I wonder if children growing up in Rumney ever hear a parent or grandparent reminisce about a place called the LAMBY and tell stories of the wonderful adventures and games that they played there. I have been away from Rumney and Cardiff for many decades but my memories of that place are as clear and vivid as if they were yesterday. Growing up, I spent many hours roaming the flat expanses of tide-washed grass on the east bank of the River Rhymney which in the 1950’s still ran black with the fine suspended dust that had come down the River from the coal washeries in the upper reaches of the Rhymney Valley. After flowing over beds of river cobbles behind the ridgeline of Rumney Hill, the River flows under the bridge at the foot of the Hill and then begins its muddy and meandering journey to the Bristol Channel. It loops in ever larger curves as it makes its way across the grassy flats that border the Channel before entering the wide mud-flats that define the edge of the Channel at low tide. Even there it continues to loop back and forth until finally  reaching the low tide mark. The Lamby was the name given to the wide sea-grass flats that ran along the eastern bank of the River.

I use the past tense  because modern “developments” have literally buried the old Lamby and robbed the village of Rumney of a wonderful open expanse of wild land that used to be the home  to skylarks and lapwings, screaming seagulls and small shallow ponds full of eels. There children could play imaginative games, young lovers could find privacy in which to kiss and cuddle while adventurous adults could embark on long walks that could end up at the Six Bells public house in Peterstone Wentloog and a rewarding and refreshing drink. Few in Rumney remember the way it was and probably most look upon it as an uninteresting area covered with industrial buildings, crossed by a busy road and topped with a heap of rubbish that may or may not be turned into a park of sorts.

Most of what I describe below has disappeared but I hope that this blog will find those who, like me remember what it once was and help uncover what is now mostly buried and gone. Read on, enjoy and help recreate what once was.

The tide is the defining feature of the Lamby. Because it flows into the Bristol Channel, the Rhymney River is a part of a tidal system that reputedly has the second largest tidal range in the World, second only to the Bay of Fundy in eastern Canada. At low tide the River runs at the bottom of a deep channel with banks of slick brown mud on either side. At the lowest tide one can see the cobbles and rocks of the river bed and hear the sound of gurgling and rushing as the dark water makes its way to the Channel. When the tide turns, the rocks and cobbles of the river bed are soon inundated by a surge of water the colour of tea that quickly fills the deep channel of the River and, depending on the season, will flood over banks and cover the flat grasslands that bound the River on its final journey to the Channel.

An expanse of  tide-washed grass flanks the tidal portion of the River and until just a few decades ago, this area of open seagrass was free of any development on the eastern bank from where the River flowed underneath the bridge carrying the London to South Wales railway built by the Great Western Railway Company, until it reached the mud flats of the Bristol Channel. That was not true of the western bank where there used to be an aerodrome and the Cardiff suburb of Pengam. Once beyond the railway bridge the River forms a series of loops or meanders and I wonder if the name Pengam is from the Welsh meaning the head of the winding part of the river. Perhaps some reader can explain that.

From the Rumney River bridge to the bridge that carries the main railway line to London, the tide grass flatlands are quite narrow, though they must have once spread across what was once an open flatland called Rumney Common, now covered in large commercial buildings and also must have once extended to the east along the base of the slope containing the houses along New Road. The building of the railway cut off a triangular sliver of this once tide-washed grassland and that area was drained with reens and divided into small fields  from just below the end of Brachdy Lane to the River. As it was flanked by the railway on its south side, the houses of New Road on the north and the River itself on the west from the Rumney River Bridge to the railway bridge, this quiet more or less  triangular enclave became a favourite place in which children could play away from the eyes of adults. The owner of the Rumney Pottery would dig for clay along the Common and also along the eastern bank and they must have developed a deep pit close to the River near the railway bridge and once abandoned that old clay pit filled with water and became a large pond surrounded by reed beds.

Sadly this wonderful hidden enclave and playground was used by the City of Cardiff as a rubbish dump and the entire area from the foot of Brachdy Lane to the River bank was filled with household waste in the early 1960’s. I remember that time very well and watched in horror as lorries backed up to the spreading pile of rubbish and dumped their loads of noxious waste that was then flattened by bulldozers. I cannot remember there being any public consultation about this terrible act in which a pleasant area of field and hedgerow were buried beneath the City’s foul smelling rubbish. Today it is an area of playing fields and public open space but I wonder how many people who wander there with their dogs or children know what is buried beneath.

Below the railway bridge the flat expanse of tidal grass once widened considerably, especially on the eastern bank which, until the City of Cardiff decided to build a road across it and later bury it beneath a huge mound of rubbish, was largely unspoiled. As mentioned above the western bank, which must have once been an expanse of sea grass extending to the mouth of the River Taff, had already been heavily developed. However,  until sometime in the late twentieth Century, the eastern side was just a wide expanse of tide-washed grass bounded by the railway, the River and to the east a low bank that protected the farmland of the Wentlloog Levels. . This bank began where Brachdy Lane came over the railway on  bridge of black-tarred steel and  ran from there  in a series of east-stepping jogs until it came to the edge of the Channel where it turned abruptly northeastward toward Newport. On maps the area of tide-washed grass between the sea bank and the mud flats of the Channel is called Rumney Great Wharf.

Just at the foot of the rough lane that descended from the railway bridge to the Lamby itself, was a partially abandoned meander with a grassy island in its centre. It was here,  historians believe, that Viking traders established a seasonal trading village and indeed the name Lamby is reputedly of Scandinavian origin. This section of the River would only fill at high tide and at some time the connection to the main part of the River was cut off and  when I was last there it had been turned into a small park with a fishing lake more or less where the old meander used to be.

At spring tides the entire area on either side of the River up to the sea bank would be covered with water. It was a spectacular sight, especially in the early morning when the sunlight would reflect on its calm surface causing it to turn into a shimmering silver mirror. For children growing up in Rumney during the 1950’s and 1960’s, which is the time that I remember, the Lamby was a wonderful place in which to play and wander. It was also the way in which they could easily reach the shore of the Bristol Channel and for the adventurous ones, it could lead to long exploratory walks along Rumney Great Wharf to Peterstone Wentloog and St Brides and even to the mouth of the River Usk at Newport. Few adults came there and there were no domesticated animals, such as sheep, let loose to nibble the salt grass. Some enterprising men from Rumney Village would go there to cut turf leaving behind rectangular depressions that would fill with seawater at high tide and trap eels during the annual run of elvers up the Channel. I have read of fishermen from the village setting fish traps out on the mudflats along the Bristol Channel, but I never saw fishermen or the traps when I was a child and actively exploring the area. One consequence of the very high tides was that a line of wrack was left along the sea bank that contained a lot of wood that must have been washed down the rivers that flowed into the Bristol Channel. I remember an older lady who used to wheel a rickety baby carriage, or pram, along the sea bank and collect the wood to burn in her fireplace.

I do hope that this blog will attract the attention of those who remember the Lamby as it was before being defiled by Cardiff’s rubbish, and also those who wonder what was there in times past and what it was like when you could stand on the railway bridge at the foot of Brachdy Lane and look over the Bristol Channel to the Somerset shore and also see the hunched shapes of Steep Holm and Flat Holm and watch the tide sweep up the River and flood over the adjacent sea grass flats of the Lamby.

I have written a story about children growing up and having grand adventures on the Lamby and the River before roads, fishing ponds and mounds of stinking rubbish buried its landscape. If sufficient people find this obscure little site I shall publish the story in a series of episodes and I hope illuminate a world of fascination and adventure and thereby bring to life the small but exciting and exhilarating world that was once the Lamby.