It was designed in the Arts and Crafts style typical of the period’s movement, which took inspiration from vernacular buildings and achieved harmony by utilising a limited number of design cues and limited palette of materials. The roofs are of small natural slates from West Wales and Porthmadog. The chimneys are tall and establish a strong rhythm in the streets’ ridgeline of houses. The timber windows are multi-paned casements and sliding sash, originally painted Buckingham Green, now mostly white. The walls are of a mellow roughcast render, originally limewashed cream, now mostly painted white. Doors also have a common rustic theme, constructed in timber with small areas of glazing.

The house plans are simple and grouped either into multiple cottages, terraces or semi-detached. These were amongst the first small houses to be built with inside toilets and bathrooms, running water, gas for lighting and cooking, a boiler, a water storage tank and even a dustbin. Hedges, fences and intimate connecting footpaths were built around the houses. The neaby railway station was vital to its success, providing easy access to the centre of Cardiff and the Docks.

The village was run as a Co-operative and all houses were rented on a ‘cost-only’ basis with maintenance and repairs carried out in the Co-operative’s own workshop. This continued until the 1960s when the houses were sold, mainly to residents. To preserve its character, the Village became a Conservation Area in 1977 and most of the houses have been listed.

Though the houses were effectively early ‘council houses’, the village was built with no help from the Government. The Co-operative prospered through two world wars and economic depression, and is testament to good investment and a sense of optimism. The movement went on to have a big influence on New Towns and on early council housing in general.

The revivalist ruralism of the village is in stark contrast to the successful examples of later modernist and brutalist council estates of the mid-twentieth century, which are architecturally more innovative. However, the lovely gardens and parks create a friendly, neighbourly atmosphere and there seems a strong community feel. Though intended for working class families, in the later twentieth century it was often inhabited by middle class professionals and academics, including Iorwerth Peate who founded St Fagans Museum. Former first minister, Rhodri Morgan, also lived here. The village, now surrounded by pleasant but nondescript 1960s suburbia, has become one of the most sought-after places to live in Cardiff.

Until I was seven years old, there were probably three keepers out on Strumble Head due to an infamous incident that took place on another lighthouse off the Pembrokeshire Coast . . .

The Smalls Lighthouse is on a cluster of rocks twenty miles southwest of St Davids. The first structure was built as early as 1776 to designs by Henry Whiteside, a talented young musical instrument maker from Liverpool and a relative of mine. Whiteside designed an octagonal timber hut perched on nine oak legs. During the Winter of 1775-1776, he temporarily erected the structure at Solva harbour and thanks to this successful practice-run, the lighthouse was built quickly out on the Smalls by September that year. The following year, Whiteside and his blacksmith went to the Smalls again to repair and strengthen the lighthouse. This time they encountered severe storms and were stranded there for months. Whiteside sent out three messages-in-a-bottle. One turned up in Galway and another was picked up on a Pembrokeshire beach. The dignified but desperate note ended with: “We doubt not but that whoever takes up this will be so merciful as to cause it to be sent to Thomas Williams of Trelethin, St. Davids, Wales.”  The note must have made it to Treleddyn because the men were eventually rescued.

In 1801, the occupiers of the Smalls lighthouse were not quite so fortunate. The two-man team, Thomas Howell and Thomas Griffith, were apparently known to quarrel. Unfortunately, Griffith died in a freak accident. Howell feared that if he discarded the body into the sea, he might be suspected of murder. So as the body began to decompose, he built a makeshift coffin for the corpse and lashed it to the external lantern rail. Strong winds soon blew the coffin apart and the body’s arm fell within view of the hut’s window. The wind caught the arm in such a way that it seemed as though it was beckoning. Working on his own and with the decaying corpse of his former colleague hanging outside, Howell managed to keep the coal-fuelled lamp lit. When he was finally rescued from the lighthouse, it was clear that the ordeal had not been good for Howell’s mental health. Henry Whiteside recommended that lighthouse teams were changed to rosters of three men. This practice continued in all British lighthouses until their automation in the 1980s.

