Penarth ghost sign: Windsor Nursery

Back in 2021, during renovation work, an old shop sign was uncovered on the front of number 86 Windsor Road, Penarth. It read ‘Windsor Nursery’. 

I’ve tried, during the intervening years, to get good photographs of the sign and its building but that has always proved tricky. For much of that time, a large campervan has been parked on the street in front of the building, limiting the possibilities for front-on shots. Also, for a long time, the exterior of the building was covered in scaffolding, though little building work seemed to take place. More recently, the front of the site has become overgrown with foliage. 

Though the word ‘Windsor’ is an obvious nod to the street name, I wondered, initially, about the name ‘Nursery’ – a child-care business, or something horticultural perhaps. Then, I found a post about the building on Twitter; this dates from March 2021 and was posted on the LovesTheDiff account:

An old shopfront sign was recently uncovered at 86 Windsor Road, Penarth. Windsor Nursery was a kind of convenience store of its time. Graham Hicks saw it and dug out this old photo belonging to his aunt. It shows the shop as it was more than 100 years ago.

I no longer use Twitter, and, for copyright reasons, cannot include the photo here but have added a link to the account name for those of you who can access it. I did, however, manage to find a couple of advertisements for goods being sold by the shop, published in the Evening Express, on 22 November 1909 and 31 December 1910 respectively. A sow and her piglets, a ladder, hot water pipes and a garden roller – it’s an intriguing combination of offerings. 

In a reply to the Twitter post referenced above, someone had added another old photograph with the comment: ‘And this is 86 Windsor Rd in 1920s/30s after the Price family took it on. Ernest Price pictured (my great grandad). My mum grew up there.’ Once again, I cannot show you that image, for copyright reasons, but here I had a piece of luck. 

I bumped in to a friend who was walking his dog in a local park and who lives near 86 Windsor Road. Somehow our conversation turned to the building and, by sheer coincidence, he told me he had an old photograph from the time when E.W. Price was the shopkeeper, which he was happy to send to me. The image quality is not great but I am still extremely grateful to my friend for letting me use this photo. 

The old photograph also showed how much the building has been altered in the intervening century; I’ve included a side-by-side comparison to show those changes. The most noticeable difference is the removal of the wonderful oriel window and its replacement with a modern rectangular window, which leaves the building devoid of its former character. I hope the ghost sign can in some way be retained and protected, as a piece of local history, but I somehow doubt that will happen. The building was recently put up for auction, though it appears there were no bids for it, so only time will tell what the future holds for the former ‘Windsor Nursery’.

Cardiff Bay: The Story Stone

Cardiff Bay has yet another piece of public art, this one to mark the 25th anniversary of the Barrage that closed off the once-tidal Bay and the natural outlets of the Rivers Taff and Ely to create a lake that now has water quality so poor that you definitely wouldn’t want to swim in it. But, hey, let’s celebrate the creation of the Cardiff Harbour Authority whose job it is to look after these murky waters. 

The artwork is the creation of sculptor Ben Dearnley, whose website says:

This project brings together the ancient world of standing stones with a modern twist. Within this huge piece of Welsh slate we have some of the stories of this wonderful regeneration of Cardiff Bay.

The mock standing stone is a 2.4-metre-tall piece of Welsh slate, with three stained-glass windows set into it. Each window shows different aspects of the Bay, pre- and post-Barrage, including the workforce that is now constantly required to clean up the rubbish that flows down the two rivers; some of the local wildlife: Salmon, Great crested grebes; and people walking, running, cycling and sailing in and around the Bay. If you’re interested in the artwork’s creation, the project page on Dearnley’s website includes many photos of the work in progress. 

If I sound cynical about the project, it’s because I am. There are two main reasons, neither of which is a reflection on Dearnley’s creation, which I actually quite like. The first reason is because, as I think I’ve mentioned in previous blogs about Cardiff Bay’s artworks, the Council (of which the Harbour Authority is a part) seems ever ready to commission and pay for new pieces but appears to allocate zero funds to maintaining them, with the result that many have now literally crumbled away or are eyesores. 

