Boom and bust in Barry Island: The next reinvention of Wales’ biggest town

THE sky is crystal clear blue and the tide is out, exposing acres of golden sand.

A rose-tinted glance at Whitmore Bay on a day like this could almost mistake it for Australia’s Gold Coast – were it not for the biting wind that’s so cold it almost bruises your face as it whips inland off the sea.

It might be winter on Barry Island, but the beach is bustling with visitors. OK, it’s not quite the August bank holiday in 1950 when more than 120,000 were crammed onto the sands, but there are people everywhere you look.

Many are accompanied by one or more four-legged friends – the fruits of a plan to resurrect Barry Island as an allyear-round destination that included reaching out directly to dog walkers.

Even early on a winter’s day many of the outlets are open and there is a buzz on the Island.

With a view of the bay, and clientele that is about 50% human, Marco’s Cafe is doing good business. The venue was made famous by TV show Gavin and Stacey.

Welsh-Italian owner Marco Zeraschi is often referred to as Mr Barry Island – “If you cut me in half you’d find Barry Island written through me like on a stick of rock” – and in person he’s as cheery and enterprising as the famous square mile of land on which he’s made his name.

His family are celebrating a 60-year relationship with the seaside town this year and by his reckoning they run about 25% of the businesses on the Island. His son, he says, is buying up property like he is playing Monopoly.

It all began when Marco’s father purchased the Piccolo in 1958, and the latest acquisition by the family is two units on the western promenade, which are being converted into an ice cream parlour.

Mr Zeraschi has seen the Island go from the boom times with Butlin’s to the bleak and deserted years when the holiday camp left. But he is optimistic for the future. It’s not hard to see why he has a belief in this seaside patch of land. In the property game you’d call it a bit of fixer-upper. Some aspects are perfect, while others are in dire need of some love.

Walking along Paget Road there is a dark green, Victorian canopy running along the shops, interrupted by a row of four fronts, before resuming again. There is glass missing from a number of the sections, and a number of the frontages could, to put it kindly, be described as a little garish.

The former home of the Merry Friars club is an imposing, solid, grey building. The upper floors and basement are used as a gym – the local featherweight world champion Lee Selby can be seen training there on occasion.

On Friars Road is the grand Esplanade building, which is adorned with plastic signs for the children’s soft play centre on the first floor. On the ground floor is a Hyper Value, a fish and chip bar, and five cafes. In some senses, it’s good to see they’re being used at all.

But it’s hard to escape the feeling that other seaside resorts of the type Barry seeks to rival would see these prime locations filled with luxury restaurants and boutique hotels. The chippies and amusement arcades would be restaurants and craft shops. But then would it still be Barry Island?

Down the coast in Penarth, the equivalent stretch of seafront boasts the Michelin-starred James Sommerin, which has rooms above, The Fig Tree restaurant, a shop selling upmarket beach-inspired furniture and gifts, and a cafe.

However Barry is not Penarth, and not being Penarth was the making of the town back in the late 19th century.

“The working class of the South Wales coalfield had already cultivated a love of the seaside,” said Dr Andy Croll, principal lecturer in history at the University of South Wales.

“A committed few journeyed to Aberystwyth to satiate their demand for saline pleasures. Many more took advantage of the newly instituted bank holidays and flocked, by rail, to Penarth in the 1880s and early 1890s.

“However, the reception they received at the hands of bourgeois Penarthians was even chillier than the waters that lapped at the town’s pebbly beach.”

When The Barry Dock Company linked the Island to the wider rail network it brought Whitmore Bay within easy reach for thousands of day-trippers from the coalfields. The inter-war period saw sustained investment. A stone seawall replaced an older wooden structure. The sand dunes were refashioned into ornamental gardens. Shelters and bandstands were thrown up (many of which remain today). And the funfair, by now in the hands of the Collins family, added ever more attractions to entice and thrill the day-trippers.

After WWII, the resort went from strength to strength. Visitor numbers boomed. In the mid-1960s, a Butlin’s holiday camp opened, bringing yet more visitors to the Island.

But when the Island fell into decline following the departure of Butlin’s at the end of the 20th century, a sense of nostalgia for this golden era drove many to yearn for something that could recapture the excitement the memories of its heydays evoke.

And despite a succession of false starts over the years, that desire is still there. A glance back at the traffic chaos caused by the funfair reopening in Easter 2015 is just one piece of evidence of the widely-held aspiration for this cherished piece of land to return to its former glories.

These days though, the Island is not actually much of an Island. When complete, the Waterfront development will have added about 2,000 homes to what is already Wales’ biggest town.

When it comes to talking about the regeneration of Barry, Paul Haley has been there and bought the T-shirt.

Chairman of Pride in Barry for 13 years, he recalls a regeneration strategy that was drawn up in the the late ‘90s that involved developing land, infrastructure, roads, drainage, and bridges to bring the dock, town and Island back together.

“A central initiative was to develop a steam heritage railway which joined up a necklace of attractions around the periphery of Barry, via a new transport hub at Barry Dock Station through to Barry Island,” he says.

“This would enable the Welsh Development Agency (WDA) to save some old heritage buildings, reconvert them, and create a unique proposition for visitors to disembark from Arriva at Barry Dock, and then steam engine to Barry Island Train Station Museum.

“The strategy aimed to create new modern undercover attractions at Barry Island, a university campus on the Waterfront, and to make the dock water a real feature, with sailing and potentially a marina by changing the locking mechanism by conversion of Bailey’s old dry dock. And a business park which would target Admiral as an anchor tenant.”

A recent report from the property consultancy JLL argued the lack of high-quality business premises is threatening jobs and economic growth in Wales. Cadoxton, on the east end of Barry, takes 18 minutes on the train to Cardiff Central, while from Barry Island it is 29 minutes.

The town still feels blocked from achieving its full potential.

One of Barry’s biggest business success stories is Spectrum Collections. The company, which makes “the world’s most Instagram-able make-up brushes”, was started by sisters Sophie and Hannah Pycroft in their Barry garage. It is now valued at £12m.

They want to keep the business in Barry but say they have struggled to scale up in the town due to severe lack in suitable space. As a result, they’re now looking to move to Penarth to find somewhere they can fit all their staff.

Mr Haley feels that since the demise of the WDA the regeneration has been fragmented, and because it was not ring-fenced, the sale proceeds of land is not going back into the pot.

At present, bar Asda, the Waterfront is all housing. The supermarket was expected to be joined by cafes, bars, restaurants, a hotel and a primary school.

The East Quay homes – towards the Docks – and its neighbouring 2.2 acres of parkland are set to be in the shadow of a biomass incinerator, or gasification plant, that recently gained approval from Natural Resources Wales.

“It’s terrible for the visual image of Barry,” says Max Wallis of the Docks Incinerator Action Group. “Looking back from Barry Island, you see not an interesting town to explore, but a huge chimney, sometimes belching a smoke trail over homes.”

The council opposed the development. NRW said the licence was granted following consultation with local residents, Public Health Wales and South Wales Fire and Rescue Service.

Meanwhile, in recent years, the council has made a concerted effort to revitalise the Island, albeit on a smaller scale than some of the grand projects that failed to get off the ground. Money has been spent on bringing back the vibrant beach huts, a climbing wall and improving the promenade.

There are also a number of events put on at weekends throughout the summer to attract more visitors.

The council is looking to work further with local businesses and “visitors capitalise on the resurgence in the