Personal Memories of Cardiff
Ration Book
Memories are essentially personal things -you seem to remember world-shattering events only inasmuch as they affected your own life.
My first memories of Cardiff go back to early August 1914. I was five, and through the lace-curtained, aspidistra-festooned window of our little terraced house I watched my father, as, kit-bag on shoulder, bell-bottoms swinging, he hurries round the corner to catch the tram for the station. He was a Navy reservist and so was called up before the war was actually declared. It was three years before he came home. The train ran into the Great Western Station, disgorging hundreds of Servicemen, some still filthy with the mud of the trenches
"Run and kiss Daddy" shouted my mother, pointing to two bearded sailors. I ran-, paused- and kissed the wrong man~ Three years is a long time fore a five-year-old to remember.
What did war mean to a Cardiff child? For me it meant unbelievable freedom, for we only went to school half-days. Our school was turned into a hospital so we shared a neighbouring school. And what delights did Cardiff offer for these continual half- holidays? Why, the thrill of stealing a ride on the bar between the back wheels of the horse drawn cabs, avoiding the whip which often came snaking down over the top; or swinging round and round a street lamp post on a penny straw-twisted rope, ingeniously fastened to the bar just below the gas-lamp. There were marvellous games with photos (cigarette cards) such as "Blowings”, on the narrow, whitened window-ledges or "Hooplas" where you set your little treasures along the wall for your customers to encircle with card- board rings. Of course, we had our more legitimate pleasures, such as picnics up Roath. Park. Does anyone remember the gas ring by the paddling pool where you could buy a penn'orth of gas to boil the kettle? Even food shortages were fun. Occasionally there came a cry passed from mouth to mouth, street to street "There's marge down the Maypole~" or "There's potatoes in Potter's". Then everyone downed tools, grabbed a few pence and bore for the shops, to join an ever-increasing jostling, chattering crowd, all trying to get into the shop before supplies were exhausted. But what joy if you managed to fight your way in and could come back to Mam with a couple of pounds of' wrinkled-skinned potatoes or a quarter pound of half-melted margarine.
Then suddenly -the war was over. There were Peace celebrations in town -I got jammed in the bottle-neck of Duke Street I remember~ -and we children were given a peace mug and a free tea- which , hardly compensated for the fact that in future we had to go to school "full-time" -an unheard-of imposition. Dad returned to his Docks job and life was going to be just fun. Only- things didn't turn out that way. A new dreaded word began to be whispered - Unemployment~
"But it won't hit the Docks" they said. But it did. After twenty-six years service dad received one week(s notice -and was refused a Docks' Card, entitling him to future employment when things got better.
Cardiff in 1927~ Were there world-shattering events, frightful disasters? I expect so -but all I remember was Mam keeping four of us (my brother at Grammar School, myself at Cardiff University) on thirty-two shillings and sixpence a week. Good old days! And every week the long line of' grey-faced "out-of-works", shuffling slowly, vacant-eyed, along Westgate Street grew longer.
Slowly things improved. I became the bread-winner. But not without a struggle -teachers in Cardiff then, as now, were two-a- penny. By the late 1930's things had certainly improved. But then we heard rather frightening rumours about a man called Hitler -but Mr. Chamberlain put all our minds at rest.
And then of course -Sunday morning -and that speech, heard in the city of Cardiff as in the tiniest village of England or Wales. And war came to Cardiff as to everywhere else. But to us one announcement outweighed all the others -came over louder than bomb warnings, gas mask instructions, evacuation notices and warnings of food shortages and possible rationing. It was the terse statement that all young men aged twenty, unless in specially reserved occupations would be immediately called up to serve in the Armed Forces and my brother was aged twenty.
A few weeks later, I watched him from the lace-curtained window, swinging round the corner, kit-bag on shoulder, on his way to catch the bus for the station. And I thought of the truth of the French saying -as true in Cardiff as it is anywhere else in the world –
"The more things change, the more they are the same”.
