Site: Croft Farm, Port Talbot

Name:Croft Farm, Port Talbot CISP No:PRTT3
Place:Port Talbot Grid Ref:SS 7633 8998 (GB)   Map
Parish:Port Talbot Stones:1
County:Glamorgan (Morgannwg) , Wales Saint(s):none
Site Type:modern secondary

Site Notes

Richards/1925, 424--425: `an old farmstead bearing the name `The Croft,' was demolished [in 1869] to make room for a more modern house erected by his father. Both cross and piscina were found concealed in a wall 8 ft. in thickness and composed of river drift, beneath several thicknesses of whitewash. The house stood on the site of the present Palace Theatre, near Pritchard Street, Port Talbot, and past it went the old road leading from Margam to Briton Ferry, which crossed the river Afan where the present Canister Bridge stands.

The relics are such as to suggest the existence of a chapel or church on the spot, and this surmise seems to find corroboration in a belief prevalent some little time ago that the Palace Theatre was haunted `because it stood on a cemetery'. In this connection it is worthy of note that Court Farm (the site of the present Steel Works' Offices) did not satisfy the location of the Chapel of St. Thomas given in Margam MSS., which state that the chapel stood between the rivers Afan and Neath. Though identified with the chapel by local historians, the farm stood between the rivers Afan and Kenfig. If the description given in the MSS. be correct, we must look for the chapel on the other side of the river; the site of the stones under consideration and `Platch yr Eglwys', not far away, offer themselves as possible solutions. Or can it be that the `Croft' once administered to the spiritual needs of the castle? Or, again, was it a `beadhouse'? Its function is at the moment a matter of conjecture. Place-names do not help us, but there is every reason to associate an ecclesiastical building of sorts with the immediate locality. In the building itself there were also discovered a narrow splayed window and quoins of dressed stones'.

References

Stones