The second has to do with the area where this new piece is located, its surrounding ‘garden’ incorporating what was once a small and very necessary pond for small birds, until the machinery which operated its hydraulic system stopped working. Even then, the pond held a small amount of water and native plants until, under the pretext of ‘health and safety’ – that small amount of water was deemed a hazard even though the large unfenced lake a few metres away wasn’t – the Harbour Authority dumped a large quantity of stones and boulders in the pond to make it ‘safe’, which, of course, rendered it unusable by birdlife. 

What could have happened was a repair, even an enlargement of the former pond, and the installation of an artwork that encompassed or surrounded the water in such a way as to allow birds in but prevented access to dogs and their humans, thus rendering it safe. Something like an inverted hemisphere-shaped stainless-steel net, for example (this is not a product endorsement but a quick google found the website of a company called Creative Pond Covers Ltd which manufactures bespoke pond covers, exactly the sort of thing I’m envisioning). With a little imagination, this could have been a win for art and creativity, as well as benefitting the natural environment … but it isn’t.

Sign: Village Green no 41

This sign has intrigued me for some years, partly because the signposted area seems small to be designated a village green, also because I didn’t realise village greens were numbered, and I also wondered about the Inclosure Act, in particular the Section 12 that was mentioned. So, I decided to investigate. 

Village Green 41 is a small public green space that sits in front of the stone boundary wall of St Dochdwy's Church in Llandough, in the Vale of Glamorgan, in Wales. According to the Llandough Community Council website, the Council owns the green and is responsible for its maintenance. The green is home to a commemorative Millennium Stone, and has benches for people to sit and enjoy the trees and seasonal flower displays.

The number 41 relates to a Register of Town or Village Greens maintained by the Vale of Glamorgan Council, which, according to their website,

holds the registers compiled by the two former counties of South Glamorgan and Mid Glamorgan.

The registers were compiled, under the Commons Registration Act 1965, between 1967 and 1970 and contain information about all the registered common land and village greens in the Vale of Glamorgan.

Every area of registered land is listed in the registers under a unique Unit (CL or VG) Number. The registers also show if there are any rights of common over the land and record details of claims to ownership.

 

Next, the Inclosure Act 1857, for which I located this excellent summary on the LexisNexis website:

This Act was implemented to address the impact of the widespread enclosure of common lands in England and Wales. It sought to regulate and protect certain remaining public areas from further enclosure, ensuring that they remained accessible for public use. The legislation specifically extended protections to ancient or customary common lands, providing a legal remedy to curtail the loss of public open spaces. It also incorporated measures to uphold public rights of way, ensuring community access and recreational use while recognising the need for continued lawful agricultural operations on enclosed lands. 

As indicated on the Village Green 41 sign, Section 12 of the Inclosure Act relates to ‘Protecting from nuisances town and village greens and allotments for exercise and recreation.’ The details of the Act on the UK Government’s Legislation website explain those nuisances might include ‘wilfully and without lawful authority lead[ing] or driv[ing] any cattle or animal thereon’, or ‘wilfully lay[ing] any manure, soil, ashes, or rubbish, or other matter or thing thereon’, acts for which ‘any churchwarden or overseer of the parish in which such town or village green or land is situate’ might fine the offender, both for the offence itself and for the cost of remedying the effects of the offence. You have been warned!

South Glamorgan Coat of Arms

Though I’ve walked across the A4232 road bridge that crosses the River Taff where it flows in to Cardiff Bay many times – never a pleasant walk with all the traffic constantly flowing past at breakneck speed, I’d never until quite recently looked at the coat of arms that adorns either side of the bridge at both the eastern and western ends of its span.
 

I located a website, Civic Heraldry of England, Wales andNorthern Ireland, which aims ‘to collect together in one place information about the coats of arms of local authorities in England, Wales and Northern Ireland both current and obsolete.’ This is the information provided for the coat of arms of the South Glamorgan County Council, written in the obscure jargon of heraldry:

SOUTH GLAMORGAN COUNTY COUNCIL CYNGOR SIR DE MORGANNWG
*ARMS: Vert on a Pile reversed throughout Ermine between two Towers Or a Roundel per pale of the last and Gules charged with three Chevronels also per pale Gules and Argent ensigned with an ancient Crown Gold.
*CREST: Within a Mural Crown Gules a Mitre affrontée Or; Mantled Vert doubled Argent.
*SUPPORTERS: On the dexter side a Dragon and on the sinister side a winged Lion both Gules and each supporting a Trident Or.
*BADGE: Within an Annulet ensigned by a Mural Crown three Chevronels all Or.
Motto 'Y DDINAS A'R FRO' - The City and the Vale.

