The Echo are running a series of photo's of various parts of Cardiff from the 1950's, 60's and 70's.

A few days ago there were photo's of Llanrumney and Rumney, mostly from the 1950's. It's hard to imagine now but I bet when people were moved from places like Newtown, the Docks, city centre, Splott etc to Llanrumney with it's spacious housing, gardens back and front, inside toilets, wide open spaces, orderly shopping parades etc it must have seemed like nirvana. There is a picture of Ball Rd flats which were a notorious place in my youth and demolished in the mid 80's I think, but actually they were quite nice.

Today there are pictures of Splott - mostly of the Splott that no longer exists. What strikes me is that the houses that were demolished all seem to be in decent nick. I remember staying with my grandmother in Milford Street when she was one of the last ones to be moved out in the late 70's. It was a good solid, terraced house as far as I can recall and certainly in no worse condition than some of the houses you see in Cathays, Roath etc now.

I imagine that now a rolling programme of improvement would take place like the North Grangetown and West Adamsdown Regeneration Schemes rather than wholesale demolition but back then it was probably much easier to move people out to places like Fairwater, Penterbane, Trowbridge, Llanrumney, St Mellons etc. People must have been a lot less sensitive about 'precious greenfield land' then or perhaps they were less selfish and prepared to allow families to be housed in decent conditions.

It's also interesting to see the East Moors steel works and how much it dominated the local landscape. I recall it vaguely and it was huge. Not just the works itself but all of the railway tracks leading up to it, the ancillary buildings etc. Cardiff must have seemed a much more industrial place then, rather than the white collar town it has become.

Karl ... there's also some interesting photos of old Cardiff in the Local Studies catalogue on the Cardiff Libraries website here. Just click the "Images" radio button and type your search query into the box ...

Cheers James, I'll check that out.

Karl ... if that link doesn't work or if it says your session has timed-out then just click the "Local Studies" button from the top menu. They have a great collection of photographs to look through ...