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The Slip Bridge
The Slip Bridge
was built by Swansea Corporation between June 1914 and September 1915 and sited
on two stone abutments near the Bay View Hotel. In March 2004 the
footbridge was removed, ostensibly to examine what repairs were necessary, and
placed on the Recreation Ground. After a
year the estimated cost of £350,000 to make it safe for restoration was deemed
to be uneconomic, so it was moved onto the
seafront
promenade opposite, where after twelve years it seems unlikely to return
to its original site.
Notwithstanding opposition from the Civic Society, the Open
Spaces Society and others, the public right of way across the road which the Slip Bridge
had spanned was closed.
The “coat hanger” footbridge had
been erected to take pedestrians across
Oystermouth Road to the part of
Swansea beach known as
“the Slip”, near a signal box and level crossing.
The Slip was very popular before the last
war, and crowded at holiday times, being near a tram terminus, and having
tearooms, beach huts, vendors and offering donkey rides: Dylan Thomas’s short
story “One Warm Saturday” starts there.
But
the footbridge did not merely cross
Oystermouth
Road – substantially narrower in those days – but
also crossed two railway lines that ran parallel with the road.
One was the L.N.W.R. (
London and North Western Railway), which from 1923 became
the L.M.S. (
London,
Midland
and Scottish), which ran along the coast from
Swansea’s Victoria Station – roughly where
the Leisure Centre LC2 is – to Blackpill.
There it turned inland over a long-demolished bridge to continue up the
Clyne Valley
– the route is now a cycle track – to Dunvant, Gowerton and along the Central
Wales line to Mid Wales and
Shrewsbury.
The section from Victoria Station to Gowerton
was closed amid
Dr
Beeching’s reports of 1963 and 1965, which led to extensive closures throughout
the entire rail network.
The other line was of course the Mumbles
Railway – originally called the
Swansea
and Oystermouth Railway - which as most readers will know became the first
passenger-carrying railway in the world.
It was initiated by an 1804 Act of Parliament as
a mineral line to transport lime, bricks and also marble to
Swansea
from the
Clyne Valley and Mumbles, but from 25
th
March 1807 it also carried passengers along the 4½-mile route to a regular
timetable.
This was initially from the
Rutland Street
depot to
Oystermouth Square,
until in 1898 an embankment was built enclosing the natural harbour known as
Horsepool, so the route could extend to the newly-opened Mumbles pier.
Today a few signs of the railway
remain, such as Blackpill’s Junction CafĂ© with its colonnaded porch, formerly the
Mumbles Railway’s electricity sub-station and the Blackpill stop.
At
Oystermouth
Square a rusty pole remains that carried the overhead
transmission wire to the electric carriages, and in the Maritime Quarter the
tram-shed by the Dylan Thomas statue contains the front part of red double-deck
passenger car no. 7.
The tram-shed also
displays the three means of transportation during the 156 years that the
railway operated – horse-power, then steam locomotion from 1877, and finally
electrification from 1929, until closure on 5
th January 1960.
From the
130-tonne iron walkway of the Slip
Bridge one had a fine
view of Victoria Park’s working floral clock, which the Parks Department
maintained from 1911 for much of the twentieth century, before a large segment
of the park was taken as the site for the new Guildhall. By the end of the twentieth century, with Victoria
Park smaller, both railway lines removed, and car ownership opening up Mumbles
and Gower’s beaches, the Slip had ceased to be a mecca for bathers, so the main
reason for the footbridge was gone.
The two
stone abutments remain, with access up the steps blocked on safety grounds, so
their future survival may be in doubt.
Those abutments at the Slip and the grounded footbridge on the prom are jarring
reminders of what is missing.
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