That website includes a coloured image of the coat of arms but I also located one on Wikimedia that shows the coat of arms more clearly and is free to use under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. It is shown below. And if you want to try to decipher the heraldry jargon, there’s a beginner’s guide on The Heraldry Society’s website. 

South Glamorgan County Council was active from 1974 to 1996, and consisted of Cardiff, which is now its own district; parts of south Glamorgan, which are now included in the Vale of Glamorgan district; and St Mellons, which is now in Monmouthshire.

El Galeón Andalucía

The Paddle steamer Waverley (see last week’s blog) is not the only historic ship to have graced local waters in recent weeks; Cardiff has also had a visit from this Spanish replica, the Galeón Andalucía. 

The galleon arrived in Cardiff Port on Tuesday 28 May and, having extended its stay for an additional week, departed on Sunday 14 June. During its stay, the galleon was moored in Roath Basin and was open to visitors every day from 10am to 8pm, at a price; the standard adult cost was £15, not an amount I was prepared to pay so this blog only has exterior photos of the ship. 

According to the information on the galleon’s website,

The Galeón Andalucía is an impressive 55-meter-long ship featuring six decks, meticulously built from iroko and pine wood. It boasts nearly 1,000 square meters of sail area spread across seven sails. Built by the Fundación Nao Victoria in Punta Umbría (Andalusia, Spain) with rigorous historical accuracy, it showcases the thousands-of-years-old maritime tradition of the Andalusian community.

Galleons like Andalucía were built in both Portugal and Spain from the early 16th century to transport cargo from the newly discovered territories in the Americas back to Europe. (Similar ships were also built in other European countries during the age of sail but these are not usually known as galleons.) 

Due to the richness of their cargo and the possibility of piracy at sea, the galleons were heavily armed, as you can see from the cannons poking out from the open portholes in the Andalucía, and, taking advantage of the weaponry they carried, the galleons were also used as warships until the mid-17th century when ships were purpose-built for the Anglo-Dutch Wars. 

Since it was built during 2009-2010, the Galeón Andalucía has sailed thousands of miles around the world, visiting more than 100 different ports in cities as diverse as Liverpool and Shanghai, New York and Singapore, Quebec and Manila. The website of the Nao Victoria Foundation, which built and operates not only this galleon but also other replica ships, explains that the Andalucía ‘travels as a floating ambassador for Andalusia as a tourist destination’. 

The Galeón Andalucía visited Cardiff as part of its 2026 European tour, during which the replica will visit ports in England, Ireland, and other European countries. I’m sure admirers of historical maritime transport in those locations will enjoy views of and visits to this very impressive ship.

Paddle steamer Waverley

I was sitting at my table/desk late one recent afternoon, working on my laptop, when I flicked my eyes from screen to window and noticed an unusual vessel chugging up the Bristol Channel (I am lucky to live in an apartment building on a clifftop overlooking the Channel). It was instantly recognisable: the paddle steamer Waverley. 

I went immediately to the Waverley Excursions website to check the Waverley’s timetable and was delighted to see that the paddle steamer would be in the local area, cruising to various locations around the Bristol Channel, viewing the local islands and sailing along the coastlines of England and Wales, for the following couple of weeks.

I checked when she would be in the local area and, the following Sunday morning, went down to Penarth Pier to watch the paddle steamer depart for her daily cruise and get these photos. You might wonder whether I booked a cruise but no; I’m a very poor sailor so the prospect of spending a couple of hours, even worse a whole day, on a boat is my worst nightmare. I do like to look, though. 

