When the much-loved Cwmgors primary school closed, Awel Aman Tawe, a local charity, bought the building to keep it in the community and we are now at the final stages of refurbishing it as a net-zero community hub: Hwb y Gors. 

Cwmgors School - 2018

Hwb y Gors

We bought the school in 2018 with money raised from our community windfarm (there's a story!) on Mynydd y Gwrhyd and have since raised over £1.6 million for its refurbishment (see below for our list of funders). We're working with fantastic local building contractors Just inTime, architect Jonathan Arndell, Quantity Surveyors  ER Brown Ltd and structural engineers, Ateb Consult Ltd. Our contractors have been hard at it for two and a half years renovating the building to include a community café, co-working studios and enterprise spaces, education facilities and a community electric transport scheme. It will have an accessible washroom (with hoist, adult changing bed etc) built to the Changing Places standard, Nature Positive community garden, EV charge points and a sustainable drainage scheme (designed by Robert Bray Associates). 

Hwb y Gors will be a thriving venue for the community and visitors to the area. Awel Aman Tawe, Egni and Awel Co-ops will all relocate to the Centre, as will the Tawe Guild of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers. It will be a base for Heritage Crafts, Low-Carbon Enterprise and Education programmes (for schools and adults),  our Climate Change Artist in Residency scheme, our Repair Café, Garden Club, Bike scheme, and a whole host of community events and activities. We're so close to our target - please help us get the final amount we need to finish the work!

Net Zero

We believe that enterprise, education and the creative sector have a huge amount to offer in reaching Net Zero. Hwb y Gors will be part of this journey, offering an affordable, attractive, sustainable place to learn, work and play. 

We have installed 90kW of solar; a 50kW ground-source heating system and 20kW of battery storage onsite. Our panels were installed by Ice Solar and the heat pump by WDS Green Energy. We have insulated the external walls with natural cork and lime render. We had great mentoring support on sustainable construction from Down to Earth and on our Business Plan from Urban Foundry. 

Awel and Egni Co-ops will relocate to Hwb y Gors giving it flagship status for Welsh renewable energy development. Our two co-ops are the largest renewable energy co-operatives in Wales, and have installed nearly 10MW of community renewables on schools, community centres and businesses across south Wales. All our renewables are part-financed via community shares as well as bank finance, giving people the chance to invest in the green economy, and all surplus goes into community development and climate education. 

This energy asset base gives Hwb y Gors financial security and will enable us to keep prices affordable. Hwb y Gors will reach net-zero by 2030 and will be a base for supporting the transition to low-carbon living across the region.

The Refurbishment

The school was built in 1912 and has important heritage value and deep associations for the local community. Unfortunately the building required a substantial strip-out due to dry rot and subsidence, but we have conserved, repaired and reinstated heritage features, e.g. tiled fireplaces, curved plasterwork, internal and clerestory windows and alcove cupboards etc.

We've installed underfloor heating throughout. This is heated by our ground-source heat pump (powered from 12 bore holes in the playground). Note in the picture below, the internal windows which are the original windows stripped and sanded. Where some were missing, we've recreated matching windows using pitch pine from the ceiling rafters that we removed when opening out the café to reveal the vaulted ceiling.

New sloping roof : The small flat roof in between the two pitched rooves was one place where rainwater had come in causing damage in almost every classroom.

 During the strip-out, we unblocked these high level (clerestory) windows in many of the classrooms which backed directly onto the flat roof.  They had been concreted over to try to stop the water coming in. We have uncovered them and built a new sloping roof above the flat roof to take the water away.  The original windows had rotted but we've replaced the frames - and members of the community have made stained glass panels which will be fitted in their place (see more detail about this below).

New External Windows and Repairing the Entrance Stone

We've replaced the external windows with locally made wooden windows and rebuilt the Dormer windows (one at each end) which were badly damaged.  There are two entrances - originally the girls' and the boys' - this one (pictured below) was the girls. They are made from Bath stone and were quite damaged in places. We've repaired them so they look beautiful again. 

New Mezzanine rooms:

We've added 5 new mezzanine rooms. This one has a good view of the solar panels on one side and wind turbines on the other (not our windfarm unfortunately, but still....). The one (below left) will be a hotdesking space with fast wifi and fabulous furniture donated by Orangebox (who have generously given us re-manufactured furniture for the whole centre). This re-use of furniture fits into the circular economy ethos behind Hwb y Gors.

The view below is from the new mezzanine floor in the café (during construction). The openings were originally for the school's  maintenance crew to get from room to room above the ceilings. In the café, we've removed the ceiling to show the beautiful vaulted roof. 

Hall beams, spiral brackets and the structure of an original bell tower... (maybe)

The Hall has lovely beams and spiral brackets which thankfully have only needed a little bit of repair. When removing the ceiling, we discovered what looks like the structure for a small tower. We think it might have been a bell tower (see picture below). Also, we've made an L-shaped gallery for the hall, and we've recreated the original curved plastering throughout the building.

Fireplaces:

Julie from Art of Eco has repaired 4 of the original fireplaces, matching the various shades of green and making new blocks to fit the broken sections:

 The electrics!

The electrics have been a huge and complex job due to the solar generation, the battery storage, chargepoints, the kiln etc on top of the ordinary electrics for a public building. The electrics have been installed by Phillips Services, supported by our M&E Consultant, Jeremy Prosser from Quinross Ltd.

Painting and glazing:

The glazing is half-hour fire resistant. Here's Huw painting the rooms.

Converting the outside shelter into studio space units:

This was the shelter in the playground for those days when the weather was bad. It has a north side and south side with a wall down the middle which originally separated the girls from the boys.

We are now converting it into studio spaces and an outdoor classroom.

