New hope for gateway to the Rhondda?
Like many of its neighbouring towns in the south Wales Valleys, Porth has suffered years of post-industrial decline. Now, ambitious plans are in place to revitalise the area, but what do the locals think? Lydia Stephens reports
IN WELSH, Porth means gateway. And if you look up as you walk down Hannah Street, you will see banners with the title: “Porth, The Gateway to the Rhondda”.
Situated at the bottom of the Rhondda Fach and Rhondda Fawr, this town is bordered by mountains and terraced houses, a reminder of its coal-mining past.
Porth high street was once a central hub for its neighbouring villages – Cymmer, Trebanog, Trealaw, Dinas, Ynyshir – and home to three banks, a Woolworths, an Italian Bracchi and a Thomas Cook store.
You could barely walk down the pavement for the number of people who would visit there on almost a daily basis.
But changing shopping habits, the installation of a bypass and a oneway system in the town, as well as the proximity to places like Talbot Green retail park and Cardiff, have all had a major impact on the number of visitors to the town.
Jeweller Craig Bowen-Jones, who works at Jeff’s Jewellers, a goldsmiths that his father Jeff Jones started 30 years ago, said the number of people visiting the high street is simply not enough to sustain a profitable business.
“In June, the footfall in Hannah Street was just 6,000 people,” he said.
That is around just 200 people a day.
Craig’s father Jeff, 58, said things started to get really bad in 2006 when the bypass opened.
“It completely cut us off,” he said. “People just stopped coming here. It would take us an hour and a half to get home from work and we live around here. It took us a while to recover.”
Jeff opened his jewellers and goldsmiths in 1989 and it quickly earned a reputation that now attracts people from all over the UK.
The business has taken advantage of new ventures by using online shopping tool Etsy to send their jewellery worldwide.
“Our sheep necklace is one of the most popular,” said 31-year-old Craig.
Jeff’s Jewellers is doing so well they are working on opening a new store in Porthcawl, but Jeff admits it is the footfall that the seaside town attracts that made him choose the area.
“If you look at the footfall in all the towns in south Wales, everywhere has taken a hit. But Porthcawl is still doing well,” he said.
“I really hope Porth doesn’t die.” Craig added: “We don’t rely on footfall here. If we did, we would be gone.”
Like most of the traders along the street, they are anxious to see if Rhondda Cynon Taf Council’s regeneration scheme will help lift trade on the high street, or if the road and development work in the area will be a deterrent.
The regeneration plan for Porth, which comes with financial help from the European Regional Development Fund, will see the installation of a transport hub at the top of Hannah Street, on the site of the Alec Jones Day Centre.
This will include a bus interchange, taxi rank, cycle storage and train station links.
Porth train station is also expected to benefit from the south Wales Metro, as well as a new park-andride location opposite the Rheola pub, which will provide the station with an extra 30 spaces.
This could result in more people passing through Hannah Street on a more regular basis, but some businesses on the street doubt it will make much of a difference.
Gemma Bradfield, 31, who opened The Deli, a sandwich and salad bar, 18 months ago said: “The real issue we have here is with parking. There is none.”
Despite low footfall, Gemma said the business is doing well enough to hopefully soon be able to move into a bigger premises along the road.
“We have our regulars and we even do deliveries now,” she said.
“That helps because people don’t have to come into the street to park.
The bays out the front are only for one hour – that isn’t long enough for someone to come into the town, have a haircut, go for lunch or pop in a shop.
“They need to increase it to two hours at least. People like the convenience of parking up outside and running in, but it just isn’t long enough to keep people here.”
Additional parking for the town centre is something that’s promised with the regeneration plan.
Gemma believes the number of empty shops along the street also doesn’t help draw shoppers.
“Next door has been empty for a long time,” she said. “It just doesn’t look nice to people who come here.”
Gemma has decorated the front of her store with hanging baskets, which she said doesn’t cost much and goes a long way to making the street more attractive.
“We are still going in the right direction, but it would always be nicer to get more people through the door,” said Gemma.
It seems that the low footfall is affecting some shops more than others on the high street.
It’s 3pm and Jeanette Waite, who works in Bluebelles, a children’s clothing and gift shop, tells me she had not taken a penny all day.
Jeanette’s daughter owns the business, but had to return to her job as a teaching assistant because the shop wasn’t making enough money. Jeanette, 47, doesn’t take a wage. She also believes the parking situation on the street doesn’t help.
The street is steeped in history, with five listed buildings, including a butcher’s shop that first opened in 1931.
Julie Smith now runs Richards Family Butchers, which still has a number of original fixtures, including the tiled walls and ceiling.
Julie opened the butcher’s with her husband nine years ago, but he has since had to return to work due to a decrease in sales.
She hopes that the new transport hub will bring people back into the town, forcing people to walk through Porth instead of around it, but thinks all the previous disruption in the area is to blame for the fall in visitors.
“It is so hard to know what it is going to be like, but I really hope it does help us out,” said the 37-yearold.
“People go to supermarkets for convenience now, they have space for cars to park. People say shop local and we have personal contact here. You don’t get that when you go to a supermarket.”
Julie admitted she hasn’t been taking a wage for a couple of months, but is hopeful the business will keep going and added it would be a shame to lose such a historic shop.
Elsewhere on the street, there are other businesses which have withstood the test of time, including Twin Pets, which opened 39 years ago in 1982. Twin sisters Karen Price and Jackie Jones, 55, have recently become business partners with their father, who originally opened the pet shop.
“The problem is there are a lot of supermarkets in Porth, and we are a nation of trolley-fillers,” said Karen.
They said the number of people visiting the shop has fallen sharply in the past year, but, like many other businesses on the high street, they do have loyal, returning customers to rely on.
Unfortunately, this loyal customer base is ageing, so the town centre needs a broader appeal
That is one area where Rhydwen Thomas, the man behind new community group Indy Porth, hopes to succeed.
Rhydwen, 37, moved to the Rhondda with his family from the Rhymney Valley around six years ago.
“The people are so warm and friendly here,” he said. “And I think there is a really good opportunity to do something here.”
Indy Porth, which is not affiliated with any Welsh political independence groups, held its first meeting in September and set out a vision for Porth. Its aims include visual improvements, setting up events, boosting tourism and heritage, identifying long-term aspirations, publicity and community engagement.
Rhydwen said the group hopes to remind the council that people in Porth want things to change.
“There is a saying in Welsh, ‘Dyfal donc a dyr’, which means ‘steady tapping breaks the stone’, and that is what we want to do,” he said.
The group shares the views of local business-owners, who said increasing parking in the area and opening up shutter fronts during the day would hopefully attract visitors to the high street.
One reminder that the town has been neglected for far too long is the boarded-up Grade II-listed building that sits on the corner of Hannah Street and Pontypridd Road.
Sold at auction last year, the building was once a cinema and later turned into a bingo hall, but has been empty since 2009.
Since the building was sold at auction, no repairs or attempts to renovate it appear to have been made, and it has been left as an eyesore on the street, while being a reminder of how great it could be again.
As the building is privately owned, it is not part of the council’s regeneration plan, but the Indy Porth group is hopeful it can find out what, if any, plans are in place for the landmark.
“We are also hoping we can buy some empty land along the street, as a sort of local co-operative, and hopefully put some seating area there,” said Rhydwen. “There aren’t even any benches to sit down on with a cup of coffee, things like that make a difference.
“There is a whole town here, with a lot of things that need doing, and we are just asking people to take responsibility for it.”