Fires at West Cross 1896 and 1913 by Kate Jones
FIRES AT WEST CROSS 1896 And 1913
Conflagration at the Currant Tree, 3 September 1896
Once (before 1896) there was a small pub on the seashore at West Cross delightfully called the Currant Tree. This ancient inn, with nurseries alongside, had a reputation as a smugglers’ haunt and also for offences related to Sunday drinking. It was the first pub over the 3 miles from Swansea where ‘bona fide travellers’ could get a drink on Sundays under the 1881 Welsh Sunday Closing Act. To be precise – the pub was just over 3 miles if one walked; but a bit less than 3 miles if one arrived by train from Swansea. A small difference perhaps, but those who rode and drank on the Sabbath could find themselves on the wrong side of the law and many such incidents were reported in the local press.
Sketch entitled: At the Currant Tree, 1878 [Swansea Museum]
But, just after 6am on the morning of Thursday 3 September 1896 the landlord of the Currant Tree, William Hopkins, had a very different problem! He awoke to find his bedroom at the front of the inn filled with dense smoke. On opening the bedroom door he was confronted by flames leaping up the staircase – the only way out was through the window and quickly!
Landlord Escapes in his nightshirt: Stopping only to grab his trousers from the bed rail, William threw up the window, pitched the garment into the yard and leapt out onto the porch above the front door. He was just in time as the flames, encouraged by the sudden rush of air, greedily blazed through the open window behind him. Not stopping to pull on his trousers, William rushed to fetch a ladder from an outhouse, placed it against the window of the bedroom where the only other occupant of the house, his niece (Miss Woodley), was sleeping. Finding her semi-conscious he carried her over his shoulder to the window and, with difficulty, down the ladder to safety.
By now, the dry timbers of the rear of the pub were consumed by fire and it was clear that nothing could save the building. The alarm had aroused neighbours and the police were called. Within half an hour they were on the scene but by then the flames had finished their task – the Currant Tree Inn was no more! When the Council’s hose reel was brought by Messrs David Williams and Webborn, there was no point connecting it – so complete was the destruction.
Evening Express, 3 September 1896
Everything destroyed: The public house, a free one, was owned by a Mrs Davies, one-time resident of West Cross who lived in Walters Road. Poor William Hopkin the landlord who had escaped with nothing but his night shirt and the trousers he had prudently thrown from his window, was lent boots and jacket by a kindly neighbour. He had lost just about everything – the only bits of furniture left were iron bed rails, chair castors and pots and pans. A bag of coins amounting to nearly £80 had melted to a single lump. All the beer and spirits in the ground floor cellar, a low-roofed building at the rear of the premises, had been destroyed – exploding like cannons in the heat to produce a spectacular display of pyrotechnics! No one knew how the fire had started.
Hopkins, a local man who had grown up in Blackpill, had been a painter (decorator) like his father, before taking over at the Currant Tree in 1892. In September 1893 a dreadful tragedy at the inn had occurred, when his young wife, Charlotte, was struck by an intoxicated customer. She fell, banged her head on a banister post, and died three days later. Luckily, William’s two young children, May and George, were not at the inn at the time of the fire.
Rebuilding: It turned out that the Currant Tree’s owner had not insured it. Within three weeks of the fire the site (with the blackened outer walls still standing) was sold at auction to Olaf Emmanuel Anderson for £650. Swedish-born Anderson (proprietor of the True Briton public house in Swansea’s High Street) rebuilt the pub and re-opened it on 15 April 1897 as the West Cross Hotel. He was landlord here in the 1901 census and the pub was a popular one – with drinkers if not with the Temperance Movement.
'On the Way to Mumbles’, photograph by M.A. Clare
Roll forward to September 1913 … and Mumbles was still welcoming end-of-season visitors - many arriving on the Mumbles Train. There was plenty to entertain them with band concerts on the pier, the skating rink (re-opening on 2 October) and the Mumbles Cinema - where for 3d, 6d or 1 shilling you could see the ‘latest and best’ pictures. The village shops were also advertising for custom and the Mumbles Press printed lists of all the weekly visitors and where they were staying – from the largest hotels to the front rooms of terraced houses in Castleton. Mumbles was THE place to visit for a late-season holiday or day’s outing.
