Picture Essay: The Swansea Marina in 1981

In the fine May weather of 1981, the transformation of Swansea's second dock was in full flow. The stagnant green pool of water that the South Dock had become was drained away and the half tide basin which had been filled in with rubble and rubbish in the early seventies was dug out again. It became a fascinating spectacle as tractors and bulldozers crawled through the mud plainly out of place on the floor of the dock. The dock looked huge; far bigger than when it was filled with water. Along the northern wall of the dock a number of streams of water plunged into the hole from the drains placed there in the 1850s. The water was the streams of Townhill and Ffynone finding a last resting place in the dock and helping to replace the water that tended to leak out from the structure.

Around the edges of the dock were the last remnants of the industrial South dock; the Coast Lines warehouses and the fish market. The Power House was a grimy empty shell awaiting an amazing transformation into a restaurant and pub. And the blue bridge still went somewhere...unaware of the brutal amputation that was to come. At the western end of the dock, the first flats were being laid out in the shadow of the cranes that were building the first phase of the County Hall for the always unpopular and problematic West Glamorgan County Council. Nearby, in a splendid isolation, the Weavers Flour Mill stood generating endless rumours about being converted to a hotel, or flats for yuppies, or an art gallery or countless other things.