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00:00Echoes of the past are all around us.
00:07Every ruin has a story to tell.
00:11Ways of life that have vanished.
00:14I'm on a journey to discover the lost landmarks of Wales.
00:19Historic sites that have disappeared from our landscape in living memory.
00:24The heritage that was on our doorstep,
00:28where we lived.
00:30All those people who are now forgotten.
00:33Worked.
00:34It was an end of an era, really.
00:36And played.
00:37I'm not sure why we didn't save it.
00:40So much has been swept away.
00:43Places that are lost in time.
00:46Yeah, sad.
00:51It's a poignant journey.
00:53The house that they lived in is now underwater.
00:57It was a lovely place to work.
00:59Now there's nothing left.
01:00It created a lot of joy for a lot of people.
01:03These are the remarkable stories of a vanished Wales.
01:07It's amazing what you'll find in the pastures of Pallas.
01:10I've come to Crigion, north-east of Welshpool.
01:13It's amazing what you'll find in the pastures of Pallas.
01:17I've come to Crigion, north-east of Welshpool.
01:24There are four old buildings here, and they've got a fascinating past.
01:30This site was specially built during World War II, and remained in operation for more than 60 years.
01:45Towers and masts rose hundreds of feet into the air, transmitting top secret messages around the world.
02:01These buildings weren't always alone in the landscape.
02:13They used to be dwarfed by a network of masts, each one taller than the Blackpool Tower.
02:22This was Crigion radio station, a communications powerhouse that linked Britain to the four corners of the world.
02:31The site was decommissioned in 2003, and the transmitter stations came up for sale.
02:39Chris is now the proud owner of the largest one.
02:44What was actually happening in this particular building here?
02:49This is what's called the VLF building, which stands for Bay Low Frequency,
02:53which was able to transmit almost globally for the Admiralty, which would allow them to keep communications worldwide.
03:01And you grew up in this area, so you must have seen it when it was in operation.
03:04Yeah, so I used to live ten minutes away.
03:07So from where I lived, you could be able to see the little red light on top of the mast at night,
03:12so you could see all the masts lit up.
03:14Oh, wow.
03:16I'm curious.
03:17So when you were little, what did you think was happening here?
03:20Did you know what was happening here?
03:21I didn't really know, no.
03:22Didn't really give it much thought, to be honest.
03:26It was just part of the landscape.
03:27And as a child, you think differently, don't you?
03:29You don't wonder what that is. You just...
03:31Yeah, you just accept it.
03:32You just focus on what's in front of you.
03:34Yeah.
03:37So what was happening here?
03:44To find out, I'm meeting Chris's neighbour, here in another of the transmitter stations.
03:52Robert is a radio engineer.
03:55He's bought the building, installed some classic kit,
03:59and knows the full story of this remarkable site.
04:03In 1926, there was a radio station built near Rugby.
04:12That was built to provide communications, mainly for the Navy.
04:18Because it was communicating with military systems, it was vulnerable during the Second World War.
04:24So what they needed to do was to build another radio station way, way off, not on a bomb route.
04:34So this was the site that they chose.
04:37This is before satellites, it's before transatlantic cables.
04:41So that was the only way that they could communicate with the Navy, basically, during the Second World War.
04:46Without good communications, you cannot manage a war. It's as simple as that.
04:55There must have been a lot of people working here at that time.
05:01At its peak, there were 130 people working here on shift.
05:06In the winter, before the dams were built, this site used to flood really, really badly.
05:12So they actually had something called a DUKW, which was an amphibious vehicle to actually get the people to work.
05:21Did it play a role in the Cold War as well?
05:23The BLF site specifically provided essential communications for our nuclear fleet.
05:32You still need to communicate with the submarine, and our nuclear deterrent was tied up in Polaris and Trident.
05:40The only way to communicate was simply to use radio.
05:53After 60 years of military and civilian communications, the facility was wound down in the early 2000s.
06:02All the equipment was dismantled and removed.
06:09And those sky-high masts came crashing down.
06:14I remember sitting up on the top of the hill there with my dad, and they demolished the masts.
06:27It was all detonated, and they all felled the masts.
06:31You actually saw that, haven't you?
06:32Yeah, yeah. It was a big thing. It was a Sunday.
06:35There was a lot of people up on the hill watching.
06:37Oh, wow.
06:38So, presumably, when you bought this place, it had been silent for a long time.
06:47Yeah, so it was almost left abandoned for about 11 years until I bought it in 2014.
06:54It was a bare shell, not a door or a window left on the place.
06:58So, it's taken a lot of work to get to this point.
07:02And I've just been restoring the building ever since.
07:06That's amazing. And how do you feel now, knowing that you are sort of like a custodian of history, really?
07:13Yeah, the history is really interesting, so I just want to try and keep it going as long as possible, really.
07:19It's worth the effort.
07:21From Powys, I'm heading to the Welsh capital.
07:35And this high-rise development in the city centre.
07:38This is an old corner of Cardiff, dating back to the 1860s.
07:45And not too long ago, people could come here for a swim, an evening meal, or to see some brilliant bands live on stage.
