Growing up in Mumbles (Mumbles Myths II)

Thirty-three years before my birth, my great-auntie Joan was born in Albert House. For the last years of her life, Joan lived in the house next door. Before she died I asked her about growing up in Mumbles.

She recalled, ‘Mumbles was a very happy and safe community; everyone knew everyone else and we had all we needed in the village. There were two cinemas – the Tivoli and the Regent – and a dance hall in the legion. In those days, the legion hall was on the sea-front, behind where Boots is now. It was a tin hut with a beautiful oak floor, wonderful for dancing. My sister, Gladys, and her husband, Jack, your grandparents (Auntie Joan points to me), were the stewards there and all us children used to go and help polish the floor. There was a buffet with chocolate biscuits and tea and coffee but no drinks: alcohol wasn’t allowed there. Doctors would play badminton in the hall during the week and there were three billiard tables that Jack used to iron.

‘I went to Oystermouth Church School and in the summer we’d have our annual outing to Collin’s field in Langland. West Cross and Newton seemed far away to us so this was a big treat. There’d be large enamel jugs full of tea and we’d have sandwiches and slab cake.

‘And every Saturday morning I’d go to dance class in the hut overlooking Rotherslade. It cost half a crown and at Christmas we’d go to the orphanage in Thistleboon to entertain the children. Billy Lockley’s dance troupe we were called.’

From the bedroom window in the last house she lived in Joan could look down on Dunns Lane and see Oystermouth library, which was built on the site of the old fire station. ‘I must have been about ten or eleven, when I watched, from my bedroom in Albert House, the Fire Station burning down! 

‘I left school at 14 and first of all I got a job in Ceaton’s newsagents, before I joined the Post Office as a telephonist in 1941. I used to catch the Mumbles train to work and each morning my mother would shout up at me, telling me I was going to miss it but from my bedroom I could hear it leaving Southend and then I knew I’d just have time to run down and catch it from Oystermouth Square. 

‘Then every Sunday afternoon, from when we were about 15, we’d go to fellowship in All Saints’. It was where I met Uncle Horace; it was where most of us met our husbands. And on Sunday evenings we used to go to Forte’s Ice Cream Parlour, when it used to be on the corner of the Square. Mr Macari was a lovely man. He’d say, ‘No need to go. It’s cold out there. Stay as along as you like.’ So we’d sit there all evening with just the one cup of coffee.’

Today the only Fortes’ ice cream parlour in Mumbles is at Limeslade. But the one on the corner of Oystermouth Square with its blue wicker chairs and glass-topped tables lives on in memories.