Sketty - Buildings

Buildings

The Sketty area includes a number of notable buildings. Sketty was the domain of the copper magnate Vivian family of Sketty Hall and Singleton Abbey. In the mid-19th century John Henry Vivian employed the nationally renowned architect Henry Woodyer to design buildings for the estate, of which three survive.

St Paul’s Church was built in 1849-50 to Woodyer’s design, added to in 1907 and again in 1928-9 by Glendinning Moxham. Woodyer also designed the school opposite (now known as the Stewart Hall) in 1853. His third building is Parc Beck, on the corner of Brynmill Lane. This incorporates a square, late 18th century villa named Parc Wern, made much larger, irregular and Gothic by Woodyer in 1851-3 for J.H. Vivian’s son, Henry Hussey Vivian and his wife. Woodyer’s designs were drastically compromised by later 19th century heightening and elaboration. The building’s current name commemorates a later owner, Roger Beck. It served as a nurses’ home before a recent conversion into flats.

St Benedict’s Roman Catholic Church, Llythrid Avenue, was built in 1961 to a design by F.R. Bates, Son & Price. New Bethel Welsh Congregational Church, Carnglas Road, was built in 1869-70. Also on Carnglas Road (and also facing Tycoch Road) is Sketty Junior School, built in 1909 and designed by W. James Nash. The front to Carnglas Road is subtly detailed and deserves study.

Sketty Hall, Sketty Lane is a much-altered building dating back to the early 18th century. Also on Sketty Lane is Singleton Hospital, two ten-storey blocks by O. Garbutt Walton for the Welsh Regional Hospital Board, 1961, with later additions. Opposite is the University Sports Pavilion, a late work by Glendinning Moxham, designed 1930, built 1932.

Hendrefoelan, on Hendre-foilan Road is a severe grey stone mansion in the Tudor style, built c. 1860 for Lewis Llewelyn Dillwyn, MP for Swansea, by William B. Colling. It now houses the Adult Education Department of the Swansea University.

Smaller domestic architecture worthy of note includes C.T. Ruthen’s 29-47 Dillwyn Road (1905) and 1-11 De La Beche Road (1906); also Coedsaeson (1893) (now 11 Parc Wern Road) and a number of large individual houses and pairs in Gower Road (c. 1900), all attributable to Glendinning Moxham.

Lower Sketty, or Sketty Isha, was long dominated by the villas which industrialists and successful professional men erected overlooking Swansea Bay and the Mumbles. The spread of mid-20th century housing estates has obliterated all but a few traces. The most significant of the villas was Sketty Park House, built c. 1818 for the Morris family from the materials of Clasemont House (1775), Sir John Morris of Morriston’s seat evacuated by the family once the fumes from their copper works and the mine workings underground became unbearable. Sketty Park House was itself demolished c. 1973, but a large Gothic belvedere from its ornamental grounds survives on a tree-covered mound in Saunders Way. Morris's descendent George Lockwood Morris the Wales rugby player lived at Machen Lodge, and his son Cedric Morris the artist and plantsman was born there.

Farther south, in Derwen Fawr Road, three white Regency villas can still be seen: Bible College, much heightened and enlarged; Emanuel School on the east side; and on the west side the best-preserved of the three, Gwern Eynon.