Cardiff of my youth
The Bellavophon
I remember being taken to the docks to see a former ship of the, line, "H.M.S. Success" which had been used as a prison hulk and was on exhibition to the public. The "Hamadryad" was afloat about the same time, before the hospital of the same name was built. I also saw the "Terra Nova" coaling in Cardiff before sailing to the South Pole.
Canal Sign
In Tiger Bay, raids on opium dens and Fan Tan clubs were frequent, and police patrolled in pairs. I remember the opening of the Alexandra Dock by King Edward VII and later listening to massed choirs of schoolchildren in Cathays Park, and in the same place, I heard Keir Hardie speak.
I remember the Glamorgan Canal and seeing horsedrawn barges loaded with fuel blocks en route to the docks. They continued past the Castle wall and under Kingsway Bridge where people threw pennies and boys on the bank would dive for them. The canal carried on under Queen Street and that stretch was known as "The Tunne"! .The “Feeder" from the Castle Moat, still visible along Rue de Nantes, once made its way down Pembroke Terrace, but now runs underground along Churchill Way.
I remember Solomon Andrew's horsedrawn brakes from Cardiff to Penarth and the tollgate by the old brick works. In those days it was common to see bare foot children about the streets, and. German bands of 9- 10 men standing playing in a circle. A favourite Sunday afternoon treat was a ride to Victoria Park on an open top double decker tram to the Zoo. Once, flooding gave Billy the Seal the change to go sight seeing, and he was recaptured swimming along Cowbridge Road.
Roath Park was a highlight on the Cardiff scene, with its aquarium and old round and stand, later replaced with a pavilion where Waldini and his orchestra delighted audiences with gypsy music. At each end of the "prom" was an old naval gun, pointing at the islands, and there used to be a retired female figurehead from, I think, the "Bellavophon".
The first cinema I can remember was the Electric, which stood where the Dominion Arcade is now. Then there was the Pinoptican opposite the Castle Flats in Westgate Street, Duke Street in those days was very narrow, flanked by shops; at the end was a row of houses leading to the Castle main gate. I remember seeing the Marquis of Bute's two children in kilts walking on the greensward outside the Castle.
Before the present Museum was built, the Central Library was part library, part museum, and near Batchelor's statue by the underground lavatories stood a great fire extension ladder on wheels; and alongside the present Electricity showroom was the old fish market.
As a boy I lived near Maindy Barracks and watched beating the retreat, Sunday Church Parade, solemn military funerals with muffled drums, Dead March in "Saul" gun carriage and flag draped coffin and the slow march of the firing party. I remember sneaking into the goat's stable to pinch his bran and eating it in school. I'd go to sleep at night with the barrack Field empty – next morning it would be full of tents and horse lines, with English troops heading for the Rhondda to quell riots.
"Foreigners" were required for this and the Lancashire Fusiliers were regular visitors. At other times, the Royal Horse Artillery would train there, galloping about with guns and limbers.
I remember the ambulances on Whitchurch Road shuttling between Cardiff Hospitals and Senghenydd at the time of the pit disaster; the locals turning against the Chinese and attacking laundries; their owners seeking refuge in Heath Woods; the funeral of Jimmy Driscol the boxer, whose procession of mourners stretched the length of Cathays Terrace. There was Maindy Quarry, were now stands the Stadium; to a child, I thought the workers way below were dwarfs, they were so tiny. Later the quarry filled with water; its sides were treacherous and it was notorious as a dumping ground for whatever people were anxious to lose.
Three gloomy sights still linger with me: men digging graves by hurricane lamps in Cathays Cemetery during the Spanish 'flu epidemic; eight giant Prussian guardsmen in grey uniforms, silent and formidable, outside the General Station awaiting escort to prison camp; finally, a group praying outside the Goal on the eve of the execution of three members of a racetrack gang.
