Embedded Files
Look - Click Here for -
Extract from 'Working at the Post Office'
W H Jones, Boot & Shoe Depot, Post Office & Stationer. Mrs. Elizabeth Jones ran the wool shop on the left of the building. The shops further up that side of Newton Road had yet to be built. M A Clare
It was the occasion of ‘The Great Fire of 1914’, which eventually galvanised the Oystermouth Urban District Council into financing a fire cart for the village. It was 4.10am on Thursday 12 February 1914, when passer-by, Edward Willings of 14, Chapel Street spotted flames and smoke emanating from the premises of WH Jones, grocer (and erstwhile post office), plus the Mumbles branch of the London City and Midland Bank and the home of Stewart Thomas, a dental surgeon next door, on the junction of Newton Road and The Dunns. He woke the residents before contacting Inspector Davies of the local police, who arrived with six Constables, but having no fire-fighting equipment, there was little they could do apart from telephoning the Swansea Fire Brigade.
The fire was eventually put out.
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.
Daughter Elsie & son John, worked as Post Office Clerks and Emily Lloyd was their general servant.
'All that was left of the corner shop,' 1914. Mr Jones shop was hit by lightening, but the Insurance Company would not pay, as this was rdeemed an 'Act of God.'
Photo: M A Clare
‘The Great Fire of 1914’
‘The Great Fire of 1914’
William Hullen Jones
Roger Jones recounts that ‘In 1891, the Post Office on the junction of Newton Road and The Dunns was built for my Grandfather William Hullin Jones and Grandmother, Elizabeth (nee Burt Evans). It included a General Post Office, a haberdashery, stationery and fancy repository shop. The fire was thought to have been caused by lightening striking a telephone wire, which then travelled down into the telephone box and fused a wire, which set the box alight’. But, the South Wales Weekly Post was informed by 21 February 1914, that ‘a Post Office Engineer has since made a careful examination of the telephone installation, from which it is apparent that this was not the cause of the outbreak as the lightening protector was not injured in any way and the connection of the protector to the earth is still intact. Everything has been left so that the fire assessors who are experts, may examine it.’ However, the insurance company would not pay out, as it was a classified as an ‘Act of God’. ‘My broken-hearted Grandfather died in 1917.’
The Local councillors 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 (the site of today’s library). Five hundred feet of hose and equipment were to be purchased from Shand Mason for £107..12s, plus a ladder for £83. The Council also asked Sergeant Davies if his men would operate the new machinery, but he asked that a letter should be sent to the Chief Constable of Swansea ‘for a ruling on the matter.’ Having obtained permission from the Chief Constable, 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 the fire. However, on one occasion in 1915, when a fire occurred at The Rock and Fountain public house in Newton, the horses and fire cart could not get up the steep New Well Hill and locals had to use buckets of water from the village pump opposite to extinguish the flames!
Fire Duties
Fire Duties
Previous to the major fire in 1914, several fires had broken out in Mumbles over the years, probably because of the use of candles and open fires, but there was very little that could be done to extinguish them apart
for bucket chains, as there was no firefighting equipment in the village. For example, A fire broke out at Norton Lodge in May 1887, which was fought with nothing more than a bucket chain from the sea and The Ship and Castle Public House at Southend was completely destroyed in the 1890s. Cambrian, September 1896 - A fire occurred at The Currant Tree Hotel, West Cross, where the Innkeeper was a widow, Ann Jones. The premises was totally consumed by fire, but was not attended by the Fire Brigade at Swansea. The initial call, given to the Officer in Charge of the Goat Street Fire Station in Swansea, was from a Railway Guard who had seen the fire whilst passing on his locomotive on the way to Swansea! Mumbles Press, 25 September 1913 - There was another fire at the same site, by now rebuilt and renamed The West Cross Inn, when landlord John Brayley was away, but his wife was present. She was awoken at 1.00am and saw that the front of the building was enveloped in flames. Her quick thinking got everyone out and their screams soon woke the neighbours. Willing helpers gathered and Sergeant Hill and Constables Roberts, Clarke, Webber and Mallin were quickly on the scene. A water supply was found at Buckmaster’s nursery opposite and after a couple of hours, the fire was put out. The bar contents were completely destroyed and there was much damage to the room itself. It seems that the fire had started in the cellar.
The premises were later rebuild as Midland Bank
The White Rose & HSBC Bank, January 2017
Later, the premises reopened as Greggs Bakery, January 2021
An extract from 'Working at the Post Office'
Set in Mumbles, it tells the stories of the lives of the local post office staff working in the village and parish of Oystermouth during a century of prodigious change from the 1850s to the 1950s.
Also by Carol Powell: Everyday Life in the Police Service
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse