Get the biggest stories sent straight to your inbox Sign up for regular updates and breaking news from WalesOnline Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Invalid Email

Sam Allen in his Cardiff Reminscences, published by Western Mail Ltd in 1918, recalled the time the celebrated Irish dramatist, author, poet and wit Oscar Wilde visited the Queen Street Hall Exhibition of 1884 to give a lecture on the beautiful decoration of the household.

We learn that “The effect of his epigramatic lecture was somewhat marred by the Philistine demonstration of some of the well known ‘dock boys’, who promenaded the rear of the hall displaying gigantic sun flowers, tiger lilies, and suchlike, somewhat to that aesthetic gentleman’s discomfiture.”

Wilde was aged 30 when he visited Cardiff and we now know that he was jailed for homosexuality 11 years later and that he died in 1900.

Sam Allen also reveals that the Queen Street Hall was later adapted as a popular business arcade and in addition to this large hall there was “a smaller hall or lecture theatre alongside and over the Working Street entrance.”

He also recalled the time Dr William Price the Chartist and cremationist visited the hall.

“Then in the great hall we had on several occasions the celebrated Dr Price, with his foxskin cap and scalloped green trousers.

“In one of the lectures, about the mundane egg, he horrified some of the fair sex by removing much of his costume, and appearing in green tights, with alphabetical decorations.

“He shouted as he came on to the front of the platform, ‘I am dressed in the garments of my forefathers,’ in which guise he insisted that I should accompany him through Crockherbtown to the Taff Vale Station, which I did followed by a considerable retinue of small and admiring boys.”

Dr William Price, who was born in Rudry but lived in Llantrisant, was one of the great eccentrics of his time.

He was regularly seen on the streets of Cardiff and was well known for his advocacy of free love and cremation.

He fathered two children when in his 80s, and when he died in 1893 thousands turned up to witness his cremation at Llantrisant.

Meanwhile, when the Town Council in 1886 changed the name Crockherbtown to Queen Street there were many objections.

Alas, all to no avail.

A Cardiff Directory for 1858 tells us that on the approach to the villas in Crockherbtown there were to be found neatly kept flower beds while dwarf shrubs and evergreens gave a graceful taste to the increasing number of respectable inhabitants.

One of the inhabitants had this to say about his house: “It had a beautiful old fashioned and wonderfully productive garden. I grew figs and mulberries there, and there was mistletoe growing on the apple trees.

“In those days the theatre stood about where the Park Hotel stands now, and there was a lane known as Bradley’s Lane going up where Park Place is now.

“Mr Bradley’s father was a hunting man and had stables in Womanby Street.”

While William Rees, author of Cardiff: A History of the City, writes: “In 1855, Queen Street within the walls was said scarcely to deserve the name of a street for it was merely a lane with about 24 houses, linking St John Street to Crockerton.”

:: You can send your stories/pictures to Brian Lee,Cardiff Remembered, South Wales Echo, Six Park Street,Cardiff, CF10 1XR or e-mail him at brianlee4@virginmedia.com.uk