Remembered

THE OXFORD ATLAS shows 23 entries for Newtown. Two are in Wales: one in Powys, the other in Blaenau Gwent. But the Newtown you won't find on any map is the one in the centre of Wales's capital.

A community of just six streets beside the Butetown Docks, the district of Newtown, Cardiff, was built during the Industrial Revolution to house local workers from emerging industries. When Welsh workers went on strike during the 1870s the Marquis of Bute gave their work, and their homes, to Irish immigrants fleeing the potato famine. In those tiny streets they lived in squalid conditions, often nine or ten to a room.

"If you had a loaf of bread you'd give your neighbour halff," Mary Sullivan.  As locals moved to other areas, the Irish newcomers quickly made Newtown their own. "Little Ireland", as it became known, had a school and its own church, St Paul's. The church in particular was central to the devout Catholic community. Musical and sporting talents like boxing legend Jimmy Driscoll were also nurtured. It was, as resident Mary Sullivan - whose Irish gt.grandmother emigrated there - recalls, "a town within a city."

Now Mary and a group of other residents have joined together to form the Newtown Association in a pledge to commemorate the area and bring its colourful history back to life.

Back in its heyday Newtown wasn't a place you'd just happen upon; it was surrounded by docks and railway lines. But if you did take the time to walk there from the city centre, you would find yourself in a place where everyone knew everybody else, and doors were always open. In Mary's words, "if you had a loaf of bread you'd give your neighbour half."

Unfortunately, as mass urban renewal programmes began after World War Two, the charm of a community making-do was lost on the local authorities. There was concern about the state of housing around the Bay and at the number of children who drowned while playing by the Docks. Talk of Newtown being demolished spread. Angry local residents campaigned against it. Most of them, like Mary Sullivan, then 18, were young, aspirational people who wanted marriages, careers and families beyond their front doors - but didn't want the community their parents and grandparents had so tirelessly built to be destroyed.

When Newtown's favourite son, Jimmy Driscoll died in 1925 100,000 people lined the streets to watch his funeral cortege go by.
After the developers won out and much of Newtown was formally demolished in 1966, most residents were rehoused across the City. New residents moved onto the surviving roads - Tyndall Street and Ellen Street. 34-year-old Maxine Ryan, who moved to Tyndall Street as a child in the late 1970s, remembers the derelict area as "a giant adventure playground", where community spirit prevailed. "One day when money was tight and we didn't have electricity, a neighbour ran an extension lead in through our window," she recalls.

During the early 1990s, the cluster of streets which had made up Newtown underwent yet another phase of development when the Cardiff Bay Development Corporation was set up to regenerate the wider community. Meanwhile, events in Mary Sullivan's life took her back to her roots. Shortly before her mother's death, she had observed her listening to an audio tape of a nostalgic poem penned by Newtown resident Tommy Walsh in tribute to the town. Driven by her grief, Mary transcribed it. Ten verses long, the poem's last stanza reads: "But you won't find any Epitaph/Or a plaque set in the Walls/To say that this was Newtown/The Parish of St. Paul's."

Mary says: "It made me determined that in my lifetime there would be a memorial." From that determination grew a proposal to build a memorial garden for the purpose of keeping the Newtown name alive. A committee of former residents secured thousands of pounds in grant money from the Arts Council of Wales and Cardiff Bay Development Corporation. After 10 years of planning, the garden, designed by Cardiff artist David Mackie, was formally opened on St Patrick's Day 2005 at a ceremony that included Rhodri Morgan and Charlotte Church. It is situated at the top end of what is still known as Tyndall Street.

"We would have preferred to have it in the middle of what used to be Newtown, but that land was the only land we could get," explains Mary, whose husband also grew up in Newtown. "Eventually I see all the warehouses they've got there now disappearing. They'll put something decent there, and the garden will be right in the heart of it." She shakes her head at the mention of the name Atlantic Wharf: "It means absolutely nothing."

To the younger generation, Mary might seem like just another grandmother harking back to some imaginary golden age.
She insists, however, she's not looking at Newtown through rose-tinted spectacles, "It had its fair share of people drinking too much and swearing too much. I remember fights in the street. You didn't need to go and watch EastEnders. We had our own."

But Mary sees a different side to the areas supposedly spoilt by crime: "If you went out into town you didn't have to worry about taxis. You walked home along Bute Street. It was controlled by prostitutes at the time. But those prostitutes made those of us who were going out feel safer. They'd look out for us. We felt protected by them. Which is a strange thing to say, but you didn't get buses into town. There weren't any." She smiles: "It was great."

Maxine Roper

UNO, Cardiff School of Journalism