We are already starting to link up with schools and would be interested in hearing from other groups in 2020.

We would be particularly interested in hearing from people with family stories of being a prisoner of war, women in work, or experiences of the Blitz.

Anyone who has any family stories or casualty details or knows someone from Grangetown who remembers the war, please get in touch on grangetownwar@yahoo.co.uk or come along to our monthly meeting.

Society notes: March meeting

22 people were present at Glamorgan Archive

Night-time Blitz Experience: Jo Hartwig of Art Shell was welcomed to the meeting. She described the artistic work that would be commissioned from local artists to complement the focus on four bomb sites in Grangetown that would feature in the blitz commemorations in January next year, a joint project with the Society and subject of a £29,000 Heritage Lottery award. The sites being looked at will be Corporation Road (near site of Hollyman’s bakery), Clydach Street and Jubilee Street and the corner of Ferry Road and Holmesdale Street. Steve Duffy pointed out that much research had gone into these sites and a lot had been discovered of the people who lived there, and the stories of heroism involved in saving some of those involved. Recruitment of helpers and artists would begin and run into April. September and October would be spent in further research including giving talks at local schools. These would include Ninian School, Grangetown, St Paul's and hopefully other local schools. Jo said that WW2 artefacts are now needed to complement the above commemorations, such as gas masks, wardens’ helmets, etc. Pop-up events will also be planned for the Archive and Pavilion, as well as going to sheltered housing at some point.

Cardiff Blitz and Grangetown at War Steve Duffy has been commissioned to write two books, the first later this year on Cardiff and the Blitz; the second will be on Grangetown At War, and include a memorial of local WW2 casualties, to follow in 2021. Work on both is advanced.

VE Day The Society had been contacted by ITV Wales asking if they could use some of our photographs for a programme they are doing on the 75th anniversary of the end of World War Two. The meeting agreed to the request, in that all our archive is available to the public now that it is in the care of the Glamorgan Archives.

Cowbridge school heritage The Society had also been contacted by a group of people from Cowbridge, asking the Society to sign a petition against the development of the site of the Cowbridge Girls’ School. The meeting thought this inappropriate since the Society is ignorant of the issue and any signatures would be ignored because our addresses would not be in Cowbridge. It was pointed out that the Cowbridge History Society had declined to support the petition too.

Medal award Helen had been in contact with Harold Boudier and the Russian Embassy concerning his latest award by Russia of an Russian Convoy medal. Harold’s ship took part in one of the last convoys. Steve Duffy had also interviewed him. It seems that the medal may simply be posted to him, in which case it was the Society’s wish to be able to congratulate him in some way. Helen and Steve are to co-ordinate a suitable ceremony if Harold wishes it.

Future talks It was agreed that Ray would give a talk on the history of Grangetown along the lines of similar public talks he had been giving. A suitable date will have to be arranged.

Grangetown Pavilion Although we had made general enquiries as to the probable cost of using a room at the Pavilion for a public talk on our work, it has not been possible to find out the cost. The manager has asked instead that we book a specific date for such a thing and then the cost, if any, would be decided. Thus far, the Society hasn’t decided which date would be needed and what kind of event it may be. It was thought that an evening meeting/talks would be popular amongst residents of the area and perhaps attract new members.

Techniquest. A further meeting with Techniquest had recently been held. Its objective was to offer guidance and suggest materials for a display in the newly expanded building. The expansion coincides with the removal of the Welsh Assembly’s financial support for Techniquest and the realisation that to survive and thrive commercially it must focus more on attracting adults rather than only children. It was decided that the display should focus on the importance of coal to Cardiff Docks and on the history of the site of the Techniquest building when it was once the workshops of the dry docks alongside it.

NOTICE Due to the risk presented by the Coronavirus, especially to those over 60, it was decided not to hold our next meeting until further notice. The secretary will contact members when a decision has been made concerning the date of the next meeting.

