your comments
Georgia from Cardiff
I've lived here my entire life - the two parks are still here and reading all these comments makes me smile. I'm still in my teens so I don't know anything about any of this, seeing the photos made me smile too because I know where everything is and it's like seeing a 'before and after' on Riverside.
JACQUELINE BLACKMORE
Wow, just reading comments on Despencer Gardens. I was born in 1958 and lived in Neville St and my sister and myself actually went to Mrs Clemo's kindergarden and spent our playtimes at the park.
Mike, Canada
I was just a child living on Deburg St in the early 60's. Our house was a bombed out house. It was one of the newer houses that had suffered by bombs in the blitz. There was lots of evidence of those bombs. They were our playing fields. Somewhere south of Cowbridge Road was a BIG field that was bombed out. I remember meeting a young Gypsy kid collecting copper to sell. We helped him for hours. I went to Kitchener Road School. They gave me a letter writing set when we left for Canada. I remember the school being seperated into boys and girls in the playground by the water hose to the Lavs. I earned my first fountain pen there for penmanship. I also remember trainspotting at the Ninian Park train yards. I just don't remember how I got to do all of that at such a young age with no adults around. Things have sure changed.
Rajesh Hirani
I used live in Craddock Street where i would hang around with my school mates. I remember the floods in the 70s ... I remember the snow falls in the 80s ... the best days of my life.
Terry Morgan from Penmaen, Gwent
As a child I lived above Despenser Gardens Garage. Many happy memories of playing allies in DeBurgh Street and in the two parks opposite where I lived. Have many photos of those parks during the 50's and the Park keeper's house. Used to cycle to Barry and collect empty pop bottles off the beach to get the money on returning them to the shop.
Bob Elston, Sydney, Australia
David Evans - I may know you. I lived in Plantagenet Street 1935-47, went to Kitchener Road School and then Canton High. I remember the blitz and going to a shelter in Westgate Street flats as the searchlights and the ack-ack blazed away just like a firework show.
David Morgan
I got my first job here at Tudor Road in January 1954. The company was a wholesaler of car components called George Hazelby (Motor Factors) Ltd who had their head office in Bristol. Next door was a supplier of catering equipment and opposite was an old fashioned ironmongers. In those days we had the much missed trolley buses that used to stop outside our shop with a steady stream of passengers coming and going. At the bridge end of Tudor Road was a printing company where my grandfather worked for many years. People worked very hard in those days I even worked all the bank holidays without pay! The company prospered, I didn't! So I moved on to the steelworks in Splott where I trebled my income.
David Evans in Australia
I remember the terrible blitz on a cold January night. We could hear the bombs dropping. When it finished, a policeman told us to get out as a land-mine had not exploded a few houses up. We walked to the city lodge past bombed houses. Fire and destruction. It was a terrible sight.
When we got near the coal yards in Ninian Park Rd, we crawled under a rope and went down to our house. We went in and got clean clothes, after which we came out and walked towards Tudor Rd. When we got to Gloucester Rd - by the fish shop was another rope across the road. We went under that to be met by a policeman asking us where we had just come from. We told him, and he said he was waiting for the land mine to go off.
"After leaving Cardiff, I have travelled to many places - I've been behind the Berlin Wall, spent time with the Bedouin watching their wives dancing. I've been to Soweto at the time they were burning tyres around the neck of someone they didn't like, and to Angola when bullets were being fired at strangers....I am now in Australia. My singing is not as good as it was, so now I'm a magician."
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