Whiteside ended up marrying Mary? Williams who ran the Ship Inn in Solva. His timber lighthouse survived, amazingly, for 80 years and his basic design was later adopted for hundreds of sea structures. The present Smalls Lighthouse – the tallest in Wales – was built under the supervision of Trinity House in 1861. This time it was built of granite and Solva harbour was again used as the base for the builders. The surplus granite left in Solva was used for building many chimneys in the area, including those on the original cottage at The Old Boathouse in Trefin. When this cottage was demolished in the late 1960s, my grandfather salvaged the Smalls granite from its chimneys and reused them when building chimneys at Ysgubor Fach nearby.

In the pre-GPS age of sea trading, lighthouses were of vital navigational importance and must have saved countless lives and valuable cargos. They’re also such cool structures! Life as a lighthouse keeper must have had a sense of purpose and exhilaration, but it would have required superhuman levels of mental and spiritual strength. In this age of celebrity endurance shows, their premise is lightweight compared to spending months of monotony and isolation on a remote lighthouse. For the election debates, maybe we should send Cameron, Milliband, Clegg, Leanne Wood, Nicola Sturgeon, Natalie Bennett and Farage out there and film the ensuing drama. I wonder who’d end up being lashed to the ledge?

Image 1: Strumble Head Lighthouse – mubi.com
Image 2, 3 & 4: The Smalls Lighthouse – Trinity House
Image 5: The Smalls Lighthouse (before being sand-blasted to remove the red and white paint) – RCAHMW

We visited the house on a mild October day on the last tour of the year. The sprawling gardens, looking spice-coloured and autumnal, seemed to merge without boundaries into Esher Commons. Then we approached the house . . . WHAT a thing of beauty, even better than I had imagined, even if that eastern elevation looks spookily similar to Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye near Paris. The layout and rooms are so well-organised and designed; the attention to detail is mind-boggling. The interior as a whole is quite Bond-like and you get the impression that entertaining and partying were of the highest priority. The office, en-suite bedrooms, barbeque/pool area and service areas are perfectly configured and at least forty years ahead of their time.

The tour guides were really engaging. They had got to know Gwynne quite well before he died in 2003 at the age of 90; there was obviously a lot of fondness there. They kept the group teased with all sorts of minutiae at the top of the circular staircase, then they eventually opened the leather-covered double doors into the main living room. Boom. We were all utterly floored.
It’s the most beautiful, impressive room I’ve seen.

Gwynne designed about fifty houses for wealthy clients. Many of those have been knocked down by developers because they sat in huge grounds in prime locations. About ten remain and they’re all listed. The Homewood must have cost a fortune to build. They knocked down the Edwardian Villa, so they couldn’t use the proceeds from that. At the end of the amazing living room, there’s four Georgian-era portraits of Gwynne’s wealthy Welsh ancestors who, in the Regency era, built a spa town on the west coast of Wales. It turns out that in order to fund The Homewood, Gwynne’s father sold Aberaeron.

Image 3: Avanti Architects, who oversaw the building’s conservation.
Image 4 & 5: National Trust / Stuart Cox

A pioneering steel-frame construction allowed wide expanses of openable glazing in crisp white, non-load-bearing walls. In this respect, the building has similarities with Alvar Aalto’s sanatorium in Paimio, Finland which was finished three years earlier. Sully Hospital was recently converted into flats and is now called Hayes Point. Despite a few dodgy additions and a Magnolia paint finish, it retains an impressive, elegant presence overlooking the Bristol Channel.

Llangorse Road is a four-bedroom mid-century-modern house in the leafy suburb of Cyncoed, north Cardiff. It was designed by the Powell Alport Partnership in collaboration with the first owner, a businessman who often travelled to America where he fell in love with its modernist architecture, especially that of Frank Lloyd Wright. Characteristic features include floor-to-ceiling glazing and a close relationship between house and garden. Built in 1966, the house incorporated innovative features for its time such as built-in stereo systems, a central vacuum system and electronically-operated curtains.

After an afternoon exploring, we called for tea and cake in Waterloo Gardens Teahouse, then home to see Mark ‘domestic god’ Williams who cooked us supper, then out to BrewDog on Westgate Street to sample the weird and wonderful craft beers.