The excursions website proudly announces that, in 1970, the Waverley became ‘the world’s last seagoing paddle steamer’. Built in the world-renowned shipyards on the River Clyde in 1946, for the London & North Eastern Railway (LNER), the Waverley began her working life on 16 June 1947, cruising the waterways of south-western Scotland, from Rothesay to Loch Goil and Loch Long, into Loch Fyne and the Kyles of Bute, and later out to the Isle of Arran, and up the Clyde to Glasgow city centre. 

Since then, the paddle steamer Waverley has been registered as part of Britain’s National Historic Fleet ‘as being a vessel of pre-eminent national significance’. I first saw her over 40 years ago when I lived for a couple of years in Glasgow. At that stage, the Waverley was just beginning the next phase of her life, as the ’history’ page on the National Historic Fleet website explains:

WAVERLEY was sold [for £1, essentially a gift] on 8 August 1974 to the Paddle Steamer Preservation Society and refitted for the WAVERLEY Steam Navigation Company and her livery was returned to the LNER colour scheme of red, white and black. In 1975, she re-entered service on the Clyde, sailing at weekends from Glasgow and in mid-week from Ayr. In 1977, she spent a week on excursions from Liverpool and the success of this led to over a month being spent on the South Coast in the following year. In 1981, she was fitted with a new boiler and embarked on her first full season of Round Britain cruising, with the peak summer weeks spent back on the Clyde.

Between 1990 and 2003 the Waverley underwent a series of refits and restorations, getting new paddle wheels and a new boiler, as well as having her timber refurbished and her paint job restored to her LNER colours. All this has prepared the Waverley for her current busy schedule of cruises in various locations around the British coast. Check the excursions website if you’re a better sailor than me and fancy a unique paddle steamer experience.

Portland: Mulberry Harbour

I’m not particularly au fait with the names and/or functions of the various structures you can find around ports and harbours, and this hunk of what looked like concrete, rearing up from the waters of Portland harbour just offshore from Portland Castle, looks rather odd, too tall to function as a dock, too obvious to hold anything secret, lacking any obvious means by which to lift goods – in short, a mystery. Enter Professor Google … 

According to the Historic England website, these are two ‘Phoenix Caissons, sections of the structure known as a Mulberry Harbour designed for, and used in, the invasion of Normandy in June 1944. The harbour was a part of the vital support structure behind the successful operation’. It goes on: 

The ‘Mulberries’ were … pre-fabricated concrete harbours … 4,500 men were involved in their construction, and each ‘Mulberry’ was intended to be roughly equivalent in area to Dover Harbour and be capable of handling 12,000 tons of supplies daily. They consisted of a number of exotically code-named components: ‘Phoenix’ (a hollow concrete caisson); ‘Corncob’ (a sunken blockship); ‘Whales’ (floating pierheads); ‘Spuds’ (extendable steel legs); ‘Beetles’ (concrete pontoon barges); and ‘Bombardons’ (steel mooring buoys).

The Grade II-listed structures now present in Portland harbour are two of the ten ‘Phoenix’ caissons that were ‘towed to Portland in 1946 and were positioned to the west of the harbour to protect berthed vessels from prevailing westerly winds.’ In case you’re wondering what happened to the other eight, they were ‘sent by the Admiralty to the Netherlands to repair and block breaches in the dykes, following a great storm in January 1953’. 

If the structures themselves are not fascinating enough for you, on top of the caissons, there are six sculptures representing some of the crucial people involved on D-Day: two British sailors, two American G.I.s, and two dockyard workers. As you might imagine given the nature of the caissons, the manufacture and installation of these sculptures is an engaging story in its own right, and it is well worth reading the intriguing tale on the website of those responsible, Dead Walk Designs. The website also includes a gallery of the sculptures up close, as well as a video of the whole process – highly recommended viewing!

Weymouth: D-Day embarkation

When I visit Weymouth, as I seem to be doing now on a regular basis, it’s primarily for the wildlife, the birds, butterflies and dragonflies that are either resident or passing through on their Spring and Autumn migrations, and so almost every day I walk from my guest house on the front along to RSPB Lodmoor and back. Along the way I pass poignant reminders of the importance of this seaside town during the Second World War. 

One of those reminders is this sign, placed as you can see at the bottom of a flight of steps that leads from Greenhill Road down to Brunswick Lane at the edge of the beach. 

