Tiger Bay (Welsh : Bae Teigr) was the local name for an area of Cardiff which covered Butetown and Cardiff Docks. Following the building of the Cardiff Barrage, which dams the tidal rivers, Ely and Taff, to create a body of water, it is referred to as Cardiff Bay. Tiger Bay is Wales’ oldest multi-ethnic community, with sailors and workers from over 50 countries settling there from the mid-19th century onwards. [1]
Cardiff Docks played a major part in Cardiff's development as it was the means of exporting coal from the South Wales Valleys to the rest of the world, helping to power the Industrial Age. The coal mining industry helped fund the growth of Cardiff to become the capital city of Wales, and contributed towards making the docks' owner, the 3rd Marquess of Bute, the richest man in the world at the time.
In 1794, the Glamorganshire Canal was completed, linking Cardiff with Merthyr, and in 1798 a basin was built, connecting the canal to the sea. Increasing agitation for proper dock facilities led Cardiff's foremost landowner, the 2nd Marquess of Bute, to promote the construction of the West Bute Dock, which opened in October 1839. Just two years later, the Taff Vale Railway opened. From the 1850s coal supplanted iron as the industrial foundation of South Wales, as the Cynon Valley and Rhondda Valley were mined.
As Cardiff's coal exports grew, so did its population. Well-appointed residential areas were created in the 1840s and early 1850s, centred around Mount Stuart Square and Loudoun Square (between West Bute Street and the Glamorganshire Canal) to house the growing numbers of merchants, brokers, builders, and seafarers from across the world settling close to the docks. [2] The area, known as Tiger Bay from the fierce currents around the local tidal stretches of the River Severn, became one of the UK's oldest multicultural communities, with migrant communities from over 50 nationalities, including Norwegian, Somali, Yemeni, Spanish, Italian, Caribbean, and Irish. All the nationalities helped to create the multicultural character of the area, where people from different backgrounds socialised together and intermarried. [3] [4]
The East Bute dock opened in 1859. Coal exports from Cardiff Docks reached 2 million tons as early as 1862; by 1913, this had risen to 10,700,000 tons. Frustration at the lack of development at Cardiff led to rival docks being opened at nearby Penarth in 1865 and Barry in 1889. These developments eventually spurred Cardiff into action, with the opening of the Roath Dock in 1887 and the Queen Alexandra Dock in 1907. Coal exports from the South Wales Coalfield via Cardiff totalled nearly 9 million tons per annum, much of it exported in the holds of locally owned tramp steamers. The wealthier residents were able to move away to the new Cardiff suburbs. Butetown (particularly the area around Loudoun Square) became crowded, as families took in lodgers and split up the three-storey houses to help pay the rents. [2]
Tiger Bay had a reputation as a tough and dangerous area; but locals who lived and stayed in the area describe a far friendlier place. [5] Merchant seamen arrived in Cardiff from all over the world, only staying for as long as it took to discharge and reload their ships. Consequently, it has been said that the area became the red-light district of Cardiff, and many murders and lesser crimes went unsolved and unpunished, as the perpetrators had sailed away. In reality the primary brothels streets, and the primary red light area, were Charlotte Street and Whitmore Lane, both of which were outside Tiger Bay. They were demolished, and the site is now the Marriott Hotel car park.
By 1932, in the depths of the Great Depression which followed the 1926 United Kingdom general strike, coal exports had fallen to below 5 million tons, and dozens of locally owned ships were laid up. It was an era of depression from which Cardiff never really recovered, and despite intense activity at the port during the Second World War, coal exports continued to decline, finally ceasing in 1964.
Coal exports were key to the local economy, which began to decline in the 1960s, when exports from the docks stopped. Housing clearances in the 1960s relocated many of the residents of Butetown, previously the residential core of the docklands, into unpopular tower blocks. [6] The economic decline in the 1960s and 1970s led to a 25% vacancy rate of buildings and 60% unemployment in Butetown. The infrastructure and buildings in the area declined: by the 1970s and 1980s the area required development and investment. [7]
The price of land in the area decreased as there was a decline in traditional industry. This led to a rise in commercial developments, which were largely celebrated as a regeneration, although they displaced the local multicultural community as homes were demolished. [6]
Around 1999, the area was redeveloped by the Cardiff Bay Development Corporation. This redevelopment was focused around the building of the Cardiff Bay Barrage, one of the most controversial building projects of the day, [8] which impounded the rivers Taff and the Ely to create a massive freshwater lake. This resulted in the equally controversial renaming of the area as "Cardiff Bay".
