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| A view of bustling Mermaid Quay in Cardiff Bay The run down waterfront area has been transformed in to a great place to eat and drink. The Bay is home to the Welsh Assembly Government and the Wales Millenium Centre (affectionately known as the 'Armadillo' by locals) which stages concerts and is home to the Welsh National Opera. The bay has aquired a new lease of life with bars, restaurants and coffee shops and parts of it have become newly famous as locations for the BBC's 'Torchwood and Doctor Who programmes - the 'entrance' to the Torchwood Headquarters can be seen to the left of the lower decking in the picture above. The bay is also the location of the devolved Welsh Assembly Government and visitors are able to enter the main Senedd building. The adjacent grade-one listed pierhead building hosts exhibitions, a small museum and a display of Welsh heroes. |
Tiger BayFamous across the world, 'Tiger Bay' was the name given to Butetown, the area outside the docks that ran from the Pierhead up to the railway tracks which divide the bay from the city centre. Like many places in the UK, it was largely flattened in the 1960's - the back to back terraces and the imposing sea-captain's houses around Loudon square gave way to flats and little now remains of the old bay apart from the small area around Mountstuart Square and the Coal Exchange. You can catch a few glimpses of this vanished world in the 1959 film 'Tiger Bay' which starred a young Hayley Mills, her father John Mills and Horst Buchholz and which was filmed on location in Cardiff and the Bristol Channel.
The bay in its heyday lent Cardiff a cosmopolitan air and there were active communities of Arabs, Somalis and West Indians as far back as the 1800's. Cardiff was home to the first Mosque in Wales if not the UK in 1860 although local muslims had to wait untill 1947 for a purpose built place of worship. The multiracial nature of the bay made it popular with black American troops during the second world war and older residents of the area still fondly recall the G.I.'s 'Jitterbugging' and riding up and down Bute Street on the fenders of their jeeps! But the docks had been losing traffic for years and after the temporary respite of WW2, they went into terminal decline in the 50's and 60's. 'King Coal' had lost his crown to oil and with ever decreasing demand for Welsh Coal, the docks had lost their main reaison d'etre. There were attempts to generate a new traffic of cars for export and also some timber imports but only the latter trade continues in a limited way.
View of Cardiff Bay with the distinctive red brick pierhead building in the distance. |
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Goleulong 2000 Lightship Now a Christian centre, the former Helwick Lightship has been refurbished and opened to the public. You can look at the engine room, the main light and the bridge and enjoy a cuppa and a biscuit in the crew's quarters. |
2012What's on in Cardiff
this Winter. Your one-stop guide. |
The Welsh Industrial & Maritime MuseumOccupying a site at the the bottom end of Bute street roughly where the right of the three new buildings in the picture (left) are, the Maritime museum contained a fascinating collection of artefacts from the great days of Cardiff as a port and industrial centre. The collection included a full sized steam tug the 'Sea Alarm' which was broken up for scrap when the museum closed. The Maritime Museum is now located on the waterfront in Swansea but has dumbed down and gone the way of AV displays replacing exhibits and noisy recorded commentary replacing informative labelling. |
