetown that “ The ‘Victorian commercial core of the utmost probity’ nearby is just left to (literally) rot, without the slightest attempt to connect it to the new centre.” At the heart of this is the Cardiff Coal Exchange the present condition of which is, by any measure, a disgrace. Mr Doughty is to be commended for calling for direct action from civic society. By that I mean those who have even a shred of self-respect as citizens of Cardiff – a city which was suggested to be ‘the best UK city to live in’ only last week[1]. (Which was of course duly translated into ‘one of the best in Europe’ by the reliably partisan local press[2]). 

The initiative may necessarily come from within for it is to those citizens of Cardiff that the value of the Cardiff Coal Exchange, expressed as Symbolic and Cultural Capital, belongs. 

Conservation of the Coal Exchange may not be seen as a priority elsewhere in Wales, and in the South Wales Valleys in particular. There the building may be regarded as a symbol of the exploitation of their communities to the advantage of the agents and middlemen of Cardiff who erected it solely for their personal economic gain. The Coal Exchange was not built by the pantomime villains of socialist folklore, the aristocratic or commercial elite of the day (the mining and shipping magnates), but by the emergent bourgeoisie. The autocratic power of the Second Marquess of Bute became a less decisive influence on the development of Cardiff after his death and during the period of the minority of his successor when the Bute estates were administered by Trustees (Davies 1981). Thereafter greater influence was evidenced by the growth of civic society and, particularly, those who prospered from the Bute investment in the infrastructure of Cardiff Docks – the so-called ‘wharf aristocracy’ or ‘Docksmen’. They themselves were, in their day, very distinct from the ‘Townsmen’ the latter being inclined to the conservative and the ‘Docksmen’, by their nature the speculators, chancers and grifters drawn to the potential fortunes to be made in the heyday of coal shipping (Daunton 1977).

As noted in the previous blog the siting of the Coal Exchange in Mountstuart Square was a consequence of, on the one hand, the failure of the original vision of the Second Marquess of Bute for a planned residential development and, on the other, the runaway success of coal exportation through his docks.  What had been a residential square in the Georgian manner became the centrepiece of that ‘Victorian commercial core of the utmost probity’ referred to by Ian Nairn. That was separated from the city by the remainder of Butetown which, before the original Loudon Square was completed, was falling somewhat short of ‘utmost probity’. “The Merthyr Guardian was describing the Bute Street area as ‘increasingly vile and abominable….keepers of public houses and brothels are gradually obtaining possession of the whole street…. Cardiff is gaining a world-wide reputation as one of the most immoral of seaports’. Nevertheless, even today, with much of Butetown demolished, enough remains of the original concept to provide a striking example of Victorian architecture and town-planning in what has been described as ‘perhaps the most tranquil and evocative commercial centre in Europe.” (Davies 1981 p200)

The availability of an open square was then a matter of circumstance but the building of the Coal Exchange was not promoted by the Third Marquess of Bute. It may be better seen as an opportunistic response of the Bute Estate to market demand as, from the terms of the lease, they were not doing the Docksmen any favours. The ground lease of the Coal Exchange was granted for 99 years in 1883 at a peppercorn for the first three years, £100 p.a. for the following two, £200 in the fifth, £700 for the following four years and thereafter £1,000 p.a. for the duration of the lease (Davies 1981 p196). The cost of construction was reputedly £60,000 so the return to the Bute Estate might be regarded a fully commercial rate for the ground. By the reckoning of Daunton (1977) this would be a significantly better percentage return than that enjoyed on the massive financial investment in constructing the docks and also involve much lower risk. The docks, however, created the demand whereby the Bute Estate could exploit their monopoly position on land in central Cardiff.

What may then be considered in passing are the economic consequences. By the mid 1880’s we can, for example, make some fine distinction between the Third Marquess of Bute and the various companies controlled by the Bute Estate. Whereas the second Marquess had been an autocrat who built and controlled a fledgling organisation his son inherited, via the trustees and the period of his minority, distinct commercial enterprises which had wider corporate responsibilities. These commercial organisations had to service the financial demands of the Third Marquess to fund his many interests -including architectural and other patronage- whilst maintaining the economic viability of the various commercial enterprises. In simple terms one can then sketch out a chain whereby costs incurred by the Third Marquess (gold stars on bedroom ceiling) are funded by increased harbour duties, mineral royalties and ground rents on Coal Exchanges. These in turn are then passed through the middlemen, shippers, colliery owners to the source of production. They in turn cut costs (thinner beams in coal seam ceiling) and, for every extra halfpenny a ton abstracted in Cardiff all those underground in the valleys had to shovel that much harder.