Grangetown School Scroll: Chairman Doug Knight has an "emulation ladder" scroll, which showed his mother Dorothy Richards's class at Grangetown National School in 1919/20. There is a list of the 47 girls in the class and how they ranked based on performance.

The names are: Ethel DAVIES; Gladys LINK; Lily GILLESPIE; Edith UMPLEBY; Lily ROACH; Emily HITCHINGS; Winnie SHAW; Lily BROWN; Lily OWENS; Kitty SMITH; Laura LONG; Laura NOWELL; Gladys NOAD;;Clara GREENWOOD; Elsie GILMORE ;Winnie WOODGATE ; Kitty LEWARNE; Nelly POPE; Maud STONE; Miriam BUSSELL; Jane or Janet? and Belinda? (left) and Hilda WHITE; Gladys BRUCE; Winnie BILSON; Lily DILLON; Beatrice WILLIAMS; Violet NEWBERRY; Susie WESTACOTT; Irene APPLEBY; Jessie KENDALL; Gladys THOMAS; Maggie PRITCHARD; Ivy PHELPS; Veta LEWIS; May JAMES; Gertrude HARRIS; Ivy PATTERSON; Doris COOPER; Ada CORNELIUS; Rose BRINKWORTH and Flossie GLOVER (right hand side)

A review of 2019

Compiled by Ray Noyes, secretary

• A WW2 research project was proposed, aiming to complete the research for the spring of 2020 so that a book may be published
• Zena sent a resume of the history of our society for inclusion in the magazine of The Royal Army Medical Corps.
• The closing of the Conservative Club had been announced. Photographs of the inside of the club had been taken and any documents of historical interest will be saved if possible.
• Grange Gardens was granted Centenary Fields status which protects it in perpetuity. The bowls pavilion had been demolished and plans announced for the construction of a sizeable new facility there.
• Steve had been asked by the organisers of the Voices of War and Peace Great War Legacy Project to give a presentation on the Society’s WW1 project at the Community School in Ely in July.
• A number of original WW1 POW letters from soldiers had been donated to us.
• An illustrated presentation entitled The Voices and Images of the South Wales Jewish Community was given by Mr Stanley Soffa.
• During excavations for the new Grange Pavilion on the site of the bowling green, some interesting artefacts had been unearthed. It was agreed that the Society would finance the purchase of a suitable display cabinet for them.
• During our work for the WW2 project, some 260 local casualties have so far been identified, including civilians who died in the Blitz. It was agreed that an arts project of some kind be undertaken in order to bring the people of Grangetown together and remember the 80th anniversary of the worst night of the Blitz in January 2021.
• The Society remembered the passing of Mr Alan Barnett who had once been a Society member and president of the Grange Albions.



• In July, Zena, assisted by Don Gerrard (Cowbridge History Society), gave an illustrated talk on the paupers of Grangetown. Zena offered us fascinating details of Grangetown families who were on the paupers’ list, covering the principle streets in which they lived. Click on the image above for more information.


Ray Noyes signs the handover document

Grangetown Local History Society officially handed over the contents of its archives to Glamorgan Archives for safe-keeping. The idea is to ensure its continuing legacy and also to improve public access. The filing cabinets of photos and other documents are already kindly stored by the Archives in Leckwith, where the society holds its meetings. But this will ensure the contents are linked to the wider collection and also guarantee that they will be preserved for the future. The society's secretary Ray Noyes signed the handover document prior to the meeting. The donation includes our digital archive as well as the contents of our cabinets, all of which will now be conserved and catalogued. The archive remains our property. The Society expressed its thanks for the help given by the Archives staff and agreed to make an annual financial contribution towards their work.

