Vanished Wales: Places Lost In Living Memory

by Carwyn Jones

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 180
Rating:

Synopsis:

Vanished Wales: Places Lost in Living Memory is the book to accompany one of ITV Wales’ most popular shows. It explores the fascinating stories of lost landmarks: places in Wales that have disappeared from towns, cities and villages within living memory. As in the series, the book shines a spotlight on this missing heritage, featuring stories from local people who still have a deep personal connection with the remarkable sights that were once on their doorstep.

Lost communities, hives of industry, popular public buildings, cultural and sporting venues, wartime placements, Victorian superstructures and even entire villages: these are once prominent places that have been wiped off the map. Including before and after images from the show, Vanished Wales sings their epitaph.

Carwyn Jones’ Vanished Wales is based on an ITV series I haven’t seen, but I don’t think you need to have seen the series to get something out of it. It focuses not on ancient history, but on Welsh touchstones and homes that have vanished in the last seventy years or so. Some of them are still floating in awareness even for me, despite being destroyed before I was born — and my parents certainly remember them. Others are a bit more obscure.

Given the brief, I was surprised at the exclusion of the obvious target: Capel Celyn, the village drowned to create a reservoir in order to send water to, I kid you fucking not, Liverpool. Yes, you read that right: Liverpool. For industry, to be clear. Perhaps that was still a tad too raw and political for the series? It touches a little bit on local politics, and on people who don’t live in the villages and so on deciding the fate of them, but maybe Capel Celyn still provokes too much anger for ITV. Who knows?

It’s full of photographs (some necessarily old/poor quality, since there’s nothing there to photograph now) and little testimonials/anecdotes/memories from people who lived in/near the vanished places. An interesting read, even if it felt somewhat milquetoast given the impact English industrial aspirations had on Welsh places.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)