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St Fagan's is a cracking museum. Nothing nicer than a stroll around it on a sunny day.
Bloody sad that an old pub of ours is in a museum. Liverpool’s starving of development cash in the 70s/80s resulted in a lot of their city centre pubs being left alone. Would love to see pubs like The Lifeboat, The Greyhound, The Hope & Anchor, The Moulders Arms, The Taff Vale, The Prince Albert, The Marchioness of Bute, The Royal Oak, The Blue Anchor, The Glastonbury etc, all city centre pubs in my lifetime still alive and kicking. It was like a step back in time up there last weekend, all those little boozers packed out. Can’t see me hitting St Fagans any time soon.
It’s probably me looking through rose tinted spectacles, but I don’t recall many of those pubs you mention disappearing because of a lack of customers, it was more down to the developers. The Vulcan was a bit off the beaten track for me when I went drinking in town and I assumed its location worked against it getting regular customers, but I can remember going there on a Friday night a year or two before it closed and was surprised by the number of people in there.
Mixed feelings on seeing that. I loved the Vulcan, and it's tragic it was lost but it will be a fantastic addition to St Fagans, which really is an amazing museum.
Cant remember when I last went, probably last summer, but I did note that the progress on the Vulcan seemed slow so it's good to see this
I think you're right, the location of the Vulcan wasn't great, it was in a bit of a "no man's land".
There was a new-build pub further on, just past the fire station, I think it was called "Rumpoles' or something very similar? Now THAT really was an odd place to decide to build a pub. I don't think it was ever anywhere near busy, not even on a Friday or Saturday night. Given that it was directly opposite Cardiff prison, I wonder how many inmates used to look out of their cell window and think to themselves..."As soon as I'm released, that's going to be the first place I visit!"
There was a pub on that spot before Rumpoles was built, but I can't recall the name - a big old place. I do remember that apart from the bar and 'lounge', it had a little off-licence room with a counter and a wooden bench seat. The toilets were outside, across the back yard, in a corrugated iron shed. If it was raining, you had to dash through the puddles, and the noise inside was deafening, with the rain hammering on the roof. I can remember on a Sunday afternoon, you'd get all the wives and girlfriends of the prison inmates gathering there after visiting time. They used to stand across from the pub, and lift their tops to the guys leaning out of the prison windows. It did happen - I saw it more than once.
I guess that must have been knocked down around 1983 or 84, something like that, and the awful Rumpoles built a few years later.
It wasn't a bad spot - Courts, fire station, prison, Howard Gardens arts college - I bet they did alright.
Fabulous picture, big part of Cardiff history
The pub on the corner opposite the prison, before they built Rumpoles, was called The Rhymney, I think?
The Vulcan was busy for a good few years before it was removed.
A lot of students used it after the part regeneration across the road and the people who ran it used to have live music in there which drew in new and local custom.
It was the owner's decision (Rapport I believe) to make way for the car park and like many other pubs in the area was consigned to the history books.
The pubs already mentioned were demolished due to the regeneration if the area which started in the 70's and the same thing happened a mere 30 years later with the St Davids 2 development.
Those pubs were either sold off or left to rot so that they became so unstable that they had to be demolished. Very convenient.
All in the name of progress, in the main shopping malls.
Where will the white elepants that exist now be in twenty to thirty years, doubt I'll be around to see but my guess would be either in landfill or recycled.
Wow. I had no idea. Good, I suppose. But also very sad. A Cardiff landmark gone.
I used to work directly opposite The Vulcan in the old BT building Enterprise House. Nice to see it finally being rebuilt.
Definitely the Rhymney, opposite the fire station, before that was moved. I remember going in there, having a drink watching a mate of mine, on The Price is Right.