Pontrhydyfen Mural

The Project

Nationwide Platforms has recently provided working at height support for Burton Bont Festival Group’s (BBFG) project to paint a mural of famed 20th Century actor Richard Burton in his home village of Pontrhydyfen, Wales.

The BBFG celebrates Richard Burton’s legacy as one of the greatest actors of his generation. Renowned as ‘the next Olivier’, Burton’s fame was further bolstered by his two marriages to Hollywood star Elizabeth Taylor.

The group itself is named after Y Bont Fawr or ‘The Big Bridge’ aqueduct, which was built in 1867 by Sir John Reynolds and spans the village.

BBFG campaigned for funding for the mural, which was granted by The Shared Prosperity Fund, which is invested in a series of regeneration projects across the UK. Their aim is to prepare the village for the 2025 centenary of Richard Burton’s birth, as well as the bicentenary of the construction of the The Big Bridge aqueduct, where Burton was famously photographed.

Expert mural artist David “Gnasher” Nash was hired to create the mural, which was painted on the wall of the Miner’s Arms pub, Burton’s haunt since childhood, and still a local favourite. 


 

The Challenge

Pontrhydyfen sits in the Afan Valley in Neath Port Talbot County near the coast of South West Wales. Exposed to the maritime climate and westerly winds of the Atlantic Ocean, the most common kind of weather in the village is rain. Indeed, the county often receives 1,000-1,500ml of rain annually. Painting a mural, however, requires consecutively dry days. Because of this, the community needed an access provider that was flexible and able to reschedule the hire dates quickly, so that if rain fell during the original planned dates, new hire dates could be arranged.

A secondary challenge was that the village’s roads are in parts incredibly narrow. Pontrhydyfen is a small village with a population of just over 800 people. Cobbled streets wind upwards round inclining bends where larger vehicles often have a problem manoeuvring. In light of this, the BBFG needed to hire a machine that was capable of navigating these tight, meandering roads. At the same time, the customer was keen to obtain a machine with a good damage-protection policy to insure against potential knocks and scrapes. 

The Solution and Benefits

First, Nationwide Platforms surveyed the area and village roadways to determine how accessible the Miner’s Arms was from the main thoroughfare.
 
It then advised the Burton Bont Festival Group on the best type of machine for the job. Festival Group member Dean Edwards, husband of organiser Andrea Edwards and an experienced operator himself, knew that the job would require an articulated boom lift. The articulating capacities were vital for enabling the boom’s extending arm to reach up and over any obstacles remaining in the car park, and also allowed the machine-arm to extend, rotate, and reach different parts and heights of the mural even when the machine’s lower body was confined within the fairly small car park area.

Given the area and job description, Nationwide Platforms were able to advise that the group hire the Niftylift HR12NBS 12.2m Bi-fuel boom lift. With bi-fuel options, the machine was suitable for working sustainably in a small village surrounded by countryside. Its lightweight, agile and narrow design made it ideal for navigating the bottleneck road leading to the pub as well as manoeuvring around the car park. In addition, as an articulated boom, it could support the mural artist in a variety of positions so that he could paint the Richard Burton portrait with the right amount of detail, navigating the precise angles required to render a realistic three-dimensional portrait on a two-dimensional surface.

To insure against damage while manoeuvring the machine through the narrow spaces of the village, the customer took out Nationwide Platforms’ PowerGuard Platinum protection plan. This plan provided the hirer with protection against the cost of repair or replacement of the equipment following accidental damage, loss, theft, vandalism or malicious damage.

To ensure operator safety, the machine was equipped with Nationwide Platforms’ game-changing safety technology, Harness ON™, which ensures a machine cannot function unless the operator is securely fastened in.

Andrea Edwards, Chair of The Burton Bont Festival Group, said: “Richard Burton has been a vital part of Pontrhydyfen’s legacy for many decades. Tourists come from miles around to visit his birthplace and experience the area he called home, and through this the village is able to sustain itself and thrive. Working with a rental company like Nationwide Platforms has been immensely useful in helping us prepare for the upcoming centenary. Their flexibility and expertise made what we thought would be an arduous job turn out to be a breath of fresh air and a lot of fun.”

David John, Business Development Manager at Nationwide Platforms added: “We have a large and diverse fleet which allows us extra precision in tailoring our access solutions to the project at hand. We’ve dealt with unpredictable weather conditions previously, such as with the Mid Hill Wind Farm project, and we’re proud to be able to deliver efficient access equipment while working around shifting schedules to ensure the customer can get the job done to the highest of standards.”