Local Engagement - Ein Milltir Sgwâr

The local community have been actively engaged in the refurbishment. Over 600 residents worked with Sustainable Stitch artist Menna Buss and the Tawe Guild to create a 10-metre heritage quilt for the café – using low-carbon processes of cyanotype, natural dyeing, and collagraph printing. We commissioned local stained-glass conservation artist Simon Howard to run workshops for 60 people to create 60 stained-glass panels for the reinstated clerestory windows (mentioned above). Another 70 people have made ceramic ‘wildlife’ tiles with local ceramicists Art of Eco. These will be installed all the way up the chimney breast in the Ceramics Studio.

Making and celebrating the 10 metre heritage quilt for the community café:

Making 60 Stained Glass panels for the clerestory windows:

Making 100 wildlife tiles for the ceramics studio:

Keep Wales Tidy food beds

We have been given a food growing pack by Keep Wales Tidy and a team of 20 local residents helped to clear part of the yard and build it it ready for planting.

Planting Hiroshima Seeds

We've been given some very special seeds from Green Legacy Hiroshima - seeds from one of the Gingko trees at the epicentre of the H-bomb in 1945. We want them to be part of a peace and renewal area of our Nature Positive garden. We took a group of pupils from Gwaun Cae Gurwen school to the National Botanic Garden of Wales to help us plant the seeds. (Photos Tim Jones).

Does anyone remember this man?

During the renovation we found the signature of the original carpenter: Thomas Phillips, dated May 25th 1912. We've kept the wood with his signature. Let us know if you know of him!

Time Capsules:

We have been told recently about 2 different time capsules that have been buried in the grounds at Hwb y Gors. One was buried in the 1970s; the other, not long before the school was closed. This has given us the idea to bury a time capsule of our own, to document the refurbishment of the school and to include the names and messages of all those people who have helped it happen. We're calling it the Future Generations Time Capsule to celebrate the building's new lease of life and to celebrate Wales' unique Act which shows our country's commitment to the wellbeing of future generations. Will your name be in that time capsule?

Hir Oes i Hwb y Gors (Long Live Hwb y Gors)

Community Energy Wales' Dyfan Lewis, visited Hwb y Gors in Cwmgors last year and wrote this piece about how he felt coming into the school. We should add that Dyfan was also winner of the Eisteddfod Crown 2021 and so is one of Wales' most celebrated poets!

"I was raised in two villages on the sides of the hills of north Swansea.

I say two villages, because my childhood home was in Craig-cefn-parc, but I had my education in Felindre. In a small school with around 30 pupils – Ysgol Gynradd Gymraeg Felindre. I received an education by a whole village there, one that has sustained me and enlightened my values as well as my belief in community to this day.

In summer 2019, after a strong resistance by campaigners in the community, the school was closed. The following January it was sold to private hands, changing the nature of the village forever.

Ysgol Cwmgors, on the other side of the Gwair and Betws mountains to Craig-cefn-parc and Felindre, saw the same fate in 2015.

So, it was strange and emotional to step through the doors at Hwb y Gors – the site of the school in Cwmgors, that’s now being developed to be a low-carbon hub. The site was purchased by Awel Aman Tawe, using revenue from their wind farm, which is about a mile above the building on Mynydd y Gwrhyd.

The work is still ongoing, but Hwb y Gors will include a community cafe, office space, arts workshops, a hall for events, accessible wetrooms and toilets, and spaces for artists in residence.

I know and empathise with the unique grief that rises from the closure of a small school in a village. The place grows older overnight. The sounds of children playing stop. There is no space for young families and their children to interact with the community – a space for people to gather and socialise. It is a critical blow to the language as a community language too.

Hearing Emily, Louise, Bethan and Dan from Awel Aman Tawe talk about the journey of the local community – from being unsure about the development to being full of enthusiasm and ideas struck home. As did the stories about a previous pupil at the school listening to a sound piece by the artist Matthew Collier, and feeling a strange pang from hearing the playtime bells ringing once again.

Cwmgors’ ability as a community to develop and take part in the future of this building was down to community energy. The wind farm as an asset, and the money from it, allowed the necessary space to purchase the school, and compete against the open market. My community in Felindre didn’t have a similar asset, and the school there now lies in private hands.

Having more community projects around Wales would enable this development on a community level of course, but we at Community Energy Wales are also asking Welsh Government to give communities the first option to buy public property. This would mean more time for communities to develop plans and raise the necessary capital to create projects like Hwb y Gors.

I look forward to returning to Hwb y Gors when the building work has finished and seeing first hand how the community has taken ownership of it once again.

Hir Oes i Hwb y Gors!"

We are so excited about the project and can't wait for the building to be finished so we can begin a whole host of projects that we've got planned. But we still need a bit more money before we're able to open - in particular for the climate education classrooms and for making the building as accessible as possible to Changing Places standards. So any support you can give us is extremely gratefully received. Thank you in advance!

We are really grateful to the following funders and supporters listed below, and to all our volunteers, who have made this project possible so far:

Heritage Lottery, Arts Council of Wales, Neath Port Talbot CVS Community Renewal Fund, The Clothworkers' Foundation, The Ashley Family Foundation, WCVA Landfill Disposal Scheme, The Moondance Foundation, Margaret Davies Charitable Trust, Neath Port Talbot Council Transforming Towns Initiative, Garfield Weston Foundation, National Lottery People and Places Community Fund, Welsh Government Community Facilities Programme, Welsh Government Energy Service, Baily Thomas Charitable Fund, Orangebox Ltd, The Coalfields Regenerations Trust, Keep Wales Tidy, Natural Resources Wales, Cwmpas through Social Business Wales.