Mansion (From Penarth Times)

Mansion

DOES anyone remember the mansion in the woods occupied before the war, and who lived there?

As kids we called the mansion "Frenchies" and the woods "The Ferns".

As far as I know it was built for a shipping line owner and he had a summer house built by the edge of the cliff with a stone wall built into the cliff to watch his ships going in and out of Cardiff and Penarth Docks.

The Yanks moved in there in the run-up to D-Day and the Docks was full of LCTs and landing craft, and as kids, dare I say, we would sneak in there and see what we could pinch.

All I had was a set of knives and forks with black Bakelite handles with USN stamped on them.

We shouldn"t have done that because they were good to us kids.

We used to go down the dock beach and they used to throw candy and gum down to us from the summer house.

They had a large ape as a pet in the woods and it got away and we watched them shoot it in the allotments in Paget Road where I lived.

The dead ape was dumped on the refuse tip in Saulters Field. It was there quite a time. We put it in a tin chest and burnt it.

Then, as if by magic, the docks emptied and they were gone. Someone took the house over after the war and to us kids we thought they were gangsters because they used to drive up our road in a black car, dressed in black with black hats.

Now that beautiful mansion is gone and I think myself it was a crime knocking it down.

Patrick Wolahan

Porthkerry