by Mike Hall
1942: British commandos completed their training at Cardiff Docks for the planned raid on the dry dock at St Nazaire in German-occupied France. As part of this daring raid an American destroyer rammed into the lock gates and was blown up. This enterprise was successful in putting the dock, one of only two large enough to take the powerful German battleship Tirpitz, out of action, but 169 British servicemen were killed and 216 taken prisoner. Later in the war Cardiff Docks was the location for the manufacture of parts for the ‘Mulberry Harbours’ used in the D-Day landings. (J.H. Morgan, ‘Cardiff at War’ in Stewart Williams (ed.) The Cardiff Book, Vol.3, 1974)
March 15th
1961: George Thomas MP (later Speaker of the House of Commons and then Lord Tonypandy) officially opened Waterhall County Secondary School. The headmaster was Mr R.A. Jones. (Stewart Williams, Cardiff Yesterday)
1997: A poignant day for rugby fans at the Arms Park. It was the final Five Nations match before demolition began to make way for the planned Millennium Stadium. Jonathan Humphreys captained Wales and it was the last game for Jonathan Davies and England legends Will Carling and Rob Andrew. England spoiled the party by beating Wales 34-13 but Rob Howley salvaged some Welsh pride by scoring the last international try there, 113 years after the first (scored by another Cardiff player, William Norton). Eleven years later the new stadium accommodated the largest-ever crowd to attend a sporting event in Wales, 74,609 for the Grand Slam decider between Wales and France. (Steve Lewis, The Priceless Gift: 125 Years of Welsh Rugby Captains, Mainstream, 2005 / Western Mail)
March 16th
1896: In a football international at Cardiff, Wales lost 1-9 to England, their worst home defeat. (Dennis Morgan, Farewell to Ninian Park, 2008)
1932: On her first visit to Cardiff, the Duchess of York (later Queen Elizabeth II) was presented with a magnificent thatched model house, ‘Y Bwthyn Bach’. This gift from the City of Cardiff was described by the Lord Mayor, Alderman E.C. Melhuish, as ‘a perfect house in miniature, replete with fittings and furnishings in every way similar to an adult’s home but built to the scale of a little child of six years of age. The house was 22ft long and 8ft wide. It weighed ten tons. It had been the idea of E.C. Morgan Willmott who designed it all. Furniture, including a little Welsh dresser, curtains and drapery had been made by the Roath Furnishing Company. The presentation had been made by Miss L.V. Walters of the Welsh Terrier Society. The ceremony took place at the Greyfriars Hall. (Stewart Williams, Cardiff Yesterday)
March 17th
1570: Death at Hampton Court of William Herbert, first Earl of Pembroke, a member of a noble family which played the leading role in Cardiff’s story from the sixteenth century. The son of Sir Richard Herbert, he had been a hot-headed young man who carried on dynastic family feuds with great enthusiasm (see February 2nd). He became a leading figure at Henry VIII’s court. Henry heaped favours and honours upon him, including the gift of Cardiff Castle. He married Ann Parr, the sister of Henry’s sixth wife, Catherine. He was knighted in 1544. After Henry’s death, he became one of the guardians of the young King Edward VI. He became a Knight of the Garter in 1549 and was made Baron Herbert of Cardiff and first Earl of Pembroke in 1551. Much of his wealth was spent in making the castle a more appropriate residence for a rising statesman. However, now only the Herbert Tower now remains from this period. (Dictionary of National Biography, OUP)
1979: Wales beat England to secure their fourth successive Triple Crown. (Robert Cole & Stuart Farmer, The Wales Rugby Miscellany, Sports Vision Publishing, 2008)
March 18th
1848: ‘The Richest Baby in Britain’ succeeded to the title on the death of his father, the second Marquis of Bute. He inherited a position of great wealth and privilege. In 1766 the heiress of the Pembrokes (see March 17th) married a Scottish nobleman, Lord Mountstuart, whose family took their title from the Isle of Bute on the West Coast of Scotland. Mountstuart’s father saw Cardiff Castle as the ideal place of residence for his son and employed Henry Holland and Capability Brown to renovate it. By 1848 the mineral resources of the Bute family estates in South Wales had made the Butes fabulously wealthy. The second Marquis grew up to be a studious aesthetic young man, fascinated by archaeology and religion. At the age of 21 he converted to Roman Catholicism. In 1865 he met the architect William Burges (see March 20th) and together they transformed Cardiff Castle into the medieval fantasy that we see today. (Simon Jenkins, Wales: Churches, Houses, Castles, Allen Lane, 2008)