• In August, we remembered with great sadness the passing of our dear friends Ray Shaw and John ‘Dusty’ Miller. Ray had been a founder member of the Society with an encyclopaedic knowledge of Grangetown. His steadfast work in support of the Clive Street Baptist Chapel was particularly acknowledged. Dusty was an energetic supporter of the cadets in Penarth.
• Messrs Purchase and Grey from the Ebenezer Chapel reminded us that the chapel would be holding its 120th anniversary on October 5th and 6th and invited us to contribute to information on its history.
• An illustrated presentation was given by Brenda John and Keith Fruin describing the work that had been done to straighten out the River Ely, prior to the construction of what is now a retail park and previously a waste tip. Using maps and numerous photographs the meeting discussed the topic with some enthusiasm.
• In September, Mr Brendan Bowles described the history of the Bowles Sand and Gravel Company Ltd which began in 1893 in Harrowby Street. The company once had a fleet of 25 ships, some operating off the continental coast. It was taken over by British Dredging. Mr Bowles was attempting to record the details of the company’s past and to produce a publication on his findings.
• The last funeral had been held at St Pauls’ Church prior to most of it being converted into apartments.



The society had a bus trip to the Port Talbot transport museum in October.

Those of us who went had a most amazing, enjoyable afternoon viewing the many items collected by Harold Wilson and also viewing some wonderful sculptures using recycled slate. Those who didn’t go missed a wonderful treat.

• A new book on the history of Grangetown had been published, entitled Urban Development in the Victorian Era, a case study of Grangetown, by Ray Noyes.
• Ray gave a talk on Grangetown to students at the Welsh School of Architecture. Grangetown is being studied as part of their degree in urban development.
• A site visit to the new Grange Pavilion took place on 1st November to see progress. Mike Farr particularly enjoyed it, offering him the opportunity of wearing his hard hat.
• Zena announced she was researching the many brides who had been married in Grangetown for a possible talk.
• The application for a Lottery grant was being made, in order to finance the intended commemoration of the 1941 Cardiff Blitz.
• A successful Christmas lunch was held at the Cedar Tree Restaurant to end the year.

Grangetown author and local historian Ray Noyes has produced a new book, which charts the history of the neighbourhood's development - with particular emphasis on its rapid growth in the Victorian era. Ray was born and brought up in Grangetown but his career in engineering took him away from the area, including abroad. He is secretary of Grangetown Local History Society.

Q How long did it take to build the Grangetown we now know? Most of Grangetown was built over 30 years, with some houses along the Taff and Avondale Road area added in the twentieth century once flood defences had been built along the Taff. Corporation Road was once a flood barrier which is why it is slightly higher than the houses and Grange Gardens on one side.

Q When and where did it all start? Construction started in 1857, at the same time as Penarth Docks. Grangetown was intended to house workers at Penarth harbour and docks as well as in an iron works and the gas works. With no public transport until 1873, workers had to live near their work. Penarth was easier to get to than Cardiff and Grangetown belonged to Penarth. It could have been name Clivetown after the Windsor-Clive family who built most of it.

Q How many of those original houses survive or were rebuilt? The vast majority of the original small terraced houses still exist, except for the very earliest ones that were on Oakley Street, Knole Street and Hewell Street. The National School and police station have also gone, they were some of the earliest public buildings.

Q Where does your own particular fascination with construction and engineering come from? My fascination with the history of Grangetown as an engineer is in its construction techniques. Discovering it was once a marsh on a thick bed of clay made me wonder how on earth it was done. It was not the best place to build anything and for centuries no-one dared. During construction, foundations and even entire buildings (Such as the main school) began to sink. As an engineer this caught my imagination, knowing that all had to be done by hand, without machinery. Even the roads and drains began to sink and eventually 22,000 tons of gravel had to be used to stabilise them, all quarried, transported and broken up by hand. The Marl Field is named after the clay beneath it which was quarried there in a large excavation so big it was used as a stadium.

Q Are there any buildings in the area you're particularly fond of? The buildings I am most fond of may come as a surprise. I love the many stables and cart sheds that were built at the time and are now mostly used as garages but some have been converted into small houses.

