Summer Days At Oystermouth

A Memory of Mumbles, The.

Memories of The Mumbles by John S. Batts

Viewing on-line a collection of Frith’s old photos of The Mumbles has jogged many memories. For me the place was simply known as “Mumbles,” home to a much-treasured uncle and aunt who ran a shop for several decades in Newton Road, Oystermouth until the late 1950s. The district has many pleasant associations within the family, too, for I’ve seen small black & white photos of my parents playing golf at Langland Bay GC while on honeymoon in the 1930s.

Early journeys by bus over the Beacons from Brecon are not fondly recalled however. I was invariably motion-sick, and if that had failed to upset me then the smell of petro-chemicals from Llandarcy towards the end of the trip provoked much the same reaction. Clearly on arrival I was much in need of bracing seaside air.

I must have been taken to the Mumbles on a summer holiday, the first of many, during World War Two, because my uncle used to visit Swansea Docks regularly to pick up ice boxes and fish; on occasion he would take me there in his “Flying Standard” motor-car while ensuring that I was hidden from view when passing the entrance guard. Within the docks I recall little enough beyond once visiting a smoky curing-house where kippers were given that aroma and appearance that has rendered them irresistible ever since. There are even dusty corners of my memory that assure me I saw barrage balloons over Swansea if not over Mumbles.

I digress, of course, but the illegal visit to the docks may have been the very first of umpteen summer stays in Newton Road, Oystermouth, during my childhood. Those photos brought back recollections of Mumbles Pier with its Lifeboat ramp and slot-machines, the ruined Castle, and the maroon-and-cream Mumbles tram that stopped at Oystermouth on its route around Swansea Bay as far as the Mumbles Pier. Life was never dull during Mumbles holidays.

If the late August day was wet, then a tram trip into Swansea cheered the day. There I watched my first professional football game at The Vetch. The all-white Swans, complete with a neatly moustachioed Trevor Ford as centre-forward—the term “striker” was not used—played Barnsley, a team that included the Robledo brothers in their eye-catching all-red strip. On August Bank Holiday at St. Helens Glamorgan usually struggled with the visiting tourists at cricket, but I cannot claim to have seen Bradman’s “invincibles”! And on a Saturday night the whole family used to go to variety shows at the Swansea Empire for the likes of “Big Bill Campbell’s Rocky Mountain Rhythm” and other top-of-the-bill acts—but no, I didn’t see Harry Secombe there. A story in the family has it that I was once taken as a babe to The Plaza Cinema one morning when my father wished to attend a live broadcast by organist Tom Jenkins. I wonder if any reader could date that event?

But back to warm days and the Mumbles. I too recall not far from Oystermouth station the delights of what my uncle always referred to as “Charlie Forte’s” ice-cream parlour, sundaes with a wafer atop served on thin-stemmed metal bowls.

And not far away on the same street was The Tivoli Cinema where, notwithstanding Judy Garland, I was frightened by the Tin Man and a talking scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz; looking back, I may have been an unenthusiastic young cinema-goer left there unescorted on a wet afternoon.

And further along that coastal street there was The Mermaid, a pub-cum-club favoured by my uncle when I was not around. In that vicinity, others too gathered about mid-morning to witness an ancient swimmer—was he called “Popjoy”?—who regularly bathed in the sea whatever the weather. The bald old chap must have been a bit of an exhibitionist because I swear he used to swim on his back on occasion and take out a copy of the South Wales Echo, ostentatiously appearing to read it; and I’m not sure that he may also have added to the effect by putting a briar-pipe into his mouth to enhance the laid-back—though he would not have recognised that adjective—impression for his audience!

At the bottom of Newton Road, a lane went under the railway line and gave access to the beach, vast at low-tide but almost lacking any sandy perimeter at the full. At low tide this area was an enormous expanse of wet sand, forbidden for me to venture, but where adults still delved for sundry shell-fish. I suspect that the waters of Swansea Bay had been polluted for some time and that oysters, at least edible ones, had long since disappeared.

