Resolven is a small village nestled in the Vale of Neath in Neath Port Talbot County borough. Supported by agriculture and later the Melin-y-Crwt Iron and Furnace Works which operated for most of the 18th century, the village swelled as a result of the opening of the Neath Canal in 1795 and Vale of Neath railway in 1851. The connection that these infrastructural projects provided helped initiate and support the growth of coal mining in the area with the opening of the Resolven Colliery in 1840.
The closure of the local mines following the 1984-85 miners’ strikes began a decline in the village economy, further exacerbated by the period of austerity that followed the recession in the late 2000’s. The combined effect of these has resulted in high rates of unemployment and a lack of public money to support key community initiatives, subsequently leading to increases in anti-social behavior, decreasing levels of education and poor health and wellbeing. Closures of shops and cuts in public transport services have further worked to weaken the community’s access to facilities and services.
Through all this, the close-knit residents of Resolven remain loyal and determined to the betterment of their community and supporting each other, proud of their identity and their heritage. The legacy of the village’s mining heritage is present in the names of the streets as well as in the many stories of those who still live there.
Built in the 1920’s from money contributed from the weekly wage packets of Resolven miners, the Resolven Miners Welfare has always been synonymous with community support and outreach. Initially containing a library, reading room and games room on the ground floor and a multipurpose hall for assembly and dance on the first floor, it was conceived as a place not just for entertainment but also for education. It has hosted a variety of community groups throughout the last century, providing a place to meet and interact in both structured and informal ways.
The building has been reconfigured and refurbished during its lifetime including the conversion of the theatre to a cinema in the late 1940’s, the inclusion of a bar on the ground floor in the 1960’s (Now a social club) and a number of cosmetic changes (the original red-brick façade was rendered in a significant renovation in 1987). The closure of the mines severed a vital funding stream for the centre. Unable to finance vital works to update compliance with safety and accessibility legislation, the cinema was forced to close in the early 2000’s and the building has been falling into disrepair. It currently relies on meeting crowdfunding targets to raise money for repairs, but the client hopes that following the implementation of a successful scheme it will be able to sustain itself.
To support the upkeep and the continued running of this valuable asset, so that it continues to provide services and facilities for the community, a limited company was set up in 2010; the Resolven Miners Welfare Ltd. Formed from committed members of the community as directors, their intention is to ensure the viability of the building by sourcing and attributing funding with the long-term goal of a facility that is financially self-sufficient.
Since their inception as a charity Trust, the Resolven Miners Welfare Scheme as worked ‘for the benefit of Resolven and surrounds by providing opportunities for personal development of local residents, promotion of education, health, wellbeing, culture and heritage with a view to seeking a brighter and healthier future for all.’1 Through the use of the building and social inclusion projects the Trust aims to strengthen the community and provide spaces for it to meet, learn and be entertained.
The proposal seeks to create an example of rural revitalisation within the context of a small market village of Resolven. The proposal will return the Miners Welfare Building into the hub of the Neath Port-talbot Valley by forging links with the surrounding villages through classes and social activities, which will strengthen bonds between the villages.
The central location of Resolven between so many sites of natural beauty presents opportunities to turn Resolven into the nature hub of the Neath Port-talbot Valley. This will inject Resolven with a much-needed boost in tourism by attracting people from far and wide to experience the natural wonders that Resolven has to offer.
The area around Resolven boomed during the industrial revolution, prospering as a leader in energy, due to the coal mines. When the coal mines closed, the towns in the Vale of Neath fell into decline and the Resolven railway that connected them all closed and became overgrown. A larger scale move to include the revival of this landmark, as petitioned by community members is also included as part of the proposal. It will provide their stories and history of community along it and connect the surrounding towns with a hiking and cycle path. The path will connect directly to the Resolven building therefore leading people in the area through the town to their own local safe haven.
Resolven in famous for its carnival that aims to bring communities spirit back to the village. The festival is entertaining, joyful, and performative, just like the Miners Welfare once was. These qualities are proposed to be brought back to the building by returning performance arts facilities, introduce an educational facility for people to learn about craftsmanship, providing comfortable spaces for social interactions and introduce a community garden and kitchen.
In the proposal, generating revenue depends on volunteers and community integration with the spaces and repair café, markets and the library of things. The community facilities program, which supports volunteers would encourage community members to take part. We will be adhering to a phased construction starting with the railway interventions to create opportunities for fundraising activities.
The proposed facilities and spaces have been driven by the three scales of intervention previously mentioned. The wider scale being that community teaching and workshop skills. The median skills focusing on the heritage information and the natural preservation and the intimate scale looking to increase local interaction with their favourite bars and cafes band rehearsal spaces and community performance spaces. Overall, the aim is to open the building up to increase adaptability and efficiency.
The phased approach to the construction that has been taken allows for a continuous stream of income to the building while construction is taking place by keeping parts of the building that are not under construction open to the public. During the first phase, the restaurant on the ground floor will remain open and the majority of works will take place on the upper floors. The main goal of this phase is to renovate the theatre into a multipurpose auditorium, and to renovate the entrance lobby into a services core to provide suitable vertical circulation for visitors. The renovated auditorium has been provided with a rhythm of windows along both the northern and southern facad which ties into the existing rhythm of the building. These windows will be supplied with blackout shutters to allow flexible lighting choices for a range of uses. Phase 2 will see the renovation of the ground floor by converting the bar space into flexible studio space and by reorganising the restaurant to allow for greater connection to the community garden space. Two single storey extensions, which connect to the building on the south elevation, create an internal courtyard which the restaurant can spill into on sunny days. The two extensions help to lower the noise levels from the busy street on the eastern boundary and the proposed foliage on southern boundary helps to prevent overlooking of the residential neighbours while still providing long views to the mountains beyond. The two extensions house the new entrance lobby and the community kitchen. The entrance lobby creates a friendlier public face to the building that encourages visitors to explore the building. The community kitchen will have a router so that this space can be used as the main kitchen to the restaurant and as a teaching space for the community. The third phase helps to integrate the previous two phases into a coherent whole by breaking down barriers between the two to create an intuitive space.
The bricks removed from the existing building when the new perforations are made, are the be reused in the construction of the extensions. The red brick is then to be covered, inside and out, with render that has been dyed with coal. This is to represent the coal dust that settled over the valley when the mines were active. These walls are then filled with insulation to prevent as much heat loss as possible. Intensive green roofs are to be implemented on the extensions which will be designed so that the vegetation starts to pour over the sides of the building. This reflects what can be seen at the sites of the mines, that nature is starting to recover and take back its hold over the mines. An investigation was undertaken to create an environment within the entrance lobby that mimics the dancing light that would have been created from the head torches of the miners.
Through an investigation of the floor/ground materials to be used within the proposal a relationship between the visitor and the ground has been introduced which tells the storey of the villages’ connection with the ground and of the experiences and sounds the miners would have been subject to during their daily visit to commute to the mines.
