Cardiff Bay: dolphins

Dolphin: Naut.; a post or buoy for mooring a vessel (Collins Dictionary).

The Environment Agency, a division of the UK Department for Environment Food & Rural Affairs, provides this rather more comprehensive definition as part of its asset management information:

A man-made marine structure that extends above the water level and is not connected to shore. It is usually piled into the river or sea bed. Dolphins may be used as a temporary tethering point, a structure for housing navigation aids or for protecting other structures from ship impacts.

The old timber dolphins dotted around Cardiff Bay, near Mermaid Quay and the entrance to Penarth Marina, serve as a reminder of the days when Cardiff was a very busy port, when ships from all around the world would be moored not only at the quay sides but also to the dolphins, awaiting their allocated slots for unloading and reloading. Some of these dolphins are now in a very dilapidated state, while others continue to carry functional navigation aids for the marine traffic still active within the Bay.

Cardiff Bay: Bowline Knot

Located off Havannah Street, at one of the entrances to Cardiff Bay Wetland Reserve, partially obscured behind the circle of shrubs that surrounds it and officially called Bowline Knot (according to the Cardiff Public Art Register), but also known as the Rope Knot, this 'cast bronze and mild steel' sculpture was created by Andrew Rowe in 2000.

The sculpture models a length of rope tied to a ring that is set into the ground with a bowline knot, the type that was traditionally used to tie ships to the dock at which they had moored. The art register reports that 'this bronze sculpture reflects Cardiff Bay's heritage as one of the worlds [sic] principal coal-exporting ports.'

You can read about Andrew Rowe's career on the Fresh Air website, and learn more about his current work and see examples of his formidable artworks on the website of DAR Design, the company he founded in 1990.

Pargeting: Harriet Street, Cogan

Firstly, in case you're unfamiliar with the term, pargeting (or pargetting) is the name given to the decorative plasterwork you often see on the facades of older houses. I spotted this particular example on a house in the Penarth suburb of Cogan, about a mile or so from where I live, and it has me mystified.
 

The first houses in Cogan were built in the 1860s to house the workers who were constructing and later working at Penarth docks, back in the days when the mining and exporting of coal was the dominant industry in south Wales. They are mostly small two-storey terraced houses that line both sides of Cogan's oldest streets but the house with the pargeting is different from the others (see photograph above; the house is at the right). 

These days the building is used by a variety of community based businesses, and perhaps that was always its function, but it's the medallion at the centre of the pargeting that is most intriguing. (In the street photograph, which dates from 2022, the medallion was painted black but it has since been repainted white.) 

The medallion looks like a coin, the portrait appears to be that of King Edward VII, and the inscription that encircles the bust is the same as that found on coins minted during Edward's reign, between 1901 and 1910. The Latin 'EDWARDUS VII DEI GRA: BRITT: OMN: REX FID: DEF: IND: IMP' translates to 'Edward the Seventh, by the Grace of God, King of all the Britains, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India'. (You can see an example of a well-worn penny from that time on the Windows on Warwickshire website and a pristine example on a page of the Elysees Numismatique website.) 

The use of a coin image in the decorative pargeting makes me wonder if the building once had a financial function, as a bank perhaps, but unfortunately I've been unable to uncover any details of the building's history so, for now, it remains a mystery.

** Updated 20 January 2026

Thanks to a message from local author David Ings, for which I am exceedingly grateful, I now know that this building was originally Cogan's Reading Room. I found the following brief notice in the Barry Dock News of 7 November 1902 about the building's opening:

COGAN NEW PUBLIC READING ROOM.-A new reading-room which has been built in the centre of Cogan by the Penarth Urban District Council, at a cost of £640, was opened to the public on Saturday last. The opening ceremony was performed by Mr S. Thomas, J.P. Mr Thomas gave a review of library work, after which he was presented with a gold key, by the contractor, Mr J. Pickford. Mr Thomas then declared the room open to the public. Subsequently a luncheon was provided at Cogan Schools.

I also found a photograph (on Pinterest, which links to a Tumblr page) showing a number of men, apparently queuing at the 1902 opening. The image appears to have been sourced from the People's Collection Wales website but PCW has a terrible search system and I've failed to find the original. Unfortunately, the photo  doesn't show the entire building so we can't see whether the medallion centrepiece is an original feature but the facade has obviously been altered at some stage as the words 'READING ROOM' can be seen in the photograph.