Pootle with Mum

Friday 2 April

We fancied a couple of hours of aimless bumbling around and decided to try and locate where in Bailey Park the former open-air swimming pool would have been. The pool was apparently opened in 1938 and closed in the mid-1990s, although it wasn’t demolished and filled in until around ten years later. This picture taken in 2003 shows a picture of the then-derelict pools.

Looking across the yard of the tyre place to Blorenge beyond

There’s an Abergavenny Lido Group campaigning to bring an open-air pool back to the town - no idea what their chances of success are. This plan from the website of the ALG shows the footprint of the pool at the north-west side of the park, which helped us locate it.

We walked through the town and across Fairfield Car Park into the park beyond. This bit of the park seems to be set up as some sort of sensory garden. Beyond this, there was an abandoned-looking stretch of grass which was pretty clearly the former pool site. It’s this bit circled in black on this snip from Google Maps.

Site of the open-air pool

We left the park at the north end and turned right along Park Avenue and then left onto Hereford Road. We walked up as far as the junction with Grosvenor Road and looked briefly for any evidence of the railway cutting that crossed under the Hereford Road at this point. There’s not much to be seen – the wall on the west side of the road is quite high and on the right there’s just a small patch of wasteland before some housing begins. Guessing much of the trackbed has been built over.

Blorenge, looking south from Hereford Road

Bridge over the former railway line, courtesy of Street View

The railway line that passed here was the Merthyr, Tredegar and Abergavenny Railway. Mum and Dad had an interesting 1916 map of the town, which showed this line clearly. The line ran between Abergavenny and Merthyr Tydfil, stopping at such places as Govilon, Brynmawr and Ebbw Vale. It closed to passengers in 1958.

We turned down Richmond Road and went down the steps onto Ross Road, where we joined a path running through a grassy area between the road and the river Gavenny. This eventually reaches a footbridge, which we crossed and walked up along the river coming out on Sycamore Avenue, just by the a residential conversion of the former Pen-y-Fal Hospital.

The River Gavenny from the footbridge

Path alongside the river

The hospital is shown on the 1916 map as the 'County Lunatic Asylum'.

The snip from the 1916 map also shows the Asylum Chapel, which for a while now has been in the process of conversion into apartments. The development appears to be on the market via Savills.

Pen y Fal chapel

After leaving the Pen y Fal site we walked briefly down the road and turned left onto Coed Glas Lane and followed the lane through to where it comes out on Holywell Crescent. We made our way back to Mum and Dad’s house via Holywell Road and Fosterville Crescent, stopping for a snoop at this enormous semi which has been a single residence until relatively recently but is now undergoing conversion.

Houses on Fosterville Crescent

House undergoing work