This is of course a simplified – or simplistic- outline of the cause and effect of the commercial self- interest of the ultimate beneficiaries of coal production, many of whom were based in Cardiff and, in particular, those intermediaries that made their money from brokerage. This emergent bourgeoisie had, in the main, little personal connection with Cardiff let alone its hinterland. Simply by looking at the population statistics in that period of exponential growth would establish that most of the residents would be, at best, first generation Cardiffians. In reality the majority of those involved in coal shipping had been attracted to the area solely in pursuit of personal gain. However unenlightened their self-interest it nevertheless produced lasting benefit for the city. The construction of the Coal Exchange was as important a contribution to the infrastructure of the (then) town as the cultural, educational and administrative buildings at Cathays Park and elsewhere. The Coal Exchange firmly established Cardiff’s dominance as the commercial and economic centre of South Wales and, thereby, its supremacy in the urban hierarchy. Although it was supplanted by Barry in the tonnage of coal exported Cardiff remained the centre of the coal trade. And by that time Cardiff had, of course, been designated a city. It may then be argued that, from the outset, the principal beneficiaries of such buildings have been the people of Cardiff.

Theoretically there should not then be the expectation that the salvation of the building be funded by those outside the city. There are those who will, on the foregoing grounds, view the Coal Exchange as simply a monument to Victorian venality and oppose any wider financial contribution to its restoration. Taking such line of reasoning to its (il)logical conclusion we might briefly consider the case of Cardiff Castle which has, over the course, been a symbol of Roman, Norman, Plantagenet and feudal subjugation of the indigenous population and was elaborately and expensively restored largely through their indirect exploitation during the 19^th century[3]. Lesser cases would be Duffryn House and gardens, Insole Court or any other edifices erected on the proceeds of coal mining and shipping. Blaenavon is a World Heritage site, Big Pit is maintained by our National Museum and there is a tollbooth in St Fagans. In fact many of Britain’s most cherished heritage attractions are the legacy of far more oppressive exploitation both here and, more particularly, overseas.

The converse argument is therefore that architecture and landscape is the repository of our collective memory and we simply recognise the past for what it is. Our common heritage. The ascendancy of Cardiff and the other major urban centres through the abstraction and exportation of coal is absolutely central to the story of modern Wales. The Coal Exchange may be seen to symbolise the epicentre of that trade and consequent development. The Victorian Society consider the building one of Wales’ most important landmarks and that society (unsuccessfully) campaigned to save the London Coal Exchange from deliberate demolition rather than neglect. The Cardiff Exchange probably has less importance in terms of architectural history than that.

Architecturally the work of Edwin Seward may be considered better represented elsewhere in the city. Recent works to the Cardiff Royal Infirmary display those buildings to greater advantage and the Old- Old -Old Central Library in the Hayes considered by some his finest building (Newman 2004 p211). (The conversion of the latter to the ill- fated Centre for Visual Arts may perhaps be noted as regards any suggestion as to where the future use of Coal Exchange may lie)  The ‘debased French Renaissance vocabulary’ of the exterior elevations of the Coal Exchange are less remarkable and the architectural value of the building is largely in its lobby and trading hall (Newman 2004). To some extent that argument has already been lost as successive planning consents have permitted significant alterations including the threat of extensive demolition and retention of the facades. It is probable that public access to the lobby and hall would have been very restricted had the Macob consent for conversion of the building to residential use proceeded. It remains, however, a listed building of some architectural importance and more social and historic significance.

However, after all the above is said one has to question whether any cultural heritage case or argument is really the best way forward. We can turn now to the Welsh Government who devote proportionately less resources to a) Cadw than are allocated to the equivalent bodies in other regions of the UK and b) Visit Wales whose marketing in part promotes that heritage. This may be underlined by the recent decision of the Welsh Government leadership that the Cabinet does not need a Culture Minister. In the first instance their attention may best be arrested by suggesting that the current predicament of the Coal Exchange is a direct result of the negligence of their officers. This may be outlined by moving to the more recent history of the Coal Exchange.