March 19th
1921: Francis Mostyn was enthroned as Archbishop of Cardiff. He was the first post-Reformation Roman Catholic leader in Wales to have been born in the Principality and his appointment was widely acclaimed. It was Mostyn who lobbied for March 1st, St David’s Day, to be celebrated as Wales’ National Day. In 1934 Pope Pius XI asked him to lead the fight against ‘the modern tendency towards immorality in public entertainment’. He set up the Cardiff Board of Catholic Action which threatened that Catholics would boycott cinemas unless ‘the adulation of the gangster and the immoral and easy divorce themes were eliminated’. Cinema managers were told not to show films that celebrated low public morals or ‘lowered the fundamental principles of religion’. The campaign was so successful that the film industry felt compelled to set up a panel which vetted film scripts before production. This lasted well into the 1950s. In 1934, when Mostyn celebrated the Golden Jubilee of his priesthood, the Earl of Dumfries described him as ‘the best-loved man in Wales’. (John O’Sullivan & Bryn Jones, Cardiff: A Centenary Celebration, The History Press, 2005)
March 20th
1881: The death of William Burges (born in 1827), the architect responsible for the restoration of Cardiff Castle in collaboration with the Marquis of Bute (see March 18th). Burges’ artistic vision offered an escape from nineteenth century industrialism and a return to an imagined medieval ‘golden age’.
‘Supremely confident in any style,’ writes Simon Jenkins in his 2008 book Wales: Churches, Houses, Castles, ‘Burges could design a palace, a stained-glass window or a set of toiletries to order. In the bonding of Bute and Burges, money met art in the most fruitful alliance in Victorian aesthetics … The exterior of the castle peers over the battlements of the wall that separates it from the city. Corners are adorned with watch-towers, pinnacles, flags and banners. The clock-tower might be from Carcassonne’.
Sadly, the work on the castle – and the Butes’ ‘holiday cottage’, Castell Coch – were left unfinished on Burges’ death. The Bute family never again spent more than two months a year in Wales. In 1947 the then Marquis generously donated both properties to the people of Wales and they are now major tourist attractions visited by thousands every year.
March 21st
1713: Birth in Llandaff of Francis Lewis, one of the signatories of the American Declaration of Independence. He was the only son of a clergyman, also called Francis. Orphaned at an early age, he went to live with an aunt and uncle. He went into commerce in London but emigrated to Whitestone, Long Island, in 1734. Taken prisoner while serving as a mercantile agent for the British, he was allegedly ‘shipped to France in a box’ in 1756. On his release he returned to America and became active in the cause of Independence. He became a member of the New York Provincial Congress and was elected as a delegate for New York to the Continental Congress in 1775. His home at Whitestone was destroyed by British troops during the War of Independence. His son, Morgan Lewis, fought in the war and later became Governor of New York State. (T.D. Breverton, The Welsh Almanac, Glyndwr Publications, 2002 / Wikipedia)
March 22nd
1949: John Toshack, football player for Liverpool and Wales, and later Manager of the Welsh national team, was born in Cardiff. A striker, he was part of the successful Liverpool team of the 1970s where he forged a forward partnership with Kevin Keegan. He had started his career with Cardiff City, signing for them as a 16 year old (see November 13th) before moving to Liverpool in November 1970 for a fee of £110,000. During his time with the club he s
cored ninety-six goals and Liverpool won the First Division Championship three times, the UEFA Cup twice and the FA Cup once. His career was, however, blighted by injuries and in 1978 he moved to Swansea City as player-manager. He was very successful there, taking Cardiff’s deadly local rivals from Fourth Division to First in just three seasons. He had two spells as manager of Wales, the second ending when he resigned in September 2010 following a 0-1 away defeat to Montenegro in a Euro 2012 qualifying game. (T.D. Breverton, The Welsh Almanac, Glyndwr Publications, 2002 / Wikipedia)
March 23rd
