Wilson Street Splott 1953 & 2012
I used to think this street was awfully long. I suppose from the perspective of a small girl with short legs, a push of the pram down beyond the boundary of our own lamp-post was a bit dangerous. No cars, notice. In all of the photos from this year, there are no cars in the road. Our 'garage' in the left hand picture housed my dad's motorbike, and the potential for rental of spaces once cars were a more frequent possession by neighbours. It's now a house, quite ugly, and our house next door now has plastic porch doors, plastic windows, a metal fence on the wall (our original ones were taken for the "war effort", we hoped it had become a beloved Spitfire!) and a burglar alarm. In Splott! I wonder who lives there now? The wall looks similar, the edging to the doorway the same...
The house next door, and the one across the road where my great Auntie Maggie lived, still have the encaustic tiles in the pathway, the shiny and sculpted majolica panels in the porch, deep green tiles above. And the chimney stacks are still visible opposite, the houses substantial in a cramped sort of way. It all felt enormous of course!
Below - the Coronation street party