The Cardiff Bay Development Corporation  acquired the Coal Exchange in 1988. At that time it was in multiple occupation having been previously acquired by a company called Control Securities who had carried out alterations and ‘improvements’ in anticipation that the building would be the home of a Welsh Assembly following the devolution vote of 1979. The proposal for regional devolution at that time was defeated by a majority of 4:1 (20.3% for and 79.4% against) with only 12% of electorate voting in favour of establishing an assembly. Neil Kinnock was one of six south Wales Labour MPs who campaigned against devolution on centralist, essentially British-nationalist grounds. When the Coal Exchange was owned by CBDC it housed, among others, the offices of Mrs Glenys Kinnock MEP. There was, in fact, a multiplicity of tenants and both this and nearby buildings around Mountstuart Square enjoyed something of a false dawn, particularly during the period of CBDC’s operational lifetime. Animation and design companies, a theatre group in the former St Stephens church, artists studios and a host of other activities which were attracted initially by the relatively low cost space in that area and then by the presence of complementary activity. New bars and restaurants opened and there was a lively music scene with The Dowlais, The Exchange itself and other venues (the fabled Casablanca Club was an early casualty).

CBDC formulated various proposals for the restoration and adaptive re-use of the Coal Exchange. The estimated costs were somewhere north of £10m and commercial companies were invited to tender on the basis that they would undertake that work. In short, such capital expenditure was to be a condition of such sale. Macob were selected having bid something in the region of £800k. At that time the rental income for the hall and various offices and other occupiers in CBDC's time may have been in the region of £400k a year. Subsequently the building was vacated of tenants in anticipation of major development. Following the dissolution of CBDC it would appear that the property was sold by the Welsh Government in 2001 without the condition to spend the £10m + on immediate repairs and refurbishment. The figure reported in the property press at the time was £500k for the 200,000 sq ft building (£2.50 per square foot).

Macob, to their credit, allowed continued use of the hall as a music and function venue and many notable events happened there. I would make it absolutely clear that John Roberts of Macob is a decent and honest man who extended the use of the Coal Exchange Hall as a music venue at some considerable personal expense. However, Macob - then effectively under the control of another individual- subsequently revised the proposals for the building from those originally presented to CBDC to a residential development which would have seen the hall closed as a music venue and reduced to a form of atrium.  On securing consent for that development the building was re-mortgaged at the then market peak and, in the subsequent recession, represented negative equity. The residential development did not proceed. John Roberts resumed personal control of Macob, re-opened the hall for a time and started carrying out some essential repairs and refurbishment on the building. This has been a losing cause in the economic climate of recent years and, as is now the case, has resulted in the company that owns the building going into liquidation.

More recently there was action by Cardiff City Council who invoked legislation which may have led to a coercive acquisition of the building from Macob. That action might have been regarded as an enterprising and entrepreneurial attempt to restore the position that had been achieved by CBDC but proved to be abortive. Alternatively their action may be expressed as a cynical and opportunistic attempt to secure an asset which was bought and paid for by the taxpayer via CBDC and sold, either incompetently or corruptly, by officials of the Welsh Government in 2001. There is therefore a case for formal public investigation into the recent history of the Coal Exchange to determine whether incompetence or corruption of public officials placed it in the hands of Macob. The question that needs to be addressed concerns the terms of the sale to Macob by the Welsh Government. The fault and any blame in this sorry affair would appear to lie squarely with the latter.

If, as is rehearsed above, the Cardiff Coal Exchange is held to be Cardiff’s problem then, at a minimum, some claim may be made by the city on The Welsh Government for financial assistance by way of reparation for the negligence of their officers.

That then deals with the issue as to how the attention of the Welsh Government may be arrested as regards the future of the building. The blame game will not, however, save it. The future of it, and Mountstuart Square was probably at the feet of the Cardiff Bay Development Corporation in that brief renaissance. Rather than be distracted or impeded by the cultural and heritage issues outlined above the future of the Coal Exchange is probably not a Grand Projet but in the fields of entertainment, education and experiment. A community led project which would see the restoration of the building as an extended exercise in building restoration skills led in part by local universities and FE Colleges. Conservation and traditional building skills are desperately needed across Wales and the Coal Exchange could provide hands on experience to students for several years.

