Until 1826, when  the Swansea to Oystermouth turnpike road opened,  Mumbles had been a small isolated fishing village with no road access around the bay to Swansea or to the nearby bays.  

          In the 1880s, some fifty years later, the Oystermouth Local Board began ideas to extend the road onwards towards Mumbles Head, thence to Bracelet and Limeslade and  eventually to Langland.  The proposed routes caused many objections and arguments, which were played out in the  Board meetings over several years. One scheme proposed  to clear the few houses at Southend on the seaward side of the road opposite the Mermaid (these were demolished) and that 'a promenade and road round the Mumbles Hill to Bracelet Bay and beyond' be built.  The Board believed that the construction onwards from Limeslade to Langland around the cliffs 'would be most beneficial to the ratepayers . . . but that the cost of this section should be paid by the adjacent landowners.'. At the  Local Board meeting on 6 May 1886,  a second plan for 'a road over Mumbles Hill'  was proposed, which would be submitted to His Grace the Duke of Beaufort 'for his approval'. 

          Then yet another plan was put forward for 'a Cutting  by the back of the lifeboat house, the entrance to be 30 foot wide, tapering to 24 foot to the top of Bracelet Bay' and onwards to Limeslade. The first part of the plan was agreed and the 'Cutting' was duly completed in October 1888, when Madame Patti presented  sufficient ferns 'to plant alongside the New Road to Bracelet Bay.'

   In December 1888, a committee was set up  to select a new route for the section from Bracelet to Langland, as the route around the cliffs had been rejected by  landowner, Mr. Graham Vivian, who refused to allow the road to be made through his land, prompting the Duke of Beaufort's solicitor, Mr. Baker to comment that it would be 'useless to make the road along the planned route . . . and an alternative should be submitted.' In a letter to the Council in 1896, Mr. Nicholl Morgan, owner of nearby Craig-y-Mor,  wrote that he had arranged with the Duke of Beaufort for the extension of the road from 'its present termination at Bracelet Bay to Limeslade and thence through his land to join the Plunch Lane . . . and that he intended dedicating the proposed road to the Public when the existing highway from Plunch to Marepool had been widened.'