Tonypandy High Street

1997

Working in close collaboration with Tim Rose of MacGreggor Smith landscape architects, together we created the first townscape in Wales to integrate artwork, street furniture and paving, throughout the length of the high street.
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This innovative approach saw references to the town’s famous coal mining past given new life in imagery of Carboniferous Age plants, as well as the geological timescale that created the coal. The central feature is a column of sandstone strata, redolent of the pithead winding gear that was once such feature of the area. Standing 4.6 metres high, each millimetre represents one million years of the earth’s life. Embedded within the column is a band of black slate 80cms deep – the same thickness as the seam of coal in which the miners once worked. Inscribed on the slate are poems by Gillian Clarke and Menna Elfyn, written within a circle to reflect the circular hole at the top of the column, like a pithead wheel now gone, but with a shaft that still connects down through layers of history.

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