For the sake of clarity I will elaborate on this. In my view students of architecture, engineering or other constructions would benefit as much from seven weeks on the trowels as seven years on Autocad. As to the crafts I am not suggesting some Equal Opportunity Community Youth Training Work Experience venture. I would be more inclined to an elite cadre comprising the best four or five students in each of the ‘biblical skills’ selected from the FE Colleges of Cardiff and its neighbouring boroughs. These should be selected on merit and superior ability not proportional representation, allocation, sex, creed, colour or by virtue of being distantly related to the Board Member of a Welsh Institution. The objective would be for them to leave after a year of advanced applied education and be recognised as the leading practitioners of their craft in their generation. Training which is informed by the pursuit of excellence and leads directly to highly skilled jobs.

This will, in turn produce relatively low cost accommodation of some quality which can be occupied across a range of uses.  As Jane Jacobs observed over fifty years ago – ‘new ideas need old buildings’. Obviously this challenges the fixation of our politicians with shiny new buildings on roundabouts but the Welsh Government should have seen the error of that way. Was not the Techniums Fiasco a contributory factor in bringing about the ultimate demise of the Welsh Development Agency? As may be observed from the preceding blog more locally much of what has replaced older buildings is not very good.

The origins of the Coal Exchange and cultural/ heritage baggage of its distant past are then as little if we can posit a future where it is possessed for the common good. That can be guided by the intelligent and inventive thinking that has informed the effective regeneration and adaptive re –use of older buildings elsewhere. Among these are, for example, the Custard Factory, Birmingham and The Melting Pot, Edinburgh. The Coal Exchange offers the advantages of an outstanding venue in the hall and a wider variety of potential use around in the building. This could include low cost foyer style residential accommodation in one wing, studios in another. In its commercial heyday the building had restaurants, a gentleman’s club and a wine merchant in the lower floor. More recently Mountstuart Square has doubled up as a Dalek devastated London. Somewhere between the two is a future for the Coal Exchange.

If you have any thoughts on that Mr Doughty, who represents Cardiff South and Penarth, can be contacted at stephen.doughty.mp@parliament.uk

References

Daunton, M. J. (1977). Coal Metropolis Cardiff 1870-1914. Leicester, Leicester University press.

              

Davies, J. (1981). Cardiff and the Marquesses of Bute. Wales, University of Wales Press.

              

Newman, J. (2004). The Buildings of Wales: Glamorgan. London, Yale University Press.

              

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[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-29174074

[2] http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/cardiff-voted-one-best-cities-7503586

[3] A future blog will deal with the Pembrokes who preceded the Butes as lords of Cardiff castle.

Nairn’s Cardiff

An appreciation of Nairn’s Towns (2013 Notting Hill Editions)

The reprinting of Ian Nairn’s collection of pieces from The Listener magazine during the 1960’s presents the opportunity to appreciate how prescient his writing about places was. Those who have more recently revisited Outrage (Nairn 1955) may agree that so much of what he feared and predicted has come to pass. The essays collected in Nairn’s Towns are, however, even more specific to place and many of the themes and issues raised can be reconsidered in the case of those locations with which we are most familiar. In my case the Cardiff of the 1960’s described by Ian Nairn remained recognisable through the following decade and many of his observations still ring true some fifty years later . This note is offered as a supplement to his essay on that city, one which revisits and develops some of his observations and themes with the advantage of hindsight. There have been very significant physical changes in Cardiff but the underlying issues in Nairn’s writing have proved to be enduring.

For example, in the second paragraph of his essay he describes the aspect of the city presented on leaving Cardiff Central railway station as the embodiment of T.S Eliot’s ‘shabby equipment always deteriorating’. The ‘joke modern’ Empire Pool has of course since disappeared but been replaced by Even-More-Of-A-Joke-Post- Modern and even less digestible slices of ‘commercial hackwork’. As Owen Hathersley observes in his editorial footnote to Nairn’s piece, in Cardiff a lot of replacement equipment has degraded from flashy to trashy rather too quickly.

It is now planned that the prospect from the Central Station will be graced with a new regional headquarters for the British Broadcasting Corporation to be designed by the Foster Partnership. This then echoes another theme in Nairn’s discourse, that of the domination of those “London firms …dumping down their most slapdash agglomerations.” Much of his short essay is concerned with the lack of a distinctive architectural style in the city and the dominance of external influence. He comments that “Most of the local firms seem happy to follow the well-beaten trail of mediocrity”, the one notable exception at that time noted as the Alex Gordon Partnership. Even this was qualified, the designer of the (then modern) building singled out by Nairn for praise being an Englishman. This may be seen to have been be a persistent trend in the intervening period and buildings by Welsh architects of note are the exception to illustrate, if not prove, the rule suggested by Nairn in the 1960’s. Of their work a debate may be had on Nairn’s implication that such exceptions are notable in being rooted in the vernacular, as might whether the question as to why ‘the Welsh are no good at visual things’ posed in his third paragraph may still be relevant fifty years later. The real issue may, however, be about confidence in the commissioning of architecture.

