Saturday, February 21, 2026
A history trail in Mumbles
The walk has twenty points of interest, and stirred memories of a walking tour I helped write back in the 1980s. It starts with Clement's Quarry, one of a number of limestone quarries in Mumbles between 1806 and 1902, which is now a long stay car park, when it is not hosting the workmen and their equipment for the recent flood defence works.
The Dairy car park across the road was originally the site of The Elms, built in 1850, and was in turn a private house, a hotel and in the 1860s and 1870s, refreshment rooms for the Mumbles railway terminus and offices. Later it was a skating rink before housing a dairy and bottling plant.
An interesting fact is that although, while standing on Oystermouth Square at low tide you can see the remains of oyster dredgers or skiffs on the beach, Oystermouth itsef is not named after the oyster trade that briefly flourished in that area, and once attracted Gladstone to sample its wares, but from the Welsh name for the area, Ystumllwynarth, which appears in early Medieval Welsh literature and derives from Ystum Lluarth, meaning a "place of entrenchment on a hill".
The White Rose pub on the corner opposite was once the favoured watering hole of the actor, Hywel Bennett, when he was in the area. Private Eye editor, Ian Hislop was born in the area, while Catherine Zeta Jones, Bonnie Tyler, Archbishop Rowan Williams, Rugby player Geoff Wheel, Dylan Thomas and Kingsley Amis all have associations with Mumbles.
The steps alongside the cottages are the beginnning of a path that can take you to the top of Mumbles hill, which is a nature reserve and once housed a battery dating back to 1844. You can also see the remains of second world war gun emplacements.
Labels: lochist
