This week we visit Castleland Street, and a building that we have struggled to find much of a history, but with our Barry and District Museumeers we have some part of a story.
Examining the Ordnance Survey from 1877, Castleland Street did not exist for housing, but may have existed as a field boundary within an agricultural landscape. By 1898, most of Castleland Street was complete; the buildings that stand today.
However, heading towards Holton Road, to the rear of what is popularly known today as ‘Amy Evans’, on the Eastern side of Castleland Street, there is a wide vacant spot with no buildings.
By, 1914 a building known as the Gospel Hall had been constructed to the rear of ‘Amy Evans’. Then on the 1935 Ordnance Survey, a building plot defines our structure this week, but it’s not built.
But by 1954, the mainly all-red brick building had been erected. The precise building date at this stage is unknown, but we are likely to be looking at, in regards to its style, about 1938.
The hall-like structure alongside what would have been the now demolished Gospel Hall stands alone at Casteland Street today.
The frontage first floor with four windows defined by Bathstone, is dominated by red brick, with a circular carved stone feature above the window line. The roofline features have an Italianate curved effect with coping stones, completing the gable line in Bathstone.
The ground floor of our hall has four antique-looking square columns of Bathstone; two of which define the entrance, and above this, there is a complete cornice line.
The side of the building is now rendered in concrete, but its full depth was probably all in brick. In the late 1930s, bricks were being manufactured in Newport for Barry and District construction projects. Although we can’t rule out the hall being constructed utilising one of the remaining Barry and District brick works at that stage.
Some final history from our Facebook Barry and District Museumeers. Over the years this structure has been home, according to Paul Noyes, to Glamorgan Plumbing, Tina Paulakis and Paul Wharton tell us it was a Freezerland food outlet in the 1970s. Also, according to Kevvo Davies, it was Old Track 2000 once, and as advertised, home to CEG Graphics today.
But John Anzevino has discovered our structure as the home of Sidney Harfoot and Sons Haulage Company Ltd from 1950, its vehicles parked alongside it on its Southern side, and a purpose-built depot, until the late 1960s.
There it is, a brief history of a building in the Barry and District, that on the surface it is silent.
