CARDIFFREMEMBERED Long-gone city pub once used by farmers after going to market

SOME Cardiffians may remember the Horse and Groom which used to be in Womanby Street.

Emrys Jones writing about this now long gone pub in his series of articles on the old inns of South Wales for the Evening Express back in 1927 told his readers then that it was not in its original condition as when it was erected 200 years earlier.

“There do remain,however, traces of its ancient past. Upstairs the poky little attics are still to be seen, with their white-washed wooden beams and low ceilings!’’

He goes on to tell his readers that in the days when Cardiff was a sleepy little market town, builders were not allowed to build house to house, and “if you venture into the back of the Horse and Groom you will find one of these narrow separating passages left amid Cardiff’s modernity.

“Look at the walls; notice the rounded, watersmoothed stones raised from the bed of the Taff! They are immemoriably old.’’

We also learn that if you had entered the pub back in 1927 you would have seen two large oil paintings, Hogarthian in character, that hung on the walls.

“Generations of Cardiff men and women have gazed at these pictures with an understanding denied to others who have no time for contemplation. “But those same men, if they would return, would be overwhelmed with the complexities of our modern city life. They would hasten back, no doubt