The text on the sign reads:

Rangers Way 2
At the start of June 1944, the 2nd Battalion US Rangers descended these steps en masse before lining up on the Promenade. They then marched to the Pavilion to board the boats for the crossing of the Channel to Pointe du Hoc, Normandy, France.
"We may never see their like again."

 And, one afternoon, when I was returning to my guest house from a walk around RSPB Radipole via a meandering exploration of the older parts of Weymouth, I found another similar reminder of this town’s strategic importance for the embarkation of soldiers heading to France 82 years ago. 

This harbourside plaque reads:

D-Day Embarkation June 1944

Weymouth was one of the main embarkation points for troops assembled in South Dorset in preparation for the invasion of France during World War II. The thousands of troops who embarked through Weymouth included the US 1st Infantry Division, who landed on Omaha Beach and the 2nd Ranger Battalion who successfully disabled the heavily fortified German artillery battery at Pointe du Hoc. In the days leading up to the 6th June landings this area in front of the old 1908 Pavilion was a bustle of activity with men and supplies being loaded onto landing craft. Over the following year more than half a million American servicemen and 150,000 vehicles would pass through Weymouth and Portland to the beaches of Normandy.

As the Rangers Way sign’s quotation of General Dwight Eisenhower’s famous statement says, ‘We may never see their like again.’

Cardiff Bay: Star Walk Wales

 

Until quite recently, I'd never noticed these panels set into the pavement outside the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff Bay, and trying to find out more about them has proved difficult.
 

Online research produced the following:

• A report on The CAD Centre UK Ltd, dated June 2017, has the following mention: 'The provider [presumably The CAD Centre] is working with the architect of the Wales Millennium Centre by funding the first stages of the development of “Star Walk Wales”, an innovative project to commemorate key figures from Wales, where members of the public can interact with the “stars” and learn more about Welsh personalities.'
  
  
• According to their website, the installation work was done by a company called Atlantic Dwellings.
  
  
• A Twitter/X profile @StarWalkWales was set up in September 2016. It describes itself as follows:' Star Walk Wales, aims to create a made in Wales dedicated star-studded walk way in Cardiff Bay, to celebrate the life and work of Wales' finest achievers', but there are no posts and the account doesn't appear to be active. The website linked to this profile is also inactive.
  
  
• And it appears that the Welsh Government was not supportive of the project. Minutes of business discussed in the Senedd in November 2018 report: 'Commissioners were provided with an update on recent developments around the long-standing proposals for a ‘Star Walk Wales’. Commissioners concluded that they did not feel able to support the development of a ‘Star Walk’ on the Assembly estate.'

 

The Star Walk consists of just one 'star', a poet named Nigel Bevan. He is also something of an enigma, as online research has not produced any information about him and his work. So much for these 'stars' focusing on Wales's finest achievers!

Cardiff Bay: Pink hut

It's a strange little building, looks completely out of place where it sits, yet those two factors, and its bright pink colour, make the Pink hut one of the most recognisable buildings in Cardiff Bay.

According to the Cardiff Harbour website, the hut, which looks rather precarious on its thin stilt-like legs, was intended for use by 'local yacht clubs and other event organisers to start and control races in the estuary'. 

To be honest, that sounds very odd. Although the hut sits near the end of the eastern breakwater of the Barrage, the extreme tidal range of the Bristol Channel means that, at low tide, there is a large expanse of mud below the building, rather than water. 

And, in fact, I've read that the Pink hut has never been used for its intended purpose so now it's something of a pink elephant. Perhaps that's where the idea for its paint colour came from. 

An article on the Wales Online website, dated 6 October 2020, says the building had recently been set up as a personal gym, with a punch bag, bench, bar and weights, after being rented out to one of the Habour Authority employees. I don't know if that's still the case.

Weymouth: maypole plaque

Today is May Day and, in the few places around the UK where they still exist, maypoles will feature in the celebrations. The origin of the custom of dancing around a maypole seems still to be much debated, with various theories posited, mostly surrounding the worship of trees and/or tree spirits, the phallic symbolism of the pole and its relevance to fertility rituals, and the importance of the return of warm weather for agricultural production. 