An argument may be advanced that the lack of such confidence in Cardiff is embedded in the DNA of the place. In its period of most significant growth from the 1830’s it may be said to have been built by the Irish for a Scot and was, outside the largely mediaeval settlement boundary, a planted settlement and, in effect, a company town. New development took place mainly on the landed estates of the Marquesses of Bute and subsequently on those of Lords Tredegar to the east and Plymouth to the west. The development of aristocratic estates elsewhere in Britain informed the initial planned development of Butetown and the architectural style adopted was essentially late Georgian. 

Only fragments of such development have survived from the time of the Second Marquess of Bute and much of what remained had already been, or was being cleared by the time of Nairn’s essay. This was an aspirational form of urban extension by the Second Marquess of Bute and, had it succeeded, might have imposed a more enduring (but imported) architectural style on the city. The reasons for its failure are more fully detailed by others (Daunton 1977, Davies 1981, Davies 1982, Davies 2009) but the construction of the railways, essential to the success of the Bute Docks and growth of coal exportation, made Butetown an unattractive location for wealthier residential occupiers who relocated to new development north of the main line railway. Butetown and Newtown became and remained literally the ‘wrong side of the tracks’ and dominated by the ‘mean stucco terraces’ referred to by Nairn.

The direct route from Cardiff Castle to the Pierhead intended by the Second Marquess of Bute perhaps had some symbolic civic intent and in that respect it also failed. Bute Street became, as Nairn accurately describes it, the major thoroughfare of the “Tiger Bay of lurid legend…. A straight mile of shops and cafes facing the long dockyard wall: suicidal, but in an almost noble way….” His observation that everyone he spoke to seemed to say that the wild days of Tiger Bay were ‘just before their time’ has the ring of truth. Certainly, in my experience, anyone who even referred to the area as ‘Tiger Bay’ could be viewed with some suspicion. The Docks, as Butetown was more generally known, certainly remained a distinctly separate part of the city and, if not quite ‘lurid’ certainly offered more alternative forms of entertainment than could be found north of the railway. Although the heart had been torn from it and the shops and cafes of Bute Street replaced with what Nairn described as “a council estate of well- intentioned but implacable aridity” there remained sufficient pockets of misbehaviour to attract those in relentless pursuit of the elusive good time until the 1980’s ( see http://rhcroydon.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/and-now-its-deja-bayview-again.html )

In the 1980’s a new wave of even more comprehensive redevelopment, by then called ‘regeneration’, was undertaken and history repeated itself with another attempt to physically connect the city centre with the waterfront 150 years after Lord Bute’s initial development. The result is what, in his footnote to Nairn’s essay, Owen Hathersley dismisses as “… a ‘boulevard’ of shocking banality” slicing the dispiritingly cheap and tacky restaurants and miserable flats from the council estate of Bute Town. A fuller and no less damning appraisal of what is now called Lloyd George Avenue is offered by Professor John Punter who outlines the original design aspirations for that project (Punter 2006). The intentions of the promoters of this later development were, perhaps, even more expressly symbolic than those of the Second Marquess of Bute. Originally referred to as ‘The Mall’ and with clearly stated aspirations that it would provide a form of ceremonial route the promotion was accompanied by much rhetoric. Also, to echo the earlier theme of imported design raised by Nairn, the promoters sought to purchase the cultural capital represented by the international reputation of David Mackay of MBM and thereby their association with the Olympic Village at Barcelona. It was clearly intended to be something more than a wider than average residential thoroughfare but it failed to achieve that.  What now exists bears very little resemblance to the design purchased from David Mackay and the reasons for this are more complex than may be outlined here. What can be said simply is that the original design was not executed as intended and  the reason for the failure of Lloyd George Avenue does not lay in the observation made in 1951 by Sir Hugh Casson that the British do not like rhetoric in their buildings and that there are surprisingly few ceremonial avenues in our cities (Brunius and Harvey 1952). Cardiff is an exception in that respect. The intended dimension of Lloyd George Avenue were those of King Edward VII Avenue in Cardiff’s civic centre at Cathays Park which Nairn describes as “..the one piece of planning for which Cardiff is famous – and by which local worthies convince themselves that the face of the city is perfect….”. He is largely dismissive of all but the City Hall and states that “..the other buildings form a stone zoo, one weary neo-Classical hulk after another, lumped down on a regular grid. No shops, wide pavements, parked cars, everything at one removed from life.”