07:52But not anymore.
07:58People do have really strong, fond memories of the place.
08:03That is now almost part of mainstream culture.
08:07But we were pioneers in our time.
08:09Go To You Who was a really important venue.
08:14I mean, it's just really sad that it's gone.
08:17This modern apartment block is on Guildford Crescent.
08:25And until recently, the street looked like this.
08:31Some popular landmarks have come and gone here over the years.
08:36The biggest building was the Guildford Crescent Baths, which opened in 1862.
08:42It was well used by Cardiffians, right up until the 1980s.
08:50If you went on a Saturday or on the holidays, it would be packed.
08:54I would think pretty much every child in Cardiff would have either learned to swim or improved their swimming there.
09:01We used to go quite regularly.
09:04Monday evenings, we used to go after school for swimming lessons from when I was about five.
09:10I remember it was old money then because that would have been 1969.
09:16And the big treat afterwards was to go for chips on the way home for tea because it interfered with tea time, you know, the swimming lessons.
09:25Another mainstay of Guildford Crescent was the Thai House, Cardiff's very first Thai restaurant and the only one outside London at the time.
09:41It was a family-run business, the brainchild of Noi and his wife, Arlene.
09:50It was quite a gamble.
09:52At that time, it was a very, very new cuisine.
09:55And one that, you know, we had to gradually introduce to people.
10:02When we first opened the Thai House, I remember one lady and she asked me,
10:07where's this place again?
10:11It's Thai Labs.
10:14We won lots of awards and the food was absolutely authentic.
10:19The Thai House was a family affair.
10:24Noi and Arlene's daughter Tamsin became part of the team.
10:28Meanwhile, her brother Tom and his friend Duncan had a vision to convert one of the restaurant's adjoining buildings.
10:35And that became Goody Who.
10:37Before they knew it, they had this really kind of iconic music venue.
10:53Goody Who was really kind of unique and quirky, quite small, but full of character.
11:00And it was really kind of an inclusive space.
11:02A lot of creative people went there and, yeah, it was a really important part of the music scene in Cardiff for about ten years.
11:14It just had such a kind of welcoming, fun vibe and it really had an independent feel about it.
11:23But Goody Who has gone. So has the Thai House and the public baths.
11:36This street has seen a world of change.
11:42Coming up, the spirited campaign to save Guildford Crescent.
11:46And the coastal town with a luxurious Lido. The leisure complex that thought big.
12:05I'm on a journey across Wales, exploring the hidden histories of our lost landmarks.
12:11I've come to Guildford Crescent in Cardiff, an old city street that's being radically redeveloped.
12:21Long before this high rise building pierced the skyline, the area was home to the Guildford Crescent baths.
12:30They had stood for 120 years. Generations of children learnt to swim there.
12:37There was huge outcry in the 1980s when the council announced that the baths were to close.
12:45It said the cost of repairing and modernising the Victorian building was simply too much.
12:52It was part of the community that got ripped apart.
12:55And it was a really unique place that's been lost.
13:01It's strange really because Cardiff has changed so much.
13:05It's just nothing like it used to be, especially that area.
13:10A real sad loss.
13:12The baths were demolished, eventually replaced by a hotel.
13:21And a few doors down was another landmark that's now missing from this street.
13:27Goody Who.
13:30There was just something really intimate about Goody Who.
13:46There were great gigs on and it was just a real variety because it was a hub for so many different types of music.
13:58I used to play there loads and I'd go to see a lot of gigs there as well.
14:02And so starting out again doing my solo stuff, Goody Who was really integral to that.
14:07And it was fully independent.
14:10A lot of Welsh artists would hang out there.
14:17And so I quickly became aware of what everyone was doing and I got stuck in.
14:23So that's the value of Goody Who and that's the value of any small local venue,
14:28is that it pulls people together and people sort of get a vibe of what everyone's up to.
14:33And it really fed into my first album as well.
14:36And it sort of gave me the confidence to work out what that record was going to be.
14:41And I would say that Goody Who was an integral part of that.
14:50This new tower block has replaced Goody Who and its two neighbours, including the Thai House restaurant.
14:57Both buildings were leased by the Ramessut family and in 2018 they were told that their way of life was going to change.
15:07Unfortunately, the landlords had other plans for the site.
15:12They were very keen to develop it as is now underway.
15:15The owners gave us notice they weren't going to renew our lease.
15:21And I tried every which way to persuade them to let us continue, but they had plans to develop the whole site.
15:30In the meantime, a wonderful young man called Minty was leading a great campaign to save Guildford Crescent.
15:37We had a petition which was signed by 20,000 people.
15:42And eventually there was a huge march through Cardiff.
15:463,000 people marched.
15:48But unfortunately, despite all the goodwill and all the support and positivity, it still was knocked down.
15:55It took a long time for me to adjust to the fact that we lost it.
16:06Madeira did find alternative premises.
16:09Unfortunately, ourselves, no, we couldn't find anywhere.
16:13There was a grieving process afterwards.
16:16We couldn't really believe that it had gone.
