Stuart’s Photography

View this set of photos as part of my Merthyr Road project on Flickr.

For most of its life, the Glamorganshire Canal reached the Bristol Channel via a Sea Lock built at Lower Layer, part of the tidal estuary formed by the mouth of the River Taff. Authorised by a second Act of Parliament (the Glamorganshire Canal Act, which passed through the Lords on 26th April 1796, a year which included such notable company as the Duty on Hats Act), this Sea Lock replaced an earlier lock (also known as Sea Lock) which had been operating since the 29th of June, 1793. (The earlier lock had stood on the river bend to the north of where Clarence Road now crosses the Taff). The new lock opened on 27th June, 1798.

Between the new Sea Lock and the southern end of St Mary’s Street was the stretch of canal known as Sea Lock Pond. Here, the wharves were built to transfer iron and coal, from the canal boats to the larger, ocean-going vessels that came into the Pond through the Sea Lock. Some of the land for these wharves fell under the compulsory purchase provisions of the Act, but most of it did not, guaranteeing local landowners (principly the Marquess of Bute) good incomes on what had previously been open moorland.

The northern end of Sea Lock Pond terminated at Cardiff’s South Gate. (Cardiff was a small walled town of little importance before the Canal and docks arrived). In 1802, permission was given to remove the Gate, and connect St Mary’s Street with the canal wharves beyond.

Trade down the Canal was to transform both Cardiff itself and the moorland south of the town. Bute Street was laid down in around 1830, forming the eastern edge of Butetown (work on which began in 1846). The new TVR railway (which still exists today as the rail link between Cardiff Bay and Cardiff Queen Street Station) made its way directly to the east of Bute Street. This, in combination with the two huge docks built by the Bute Estate to the east of the Canal, was eventually able to ship millions of tonnes of materials and goods from Cardiff Docks, as opposed to just hundreds of thousands of tonnes through the Canal.

Although the Canal gradually fell into disuse from the late 1800’s as both iron and coal began to run out, it was the aquisition by the Cardiff Corporation on 1st January 1944 which spelt the end of Sea Lock, and hence the Canal as a whole. The City of Cardiff looked on the Sea Lock Pond as prime land for redevelopment. By now much of the Canal was unpassable, effectively leaving Sea Lock Pond (or Sea Lock Pound as it was now known) as just another harbour in the Cardiff docklands, but wartime decree forced the Corporation to continue to run Sea Lock Pond until the early 1950’s.

Late at night on 5th December 1951, the sand dredger Catherine Ethel collided with the lock gates at Sea Lock. With the lock gates destroyed in this unfortunate accident, the Canal waters (which, by this time, appear to have only been the water left in the Sea Lock Pond) emptied out into the Taff in a tidal wave.

The Canal’s 158 years of operation had finally come to an end. Within 50 years, the rest of the Cardiff Dock area too would close, leaving Cardiff - a small town that became a capital city on the back of its links between the industrial valleys and the sea - to once again revert back to being a market town.

(As always, I’m indebted to the historical research published in the excellent Glamorganshire and Aberdare Canals - Volume 2, by Stephen Rowson and Ian L. Wright. If you want to know a lot more about Sea Lock, or any other aspect of the Canal, I can’t recommend their award-winning books highly enough).

Thoughts on the Day

It will come as no surprise to hear that Sea Lock itself, and the whole Sea Lock Pond are no more. Sea Lock, the Pond, and Butetown have suffered that most terrible of fates - they have been redeveloped. Despite numerous efforts - including such extreme lengths as siting the Welsh Assembly down in the Cardiff Docks when it should have been sited somewhere like Aberwyswyth) - the whole area south of Cardiff’s old town wall continues to feel disconnected from the rest of the city. I’ll look at the regeneration of Cardiff Docks in a later article in this series.

Sea Lock itself probably lies underneath the bridge that carries the A4232 across the river estuary. That matches up with the last photo published in GaAC Volume 2, on page 352. To the south of the bridge lies the Cardiff Yacht Club and the new wetlands created as part of the official vandalism that created the Cardiff Bay Barriage, whilst the river bank immediately north of the bridge has been redeveloped into Hamadryad Park. It’s actually possible to get from the wetlands to the park by walking under the bridge, and I highly recommend it; the park is a very peaceful place indeed.

