Want the latest news from Swansea sent straight to your inbox? Don't miss anything from your city! Sign up for regular updates Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Invalid Email

You really wouldn't have recognised the Swansea of the 1930s. It was something quite special.

Its elegant department stores and beauty parlours, and streets lined with historic buildings, would have been packed full with shoppers, buying everything from corsets to Rolls Royces.

Then came the Second World War and, more pertinently, February, 1941.

It was a month which has defined the city of Swansea as we know it forever.

In that month, Swansea was one of 53 urban areas to be hit by aerial bombing and incendiaries.

It became known as the Three Night Blitz and saw 60 to 70 enemy aircraft drop an estimated 800 high-explosive bombs and 30,000 incendiary bombs on what was then still a town, the worst coming between February 19 and 21.

The Guildhall, Glynn Vivian Art Gallery and the old Swansea Central Library in Alexandra Road might still have been standing but, that apart, all that remained of the town centre were heaps of rubble and the jagged, charred remains of stores and offices.

The list of destroyed buildings in the commercial centre of Swansea included the central market, which in itself housed 415 small shops and stalls, along with 352 other shops, 108 office buildings, 72 industrial buildings, 87 houses, 28 pubs and 10 churches and chapels.

What it meant for Swansea and many other towns and cities across Britain was a huge rebuilding process which has shaped them forever.

The decisions that were made back then have had a huge and lasting impact on the place we know today.

Dr Dinah Evans, an honorary research associate at Bangor University, has researched the rebuilding of Swansea and many of the issues it raised, and written a book.

Her work observes how Swansea was before the blitz, noting how an official survey of the town was carried out in 1936, revealing how there had been 10 department stores, 51 multiple shops, 13 co-operative stores, and a range of individual shops which offered a wide assortment of goods and services.

The market covered over two acres and boasted niche stores selling silks or other such luxury items, while others focused on goods such as umbrellas or corsets.

There were shops selling fine art, books, hand-made shoes and millinery. Jewellers rubbed shoulders with florists or shops selling travel goods.

If you wanted to hire a Daimler or a Rolls Royce car you could do that too and some of Swansea’s beauty parlours could have given even the most elegant twenty-first century establishment a run for its money.

(Image: South Wales Evening Post archives) (Image: South Wales Evening Post archives)

It was a time, Dr Evans observes, when stores were regularly improved to boast grand staircases or newly installed lifts, soft rubber floors to walk on, central heating radiators in the ceilings, vacuum cleaning attachments in the walls and anti-fire sprinklers ensuring buildings were pleasant and safe places to shop.

Competition was rampant and store owners were driven to be innovative.

The famous old David Evans store even built an Indian village in the shop, manned by staff from the Indian sub-continent, all in traditional dress, complete with an Indian jungle where live monkeys could be found scampering about.

(Image: South Wales Evening Post archive) (Image: WALES NEWS SERVICE) (Image: WALES NEWS SERVICE)

(Image: media wales)

Dr Evans said: "As a child I spent a lot of time with my maternal grandmother and one evening she called me to the front porch of her home and pointed out a glow in the night sky with the words ‘that’s what it looked like when Swansea was burning’.

"Of course, there were no fires this time, rather the council had introduced sodium street lighting into the town and it was that which was reflected in the sky but, for the first time, my grandmother then spoke to me at length of her sadness for the town that had been ruined in the blitz, the loss of so many beautiful buildings, her great affection for the market and especially for the Ben Evans store which stood where Castle Gardens are now.

"After completing my PhD thesis on the dynamics of Labour Party politics in Swansea in the forties and fifties, I decided to revisit the Swansea of the 1930s that my grandmother had spoken of so fondly that night.

"Swansea was a town that had developed organically over the centuries and the book examines the process of rebuilding that town centre over the twenty years following the blitz.

"It should also help in understanding why, decades later and after years of reconstruction, when in 2006 I spoke with many of the town’s older residents as part of a radio programme about Swansea, they were still nostalgic for the old, pre-war Swansea."

Dr Evans's book observes how, when putting forward plans for rebuilding Swansea after the blitz, the council’s borough engineer, Heath, had said he wanted to plan for "business not pleasure".

But many of the drawings and paintings the council produced at the time show a utopian view of the ‘new’ Swansea, and a town a world away from pre-war Swansea.

The illustrations showcased a modern town centre with spacious, well-laid streets edged with uncluttered, streamlined structures, all ideally placed to service the demands of a dynamic, new town centre. They reflect the scale of the ambition of council officials for their rebuilt town.