The opposition to the development was led on the grounds of removal of communities, and ecological preservation of the mud-flats and salt marshes which were home to wintering birds. [9]
Butetown councillor Saeed Ebrahim has commented on the present day repercussions of these developments on the local community:
“The way developments were created was not very healthy, put it that way. The developers created us and them. They never wanted to include their developments in the older people and the older Butetown communities.”“The development of Cardiff Bay has never included the people of Butetown frankly, and still to this day they are not included into the agenda of businesses. And still, there's a huge divide in the Bay and Butetown.”
The funding available for the existing community was small and the Tiger Bay name was pushed out in favour of Cardiff Bay.
In the redevelopment of the area, some long-standing cultural institutions were closed or demolished to make space for new buildings. In the 1970s, the Industrial and Maritime Museum was built on Bute Street to commemorate the heritage and history of the area. The museum, along with other historical buildings on Bute Street, were demolished in the 1990s to make space for the Mermaid Quay shopping and leisure development. [7]
In 1988, coinciding with the creation of the Cardiff Bay Development Corporation, the Butetown History and Arts Centre was created by the Butetown community to preserve the cultural-political heritage of the area. The centre was the site of historical oral recordings, educational events and activities for children and adults, and it also published books. [10] The founder, an American historian named Glenn Jordan, was certain that the centre would remain an integral part of the regeneration project, since the area was deemed to be an example of a harmonious multi-racial community. [11] However, the corporation provided no funding to the centre, and the space had to rely on external charitable funding to keep running. [12] In late 2016, the long-standing institution could not obtain funding and was shut down. Its rich collection of the history of the Tiger Bay needed re-housing, and the last important link for communities that had been cleared out from the area, to make space for the re-generation, was now closed. [12] [11]
The BHAC collection has passed to The Heritage & Cultural Exchange, a local community-based organisation. [13]
The name "Tiger Bay" was applied in popular literature and slang (especially that of sailors) to any dock or seaside neighbourhood which shared a similar notoriety for danger. [14]
During the Falklands War in 1982, the Argentine Z-28 patrol boat ARA Islas Malvinas GC82 was captured by the Type 42 destroyer HMS Cardiff. Brought into service with the Royal Navy, the crew subsequently renamed her HMS Tiger Bay. Stationed in Portsmouth Harbour for a period, she was sold for scrap in 1986.
Cardiff is the capital and largest city of Wales. Cardiff had a population of 372,089 in 2022 and forms a principal area officially known as the City and County of Cardiff. The city is the eleventh largest in the United Kingdom. Located in the southeast of Wales and in the Cardiff Capital Region, Cardiff is the county town of the historic county of Glamorgan and in 1974–1996 of South Glamorgan. It belongs to the Eurocities network of the largest European cities. A small town until the early 19th century, its prominence as a port for coal when mining began in the region helped its expansion. In 1905, it was ranked as a city and in 1955 proclaimed capital of Wales. Cardiff Built-up Area covers a larger area outside the county boundary, including the towns of Dinas Powys and Penarth.
Cardiff Bay is an area and freshwater lake in Cardiff, Wales. The site of a former tidal bay and estuary, it is the river mouth of the River Taff and Ely. The body of water was converted into a 500-acre (2.0 km2) lake as part of a pre-devolution UK Government regeneration project, involving the damming of the rivers by the Cardiff Bay Barrage in 1999. The barrage impounds the rivers from the Severn Estuary, providing flood defence and the creation of a permanent non-tidal high water lake with limited access to the sea, serving as a core feature of the redevelopment of the area in the 1990s.
Butetown is a district and community in the south of the city of Cardiff, the capital of Wales. It was originally a model housing estate built in the early 19th century by the 2nd Marquess of Bute, for whose title the area was named.
Atlantic Wharf is a southern area of the city of Cardiff, Wales. It is primarily an area of new houses and apartments located on the west side of the disused Bute East Dock and to the east of Lloyd George Avenue. It also includes a number of refurbished dock warehouses, modern hotels, the Red Dragon Centre and Cardiff Council's County Hall. Atlantic Wharf lies in the Butetown electoral division of Cardiff and the Cardiff South and Penarth constituency for the UK Parliament and the Senedd.
The Butetown branch line, also known as the Cardiff Bay Line, is a 1-mile-6-chain (1.7 km) commuter railway line in Cardiff, Wales from Cardiff Bay to Cardiff Queen Street. The service pattern formerly comprised a mixture of shuttle services along the branch and through trains along the Rhymney Line to Caerphilly, or the Coryton Line to Coryton, but after December 2005 was a shuttle service from Queen Street station. However, in May 2024, direct trains to Pontypridd were restored alongside shuttle services. The normal journey time is four minutes.