Urban Development in the Victorian Era: A Case Study of Grangetown, Cardiff, 1100-1900 is available from Wordcatcher Publishing, priced £15, and will also be on Amazon. Ray, who is secretary of Grangetown Local History Society, is also happy to order copies which he can bring along to our monthly meetings.

Read more about Grangetown streets here

Ray on the left at a meeting a few years ago.

We have heard the sad news of the death of a founder member of the society, Ray Shaw, aged 81.

Ray was a member of Grangetown Baptist Church and an expert on its history and archive. With a family hailing from Hewell Street, he was a fount of knowledge about Grangetown people and its characters. He will be much missed - and was a regular at meetings from his home in Dinas Powys with his wife Margaret, despite bearing with a long-term illness over the last few years.

History society member and former chair Zena Mabbs said: "Ray was a staunch supporter of all our activities over the years until his illness prevented him from participating. He always helped to sell our annual calendars, and was present every year at the Grangetown Carnival, and supported our talks and presentations.

"We all valued immensely his knowledge of Grangetown and his wonderful ability to always be on hand to help anyone he could. Some of his Grangetown memories are preserved in one of our Grangetown books and in our oral history archive.

"His presence will be sadly missed by all of us who knew him for so many years," she added.

Ray had run a greengrocer's business in Barry Island before he retired. After a committal at Barry crematorium on Wednesday 17th July (11am), there will be a celebration of his life at Grangetown Baptist Church at 12.30pm. Donations to Parkinsons UK are requested instead of flowers. The society sends condolences to Margaret, his son and family.

This topic was discussed at recent meetings. A number of questions arose, principal amongst which were: (a) Are we a group that is seriously researching the history of Grangetown, or are we a group of people who meet because our personal histories just happen to stem from being born in or associated with the area?
(b) If the former, then shouldn’t each meeting address a specific history topic that has been researched, rather than (as now) being a rather large committee meeting discussing the business of the society?” (Shouldn’t the business of the society be discussed by an executive group at another time and place?)

There appears to be a limited number of options open to us as follows:
Option 1) Continue as we are, as an informal group of Grangetown friends, with the inevitable diminution in numbers as we age; Observations: This ‘do nothing’ option would see the demise of the Society.
Option 2) Transform society meetings so that each deals with a specific history topic, as in today’s meeting, making our meetings less like committee meetings - which ought to take place separately anyway. Observations: this solution requires many more members to undertake research and make presentations of their findings, and/or drawing up a comprehensive list of external speakers – with their associated costs, perhaps requiring us to charge a membership fee. If hiring external speakers, who will do it?
Option 3) Try and recruit new, younger members, by holding our meetings in a public place outside working hours. Observations: There would be costs involved in this too, which may require us to charge a membership fee and it would require diligent planning and organising – who will do it? It was felt that these days younger people are no longer interested in attending groups such as ours and would prefer using social media to maintain contact with others. There is so much of interest on line that we have to compete with it.
Option 4) Bearing in mind that the language of younger people is now the language of social media, shouldn’t we be speaking their language and consider a more active online presence such as Instagram, Twitter and Facebook? Observations: We would face the problem of who would do this technical work and maintain it. There continues to be just a tiny number of members who do all the work, notably any research, so that any options requiring more effort should be judged in that light.
It was agreed to discuss this topic again once members had thought about it.

End of an era as Grangetown Cons Club closes its doors

Grangetown Conservative Club has closed its doors - just short of its 125th anniversary.

Julie Biggs has been stewardess since 2012. Pictured with committee member Mario Felices and Terry Woodroff, treasurer and acting chairman.

The club has been in its current home in Corporation Road, close to Grange Gardens, for more than 110 years. Grangetown Local History Society heard of its imminent demise a few weeks ago, and went along to take a few photographs, as well as receiving some archive material.

The original "Grangetown Conservative Workingmens Club" was founded in May 1894, on the corner of Holmesdale Street and Ferry Road. Previously it had been the location for a local rope manufacturers.