In many respects Nairn is correct in that Cathays Park is something of an aberration, a capacious compound dominated by imported Edwardian architectural styles. That is, however, what makes it unique as were the circumstances which brought it into being and conserved its purely civic function. The construction of a civic centre in that form was made possible by its retention in the single ownership of the Bute family and its sale to the city in 1898. At the insistence of the Third Marquess of Bute the form of permitted development was widely spaced buildings and avenues and the use of the park was restricted to civic, educational and cultural functions, any commercial activity being expressly prohibited. This has had significant consequences for the city to the present day which are outside the scope of these notes. Here it is only noted that the availability of nearly 60 acres in the heart of the town of over 150,000 people at the end of the 19^th century presented a unique opportunity at a time when the exportation of coal through the port of Cardiff was reaching the peak of its growth and prosperity. The procurement of Cathays Park by the Corporation marked the ascendancy of civic society although, as already noted, the influence and patronage of the Bute estate remained a persistent factor not least in the establishment of those institutions which consolidated Cardiff’s position as the dominant urban centre in Wales.

The antithesis of Nairn’s essay is that written by Dewi Prys Thomas in praise of the architect of the main University College Building (now Cardiff University) of 1909 (Thomas 1983). The latter evokes his personal memories of seeing Cathays Park for the first time in 1934 when those original Edwardian buildings stood in relative isolation in what he describes as being comparatively open parkland.

“A vast urban space stretched before me towards distant domed buildings. They were white. Unreal to my northern eyes, they shimmered in the glow of late summer. No Welsh Office impeded a prospect which, I felt sure, could not be bettered by the Tuilleries Gardens. And the broad avenue flanked by venerable elms, at its far end a magnificent white campanile, must shame even the Champs Elysees.”

Much infill had taken place by the time of Nairn’s visit and has taken place since. Furthermore his remarks in 1967 on the increased number of cars parked in the area since 1964 are apposite in that the avenues and the spaces between buildings are now largely filled with parked cars during the day. It remains, however, possible to stand in Alexandra Gardens at the centre of the park (where the unbroken ranks of vehicles are screened by hedges) and imagine that sense of space and of large, white buildings set amongst trees appreciated by Dewi Prys Thomas. Thomas is very much more appreciative of the individual buildings and a point which may be made in passing here is that he was a gifted architectural teacher and practitioner who perhaps displayed the talents that Nairn sought in a regional architect. His design of the headquarters of Gwynedd County Council at Caernarfon attests his skill and, moreover, both the humour and humanity that Nairn attributes to the Welsh. On the matter of urbanism it is also interesting that Thomas helped Alwyn Lloyd and Herbert Jackson in the development of the South Wales Outline Plan of 1949 (Lloyd and Jackson 1949). This also takes a very different view of Cathays Park to that expressed by Nairn and makes particular reference to the expanses of parkland in Central Cardiff, again a direct legacy of aristocratic landownership through preceding centuries. This is specifically referred to as ‘beneficial’ through “.. the incidence of what we should now describe as ‘zoning’ in the structure of its plan……Consequently the centre of Cardiff and the chief streets disposed around the castle escaped the mixture of industry with business and residential streets that so often mars the centres of other cities.”

The negative effect of such ‘zoning’ has perhaps been touched upon earlier by reference to the consignment of the area south of the railway to low quality housing and industry and this is dealt with at some length by Daunton (1977). By Nairn’s account Cathays Park “sealed off the city from its northern suburbs” and, whilst there is a distinct physical separation it is questionable whether this is detrimental to the northern part of the city. The city centre has, with the constraints imposed by the river and railways, remained distinct and, even within that perimeter, has experienced significant decline, change, redevelopment and resurgence. In that respect Cathays Park cannot be said to have had an adverse impact on the commercial health or vitality of the retail and business core of the city. A factor which Nairn observed in 1967 which has had more noticeable impact is traffic which has been effectively removed from the retail core but, because of the restrictions imposed by the river and parkland, is now channelled between the Castle/ Cathays Park and the retail core or supplements the barrier of the main line railway between the city centre and Butetown by its diversion to the south.

