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Municipal Vandalism?
See The View (Right)
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The View
Sunday 15 October, 2000
The local residents
have already slated it as an unforgivable act of vandalism. The
destruction of the Victoria Park toilets probably doesn’t arouse
much interest in the City Council Offices, and the now anonymous
city workers who ordered their destruction had probably never even
seen them. For a council whose usual speed of activity can be
described as glacial, the speed at which they demolished the
toilets was breakneck. It is lucky that workmen were not injured
in the haste to demolish the building.
The toilet block was not
of architectural significance, it was not a unique building or a
special design, although some would have recognised the classic
municipal style which we treasure in the Guildhall but is ignored
or even hated in lesser buildings. The building had something far
more significant in the history of Swansea, it had value, and it
had memories. It had
value for being a public convenience in a part of town that has
none. It had value in being the toilets opposite the
Slip, the
most important part of the Beach. It had memories for the
generations of people who spent days at the Slip and who trekked
across the Slip Bridge to use the toilets and buy Wall’s ice
creams in the café that used to hide in the arch under the
stairs. It had memories for the children who would use the water
to wash sand off their feet before putting their shoes and socks
back on. I am sure that Dylan Thomas must have used them, so you
would think that the burgeoning Dylan Thomas industry would have
latched onto the fact that another part of Dylan’s Swansea has
been taken from us. However the Dylan sector is silent. Hardly
surprising, as very few of the key workers in the Dylan sector are
familiar with Swansea.
I can remember giving a
history lecture to some German students a few years ago. When
discussing the Blitz (yes we did mention the War!), I remarked
that many of the historical buildings missed by the Luftwaffe were
eventually destroyed by the local council. This caused much
amusement and the students told me that was exactly what they say
in their home town about the RAF and Bremen Council. So
Swansea’s council is only averagely uncaring.
The town is suffering a
severe identity crisis at present. The wholly inappropriate
campaign over siting the Welsh assembly building in Swansea, the
planning disasters over shopping redevelopment and remodelling
Wind Street have sent waves of despair through Swansea people. The
lacklustre council leaders have lurched from insult to injury by
demolishing much loved institutions such as widening car access to
Singleton Park (reason: because cars are important) spoiling the
park for many users, destruction of Brynmill Zoo (reason: modern
planning constraints) spoiling the park for many users, on street
parking (reason: because cars are not as important as they were
last year). And now we see the destruction of two more priceless
items of value, the Victoria Park toilets and Swansea Baths.
I think this is more
about people’s history. As with Swansea Slip, the history and
value with such a building is in the use and familiarity that it
has experienced over the generations. Any building that is not associated with what I call the Welsh
History ‘A List’ (i.e. Coal Mining, Dylan Thomas, Castles,
Cardiff, Welsh Language and more Dylan Thomas) is likely to be at
risk. What is especially sad for the local people is that another
link with Victoria Park will now be obliterated. I don’t mean
the small ornamental postage stamp piece that is now used as a
race track for wedding parties in the Patti Pavilion, I am talking
about the grand idea that William Thomas had in the 1880s that the
St Helen’s fields should be saved for recreation. After a
gigantic struggle in the 1880s the open fields of St Helen’s
were saved for parks and sports much to the annoyance of
unscrupulous property developers who wanted to build further
tracts of housing. The park was opened in 1887 and named Victoria
because it was her Golden Jubilee year. I don’t suppose that
would be a politically correct action nowadays!
Millions
of pounds have been spent on cleaning up the Bay, and thankfully
the water is improving. The beach at the Slip
will attract more
people because it will be a convenient place to go. However it’s
now far less convenient because there are no toilets. The local
authority regularly sacrifices our past on the altar of new
development. We see our past bulldozed away and replaced either by
buildings that are dreadful amalgams of glass and metal such as
Parc Tawe or not replaced at all because the City planners don’t
know what to do. In the midst of it all our heritage is
reduced to photograph albums peddled by the local newspaper
because the Council have knocked down the real stuff. Apparently
we get the local government we deserve. The people of Swansea
don’t deserve this.
Nigel
Robins
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