16:18It's a blow to Cardiff as well, I think, because lots of people find it quite sad that those businesses are no longer there.
16:35From Cardiff, I'm heading north, to the coastal community of Duganwy.
16:40From the 1930s right through to the 60s, there was a landmark here that took leisure and pleasure to a whole new level.
16:50It's incredible to think that it's no longer here.
16:53In fact, it's incredible to think that it was even built at all.
16:57Today, it's a housing estate.
17:00But for an entire generation, this site was the Duganwy bathing pool.
17:06Splish, splash, I was taking the bail. Long about a Saturday night.
17:12It was enormous.
17:14And as the years went by, it just grew bigger and bigger.
17:19The pool was on Vicky's doorstep.
17:22And she's researched the history of this remarkable attraction.
17:27So, Vicky, from what I've seen, this pool was huge.
17:32Well, it was certainly a very large pool for a very small place.
17:36Duganwy was only a village in the 30s.
17:39It was opened in 1936.
17:42It was always very popular, actually, and it was open throughout the wall, which is amazing.
17:49It was built by a man called R. Arthur Jones.
17:53He was a sailor and he was a golfer, and I think probably he was a very keen swimmer as well.
17:58It was 200 feet long and 100 feet wide and 10 foot deep at its steepest point.
18:06There was a five-meter diving board.
18:10It was a place for fun and a place for serious swimming.
18:14Martin spent most of his childhood at the pool and remembers those dizzyingly high diving boards.
18:21The top one was 26 feet, which was about six or seven meters.
18:27I could run off that and do a running jack knife and land in the six-foot area.
18:32What?
18:33Yeah, they're mad.
18:35They're all mad.
18:36If you don't have fun when you're young, what do you do?
18:40Martin, you were born and bred in these parts.
18:43Yes.
18:44What was it like? Can you paint a picture for me?
18:47It was happy. Happy days.
18:49Yeah.
18:50Everybody from round here came to it.
18:52Yeah.
18:53You know, we'd come on the train from all over the place.
18:56Apart from swimming, they had beauty contests.
18:59They had horse riding, amusement parks, things like that, you know.
19:02And they had a fella called Tarzan, who used to get towed with a wire by a wagon.
19:10And he'd hang on to this and he'd be like Superman going through the waves.
19:17There was just so much to do.
19:19There was a lovely restaurant with a jukebox.
19:22Of course, that's where the lads and the girls went and enjoyed each other.
19:26And over the years, there were pedalos in the pool, the children's pool, a little tiny carousel for children.
19:35There was the petting zoo, there was the zoo.
19:38Yes, that's right, an actual zoo.
19:44Rodney used to work in the cafe, but soon found himself swapping milkshakes for monkeys.
19:52This is a swimming pool with a zoo.
19:54And a zoo.
19:55This was the weirdest place ever.
19:58It was amazing.
19:59I learnt a lot.
20:01It's amazing.
20:04We had red pandas.
20:06And we had woolly monkeys.
20:08Little woolly monkeys.
20:10Porcupines.
20:12Snakes.
20:13I was bitten by one too.
20:15Great fun.
20:17Oh, we had some wallabies.
20:19Now they were vicious too.
20:21That sounds so amazing for this area, to imagine all those...
20:25Because there's nothing else around here.
20:28In its heyday, the baths attracted thousands of visitors.
20:34The press called it Wales's Wonder Pool.
20:38But visit Daganwy today, and all you'll see are rows of houses.
20:45Why did it close?
20:47Part of the problem, I think, was the upkeep of the huge pool, which of course was fed by seawater.
20:53And so it was very complex.
20:54And I have a feeling that that might have turned into a problem.
20:59And the pool got less attractive to swim in.
21:06The pool was the main site.
21:07Yeah.
21:10When it went in the 60s, it sort of disappeared.
21:14I think nowadays we'd be so upset by the loss of such a wonderful, wonderful facility that would be out with placards and petitioning people.
21:23But in the 60s, it just closed.
21:29It stayed empty and sad-looking for about two, three years.
21:36So, Martin, did you see any of it being demolished?
21:42Yes, yes.
21:44Part of the buildings and all the flagstones, they were tears.
21:49And I remember a local builder, you know, taking all these flagstones away.
21:54That must have been quite a surreal experience for you, seeing this place.
21:58Yeah.
21:59It was sad.
22:00Yeah.
22:01Yeah.
22:03Part of our childhood, it was wonderful.
22:05Yeah, can't change that, can you?
22:07You can never bring it back.
22:11A lot of people have said, oh, gosh, why didn't we save it?
22:15Mm-hm.
22:16And I'm not sure why we didn't save it, quite honestly.
22:20It is sad that it's gone.
22:22And I am sure that if it were there now, it would be used as much as it was in the 30s.
22:34Next time, the community displaced by an army camp.
22:39The Gothic mansion that went up in flames.
22:43And the much-missed milk bars.
22:46The� Browse.
22:47The� Browse.
22:48The.
22:49The.
22:50The ہے Browse.
22:52The.
22:53The.
22:54The.
22:55The.
22:56The.
22:57The kiwi.
23:12The.
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