A few more points may be made on issues relating to Cathays Park. In his footnote to Nairn’s essay Owen Hathersley is more forgiving of the individual buildings but encapsulates in his choice of words the essential character of the place. By referring to the “..  single –use, monolithic authoritarianism..” of the ensemble Hathersley, perhaps unintentionally, underlines that it has become the economic  location of choice for filmmakers wishing to recreate the Berlin of the Third Reich.  Notwithstanding the prohibition on commercial use of the park, its accessible and available collection of fine Speeriod property seem to find a ready market for such use. We are thus treated to the darkly amusing paradox of the Temple of Peace doubling as the Pentagon or Reich Chancellery.  In this respect alone it might, by association, be seen to represent “…an utterly alien model for urban improvement” as Nairn suggests. 

That is, of course, guilt by fictional association and it would be interesting to ponder on what Nairn would have made of a building which is the real deal, the former Welsh Office, now Welsh Government building built in the 1970’s. Designed by the one firm singled out by Nairn for praise, the Alex Gordon Partnership (see above) it could be said that its architectural influences are truly international. A forbidding example of Cold War architecture squatting above an underground command centre it is a defensible structure which shares many design features with Kensington Barracks. The Architects Journal called it ‘a symbol of closed inaccessible government’, conveying an impression of ‘bureaucracy under siege’ (Newman 2004). (Some may see this as the embodiment of form following function.)

That building has, since Nairn’s visits, been supplemented by another in Cardiff Bay which is referred to by Owen Hathersley in his footnote.  It must be noted that the debating chamber of the Welsh Assembly – The Senedd- also echoes that dominant theme of Nairn’s essay which is the provincial lack of confidence in the commissioning of architecture and the persistent practice of importing an ‘established brand’. In this respect the selection of the (Lord) Rogers Partnership looked, to some, suspiciously like a foregone conclusion. (One very distinguished academic presciently remarking some time before the competition that the winner would inevitably be one of ‘the Three Tenors of architecture’). It also calls to question the earlier quotation from Sir Hugh Casson that “the British do not like rhetoric in their buildings” as it swept in on waves of it. Several architectural writers question the validity of claims that architecture can accurately represent the forms of government of those who inhabit it (Sudjic and Jones 2001, Vale 2008, Meades 2012). In this case it is debateable that the Senedd building represents an ‘open and democratic’ form of regional government for, as Owen Hathersley notes, to enter it one must negotiate ‘airport style security’. A more cynical observer might look below the superficial superstructure and note that the occupants administer second-hand-me-down power crouched underground behind walls encircled by tank traps.

We return then to the Bute influence on the city and ‘the glorious absurdity’ of William Burges’ Victorian fantasias of Cardiff Castle and Castell Coch. Again we can say that this has little to do with Wales and the Welsh. These are, like Cathays Park, a complete aberration and of a very different architectural stripe. They are, as Nairn suggests, the work of a joker but it is questionable as to whether their location in Cardiff was in any way influential in the design. The Third Marquess of Bute was reputedly one of the richest men in the world at the time and could afford extremely elaborate follies pretty much anywhere. It may be the case, as Jonathan Meades mischievously suggests that “Between them Bute and Burgess suffered religious mania, opium addiction and tertiary syphilis- the trinity of afflictions that made high Victorian architecture glorious. It was religious mania that determined that the styles that were acceptable. But it was in laudanum and venereally founded madness that determined the manner of their interpretation” (Meades 2012 p195).

This may be more plausible than any association with the High Victorian Gothic ideals of Ruskin and Pugin and adherence to the architectural principles they espoused. The third Marquess of Bute rented Chiswick House, the very epitome of the Palladian style, as a London residence and, later, St Johns Lodge in John Nash’s Regents Park. Both represent forms of architecture directly opposite those idealised by the promoters of the Gothic Revival.

Nairn makes passing reference to the “implacable Victorian gables” of Cathedral Road but otherwise makes none to the suburbs north of the city centre which evidence the influence of Bute and Burges on the appearance of the city. Where his father, the Second Marquess, had failed to impose a lasting order on planned settlement, the Third Marquess had a far more enduring impact on its character. Nairn states that the development along the eastern side of Cathays Park did not redress the balance of the architecture and there is indeed something of a disjoint. However the architecture of Park Place and Cathedral Road largely pre-dated the construction of Cathays Park and should be considered in the context of the Castle. It is necessary to see those buildings flanking what were then the castle grounds, now Cathays Park and Sophia Gardens. From the southern end of both Park Place and Cathedral Road one can still discern a hierarchy of later Victorian architecture, the grander buildings taking their cue from Burges’ Park House. 

