I am encouraged to write this after reading the memory contributed by Clive Bennett of Fairwater predating 1949, the year my family moved into a new council house at 1 Kerrigan Close.

Plas Mawr Road

There is a footpath that runs parallel to Ferrier Ave. This was our short cut from the estate to wards Fairwater Green.

Scouting

Opposite where the footpath comes onto Plas Mawr was the meeting place for the 1st Fairwater, 64th Cardiff cub pack, scout troop and rover crew. You had to be eight to join and I recall being allowed to join in 1950, a couple of months short of the needed birthday. We met in a couple of ancient, one-story farm buildings (cattle sheds?) that ran along the western boundary of the field. Whenever I enter a dry dusty room I recall cub meetings in Fairwater.

In 1954 my family emigrated to Canada. One of the first things I did once we had a place to live in Toronto was to join the local scout troop. My family came back to Cardiff for a holiday in 1958 and through a friend from days as a cub I was welcomed back into Senior Scout Troop and had a wonderful time camping in Saundersfoot on the Gower Coast.

From the path that ran along Plas Mawr Road you were very aware of the small muddy 'cliff' along which the footpath ran. The face of a huge rock was visible in the side of the cliff and I often had dreams of an expedition to dig around that rock as though it where a door to an underground passage. If memory serves, from a visit a couple of years ago, that muddy cliff is now shored up with a wall.

The Brook

A brook ran parallel to part of Plas Mawr Road. It came out from under the wall of what was then a training school for the merchant marine (still shown as a College on my map) and was crossed by Fairwater Road.

The most vivid memory I have is of a small wooden shed built over the stream, in what I judge to be just south of Fairwater Road where milk in tins (did we call them churns?) was put to cool. Most mornings, on the way to school, we would hear the clank of the tins being put into the shed. Near the shed, on the other side of a low wall, was an apple tree and in the autumn term we would buy windfalls for a penny.

The invalid's chair

I befriended a boy who arrived at Fairwater Junior School (when it was still in army huts on Bwlch Road) some months after the school year had started and he invited me home. This turned out to be a very large house set in grounds with a swimming pool on the east side of Plas Mawr Road, south of the college and north of Fairwater Road.

I visited the house several times and recall swimming in a very green (algae?) pool and having my first taste of beef-tea. In a stable at the back of the house we found an invalid's chair what was propelled and steered by a hand-crank at the front. We spent hours 'driving' around the yard. I can only think that the place was a home or hospice of some kind though I have no memory of seeing patients or meeting the boy's parents. He was not at the school for long.

Prefabs

Along much of the west side of Plas Mawr Road there were council houses called prefabs. We could get of the Road and walk along a lane that fronted these homes. My grandparents had a prefab on Hazel Road which I redall was the last turining on the left before Plas Mawr joined Pentrebane Road / Pwll Melin Road. The prefabs were made in America and I presume were bought to help ease the shortage of public housing after World War 2. They had fridges - the first I had seen - and I realize now that this was a real luxury.

In contrast our new (1949) council house had a larder; open to the elements through a grating in the lower back wall and with a thick cement shelf on which our supply of Corona pop was kept to stay cool! My Nan used to make lemon barley water lollies in her fridge-a treat for my sister and me and friends on the way home from school.

The end of Plas Mawr Road

I cannot recall if Waterhall Road was a continuation of Plas Mawr in the mid 1950s. I do know that there was only open fields north of Pwll Melin where it went past our corner house on Kerrigan Close. But that is another story.

Christopher Smart - Ottawa, Canada - September 2008