The Coal Exchange is a historic building in Cardiff, Wales. It is designed in Renaissance Revival style. Built in 1888 as the Coal and Shipping Exchange to be used as a market floor and office building for trading in coal in Cardiff, it later became a hub of the global coal trade. It is situated in Mount Stuart Square in Butetown, and was for many years the hub of the city's prosperous shipping industry.
Cardiff Bay railway station, formerly Cardiff Bute Road, is a station serving the Cardiff Bay and Butetown areas of Cardiff, Wales. It is the southern terminus of the Butetown branch line 1 mile (1.5 km) south of Cardiff Queen Street.
The Norwegian Church Arts Centre is a point of cultural and historical interest located in Cardiff Bay, Wales. It was a Lutheran Church, consecrated in 1868. Under the patronage of The Norwegian Seamen's Mission it provided home comforts, communication with family and a place of worship for Scandinavian sailors and the Norwegian community in Cardiff for over a hundred years.
Bute Street is a street in Cardiff, Wales. It links Cardiff Bay and Butetown with Cardiff city centre. It now has no road number. It runs from the dockside of the Mermaid Quay complex in the south, which is now a pedestrian zone, to the junction of Bute Terrace (A4160) in the north.
The Pierhead Building is a Grade I listed building in Cardiff Bay, Wales. It was built in 1897 as the headquarters for the Bute Dock Company.
The timeline of Cardiff history shows the significant events in the history of Cardiff which transformed it from a small Roman fort into the modern capital city of Wales.
The history of Cardiff—a City and County Borough and the capital of Wales—spans at least 6,000 years. The area around Cardiff has been inhabited by modern humans since the Neolithic Period. Four Neolithic burial chambers stand within a radius of 10 mi (16 km) of Cardiff City Centre, with the St Lythans burial chamber the nearest, at about 4 mi (6.4 km) to the west. Bronze Age tumuli are at the summit of Garth Hill, within the county's northern boundary, and four Iron Age hillfort and enclosure sites have been identified within the City and County of Cardiff boundary, including Caerau Hillfort, an enclosed area of 5.1 ha. Until the Roman conquest of Britain, Cardiff was part of the territory of an Iron Age Celtic British tribe called the Silures, which included the areas that would become known as Brecknockshire, Monmouthshire and Glamorgan. The Roman fort established by the River Taff, which gave its name to the city—Caerdydd, earlier Caerdyf, from caer (fort) and Taf—was built over an extensive settlement that had been established by the Silures in the 50s AD.
As the capital city of Wales, Cardiff is the main engine of growth in the Welsh economy; the city has been developing as a significant service centre and economic driver for the wider south east Wales economy. The city and the adjoining Vale of Glamorgan contribute a disproportionately high share of economic output in Wales. The Cardiff travel to work area has grown significantly since 1991; the 2001-based version includes much of the central South Wales Valleys in addition to the Vale of Glamorgan.
Cardiff Docks is a port in southern Cardiff, Wales. At its peak, the port was one of the largest dock systems in the world with a total quayage of almost 7 mi (11 km). Once the main port for the export of South Wales coal, the Port of Cardiff remains active in the import and export of containers, steel, forest products and dry and liquid bulks.
Architecture in Cardiff, the capital city of Wales, dates from Norman times to the present day. Its urban fabric is largely Victorian and later, reflecting Cardiff's rise to prosperity as a major coal port in the 19th century. No single building style is associated with Cardiff, but the city centre retains several 19th and early 20th century shopping arcades.
There are many listed buildings in Cardiff Bay, part of Cardiff, capital city of Wales. A listed building is one considered to be of special architectural, historical or cultural significance, and has restrictions on amendments or demolition. Buildings are listed as either Grade I, II* and II buildings lists, with the Grade I being the most important.
Butetown History & Arts Centre (BHAC) was a historical archive, educational centre and art gallery located in the Butetown area of Cardiff, Wales. BHAC was founded by Glenn Jordan as a non-profiting organisation with the aim to involve the local people of Butetown to help promote the area's history of the docklands.
Loudoun Square is a residential square in Cardiff, Wales. Described as "the heart of the old Tiger Bay", the square is the location of two of Cardiff's few residential tower blocks, as well as shops, a pub, church, health centre and community centre.
Mount Stuart Square is a residential and commercial square in Cardiff, Wales. It is located in the Butetown area of the city. Originally developed in the late 1800s as a residential location for nearby dock workers, it quickly became a centre for upscale residential properties which revolved around the main square. By 1900, commercial activity had taken its place, dominated by the Coal Exchange, which occupied the once open central space. The square contains a high concentration of listed buildings, which represent a range of architectural styles and some of Cardiff's finest examples of late 19th and early 20th century commercial architecture. Mount Stuart Square area was designated a Conservation Area in July 1980.
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