Trying to trace the route of the Sea Lock Pond by the surviving buildings is very difficult indeed. Unlike in Taff Vale, where many of the original buildings that were built along the side of the Canal still exist, down here redevelopment and regeneration has swept most of the history away.

The majority of the length of Sea Lock Pond has been turned into an open space called Canal Park. You won’t find this space listed on Cardiff City Council’s website, but it’s there. From Sea Lock at the southern end up to the back of St Mary’s Church in Butetown in the north, Canal Park runs along the route of the old Canal and its wharves, and if you look closely enough, there are memories of the former canal hidden away in plain sight.

Sadly, I couldn’t find a single sign to commemorate the canal. What signs there are are notice boards for the local community. The kids growing up in the area today, and playing in the park itself, have nothing to read to remind them of the past. All that’s left to stimulate an interest in the history of the Canal is the name of the park itself, the names ‘Sea Lock’ and ‘Glamorganshire Canal’ laid out in brick at the point where James Street crosses the Park (the sight of a former swing bridge across the Canal, although to look at it today I think anyone would be amazed to learn that there was once a bridge at that spot), and not much else.

Heading north through the park towards Cardiff city centre, I found a few things to remember the canal by, ranging from the obvious to the obscure. At the obvious end of things is this play area flanked by mooring capsterns. If you look closely at the paving, the outline of a narrow boat has been incorporated into the design. About half-way between obvious and obscure are some of the old buildings that border onto the park. There aren’t many left, but there are just enough to show where the wharves might have originally been. My favourite item, though, is this obscure post set into a concrete base. This is the base and crown post from one of the canalside cranes (see GaAC p. 293), although how anyone growing up in the area is supposed to know that isn’t immediately obvious.

I’m not sure what the merit is of preserving a piece of history whilst at the same time not leaving a message to tell the next generation what has been preserved. It’s a maddingly frustrating story that’s repeated all along the route of the canal, and one that the folks I meet on each of these trips wish would come to an end.

Cardiff should be proud of what the Canal (and the railways that came afterwards) did for the place.

Favourite Photo From The Shoot

This shot of Canal Park is my favourite photo of the shoot. I like the amount of depth to the photo, thanks to the large number of subjects in the shot, but at the same time the use of a longer focal length has flattened everything. My photo of Windsor Esplanade, Lecuna, and the A4232 road bridge is a close second, as is the shot I took from underneath the A4232 road bridge.

Three Lessons From The Shoot

• It often pays to go back to the same place two or three times before doing a shoot. I’m not someone who can just look at a location in a book, and then head straight there to get everything in one go. I’d been down to Sea Lock a couple of times before, and matched up what I’d seen for myself with what I’d read in GaAC Volume 2 before heading down for the final shoot. I’m glad I did - I wouldn’t have thought to include the shots of the A4232 bridge (which stands on the old Sea Lock location) otherwise.
• Google Earth is a real gift for projects like this. It was instrumental in matching up photos published in GaAC with the street layout today to help me find Sea Lock itself.
• During a shoot, take as many photos as you can. Don’t ignore something just because you don’t know what it is at the time. I didn’t find out what the canal crane post was until leafing through GaAC Volume 2 several days after the shoot. It would have been very easy for me to have not photographed it.

Post Production

It was a cheery sunny morning, and I wanted these photos to reflect that. Butetown is one of those parts of Cardiff that has a certain reputation, and I was very worried that another black and white set would do nothing to show a different side to the place. Canal Park is the major open space in Butetown, and for that I think it’s fantastic.

Looking at the photos a week or so after processing them, I’m not happy with the colour. It’s too eye-popping, and doesn’t sit well with all the black and white shots from other sets in the Merthyr Road series. Time for a re-think before I publish my next article!

Found On Flickr

Whilst there are plenty of photos on Flickr about Cardiff Bay, I had no luck in finding many modern pictures of Canal Park. But I did manage to find a photo of the Sea Lock area taken from a kite, plus two older photos that also appear in GaAC Volume 2.

• Kite photograph of Cardiff Bay, by nick_russill
• Glamorganshire Canal, by Ben Salter
• Cardiff Docks, by Ben Salter