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Some of my favourite lost architecture of Cardiff - 1) Boots Queen St
2) Queen Street Station
3) Merchants Exchange
4) Buildings on Queen Street
5) Fire Service Headquarters Westgate St
6) York Hotel St Mary St
7) Howard Gardens School
8) Glossop Terrace
9) Graham Buildings Newport Road
10) Case Bros. Nursery (Oldest florist business in Wales) Newport Rd
11) Marlborough Rd School original building
12) Cardiff High School for Boys (Now St Peters) Newport Rd
13) Crwys Road Board School
14) The Wharf in Atlantic Wharf. Probably one of the newest buildings on my list having been built in 1990.
15) Poets Corner Pub City Road (Insult to injury, torn down in 2016 for student accommodation which has yet to materialise)
16) City Road terraced shops, replaced with massively out-of-scale student accommodation compared to the low-rise residential around it.
17) Eleanor Street School (First Council school in Cardiff)
18) Loudoun Square - Heart of the old multicultural Tiger Bay. Seen as a slum so demolished (despite originally built for the wealthy) and replaced with tower blocks. One of the oldest and most diverse communities in the world at the time, split up and scattered across the city.
19) South Church Street School - Butetown (Where the playing field south of St Marys Church currently is)
20) Grangetown Board School
21) Woodlands House Pen-y-Lan
22) Craigisla/Tal-y-Werydd House Pen-y-Lan (now student halls for Cardiff University).
23) Gower Pub - Large community pub demolished, hideous block of 24 flats proposed. After backlash brick terrace family homes inkeeping with the street now approved. Progress?
24) Roath Park Bandstand. Originally located in the grassy area to the west of where the playground is today. - In trying to pinpoint the exact location for this tweet, I found you could see the outline of the bandstand in old satellite imagery during the 2018 heatwave.
25) Ty Glas Farm (now White Barn Road)
26) Central Congregational Church/Windsor Place Synagogue (Now Central Bar)
27) Royal Hotel St Mary Street - Original rooftop with clockfaces, statues, 'Royal Hotel' railing, chimneys etc. Luckily lower floors have been preserved mostly.
28) Queen Street Station - Original covered roof
29) Old Town Hall St Mary St (Replaced by Hodge House) - Shame they couldn't live alongside eachother as Hodge House is also a grand looking building. I particularly like the Cardiff 'three arrows?' emblem above the doors. The building currently occupied by KFC is still there.
30) High St Arcade lost top level. Strangely, next door the windows above 14 High St (formerly Kitchens) on the 1st and 2nd floor were changed from the originals seen in the photo, 3rd foor were unchanged. Yet no. 15 next door, built identically to 14 has retained the originals.
31) The Griffin pub St Mary St
32) Western Mail Buildings St Mary St (now Golate House) - You know sometimes seeing a building like Golate House I never actually bothered to research what used to be there because I know, whatever it was, it would be 100x better than what is there now. Well, I was right...
33) Inn on the River - Riverside. Why renovate a 100 year old historic building, when you can demolish it and create an inferior replica of it with a bit of extra floorspace to squeeze a few extra shoebox flats into.
34) Country Main Bakery Rumney - Now police station
35) Duke St Buildings - Buildings used to wrap around the outside of the castle where the grassy area currently is, these were cleared to give better views of the castle. You can just make out the three arched windows on the first floor of the Duke St Arcade half way along the st
36) Roath Steam Laundry - Marlborough Rd. Despite neighbourhood campaigning to save the building it was ultimately demolished and is now a retirement home.
37) Roath Train Station - Located in Splott between Pearl St and Railway St and crossed by Splott Rd, part of the GWR mainline.
38) Broadway - Not a full loss as such, many of these buildings remain however have been altered beyond recognition or demolished and rebuilt. Terraces on left still remain however only 1 of the 3 taller buildings next to them remain. Church destroyed in 1989.
39) Queen St Houses - The building currently occupied by WHSmith was still around at this time, however to the right there is a house, to it's left a 3 storey shop and to it's left again another house with a leafy garden. The old photo is one of my favourites and I don't know why
40) The General Electric Co - Kingsway. You can still see the balconies from the building next door today
41) Corner of Duke St, Queen St and Kingsway. This corner has had a bit of an identity crisis, having had 3 designs in living memory, I wouldn't be surprised if we got a fourth.
42) Woolworths/BHS/Primark Queen St. If theyd put windows on the front instead of advertisements and put some extra windows in where the gaps are, a very rare occasion where I may like the new shopfront as much than the original! The less said about the middle 2 the better
43) Cardiff Bus Station/Asteys - Wood St. Maybe controversial, but one of my favourites as a kid. Proper 50s retro. I love the curves. The white floating awning all the way around. The windows that lean outwards. The big high windows upstairs. Sadly unloved in it's later life.
44) All Souls/Mission to Seamens Church - Cardiff Docks. Demolished in the 50s. The only remaining buildings in the photos are Corys Building and Bute Crescent terraces. Bit on an overlooked Cardiff Docklands church, overshadowed by the Norwegian.
45) Mount Stuart Sq/James St lost buildings. Love the 'tower' on that corner building and the traditional terraces on James St. Both sadly gone. South William St, the terraced street heading off into the background was demolished along with many of the original terraced streets
46) Penarth Terrace - Neighbouring street to Windsor Esplanade, a surviving street of traditional terraced homes overlooking the bay which are now worth over half-a-million pounds each. Demolished and replaced with the Eleanor Pl estate, where homes go for around 150k.
47) Northern section of Bute Street - Due to general decline in the area and being bombed during the Cardiff Blitz, much of the original grand Victorian street was demolished to make way for estate housing. Everything between Cardiff Bay station and St Marys church has gone.
48) Cardiff Town Hall - The Georgian town hall was built on the site of its Medieval predecessor despite opposition because of it's obstruction of the street. It was later replaced and moved further up St Mary St. The Marquess of Bute statue outside now resides in Callaghan Sq
49) Splott University - Demolished despite neighbourhood campaigning and over 2000 signatures in 2016. Still angry about this one.
50) Lord Wimborne Pub - Splott. Lost along with a large swathe of the residential streets of Lower Splott. Replaced with warehouses.
51) The Sailors Home - Stuart St (Docks/Bay). Home for 150 visiting sailors. Included a skittle alley, library and reading room. Now occupied by Techniquest and it's front car parking area.
52) Merthyr House - Cardiff Docks. You know that big patch of abandoned land as you go through the Bay with the severely dilapidated building with the electricity sub-station inside that the Council describes as a "significant eyesore" + a "blight". Heres what used to be there...
53) Victoria Buildings - Bute St (Opp. Packet Pub). Now a car park/beer garden/outdoor space.
54) Stuart St buildings. While a few of the original buildings have been saved in the area, most were demolished during regeneration. Some of these buildings would have made lovely characterful shops/restaurants today had they just been renovated. Sad that more weren't preserved.
55) Samuel Family canopied water fountain. Of a number of fountains donated + erected in various sites across Cardiff the only original left is in Victoria Park w/ a replica in Grange Gardens. Unlisted for protection in 93 I cant find info on its fate. Stored not scrapped I hope!
56) Glamorganshire Canal - Mill Ln to Bay. Land mostly used by Canal Park along Dumballs Rd today. Still dream about cycling from town to the bay along the canal, with old warehouse apartments and canal boats along the way. Little Amsterdam fantasy.
