West Cross House
by Wendy Cope

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WEST CROSS HOUSE
by Wendy Cope 

In June 1807 West Cross House was advertised as being for sale together with 12½ acres of meadow and pasture land which is now occupied by Grange and St. David’s schools.  The advert asks possible buyers to contact Mr Francis Bevan at Oxwich Castle which suggests that he might be the seller and it also mentions the advantages of ‘the Oystermouth tramway along which passengers and parcels are carried to and from Swansea at trifling expense.”  The estate was bought by Henry Andrews who lived at Norton Villa, at the far end of the West Cross land.  He moved his family into West Cross House and let Norton Villa. 

Henry Andrews, was formerly a Captain in the 24th Regiment of Infantry and came from Lincolnshire.  In September 1827 his eldest daughter was robbed of her purse on the way home from Swansea market.

At All Saints church in July 1828, one of Harry’s daughters, Harriet Sophia, reputedly a self willed young lady with a fiery temper, married John Harry Hammond Spencer, who was only just past his 21st birthday. As part of the marriage settlement the young couple were given West Cross House and Henry moved back to Norton Villa.  Unfortunately, the marriage was not a happy one.  The first argument is said to have taken place during the wedding reception  

 By the summer of 1834 the Hammond-Spencers had moved to Llys-neweydd, Carmarthenshire and left West Cross.  The nine bedroom house was advertised to let.  It was advertised again the following year and was taken by George Gape.  In December 1836, George and his Wife Frances Elizabeth had their son George Thomas baptised at All Saints while the Hammond Spencers also had a daughter, Miriam, a few months later in Devon.  However it seems that they soon wanted to return to West Cross and early in 1840 George Gape moved to Norton House and the Hammond Spencers came back.  In October another daughter, Blanche, was born to them at West Cross House.  On census night 1841 Harriett Sophia, now aged 30, was at home with the children, Harry,8, Herbert, 7, Miriam, 4, Alfred, 2, and Blanche, 7 months.  Her older sister Mary was there but not her husband.  They employed a total of 2 male servants and 5 female servants.  John Harry had probably already parted from his wife.  In the spring of 1842 he embarked on the Lady Fitzherbert for Australia where he made a bigamous marriage and sired a daughter.

Within two years the family had moved away again and Mary Secretan was a tenant at the house.  There was also an attempted burglary that year.

By 1851 Harriet Sophia and two children, Harry and Blanche, were back at West Cross but with fewer employees, just a governess and three house servants.  Early in 1856 the house was to let and the furniture was sold.  She did not return.  John Henry Hammond Spencer died in Australia in 1870 having made a will leaving West Cross House to his two daughters and nothing to his wife although it is believed that he had earlier made a settlement on her which included a house at Teignmouth in Devon. 

 In 1857, George Burden Strick was in residence.  He was a coal merchant and a local man, the Stricks having been in Oystermouth for many years.  He was wealthy enough at that time to employ a male servant for whom he had to pay a tax of one guinea, and he also kept a horse and a four wheeled carriage.  George and his wife Kate already had one son, George Henry, when they moved in but in the following years they failed to add to their family although Kate had four more confinements. 

 G. B. Strick was very involved in the governance of Swansea. When he came to West Cross he was already a member of the Harbour Trust and on the Infirmary committee.  He was soon elected to Swansea Corporation and was on the Board of Health and became mayor of Swansea for the year 1865-1866.  He also became a magistrate.  He had business interests in the Amman Iron Company and the Swansea Vale Railway.

 Kate Strick died in Dresden in February 1873 aged 48.  Perhaps she had gone there for health reasons.  George returned to West Cross and prospered.  He called himself an iron master in 1881 and his son George Henry, now aged 26 was his works manager. 

Throughout these Victorian years until the installation of piped water, the house owners paid a fee to the Duke of Beaufort of 17s. 6d. per year for the right to take water from the stream flowing from Boarspit farm.

 Around 1900 Mr Richards came to West Cross House with his wife Catherine, his son Lewis, a barrister, and his daughter, Edith Mary Catherine. 

 In the summer of 1911, the widowed Catherine complained bitterly to the Urban District Council about the stink arising from the council waste tip in West Cross Avenue adjacent to her house and the threat of a writ succeeded in halting the tipping.  That October she was complaining again, this time about the poor lighting in “the road from Norton Cross to West Cross Lane.”  A month later the council decided to change the burners in the lights in West Cross Lane as far as Venn’s farm to incandescent lights and erect four more lamps from the farm up to Eversleigh.

