Full Report for Listed Buildings
The list description is not intended to be a complete inventory of what is listed: it is principally intended to aid identification. By law, the definition of a listed building includes the entire building (i) and any structure or object that is fixed to the said building and ancillary to it and (ii) any other structure or object that forms part of the land and has done so since before 1 July 1948, and was within the curtilage of the building, and ancillary to it, on the date on which said building was first included in the list, or on 1 January 1969, whichever was later.
Summary Description
Reference Number
13537
Building Number
Grade
II*
Status
Designated
Date of Designation
24/11/1993
Date of Amendment
18/07/2000
Name of Property
Cwm Coke Works Northern Cooling Tower
Address
Location
Unitary Authority
Rhondda Cynon Taff
Community
Llantrisant
Town
Pontypridd
Locality
Tynant
Easting
306585
Northing
186115
Street Side
Location
One of a pair of wooden cooling towers located opposite the offices in the centre of Cwm Coke Works. The second tower is aligned and about 10m to the S.
Description
Broad Class
Industrial
Period
History
Cwm Coke Works was established in 1957 by the National Coal Board to produce coke from coal mined at Cwm Colliery. The coke was used in iron foundries, metal smelting furnaces, sugar beet refineries, brickworks, and heating boilers. Coke works were once commonplace, and were frequently attached to collieries or steelworks, but few are now operational in Britain. Cooling towers were often found at coke works as well as power stations, chemical works, and other sites where water cooling was necessary, from the late nineteenth century. The earliest were made of timber, but these were gradually replaced with parabolic concrete structures from the 1920s. Very few wooden cooling towers now survive anywhere, although they were once common features of industrial areas throughout the world.
The towers at Cwm Coke Works are unusual in having been built at so late a date, but they follow traditional construction methods going back to the end of the C19.
Exterior
The north tower is oblong in plan some 12m long and tapers slightly to a flat open top about 15m high. The timber planks which make up the walls are placed vertically and supported on horizontal and diagonal members whch are in turn fixed to an exterior frame of vertical posts, also of wood. The base consists of spaced slats to permit ventilation into the tower. A steam pipe enters the tower on the W face, the draft from beneath causing the steam to condense.
Interior
Reason for designation
Listed II* as one of an exceptionally rare pair of surviving towers illustrating this important historic technology.
Cadw : Full Report for Listed Buildings [ Records 1 of 1 ]
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