The Cardiff Book of Days (11 page)

1950:
The celebrations following Wales Triple-Crown winning 6-3 victory over Ireland in Belfast on March 11th were cruelly cut short the next day. A Tudor V aircraft carrying Welsh rugby fans home crashed at Llandow near Cardiff. Eighty people were killed and there were only three survivors. At the time it was the worst disaster in aviation history. Two weeks later five uniformed buglers played the Last Post before the match against France at the Arms Park. An appeal fund raised £40,000 for the victims' families. (Robert Cole & Stuart Farmer,
The Wales Rugby Miscellany
, Sports Vision Publishing, 2008)

1815:
The Minute Book records that no one at all bothered to attend the meeting of the Commissioners charged with powers to levy rates to improve the town's highways. The Commissioners had been set up under an Act of Parliament of 1774 ‘for the paving, cleansing, and lighting of the streets of Cardiff' but this does not seem to have got much support from local worthies. Six attended the meeting on March 27th but for the next thirteen after that all the despondent clerk could enter in the book was ‘meeting called in vain'. Very little was achieved by the Commissioners due to a combination of shortage of money and a lack of co-operation by townspeople. The Act only succeeded in depriving the Town Council of a responsibility which should have been theirs. (William Rees,
Cardiff: A History of the City
, Cardiff Corporation, 1969)

1913:
‘Two Ton' Tessie O'Shea was born in Riverside, Cardiff. Brought up in the tradition of the Music Hall, she became one of the most popular entertainers for over forty years, appearing in many well-known films, musicals and stage shows. (T.D. Breverton,
The Welsh Almanac
, Glyndwr Publications, 2002)

1887:
A petition was presented to a meeting of the Town Council objecting to the change of Crockherbton or Crokerton to Queen Street. The old name was an ancient one, although its derivation was uncertain. The thirty signatories were ‘unwilling that so well-known and ancient a name, which has distinguished this part of Cardiff from time immemorial, should be abolished'. The petition was unsuccessful, as was a later attempt to reverse the name change, in 1891. (Stewart Williams,
Cardiff Yesterday
)

1942:
British commandos completed their training at Cardiff Docks for the planned raid on the dry dock at St Nazaire in German-occupied France. As part of this daring raid an American destroyer rammed into the lock gates and was blown up. This enterprise was successful in putting the dock, one of only two large enough to take the powerful German battleship
Tirpitz
, out of action, but 169 British servicemen were killed and 216 taken prisoner. Later in the war Cardiff Docks was the location for the manufacture of parts for the ‘Mulberry Harbours' used in the D-Day landings. (J.H. Morgan, ‘Cardiff at War' in Stewart Williams (ed.)
The Cardiff Book, Vol.3
, 1974)

1961:
George Thomas MP (later Speaker of the House of Commons and then Lord Tonypandy) officially opened Waterhall County Secondary School. The headmaster was Mr R.A. Jones. (Stewart Williams,
Cardiff Yesterday
)

1997:
A poignant day for rugby fans at the Arms Park. It was the final Five Nations match before demolition began to make way for the planned Millennium Stadium. Jonathan Humphreys captained Wales and it was the last game for Jonathan Davies and England legends Will Carling and Rob Andrew. England spoiled the party by beating Wales 34-13 but Rob Howley salvaged some Welsh pride by scoring the last international try there, 113 years after the first (scored by another Cardiff player, William Norton). Eleven years later the new stadium accommodated the largest-ever crowd to attend a sporting event in Wales, 74,609 for the Grand Slam decider between Wales and France. (Steve Lewis,
The Priceless Gift: 125 Years of Welsh Rugby Captains
, Mainstream, 2005 /
Western Mail
)

1896:
In a football international at Cardiff, Wales lost 1-9 to England, their worst home defeat. (Dennis Morgan,
Farewell to Ninian Park
, 2008)

1932:
On her first visit to Cardiff, the Duchess of York (later Queen Elizabeth II) was presented with a magnificent thatched model house, ‘Y Bwthyn Bach'. This gift from the City of Cardiff was described by the Lord Mayor, Alderman E.C. Melhuish, as ‘a perfect house in miniature, replete with fittings and furnishings in every way similar to an adult's home but built to the scale of a little child of six years of age. The house was 22ft long and 8ft wide. It weighed ten tons. It had been the idea of E.C. Morgan Willmott who designed it all. Furniture, including a little Welsh dresser, curtains and drapery had been made by the Roath Furnishing Company. The presentation had been made by Miss L.V. Walters of the Welsh Terrier Society. The ceremony took place at the Greyfriars Hall. (Stewart Williams,
Cardiff Yesterday
)

1570:
Death at Hampton Court of William Herbert, first Earl of Pembroke, a member of a noble family which played the leading role in Cardiff's story from the sixteenth century. The son of Sir Richard Herbert, he had been a hot-headed young man who carried on dynastic family feuds with great enthusiasm (
see
February 2nd). He became a leading figure at Henry VIII's court. Henry heaped favours and honours upon him, including the gift of Cardiff Castle. He married Ann Parr, the sister of Henry's sixth wife, Catherine. He was knighted in 1544. After Henry's death, he became one of the guardians of the young King Edward VI. He became a Knight of the Garter in 1549 and was made Baron Herbert of Cardiff and first Earl of Pembroke in 1551. Much of his wealth was spent in making the castle a more appropriate residence for a rising statesman. However, now only the Herbert Tower now remains from this period. (
Dictionary of National Biography
, OUP)

1979:
Wales beat England to secure their fourth successive Triple Crown. (Robert Cole & Stuart Farmer,
The Wales Rugby Miscellany
, Sports Vision Publishing, 2008)

1848:
‘The Richest Baby in Britain' succeeded to the title on the death of his father, the second Marquis of Bute. He inherited a position of great wealth and privilege. In 1766 the heiress of the Pembrokes (
see
March 17th) married a Scottish nobleman, Lord Mountstuart, whose family took their title from the Isle of Bute on the West Coast of Scotland. Mountstuart's father saw Cardiff Castle as the ideal place of residence for his son and employed Henry Holland and Capability Brown to renovate it. By 1848 the mineral resources of the Bute family estates in South Wales had made the Butes fabulously wealthy. The second Marquis grew up to be a studious aesthetic young man, fascinated by archaeology and religion. At the age of 21 he converted to Roman Catholicism. In 1865 he met the architect William Burges (
see
March 20th) and together they transformed Cardiff Castle into the medieval fantasy that we see today. (Simon Jenkins,
Wales: Churches, Houses, Castles
, Allen Lane, 2008)

1921:
Francis Mostyn was enthroned as Archbishop of Cardiff. He was the first post-Reformation Roman Catholic leader in Wales to have been born in the Principality and his appointment was widely acclaimed. It was Mostyn who lobbied for March 1st, St David's Day, to be celebrated as Wales' National Day. In 1934 Pope Pius XI asked him to lead the fight against ‘the modern tendency towards immorality in public entertainment'. He set up the Cardiff Board of Catholic Action which threatened that Catholics would boycott cinemas unless ‘the adulation of the gangster and the immoral and easy divorce themes were eliminated'. Cinema managers were told not to show films that celebrated low public morals or ‘lowered the fundamental principles of religion'. The campaign was so successful that the film industry felt compelled to set up a panel which vetted film scripts before production. This lasted well into the 1950s. In 1934, when Mostyn celebrated the Golden Jubilee of his priesthood, the Earl of Dumfries described him as ‘the best-loved man in Wales'. (John O'Sullivan & Bryn Jones,
Cardiff: A Centenary Celebration
, The History Press, 2005)