CAN THE OLD CWMAMAN INSTITUTE FIND A NEW LIFE?
Once a multi-million-pound community flagship, Cwmaman Institute was the beating heart of a village. But now, more than two years after its doors closed, Nathan Bevan asks if life can ever return again to this iconic Valleys landmark...
THE road up is the worst.
A long, winding and seemingly endless slalom of double parked cars, it makes actually getting to Cwmaman impossible without facing off against other motorists in a succession of begrudged give-ways.
So notorious is it, in fact, that “the road up is the worst” was the actual title given to a very early Stereophonics’ documentary, the band having put the village on the map back in the late 1990s when they broke big with their debut album Word Gets Around.
However, prior to Kelly and the boys getting signed, the only sound of the place, technicallyspeaking, had been that of your car wheels whacking the rain-filled pot-holes that pock-marked the asphalt.
Yet, clear the rows of red-brick houses that flank it and suddenly it hits you – mountains of verdant green forestry (or, at this time of year, heathery reds and browns) stretching as far as the eye can see.
And nestling in amongst it all, like a gob of cuckoo spit, is Cwmaman Public Hall and Institute – AKA Cwm Club – once a £3.8m jewel in the community’s crown, but now long since closed.
Indeed, drive slowly enough by its front entrance and you’ll see evidence from 2015 of this place’s last breaths – ‘Wales V Australia – KO 4.40pm, Saturday October 10 – half-time food FREE’ – still written in fading chalk lettering on the blackboard affixed to the wall.
Two days later – thanks to rising costs and falling funds – it would shut its doors for the final time.
Fourteen years had gone by since its multimillion pound, Lotteryfunded refurb in 2001, when Prince Charles landed in his helicopter on the nearby lido to cut the ribbon to its labyrinthine four storeys.
State-of-the art, it was meant to breathe new life into this otherwise neglected Valleys outpost.
And for a long time did.
With its 260-seater concert room, 290-seat theatre, gym, various function rooms and bars, at its peak it had up to 40 different local societies – from am-dram to silver bands – gathering there, while on weekends gigs and shows would pull in the punters.
But, while royal blood may have opened it, Hollywood stars got smashed in it – courtesy of different sort of claret.
Notting Hill star Rhys Ifans rubbed sozzled shoulders with late ‘Phonics drummer Stuart Cable there in 2008, prior to the actor’s band Y Peth taking to the Cwm stage.
It was a moment Ifans recalled fondly when I quizzed him about it a year later, specifically the problem the group had finding somewhere to recharge the battery on their tour bus.
“Then this old woman comes across the road, and she was absolutely ancient by the way, and goes: ‘Do you need any ‘lectric, love’?” laughed Rhys.
“So we plugged the bus into her house and did a collection for her after the gig.
“She got about £400 that night – she’s probably still paying her leccy bill from that money now.”
One of the world’s most notorious drug traffickers, Kenfig Hill’s Howard Marks, also regaled a packed crowd there it when he toured his anecdotal one-man show in 2004, provoking a blue rinse picket line outside the venue much like the Sex Pistols did when they upset the self-appointed moral majority of Caerphilly in 1976.
“Anyone in tonight from CID?” Marks asked midway through his set, addressing the rumours that plainclothes policemen were present and ready to arrest him if he sparked a joint on stage.
“I can’t say,” came the reply from one wag at the back of the room. “I’m supposed to be undercover.”
Local legend even has it that the ‘Phonics’ Kelly Jones once brought pop superstar Robbie Williams there, before treating him to a bag of chips at Tim’s Chinese take-away just a few doors up the road.
That the ex-Take That member also ordered an accompanying egg fried rice has never been substantiated.
Now, though, the corridors of Cwmaman Institute are eerily quiet, the stutter of faulty fluorescent strip lighting near the foyer the only thing punctuating the silence – the electricity having somehow remained on during the last two and half years of disuse.
And that sense of emptiness is overwhelming – it’s several coats colder indoors than outside, even on this harsh January morning, while white mould has crept across the furniture in some of the rooms and the wooden dance floor has warped, curling up at the edges like those magic fortune-telling fish you get in cheap Christmas crackers.
Yet parts of it look like its inhabitants mysteriously disappeared overnight.
Dirty pint glasses remain uncollected on the bar, CDs sit stacked to the side – The Best Of The Eagles, a surefire favourite whenever there’s a local knees-up – and anonymous back rooms are stuffed from floor to ceiling with dusty props and costumes that once served local stage productions.
Out-of-date jars of cooking sauces sit curdling on the shelves of the former kitchen area, now only really identifiable as such from the oven-shaped grease marks on the walls – the units themselves having been stripped out a while ago.
Someone’s jacket still hangs on a coat hook next to the snooker table, which is so large no-one’s been able to shift it since the building was signed back over to the bank.
“They just can’t figure out a way to get it out of here,” shrugs Gary Neal, a former trustee director of the ‘Stute who now comes back here once a month or so to check the place over.
He remembers it when it was bustling with life.
“Back when we first applied for lottery funding in the late 1990s and the assessors came here, every room had some group in it doing something.
“And the lounge would be packed – and this was on a Tuesday night.”
Ramshackle and dilapidated by this point, the old institute – which initially began life as a small nearby reading room in 1868 – needed replacing badly.
“The venue we’re in now – on Cwm’s Alice Place – opened in 1892 and was paid for from small contributions taken from the local miners’ pay packets,” adds Gary.
“It had grown and been
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