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Before the Library Came by Carol Powell

Before the Library Came

By Carol Powell

Oystermouth Rural District Council Offices, c.1900

There had been a school on the site since 1813, but the British ‘Non-Denominational’ School, took over the premises in Dunns Lane in July 1835, when it enrolled 138 pupils.

In 1880, following the Public Health Act of 1875, the Oystermouth Local Board was set up and took over the premises of the school, which had closed some years before. There they met and raised rates to finance and implement various aspects of life until 1918.

However Mumbles had no effective fire fighting equipment, and it was to be the occasion of ‘The Great Fire of 12th February 1914’, which burnt down W H Jones’s Grocer Shop and two neighbouring premises (Later HSBC Bank, now Greggs) which eventually galvanised the Oystermouth Urban District Council into financing a fire cart for the village. Inspector Davies of the local police arrived with six Constables at 4.10am, but having no fire-fighting equipment, there was little they could do apart from telephoning the Swansea Fire Brigade.

The burnt-out remains of WH Jones’s shop

Later the premises became a Midland Bank and after a change of name to HSBC Bank, the empty premies was taken over by Greeggs Bakers.

They arrived at 5.15am on their one-and-only horse-drawn vehicle, by which time the building was well alight. (Swansea would not get a motorised vehicle until later that year).

The fire was eventually put out and a local firm was engaged to demolish the walls, which had been left in a dangerous condition.

Councillors from the Oystermouth Local Board went to visit the scene and it was decided to finance a fire station to serve the locality. A tender of £54..8s was accepted from Mr. Morris to build a shed adjacent to the Council offices in Dunns Lane.

`From then on, up until the Second World War, the police also acted as firemen, initially running to the fire station in Dunns Lane, to harness up horses hired from Peachey's livery stable nearby, before setting out to fight a fire. The village mortuary was also sited on the Local Board land.

Sometime in the 1920s, a new fire station was housed at Southend, at the site of an old disused oyster shed, near The Pilot Inn and the ex-local Government Offices, by now disused, fell into disrepair.

On 5 September 1930, the Fire Brigade was called to the site at Dunns Lane, by then being used as stables, which was well alight and destroyed in the blaze.

This was to be the site of the new Oystermouth Library, which would open in September 1935.