There once was a maypole in Weymouth but it was removed many years ago, and its former location is now marked by this plaque at the intersection of St Mary Street and Bond Street. Though the pole is long gone, I was delighted to find a video on YouTube of two performances of maypole dancing at this location, from 2004 and 2005, by the children of Weymouth's Conifers Primary School.

Weymouth: ANZAC memorial

Today is Anzac Day in New Zealand, the day New Zealanders and Australians remember, acknowledge and honour all those who have served and died in wars, conflicts, and peacekeeping operations around the world, the Antipodean equivalent of Britain's Remembrance Sunday and the USA's Veterans Day.

I was a little surprised when I noticed this memorial to the ANZAC (Australia and New Zealand Army Corps) forces on the front in Weymouth but I should have realised that troops from all participating nations would have passed through many of the seaside towns and ports along the south coast of England, and so it was in Weymouth. As the inscriptions on the pillar explain:

'A. I. F. [Australian Imperial Force]
In memory of the ANZAC volunteer troops who after action at Gallipoli in 1915 passed through hospitals and training camps in Dorset'

And

'N. Z. E. F. [New Zealand Expeditionary Force]
These ANZAC troops later moved from Dorset to action in Palestine and the Western Front'

And, not shown here, the road side of the pillar reads:

'ANZAC memorial
We will remember them'

Plus, on a lower step of the platform

'They came from afar
in the cause of freedom'

Sponsored by members of the Weymouth and Portland Residents' Association, Weymouth and Portland Borough Council, individuals and local businesses, the memorial was dedicated on 1 June 2005 and commemorates the involvement of ANZAC soldiers in World War One and the presence of those troops in camps in the local area during that time. 

The Virtual War Memorial Australia website provides additional information:

Weymouth was the depot for the Anzacs Gallipoli casualties sent to UK hospitals for
treatment and then discharged as convalescent. The depot opened in May 1915 and was the joint Australian and New Zealand depot until the NZ depot opened at Hornchurch in Essex in April 1916. Weymouth then became AIF Command Depot No.2 which accommodated those men not expected to be fit for duty within six months, therefore, most of the Diggers repatriated as a result of wounds or sickness passed through Weymouth. During the years 1915-1919 over 120,000 Australian and New Zealand troops passed through Weymouth.
The Hotel Prince Regent opposite the ANZAC Memorial was previously known as Hotel Burdon and was one of nine military hospitals in Weymouth during World war One.

 

Cardiff Bay: Adventurers Quay artworks

This is Adventurers Quay, a large residential development on the edge of Roath Basin in Cardiff Bay and, as you can see, around the ground floor of the building, at pedestrian eye level, there's an artwork.

The artwork, which was installed in 1999, has two components, one a mosaic of ceramic sails coloured blue and white, the other, perhaps less obvious, the grilles that cover the window openings to the car park inside the building.

The 'Terracotta Sails' mosaic is the work of ceramicist David Mackie (b. 1965), a prolific artist whose website lists completed artworks dating from 1994 to 2024, several of which can be seen in the Cardiff area. As well as the highly glazed sails, there's an undulating row of terracotta bricks fashioned to resemble a rope running along the lower part of the artwork. I quite like this piece, though I think the concept lacks imagination, sails being a very common theme among the artworks around Cardiff Bay.

Passers-by might be forgiven for not realising that the 11 steel grilles covering the car park openings are an artwork, so simple are they. These are the work of Andrew Rowe (b. 1963), whose DAR Design website describes him as a 'designer, sculptor and artist blacksmith', who works 'to commission, providing unique design solutions for public art, architectural metalwork, street furniture and sculpture'.

Cardiff Bay: Blue Beacon

I'd walked past this artwork many times before I paused to look at it more closely, possibly because it's located outside Bute Town Police Station, and I've never thought it a good idea to be seen lingering outside police stations. 

I've called this blog 'Blue Beacon' but I've also seen this artwork called 'Lighthouse' and 'Blue Light' – I'm not sure which is correct. 

According to his website, this piece was designed by British sculptor Mark Renn (1952–2019), with assistance in the design development and fabrication management from Mick Thacker. 

