A photo-led coffee-table compendium of 50 buildings and structures that have helped to create the Wales we know today. Written by architectural historian Greg Stevenson, with images by acclaimed photographer David Wilson, the book explores the idea of identity as expressed through a nation s bricks and mortar. There are even a couple of buildings outside of Wales, a couple that have been lost, and one that moves every year to a different location. AUTHOR: Greg Stevenson is an architectural historian who has written about and worked in building conservation for the past 18 years. Greg is best known as presenter on TV series Y Ty Cymreig , and he was series consultant for BBC Restoration. He is Trustee of the Carmarthenshire Building Preservation Trust and Honorary Research Fellow for the University of Wales. David Wilson was born and brought up in Haverfordwest and now lives in Llangwm with wife Anna and son Charlie. His love of photography began when he bought his first camera aged seventeen. Today, David s passion is to capture the many different faces of Wales. He is the author of two photographic collections, Pembrokeshire (2009) and Wales a Photographer's Journey (2012). Mark Baker is an architectural historian and author of several books on country houses, estates and families. Mark s first book was published in 1999 when he was aged just 13, making him one of Britain s youngest published authors. Working and studying at Cardiff University, Mark has recently completed a PhD researching the development of Welsh Country Houses. He has also contributed to several television programmes, including Y Plas for S4C.
Industry Reviews
If buildings help to create and define a nation, which buildings would you choose for Wales? In 50 Buildings that Built Wales, architectural historians Mark Baker and Greg Stevenson offer their choice. The authors have collaborated with photographer David Wilson to produce this generous, large-format study of some of the iconic - and some of the merely typical - buildings that reflect our nation.
There are some obvious choices - Caernarfon Castle, Tredegar House, Tintern Abbey, Portmeirion, Gregynog, The Senedd - but also many surprises, because this book is not so much about fine architecture as about buildings which have made a deep impact on the nation, some of which are far from architecturally significant.
So, Pont Trefechan - a rather undistinguished nineteenth-century bridge across the Rheidol at Aberystwyth - is included because of the famous sit-in by Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg in 1963, a human blockade of the north-south road which was a symbolic turning point in the fight to save the Welsh language.
On a different scale entirely is Port Talbot Steelworks, 'one of the longest structures in Europe', the authors tell us. By day, this vast sprawling works is a confusion of tubes and pipes and towers gushing steam (and who knows what else), a living monument to the brutalism of heavy industry. By night, however, the works is transformed into an extraordinary palace of orange and white lights, steam billowing and drifting eerily as you pass in a train. Both aspects are well captured in David Wilson's photographs.
Chapels, that have meant so much in Welsh religious and cultural life, are represented by two extremes - the stark simplicity of Soar-y-mynydd in rural Ceredigion, and the opulent elegance of Capel y Tabernacl in Morriston.
With the decline of religion, many chapels have gone, of course, and so too have other buildings. Most moving for me is the chapter on Capel Celyn, Tryweryn, the Welsh-speaking village that was drowned to provide water for Liverpool, against the protests of the Welsh nation. That event was a bitter confirmation that Wales is a conquered land, powerless to defend its own. The placid surface of the artificial lake at Tryweryn still hurts, but the forced destruction of the village galvanised the Welsh-language and national movement, so that although the ruins of the houses lie beneath that ugly sheet of water, Capel Celyn is rightly included here.
Wales has a bad history of tearing down iconic buildings, and this too must say something about us as a nation. At one point, the authors give a partial list: Brynmawr rubber factory; the Empire Pool, Cardiff; Bettws High School; the Knap Lido, Barry; Penarth's modernist Esplanade Car Park; the Chartist Mural, Newport; countless Deco Moderne cinemas built between the wars. And then there are those that were never built, like Zaha Hadid's brilliant design for the opera house in Cardiff - which was built in Guangzhou, China, instead, after Wales rejected it. We are still a nation without the kind of self-belief that would allow us to make cultural statements on the grand scale.
For me, though, it is places like Kate Roberts' family home at Cae'r Gors, Rhosgadfan; Soar-y-mynydd; the industrial terraces at Blaenau Ffestiniog and Rhondda - all represented here - which are at the heart of the nation, symbols of our will to survive and real presences in the land. The great houses of the wealthy and the castles of the English have their place, too, of course, and all are represented in this fascinating and eclectic book. -- John Barnie @ www.gwales.com
