MARCH IS ON TO SAVE WOMANBY STREET
CAMPAIGNERS plan to march on City Hall to demand protection for the “cultural hub” of Womanby Street.
Organisers of the Save Womanby Street campaign are planning the march in Cardiff to ensure the area is protected against what they feel are developments that jeopardise the area’s future.
The Save Womanby Street campaign is lobbying Cardiff Council to recognise the street as an area of cultural significance for music and performance arts.
A statement by the Save Womanby Street team on Facebook reads: “The gloves are off. Our street’s survival is at stake.
“We ask, we implore, to those who have laughed, cried, sweated, bled, or hoped on our Womanby Street. Step up.
“Our demands are simple, the consequences [are] resounding.
“We ask Cardiff council to protect our street and ensure the cultural hub of Womanby Street is defended in law so it can grow and flourish.
“There will be gigs, there will be events, we will celebrate our street across the weekend. But we need you to fight.
“Without you, this street could die. We need you. Spread the word. Our street needs its community.”
The Save Womanby Street campaign was launched due to recent developments in the city’s “music quarter”, including the closure of Dempseys and the proposed opening of a Wetherspoons Hotel on the street.
There are fears the street’s live music scene is at threat from new developments.
Thom Bentley, from The Full Moon, said previously: “Womanby is more than just a street, it’s the aorta of the beating heart of live music in south Wales; every truly great Welsh musician has cut their teeth here.”
The group are calling for the area to be designate the street a “cultural night time economy area” as part of the council’s Local Development Plan, which designates usage of different parts of the capital.
They feel that the move would protect the area and allow businesses to grow.
A spokesman for the Cardiff council said previously: “The Planning Policy Framework is set by national government and not local authorities.
“We are given to understand that the Mayor of London is proposing to recognise ‘an area of cultural significance for music’ in parts of the Capital but in Wales - this term isn’t recognised in the current Planning Policy Framework.”
The march on Cardiff City Hall is set to take place from 4pm to 7pm on Saturday April 29 and will leave from Womanby Street.
CARDIFF’S Womanby Street is synonymous with the city’s live music scene.
But that’s nothing new as, for centuries, the street has been known for its bars and pubs, dating back to when thirsty sailors would stagger down the alley while their ships were moored in Cardiff docks.
At that time in the 1700s, the River Taff ran down what is now Westgate Street, with merchant ships “burnt by the tropi- cal sun” sailing past the back of Womanby Street.
The street still has one of the last visible examples of what was politely called “housing courts” – we would now describe them as slums.
Jones Court was a place where the waves of migrant workers who were coming to Cardiff at that time lived.
Bute built them in the 1830s for his dockworkers but the houses had just two rooms, no water supply or drainage and were poorly ventilated. so they were perfect breeding grounds for diseases like cholera and typhus.
In a cholera outbreak in 1849, 396 Cardiffians died. That sparked a major inspection into public health. That found a horrific reality, including 54 people living in four rooms, 500 people in 27 houses sharing four toilets and no water supply.
In the 1840s a quarter of children in Cardiff died before their first birthday.
The Taff only changed position when engineers for South Wales Railway were trying to find a suitable place to build Cardiff Central station.
The land where the station and the Principality Stadium now sit was unsuitable at the time as it was prone to flooding.
In the 1840s, Isambard Kingdom Brunel came up with the solution to divert the Taff away from Westgate Street in order to create a larger space for the station.
But Womanby Street remained an important part of the city, not the side street we think of today.
According to local historian and Echo columnist Brian Lee, Womanby Street was then a major thoroughfare through Cardiff, which was itself little more than a small dock town.
Through the ages the street has been known variably as Humdenmanby Street, Houndemanneby Street, Homandesby Street, Whomanby Street, Homanby Street and Howmanby Street.
Town planners eventually settled on “Womanby Street”, a corruption of earlier names.
One of the street’s longest-standing pubs was the Horse and Groom, now the home of Fuel Rock Club.
The pub is said to date back to 1776, and was well known for having a brass pipe at the end of the bar which punters could use to light their cigarettes.