1973: The death of theatre impresario Binkie Beaumont, whose productions dominated the West End of London for over twenty years. Born in South Wales, his long career in theatre management began in Cardiff before he moved on to work at the Barnes Theatre in London. In 1936 he teamed up with H.M.Tennent in stage production and management. Both men were dissatisfied with what they saw as the low standard on offer in the West End at that time and were convinced that they could do better. Tennent died in 1941 but Binkie Beaumont went on to become one of the leading theatrical figures of the 1940s and ’50s, particularly adept at staging polished shows with big-name casts. He was later rather unkindly described as ‘the camp baron of the profitable comedy and the well-made play’. His star waned in the 1960s with the onset of the ‘Angry Young Man’ and ‘kitchen-sink drama’. When John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger was premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, Beaumont walked out at the interval. Nevertheless, he was one of the founder members of the board of the National Theatre and continued working until his death at the age of 64. (T.D. Breverton, The Welsh Almanac, Glyndwr Publications, 2002 / Wikipedia)
March 24th
1944: Cyncoed-born Brian Evans, a Flight Lieutenant in the RAF, took part in the famous ‘Great Escape’ from Stalag Luft 3. Having learned that fellow prisoner, USAF Lieutenant Emmett Cook, had studied Mechanical and Civil Engineering before the war, Evans recruited him to assist with the planning of the escape attempt. Unbeknown to their German captors, they set out to map the camp as accurately as possible. Using a protractor and a home-made sight, they set base-lines and triangulated from them to measure the distances required. Thanks to their painstaking work, the escapees knew that their tunnels would have to be at least 280ft long to reach the trees which would give them the cover that was essential if they were to get away. Seventy-six prisoners escaped but in the days that followed all but three of them were recaptured. Evans was last seen alive on March 31st but was then caught and summarily executed by the Gestapo. (T.D. Breverton, The Welsh Almanac, Glyndwr Publications, 2002 / www.usmilitariaforum.com)
1946: The Cardiff Waxworks at 90 St Mary Street that had been such a feature of the pre-war city was sold off by its owners and ended up at ‘Coney Island’, Porthcawl. (Stewart Williams, Cardiff Yesterday)
March 25th
1788: The newly-constructed lighthouse on Flat Holm came into operation to make the shipping channel up the Bristol Channel to Cardiff and Bristol safer. The lighthouse, operated by Trinity House, replaced an older one constructed because of the frequent shipwrecks in the area. (John Richards, Cardiff: A Maritime History, The History Press, 2005)
1872: ‘On Thursday night a fire broke out on the barque ‘Giulietta’. The vessel was on a voyage from Swansea to Trieste with 260 tons of coal and was lying in Penarth Roads, windbound. About nine o’clock, a fire was discovered aft and expanding rapidly. Every exertion was made by the officers and crew of the ship but without much success. The flames continued to increase until they ultimately enveloped nearly the whole of the after part of the barque. The fire was seen by Captain Evans of the Coastguard Service and he and his men pulled off to the burning vessel in their boat. All their efforts were ineffectual in extinguishing the fire and it was resolved, as there was no chance of saving the vessel, to scuttle her. A steam tug took her in tow. She slipped her cable and she was taken onto the east mud out of the navigation channel, where she speedily sank, her top-mast and yards being visible at high water.’ (E. Alwyn Benjamin, Penarth 1841-71, A Glimpse of the Past, D. Brown & Sons, 1980)
March 26th
1971: All work at the Esso works in Ferry Road, Grangetown, had to be suspended when an oil tank went up in flames. A ‘water-curtain’ was put up to protect the oil storage tanks nearest to the bitumen plant. Once supplies arrived, the tank that was on fire was engulfed with carbon dioxide to snuff out the flames. (M.J. Mace, A Brief History of Cardiff Fire Brigade, 1977)
1984: By this date work had stopped in every coal mine in South Wales although only in ten of the twenty-eight pits had miners actually voted in favour of joining the national Coal Strike called by NUM leader, Arthur Scargill (see March 6th). (T.D. Breverton, The Welsh Almanac, Glyndwr Publications, 2002)
2005: The death of former Prime Minister Jim Callaghan, just eleven days after the death of his wife Audrey. He had first been elected as a Cardiff MP in 1945. Callaghan was unique in holding during his career all the great offices of State – Foreign Secretary, Home Secretary, Chancellor of the Exchequer and Prime Minister. (Dictionary of National Biography, OUP)
