Sandfields Housing Estate, Aberavon, Beach, Port Talbot, Glamorgan, South Wales.

From the air in 1957.

Although the development of the council houses and the promenade is well under way and the beach roundabout at the eastern end of Western Avenue is already established, there is yet no sign of the Four Winds Hotel, the Coastguard Station, the R.N.L.I. Station nor the 'slope' off that roundabout onto the beach, the Afan Lido & Sports Centre on the seafront, the boating pool in front of 14 Western Avenue (the house where my family lived from 1951 until 1999), the Bay View Social Club overlooking the boating pool, the Naval Club at the western extremity of the estate, the Cinema complex off Princess Margaret Way nor the Labour Club in Dalton Road. No sign of the show piece Miami Beach Fun Fair which came and went in the sixties and seventies, only the old fashioned swing boats of yesteryear. The gasometers on the site of the present Afan Lido Sports Centre are easily identified, as is the 'muddy lane' at the rear of Moorland Road on the northern perimeter of the green metal fenced gasometer enclosure, along which we would take a short cut to Tywyn School when it wasn't too wet. The old nine hole putting green near the pre-fabricated post war white bungalows is also evident and at the north western edge of the estate, the great hall of Sandfields Comprehensive School is being built.

No sign of  the sprawling B.P. Chemical Plant - just dunes and warren falling back into the scrubland that we knew as 'Cock Robin', where we would spend autumn weekends chopping bits off trees to drag home to build Guy Fawkes night bonfires. October evenings were spent 'raiding' wood from sandy gardens and other bonfires in order to build the biggest fire on the night. Summer weekends would be spent 'exploring' the new houses being built westwards over our warren or exploring the waterline wreck of  the destroyer H.M.S. Sylphi for sea creatures left by the high tide.

Vance Broad, B.A., A.T.C.,  R.Y.A.S.I.  Principal Mumbles Sailing School

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