As with the later Georgian form favoured in the time of the Second Marquess this may again be seen to be an alien or imported style. The larger and earliest of these buildings have a vaguely ‘Scottish’ character but this moves to something which has been called ‘Cardiff Gothic’ and the dominant features are those gables, bay windows, trefoil arches and other devices which one may associate with that (Edwards 2005 A, Edwards 2005 B). This evolves further and, through the imposition of a form of design coding by the Bute (and other major aristocratic estates to east and west) a uniformity of style and materials. These are, particularly on the Bute estate lands, imposed on a form of estate development which itself follows the hierarchy of earlier Georgian estate development based upon squares, gardens, avenues and streets. The larger houses incorporate all the features and the smaller less.

This then reached its apex in the prosperous Edwardian suburbs when Cardiff was at its peak of commercial prosperity relatively (Long 1993). There is still a remarkable degree of architectural cohesion in areas such as Roath Park and Penylan with fine variations in the detail between groups of houses but overall feeling of unity in materials and general style. As to whether this is a good thing is largely subjective. What may be noted here is that the character of Victorian and Edwardian Cardiff was dictated by the estate development policy of those landed estates, principally those of the Butes. Unlike other industrial cities there was little opportunity for individual architectural expression of the late Victorian and Edwardian nouveau riche. We then refer back, in conclusion, to Nairn’s observations on regional architectural identity with the suggestion that architectural patronage was constrained from the outset in an area which has been fruitful for innovation and development of individual style- the Commissioned House. 

Overall this may be offset by the amenity level afforded through the extensive parkland and smaller public spaces created through such estate development policy. As regards the beneficial aspects of such development the self-interest of the aristocratic land owners need not automatically be prefixed with the word ‘enlightened’. As Daunton (1977) explains there was an underlying commercial rationale in the creation of such amenity and Cardiff is exceptional largely by having one dominant landowner who inspired its development from the 1830’s and a few others who followed suit in its Victorian and Edwardian suburban development. Nairn very accurately reads the eventual impact and outcome of that regime in his visits to the city in the 1960’s and, as hopefully outlined, many of his observations remain relevant to this day. It is in this respect that greater familiarity with the subject matter of his writing on the built environment provides even greater appreciation of its quality and his perspicacity.

References

Brunius, J. B. and M. Harvey (1952). Brief City. London.

              

Daunton, M. J. (1977). Coal Metropolis Cardiff 1870-1914. Leicester, Leicester University press.

              

Davies, J. (1981). Cardiff and the Marquesses of Bute. Wales, University of Wales Press.

              

Davies, J. (1982). Aristocratic town-makers and the coal metropolis : the marquesses of Bute and the growth of Cardiff 1776-1947. Patricians, Power and Politics in 19thC Towns D. Carradine. Leicester, Leicester University Press: 18-67.

              

Davies, J. (2009). The Making of Wales, The History Press.

              

Edwards, J. (2005 A). Burges- Influence over the Victorian terraced house. Cardiff, Cardiff City Council.

              

Edwards, J. (2005 B). External Treatment to Vistorian housing. Cardiff, Cardiff City Council.

              

Lloyd, T. A. and H. Jackson (1949). South Wales Outline Plan. M. o. T. a. C. Planning. London, HMSO.

              

Long, H. C. (1993). The Edwardian house : the middle-class home in Britain 1880-1914

Manchester, Manchester University Press.

              

Meades, J. (2012). Museum Without Walls. London, Unbound.

              

Nairn, I. (1955). Outrage. London, The Architectural Press.

              

Newman, J. (2004). The Buildings of Wales: Glamorgan. London, Yale University Press.

              

Punter, J. (2006). Cardiff Bay: An example of design led regeneration. Capital Cardiff 1975-2020. A. Hooper and J. Punter. Wales, University of Wales Press.

              

Sudjic, D. and H. Jones (2001). Architecture and Democracy. London, Laurence King.

              

Thomas, D.-P. (1983). A Quiet Dignity... William Caroe and the visual presence. Fountains of Praise - University College, cardiff 1883-1983. M. Jones and M. Quinn. Cardiff, University College cardiff Press.

              

Vale, L. (2008). Architecture,Power and National Identity. London, Routledge.