Strikingly, for some time after WW2 there was still evidence of defences against invasion. As an adult I surmise that the mostly flat beaches and surrounds would have made a reasonable venue for Jerry to have made a beach-head, and certainly the War Office must have held that view too. The docks at Swansea had been a bombing target for the Luftwaffe in the early years of hostilities; indeed, in the late 1940s and well into the 1950s the centre of Swansea still bore the scars of destruction. On the beaches there were what I took to be steel poles and wires to deter ships closing on the shore at high tide. And dotted around the banks of the Mumbles Railway, concrete pill-boxes and gun-emplacements were to be seen. So the foreshore at Oystermouth was regarded as a fine place to wade or muck about with bucket and spade if not to swim. Not that the Mumbles lacked beaches for the latter. Westwards from the magnificently sited lighthouse, its causeway visible at low tide, but totally off-limits for me, there were numerous spots. I don’t recall much about Limeslade Bay though it was visited. Little Langland and Langland Beach itself were the prime spots for non-swimming youngsters like me to play in the waves under supervision or to explore rock-pools with a fine-meshed net terrorising the crabs. And on occasion, but more than a long walk away from Mumbles, Caswell Bay was another sandy attraction.

Closer was the ruined and picturesque Oystermouth Castle, the slopes of which almost joined Newton Road about one-third of the way up the hill to a large park-cum-recreation ground. This was duly visited on each trip, though I imbibed little of its history at the time. Still, as the Firth photos make plain, it did have extensive views over the Bay and one could make out those industrial coastal towns like Port Talbot and Aberavon.

Of the shops in Newton Road, I can recall little enough, but the fact that these rows of buildings on both sides of the street were three- even four-storeys high impressed this small-town boy. Most shop-keepers, like my uncle, probably lived above their premises. Across the road Hutchinson’s Newsagents on the south side always seemed to be open. Next door O’Neill’s Chemist dispensed whatever small boys needed in the way of antiseptic creams and bandages. And my uncle sold fruit and vegetables alongside some fish on a slab that frequently displayed a curious heap of dark-green “lava bread” made from seaweed, supposed even sixty years ago to possess all kinds of health benefits. I tried it but never became a convert! I was often indulged with an English apple from the shop, the names of which I never find on fruiterer’s shelves these days, Cox’s Orange Pippin, Worcester Permain, Golden Russet, et al —whose orchards have all been presumably victims of the ascendancy of the European Common Market!

One pervasive half-memory is entirely aural. Being put to bed in a back bedroom meant listening to the music from the dance-hall several doors up Newton Road. In the days well before local noise abatement laws, I suspect that the merriment went on well into the early hours. And to this day I am often aware that a tune I once heard night after night is lodged in the recesses of memory: pop’ tunes of the day, big-band favourites, etc.

Another happy recollection of Mumbles is of going to horse-riding lessons; the stables were near Singleton Park, and a small group of riders often used to go into what was then countryside as far as Fairfield Aerodrome on a plateau inland, where we were taught the elements of controlling the animal with various pulls on the bridle as well as cantering, which in hindsight certainly was the highlight of the day.

Probably the most abiding memory of Mumbles is the tragedy that took the lives of the Mumbles lifeboat crew going to the rescue of the oil-laden SS Samtampa which foundered in the Bristol Channel between Porthcawl and Swansea Bay [23 April, 1947]. The blighting legacy was not only good men perishing but also several years thereafter of oil on the rocks and beaches, some of which ended up on my clothing during several summer seasons thereafter. A treasured item in my collection is a Christmas card from my uncle containing a photo of the new Mumbles lifeboat, the card being signed by several of the crew (the 1st & 2nd coxswains, the bowman and the mechanic). I think that at least two were relatives of a young Miss Thomas of West Cross who helped in uncle’s shop. There is no date, but I assume this must be over sixty years old. Photographs can indeed evoke a great deal.