The association had been set up in the year before - described as a "rallying call for Grangetown working men", with membership numbers rising in that time from 60 to 300. Subscription back in those first days was four pennies a year and the chairman was Sidney Herbert Nicholls, at the time living in Pentrebane Street.

A drawing of the original club - and William Baird, who was steward of the club with his wife Alice in the 1930s and 1940s.

A committee photo from 1936. Back row left to right: E Addicott, FD Bradford, JW Bryant, JH Robson, H Smale, JE Townsend, W Long, AJ Cusse and PE Jeans. Front row: W Roberts, FS Moore (treasurer), LW Mountjoy (secretary), H Sheppard (chairman), T Llewellyn (vice chairman) and J O'Brien.

By 1908, it had moved to Corporation Road - its present home. The old building back in Ferry Road was later converted into flats in the early 1930s and then bombed during the war.

Rugby photo preserved

A rare photo of a Grangetown rugby team winning a trophy nearly a century ago has been partially restored and placed in our archive.

The photo was bought from eBay but was in a poor state and disintegrating but has now been patched up and preserved by staff at Glamorgan Archive.

It shows Cardiff Gas Athletic RFC - the Grangetown gasworks team - who won the Mallett Cup in 1922-23. They beat Cardiff Welsh 11-5 at Cardiff Arms Park, after losing the final the previous year. The Cardiff and District rugby cup competition is the second oldest in the world and this is the only time the gasworks side won it.

It has special significance to one of our members, Keith Fruin, whose grandfather Arthur Fish - a war veteran and also ex-Cardiff City footballer - played in the game. Keith has his medal from that game but had never seen a photo before. Arthur, a carpenter who was a sporting all-rounder, also played baseball for the works side until in his 50s.

The team line-up: P Sullivan (trainer), J Snell, A Keay (vice capt), W Snell, W Silver, T Donovan, W Davies, HS Bartlett (Sec)
P Roach, A Giles, RP Jones, A Brockway (capt), A Fish, R Podd, TAL Richards
I Dunscombe, R Wyatt

Grangetown archive catalogued

Click on the image above to view the catalogue.

The documents and photos of old Grangetown collected by the history society over the years have finally been catalogued and properly archived.

The growing archive, made possible from donations and copies of originals, has been kept in filing cabinets by the society.

Thanks to the diligent work led by society member Brenda John, the bulk of the old files have been collated, sorted and properly archived and the Grangetown local history archive is now available to view online and also downloadable in Excel format

This version has already been updated - and will continue to be so as the archive and the project progresses. We hope to link to some of the images we are storing digitally in the future. It will be really useful for local people researching aspects of Grangetown or their family's history.

Grangetown history fact sheets

Ray Noyes, society secretary, and Zena Mabbs have been involved in producing some fact sheets on aspects of Victorian Lower Grangetown. Another has now been added by Ray on the building of some of Grangetown's churches and chapels and Steve has contributed one on the history of The Grange pub to mark its re-opening and 160th anniversary, while Zena and Ray have put together the presentation on Penarth alabaster, which is a feature of so much local architecture.

These have been created to print off - and have been handed out at recent meetings - and now we're starting to put some of them up on the website here, for wider interest. Click on the images above to download the PDFs . The second fact sheet on street names has been reproduced instead as a webpage here, as it is too large a document to download.

Click here for archived Grangetown Local History Society news and more photos

The Society was founded in 1995 and has a committee; there is no membership fee and it is open to anyone who has an interest in local history, particularly, living, working or having been born or brought up in Grangetown. Doug Knight - chairman; Email: grcarinfo@yahoo.co.uk Michelle Derby-Charles and Helen Stradling - email queries; secretary - Ray Noyes; treasurer - Alan Collier. The society cannot undertake family history research but please inquire as we may be able to help on an ad hoc basis. Websites: grangetownhistory.co.uk and grangetownwar.co.uk Postal address for mail order or to send photographs (please include your details): Grangetown Local History Society c/o 28 Llanmaes Street, Grangetown, Cardiff CF11 7LQ