The Horse and Groom remained open until the early 1990s and, according to a local pub guide from 1967, it was famed for being haunted by a poltergeist.
This may have been due to the decor the management chose to adorn the walls of the Horse and Groom, as Mr Lee explains: “Generations of Cardiffians on entering the Horse and Groom would have seen two large oil paintings, Hogarthian in character.
“One picture was called The Ghost Story and the other The Master Returns.”
Womanby Street has seen its fair share of trouble throughout its history.
In 1759 a fight broke out on the street, then Homanby Street, between the crews of the ships The Eagle of Bristol and the man-of-war Aldborough.
Both crews were said to be armed “to the teeth” with swords, pistols, cutlasses, pikes and muskets.
The fight left one man dead, Edmund Ffaharty, who had been shot by a “person unknown” according to the coroner’s court.
Womanby Street didn’t start to become known as a live music hub until the 1970s.
In the latter part of the decade, a pub on Castle Street (from which Womanby Street leads) known as The Globe since 1731 changed its name to the Four Bars and became known for its live music.
In the early ‘90s, the Four Bars was rebranded as Dempsey’s, around about the same time another fledgling music venue was beginning to put on gigs.
In 1983, a Welsh language social club was set up in the middle of Womanby Street.
The club was named after Ifor Bach, Lord of Senghenydd, a 12th century rebel leader who fought against English rule.
The club was never intended as a live music venue, but simply a social club for Welsh speakers.
But by the late 1980s, the club began hosting bands, a move which proved popular with young people in the city.
Due to its social club licence, the bar was able to stay open later than the rest of the pubs on the street, a major advantage for the venue in its early years.
Guto Brychan, 44, began working behind the bar at Clwb Ifor Bach in 1992 and is now chief executive of the club.
“There have always been gigs there but in the early days it was just a Welsh language club,” Guto said.
“It was only in the late ‘80s and ‘90s that it opened up a little bit more to have live music. And from the late ‘90s onwards, it has been more of the focus of what we do here.”
Many bands played Clwb Ifor Bach in their early careers, including the Super Furry Animals and Catatonia, cementing it as an iconic part of Cardiff’s music scene.
In more recent years, Clwb has played host to acts who have made a big impact on the alternative scene such as Wolf Alice, Rat Boy, YAK and Gwenno.
But during the past few months, the future of Cardiff’s live music scene has been under threat.
Firstly came the news that two of its beloved small live music venues were closing – Dempsey’s (which is now being replaced with Gareth Bale’s sports bar) and The Moon Club on Womanby Street (which has been replaced by a new blues, jazz and cocktail bar called The Bootlegger).
And that was followed by the recent announcement that The Moon Club’s sister venue The Full Moon was following suit, although former staff are planning to reopen it.
Last year marked the 10th anniversary of Swn Festival, an annual festival founded by BBC Radio 1 DJ Huw Stephens and Cardiff promoter John Rostron.
The festival takes place largely in Womanby Street venues, along with others across the city, and is designed to showcase new talent.
But after the spate of venue closures this year, and continued threats from residentially planning applications and noise complaints, some are concerned that the street’s musical identity is being eroded.
The Save Womanby Street campaign has been set up by concerned venue owners and activists to fight for measures from Cardiff council and the Welsh Assembly to protect venues from noise complaints and unfair planning laws.
Nick Cotton, who DJs under the name F-Block on Womanby Street said: “After years of effort, Womanby Street was finally being recognised as a cultural hub for musicians from all over South Wales and beyond.
“We’re four months into 2017, and all that work has been completely dismantled. The threats against Fuel and Clwb Ifor Bach look insurmountable, and it’s not like this is a Subway, Greggs or Costa under threat.
“Running an independent music venue is a thankless, stressful, monetarily bleak business to be in.
“The council and the people should be supporting the brilliant folks who put themselves in this unenviable position.
“Without these venues, subcultures don’t have a chance to flourish. And for me, it’s subcultures that truly make a city great.”