 Catherine died in October 1918 at the great age of 82 and was buried in Oystermouth cemetery.  She left the house to her daughter as tenant for life and at this time Edith invested in two properties, 7 Spring Gardens on the Mumbles Road and a cottage at 44 Norton Road.  

Edith was regarded locally as a formidable lady.  She held a Sunday School at Norton and urged the vicar to hold services at Norton but no suitable room could be found so she encouraged support for the building of the mission room there which was erected in 1908.  The following year Edith and her mother donated £15 to clear the building of debt.  She lived in West Cross House with a companion and a number of Pekinese dogs until 1950 when the house was put up for sale.  

In 1951, when she had sold West Cross House and moved to Westminster, Edith gave her other two properties to the Governing Body of the Church in Wales so that the income could be used for the benefit of Oystermouth parish.

West Cross House was put up for sale in 1950 with two acres of garden and a lodge inhabited by Miss Richard’s chauffeur/ gardener.  The land along West Cross Avenue which she had rented out to Mr Morgan the tenant of Grange Farm had been taken over by Swansea Council and turned into allotments during the 2nd World War and was bought by them later to build Grange School >.  

The house was also bought by Swansea Council and turned into an old peoples’ home.  Various additions were built on to the house and it lost its charm.  

 By 1989 the council had decided that it no longer met with the improved standards of the day. West Cross House did not have a lift and many of the residents shared rooms with up to five beds in the largest room. Plans were made to transfer the 25 residents to other accommodation, many to a new home, Ty Waunarlwydd, and the house closed at the end of March 1990.  When the home closed in 1990 the Friends of West Cross House divided the money they had raised between various other homes including Ty Waunarlwydd.

 After several years of indecision it was decided in 1995 to demolish the old house and build a new children’s home on the site to provide temporary accommodation for 10 children aged between 10 and 16 in need of care.  The home was opened in the early part of 1997.

 In 2007 the home was closed and the children relocated to a new home at Blaenymaes.  The house was demolished to make way for a Welsh language school on the site as a permanent home for Ysgol Gynradd Gymraig Llwynderw, now in temporary accommodation on the Bishop Gore School site. 

Miss Richards of West Cross House.

By Bryan James.

 Miss Richards was known to some as ’Dicky Dick’.  My father was employed by her as a chauffeur/grounds man and 44 Norton Road where we lived was a tied cottage belonging to her.  She also had a house in London where she spent much of her time, coming back to Norton two or three times a year, at which time my father would driver her down to pick up my brother and I in a splendid Rover car.  We would be treated to a trip to the Tivoli Cinema > in Mumbles, in the best seats upstairs, together with ice cream and whatever was going.  Because of her infrequent visits I was allowed to wander around her house, which was very large.  She employed a resident housekeeper and two full time grounds men including my father.  She was a formidable lady, but quite kind to us as children.  A wealthy landowner, when she died she left her estate to the Church, which put my father out of work and home.  However a new job was found and he was able to buy the cottage from the Church.

ATTEMPT AT HOUSEBREAKING

On Friday night last an attempt was made to break into West Cross House near Swansea.  The burglars cut with a diamond a square of glass in the kitchen window and removed the spring catch fastening, and lifted the lower sash up, but the shutters being strongly barred inside baffled their efforts to open them.  They also cut the glass in the dining room window, but there the shutters being well secured also prevented their entrance.

The Cambrian.  12 August 1843

HIGHWAY ROBBERY

A most daring robbery was committed on Saturday evening last, between Swansea and the Mumbles, the particulars of which are as follows:-

A young lady (Miss Andrews, of West Cross), in proceeding from Swansea market, about six o’clock in the evening, was met about two miles from the town by a short, stout man, with a bludgeon in his hand.  He made up for her horse, seized the reins, and threatened to “do for her” unless she instantly delivered him her money.  Miss Andrews, much alarmed, immediately gave him her purse, with which the scoundrel made off at a rapid rate.  From the description given of him, it is supposed that he is the same person who was seen begging in our streets a few days ago.

The Cambrian.  15 September 1827.