The Fairwater neighbourhood was developed by the Cwmbran Development Corporation from 1961 to 1974 in the south-western part of Cwmbrân, developing out of the Coedeva neighbourhood in 1959. Designed to house a population of 2,000, this scheme brought the CDC to its target population of 35,000.

The area was one of historic woodland including parts of Maes-y-rhiw Wood to the north, Coed Waun-fyr to the south-west and Coedcae in the south-east. Maes-y-rhiw and Coed Waun-fyr have been recorded as historic abbey coppice woodland and smaller sections of these survive on a reduced scale, but Coedcae has been completely overbuilt. The remainder of the area was agricultural with a small cluster of nineteenth-century houses at Newtown (later Fairwater Avenue, now Fairwater Close). Apart from the gradual reduction in size of the Coedcae woodland, there was no real development of the area throughout the first half of the twentieth century. 

The neighbourhood includes some of the most innovative of the CDC housing schemes, both by the CDC Chief Architect Gordon Redfern at areas such as Steils and Teynes, and by the private architectural practice of Alex Gordon and Partners at Fairhill, 1962. This was the first neighbourhood to be designed on the principles of Radburn planning adopted from housing schemes in the USA, separating vehicular and foot traffic to create higher levels of safety for pedestrians, and designing housing layouts based around culs-de-sac; all dwellings in the neighbourhood also conformed to the Parker Morris standards, complying with the recommendations in the report ‘Homes for Today and Tomorrow’. Many were designed with either flat or shallow mono-pitched  roofs, and some with the use of timber panels to the external elevations, in an attempt to break away from the traditional form associated with the inter-war local authority housing.

The Fairwater Unit Centre (NPRN 422745), also by Gordon Redfern, is also the most architecturally innovative of the Cwmbran Unit Centres.

S Fielding May 2021

Ref: Cwmbran New Town: An urban characteristaion study