Mumbles Press, 2 October 1913
If it was warm enough for a dip in the sea and you had forgotten to bring your costume, then S.A. Hake the drapers at London House in the Dunns advertised Ladies Bathing Costumes in either stockinette or twill, ranging from 1/3½ to 6/11½. Men’s costumes were cheaper. C.E. Tucker at No. 8, Dunns offered ‘suitable presents’ to take home to family and friends – china, books of photographic views and postcards. They also sold bathing costumes if you couldn’t find what you wanted at Hakes!
Mumbles Press, 2 October 1913
A story to tell: But it wasn’t all about visitors to Mumbles in the local paper that week. The Mumbles Press had a story to tell too. A story of dramatic night time events at West Cross, of great risk to life (women and children) and to property, of courage and resourcefulness, of neighbourly assistance and above all – a story about a plentiful supply of water and those who knew how to use it!
Mumbles Press, 2 October 1913
Fire at the West Cross Hotel, Saturday 27 September 1913
By 1911 the landlord of the West Cross Hotel was John Brayley. He had previously run the Landore Arms on Neath Road.
At 11.30 pm on Friday 26 September 1913 Mrs Mary Edith Brayley (her husband was away) did the usual nightly checks and locked up. Her three young sons, Edwin, Frederick and William, were tucked up in bed, and after saying goodnight to her sister, Minnie, Mary retired to her bedroom.
About 1am she awoke feeling horribly suffocated. To her horror she found the bedroom full of smoke and when she rushed to the window she could see the front of the building enveloped in flames.
There was no time to dress. Mary ran to wake her sister and with the three children they fled the building in their night clothes. Their cries and screams and alerted those living close by.
Someone summoned the police and when Sergeant Hill, accompanied by Constables Clarke, Mollins, Roberts and Webber, arrived they found a number of neighbours (including District Councillor Mr Graham Aeron Thomas of Glynmor and Mr George Buckmaster, nurseryman of Spring Gardens), already hard at work endeavouring to put out the fire in the bar.
Cambria Daily Leader 27 September 1913
Plentiful supply of water at the nursery: At first, with the supply from Caswell cut off, a water shortage was feared but fortunately there was plentiful supply at Mr Buckmaster’s West Cross Nursery. Together, police and civilians, armed with buckets, a hose and garden syringes, were able to completely extinguish the flames within two hours.
Although the contents of the bar were completely destroyed and the room itself badly damaged, the pub remained reasonably intact – unlike its predecessor the Currant Tree seventeen years earlier. Again the fire was believed to have started in the cellar (alcohol is highly flammable) and the cause unknown. John and Mary Brayley were of course a lot more fortunate than William Hopkins; but, as the Mumbles Press observed:
‘Only the promptitude and eminently zealous efforts of Mr Buckmaster and others called to the scene saved the hotel from being burnt down.’
West Cross station and West Cross Hotel, early 20th century, photograph by M.A. Clare [private collection]
After the Currant Tree fire the South Wales Daily Post had commented on 3 September 1896:
‘Whatever the Mumbles accomplishes in the way of fires is thoroughly done. Six months ago a fire broke out at the Castle Hotel [the Ship & Castle, Southend] and in two hours hardly a stone was left on another. The conflagration which wiped out the Currant Tree public house on Thursday morning went one better; for in just over an hour the old house was demolished.’
Bearing in mind the second West Cross fire in 1913 and the disastrous one in Newton Road five months later in February 1914, the Daily Post’s observation of 1898 seems horribly prescient. Mumbles fires were thoroughly done! The question now was not so much how could they be prevented in the first place, but what could be done to reduce the devastating damage to property, lives and livelihoods once they had started.
Kate Jones, May 2021
Acknowledgements:
Mumbles and Gower Pubs, Brian E. Davies; South Wales Daily Post, Mumbles Press, Cambria Daily Leader; A History of Mumbles website, edited by John & Carol Powell; OHA archives.