March 27th
1911: At the Olympic Picture Theatre, Queen Street, the programme for the week included The Dixie Mother, described as ‘a grand Vitagraph production embodying a variety of emotions which requires the most careful and skilful handling on the part of the author and actors to express. These emotions are Mother Love, the Wife Love and the Love of Home and Country’. Also on the bill were ‘Popular Illustrated Songs rendered by Harry Coombs (baritone) and Alfred Lee (tenor)’ and ‘Statue Dog – a series of clever poses by a remarkably clever dog’. (Stewart Williams, Cardiff Yesterday)
1944: Nine people were killed and thirty-three injured by ‘friendly fire’ while working at the Royal Ordnance Factory, Llanishen, which made parts for tanks. The building was hit by an army gun crew at Gabalfa which was actually aiming at a lone German reconnaissance plane. (Stewart Williams, Cardiff Yesterday)
1995: The Taff Viaduct and Bute Tunnel were officially opened by former Labour leader, Neil Kinnock. (Stewart Williams, Cardiff Yesterday)
March 28th
1976: Mervyn Davies, the Cardiff and Wales rugby captain, collapsed in a WRU Challenge Cup Final against Pontypool at Cardiff. He had to be carried from the pitch after suffering a cerebral haemorrhage, not caused by anything that had happened in the game. He eventually made a full recovery but his playing days were over. Phil Bennett, who took over as Wales captain, said afterwards ‘what happened to Mervyn was tragic. He was in his prime, playing the best rugby of his life. He had established himself as a great rugby captain – quiet on the field but with a fine tactical brain.’ Davies had led Wales to a Grand Slam earlier in the season and only a defeat by Scotland (10-12 at Murrayfield in March 1975) prevented him having a 100 per cent winning record as captain). In December 1975 he had led Wales to a 28-3 victory against Australia. (Steve Lewis, The Priceless Gift: 125 Years of Welsh Rugby Captains, Mainstream, 2005)
March 29th
1913: The birth of poet R.S. Thomas. An only child, he was brought up in Cardiff and lived in the city until the family moved to Holyhead in 1918 because of his father’s work in the Royal Navy. He read Classics at the University College of North Wales and then trained for the priesthood at St Michael’s College, Llandaff. He was ordained in 1936. After serving mainly in rural parishes in North Wales, Thomas retired in 1978. He was known for his bleak and moving descriptions of the hardships of life in upland rural communities. Although he wrote in English, R.S. Thomas became a fierce advocate of Welsh Nationalism and believed that the leaders of Plaid Cymru did not go far enough to their opposition to English influence in Wales. Professor M. Wynn Thomas described him as ‘the Alexander Solzhenitsyn of Wales because he was such a troubler of Welsh consciences’. R.S. Thomas died in 2000. (T.D. Breverton, The Welsh Almanac, Glyndwr Publications, 2002 / Wikipedia)
March 30th
1555: Rawlins White, a local fisherman,
was burned at the stake in St Mary’s Street, a martyr who died during the persecution of Protestants under the Catholic regime of Mary Tudor. He had described himself as ‘a diligent seeker-out of truth’. Unable to read himself, White made sure his son was educated. Every evening the boy read his to father from the Bible. As a result, Rawlins White was able to absorb and quote lengthy passages of Scripture and he preached in Cardiff and the Vale of Glamorgan, denouncing what he saw as the false doctrine of the Catholic Church. He is commemorated by a plaque ‘erected by two Protestants of this town’ which reads ‘Near this spot suffered from Truth Rawlins White, a Fisherman of this town. We shall by God’s Grace light such a candle in England as shall never be put out’. (Dennis Morgan, The Cardiff Story, D. Brown & Sons, 1991)
March 31st
1871: The Cardiff Medical Officer of Health reported that seventy-one deaths had been registered during February. Of these deaths, eighteen were caused by diseases of the brain and nervous system, twenty-two by pulmonary diseases, two by diseases of the heart, three by diseases of the kidneys, seventeen by infectious diseases (including six from scarlatina, four from smallpox, two from whooping cough, four from croup, one from diarrhoea and six from ‘diseases of uncertain seat’) and two from old age. There were eight on which inquests were being held to determine the cause of death. The mortality rate was twenty-four per thousand – slightly higher than the national rate. (Cardiff Times)