(Image: West Glamorgan Archive Service) (Image: West Glamorgan Archive Service) (Image: West Glamorgan Archive Service)

Roads are wide and, at junctions with other major streets, large roundabouts are planned to keep the flow of traffic moving smoothly.

But the routes of the proposed roads within the town of Swansea were a hugely contentious issue, not least because of their impact on the proposed development.

The town’s old medieval road patterns were believed to be unsuitable for a modern town and their replacement by a more efficient system capable of dealing with the increased traffic seemed inevitable.

The emphasis was clear, traffic in and through the rebuilt town centre was to be free-flowing and this reinforced the belief that engineers tended to focus more on traffic flow than on the experience of the pedestrian.

(Image: South Wales Evening Post archives) (Image: West Glamorgan Archive Service)

There had long been a sense of civic pride in the town, a feeling nurtured by the council but, when it tried to manage the reconstruction of the town in its own way, it came in for a lot of criticism from some government ministries about how it was going about things.

Government planners at the Ministry of Town and Country Planning continually tried to educate the council as to how it should proceed with the reconstruction process and there were often disputes between central government and the local authority.

Dr Evans observed how, after the Blitz, the council found itself in an unparalleled situation and, having no experience on which to draw, had been forced to feel its way forward.

Three variations of a processional, or boulevard from the Guildhall into the town centre were produced for discussion by council officials at the time, reflecting an appetite within the authority for an imposing scheme that would boost the town's civic image, none of which came to fruition as they were deemed to be "lacking in boldness and imagination" by the ministry's regional planning office.

The council decided to move away from taking immediate, positive steps to rehabilitate the town and instead focused on addressing the immediate issues that had been raised by the bombing, the destruction of many food shops, the dangerous state of many of the buildings, the damage to the sewerage system as well as to gas and electricity provision.

The Town and Country Planning Act of 1944, which allowed land to be transferred quickly to council ownership, had legislated that war damaged areas could be acquired by local authorities for reconstruction purposes.

(Image: West Glamorgan Archive Service) (Image: South Wales Evening Post)

Councils were required to apply to the Ministry for permission to compulsory purchase the land in order to rebuild and redevelop it. Plans were then presented to a public inquiry which would give objectors an opportunity to present their views.

Swansea County Borough Council made an application for an order declaring that about 281 acres of central Swansea should be subject to compulsory purchase for the purpose of dealing with war damage.

But when it reached a public inquiry at the Brangwyn Hall in 1946, the list of objectors was extensive.

There were 653 objectors, including prominent businesses, corporations and organisations of Swansea, and individual traders.

Most objectors argued the bulk of the area under consideration had not sustained war damage, and that the roads scheme proposed would have a damaging effect on the prosperity of High Street and Wind Street, as it was to be viewed as a 'precinct' and apart from the shopping area.

But Dr Evans said ministry planners had their own agenda, and paid little attention to what the council believed was important for the future wellbeing of Swansea, or to its efforts to make the town economically viable so it could regain its reputation as a place to do business and trade.

Footage of Swansea back in the fifties...

Video Loading Video Unavailable Click to play Tap to play The video will start in 8 Cancel Play now

Despite the strength of the arguments, the council's plan prevailed, with modifications in respect to 134 acres.

In the end, two large dual carriageways were built, the Kingsway and Princess Way, which dissected the shopping areas, making access to some parts difficult.

Dr Evans observed: "Although the immediate impact was not obvious, within two or three decades, the layout of these two roads would succeed in cutting off and demeaning the once affluent commercial areas to the east around High Street, reducing them to streets of cheap discount goods or charity shops.

"Ultimately, and sadly, that also would inevitably be the fate of the once smart stores fronting onto the Kingsway."

The council had wanted to recreate that same feeling of enthusiasm for the town as it had before the bombing, but the Government had to face the huge task of overseeing the reconstruction of the bomb-damaged country at a time when both it, and local authorities, were having to deal with acute shortages of funds and materials.

"This shortage of finance and resources would ensure that Swansea Council would be unable to fulfil its vision for the town centre," Dr Evans added.

Dr Dinah Evans's book is called A New, Even Better, Abertawe: Rebuilding Swansea 1941-1961 , and you can purchase a copy by visiting West Glamorgan Archive Service shop at Swansea Civic Centre, or head to the following website .