LOCAL historian Alan Thorne recently gave a most interesting talk at the Penarth Conservative Club on the subject of Penarth Architects.

He maintained the town had some very fine examples of architectural styles ranging from those of the Jacobean and Gothic period to modernistic designs from contemporary architects like the late Dale Owen.

Well-known Penarth buildings he talked about included Albert Road School built by Henry Cornelius Harris in 1875 -76; Penarth Library built by Harry Snell in 1904; Albert Road Methodist Church built by E.M.W. Corbett in 1901 and Beachcliff built by Frederick Speed in 1904.

Those architects were all resident in Penarth and worked extensively in Cardiff to the Windsor Plan which was designed to cope with the rapid influx of workers for the expanding coal and railway industries. In 1850, the architect Robert Forrest stated that on a visit to Penarth he noted ‘a few tumbledown farms and cottages, no shops and no roads’. Within the space of a decade Forrest and others were building rows of houses and streets at breakneck speed.

The talk, which was a Penarth Civic Society event, also examined, with the aid of some black and white illustrations, the fine buildings Penarth architects created in Cardiff . They included Cardiff Indoor Market and High Street Arcade by John P. Jones; The Cardiff and County Club in Westgate Street by E.M.W. Corbett and further afield, John Coates Cartier’s masterpiece – Caldey Island monastery.

The event venue was packed out and the audience gave a very enthusiastic applause for a most interesting talk.