He remembered the shop on the corner of Harvey Street and Quarella Street, Jeff tells us: “The shop was fondly known as Ethel Greens from the early 1950s until it closed around about the late 1950s. Other shops sold glasses of pop, lemonade, sarsparilla, orange etc, but Ethel sold glasses of Ginger Beer which every boy drank; thinking that they were grown up.”
Jeff enthusiastically tells us: “Ethel was a lovely lady, if the shop wasn’t busy she would stand in the doorway talking to the boys and girls playing in the street. The shop was on a cross roads, and there was a shop on three corners of it: Davies’ greengrocers on one corner and Jones’ on the other corner.
“When the shop closed a family moved in and I remember the mother’s name was Theresa, someone said it was Ethel’s daughter but I don’t know if it was true.” What a great blast from the past from a Barry and District News reader. Thanks.
I thought I would return briefly to one of my first true loves. Back in my weekly Barry and District Newspaper column part 95, I examined the Roman site of Glan-y-mor over the Cold Knap. For those reading this that didn’t know we have a set of Roman remains on display, they are found behind the public toilets at the entrance to the Cold Knap frontage carpark, that overlooks ‘pebbly beach’.
I wanted to share this photograph. Because it is the only part of the Roman Glan-y-mor site, that still displays its original red square floor tiles. The tiles are just visible in the image beyond the grass; held by the first wall in the forefront: 11 in total. This was the threshold for one of two entrances into the ‘Official Building’; that we know it as in archaeology circles.
In my book Romans in South Wales (still for sale at available at Nicklebys bookshop), I discuss the importance of this easterly entrance. This was the junction not only from this entrance to the outside world, but that led into a passage to a square tower.
This tower was sadly demolished in the 1960s when the Water’s Edge Hotel was constructed. The tower was part of the Glan-y-mor Official Building, constructed on an early Roman era site in the mid AD280s. The tower was part of a signal station network for the communication of messages using a light created by oil, or charcoal. When excavated the tower contained a number of burnt timbers. But little was recorded at the time of this discovery.
One fascinating point is that as soon as Glan-y-mor Official Building neared completion it was abandoned in the AD290s.
Thankyou for joining us this week, for our discoveries of our heritage in the Barry and District.