The 60-foot-tall stainless steel construction is the work of 'A1 Stainless, South Wales Monuments, Richard Williams', and there's also an LED lighting system that produces a pulsing blue light at night. 

The granite base of the structure is inscribed with a poem, 'The Ballast Bank', from the publication Zen Cymru, by Peter Finch. 

You can read the poem in full on Finch's website, which offers the following explanation for the piece and its relevance to the location:

The Ballast Bank is a poem by Peter Finch which has been incorporated into Renn and Thackers' Blue Light public artwork at the entrance to the South Wales Police Headquarters on James Street, Cardiff. This station is built very near where in the early days of Cardiff as a trading port stood a quarter mile bank of off-loaded ballast. This had been dumped by arriving ships making space for their outgoing cargoes of iron and coal. The Bank is clearly visible on John Wood's late 1830s map of the town.

The artwork puts some of that ballast bank back. The poem delineates the races, language groupings, trades and ideas which flowed in and out of the burgeoning industrial town as it exponentially developed. In its original form the poem circled Renn and Thacker's silver tower to run across the station entrance steps, in through the doors, up across reception finishing on the reception desk's surface.

According to the newspaper Wales Online, there seems to have been some controversy and criticism about the erection of this artwork, not surprising when you consider that upwards of £70,000 of taxpayers' money was used to pay for it in 2013.

Cardiff Bay: Triple spout

I admit to never having noticed this fountain until I found it mentioned in the Cardiff Public Art Register; the register is available as a downloadable pdf, though be aware that it seems not to have been updated since 2008 and, in the interim period, some artworks have been vandalised, many have suffered damage and not been repaired, at least one has been relocated, and, despite Cardiff Council's history of neglect, more artworks have appeared around the city. 

The reason I hadn't previously noticed the 'Triple Spout' is that it's located in a hole in the ground in Cardiff Bay's Roald Dahl Plass. According to the Register entry, the location is 'a deep D shaped feeder pit that was historically used for balancing water levels in the adjacent Oval Basin'. 

The fountain is the work of British sculptor William Pye and was installed in 2000. Pye specialises in sculptures involving water; his website says he 'is inspired by the extraordinary qualities of water and fascinated by the natural laws of hydrostatics and how these can be manipulated'. Scrolling through the list of works on Pye's website I realised that I've seen at least one other previously, the font in Salisbury Cathedral, which I included in a blog written in January 2017, Salisbury Cathedral by day.

Weymouth: Civil War cannonball

When I turned from looking at the ghost signs I blogged earlier this week and looked across to the other side of Maiden Street, I immediately found another item of historical interest. 

Though I didn't at first notice the object itself, I did quickly spot this plaque on the side of the building. 

And then I almost bumped in to a young woman who obviously also had a fascination for the old and interesting. She was photographing, and thus brought to my attention, these two plaques cemented in to the pavement opposite the building (and she was delighted when I pointed out the ghost signs to her). The plaques read:

The Maiden Street Cannonball

Just below the top window of the building opposite is a cannonball lodged in the wall. While the cannonball may be a replica, the damage originates from the time of the Civil War.

At the beginning of 1645 the important strategic port of Weymouth was under Parliamentary command. However in early February a plot by local Royalist sympathisers led to a surprise attack which left Weymouth, across the harbour, in the hands of the Royalists. This plot is known locally as the 'Crabchurch Conspiracy'.

The Parliamentarians took refuge in Melcombe Regis but came under heavy bombardment from Royalist artillery during the following week. The cannonball which struck the building may well have been fired from an elevated position across the harbour on the Nothe headland during this time.

By the end of the month the Parliamentarians had stormed the bridge and retaken Weymouth. However the whole town was left in ruins and the local economy would take years to recover. 

The building itself, which now houses the RAFA Club, other commercial enterprises and public conveniences, is Grade II listed, and the Historic England website entry confirms that the building dates to the 17th century, though the windows are 19th-century upgrades. The entry also confirms the presence of the cannonball, with no mention of the possibility of it being a replica: 'A C17 cannon ball remains embedded in the gable masonry to the left of the casement.'