Caswell Bay
| Caswell Bay | ||
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 The Caswell Bay in August 2008 |
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| Waters | Bristol Channel | |
| Land mass | Gower Peninsula | |
| Geographical location | 51 ° 34 ′ 8 ″ N , 4 ° 2 ′ 0 ″ W | |
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Caswell Bay is a bay in the southeast of the Gower Peninsula near Swansea in Wales . It is a sandy bay that is popular with families and holidaymakers, as well as surfers . The bay has repeatedly been awarded the Blue Flag .
Facilities and accessibility
The bay is easy to reach both by car and public transport. There is parking for cars and buses to the nearby villages of Oystermouth and Mumbles . To the east of the bay a path leads to neighboring Langland Bay and to the west a path leads to Brandy Cove and Pwlldu Bay .
There are two year-round cafes and a beach supply shop on Caswell Bay. The Surfside Cafe was badly damaged in storms in January and February 2014, but has reopened after renovations. There are public toilets and showers on the beach.
Swansea City Council operates a lifeguard post seven days a week from early May to early September. The bay is a popular place for surfing and a surfing school offers lessons all year round. The bay also offers many opportunities for exploring tidal pools .
The Bishop's Wood nature reserve borders the bay and is a rare limestone forest area. The nature reserve can be entered at any time. The Bishop's Wood Countryside Center organizes guided tours of the area.
history
Between 1829 and 1840 most of the land around the Bay was purchased by John James, a former curate of Bishopston, for his daughter and son-in-law, Charles Morgan. In 1846, the Morgans sold a piece of land on the east side of the bay to photography pioneer John Dillwyn Llewelyn, who regularly visited the bay. Llewelyn built the Caswell Cottage, which stood on the site of today's parking lot until around 1960. In 1854, Prince Albert bought two photos of Caswell Bay. In August 1878, Llewlyn's thirteen-year-old grandson drowned while swimming in the bay.
After the death of Charles Morgan's wife, their property was divided among their six children. Soon after, a piece of land on the west side was sold to the Davenport family, who built a large house there, which they named Redcliff House after Redley Cliff on the west side of the bay. In the late 1920s, the house was the home of the Vernon Watkins family, a contemporary and close friend of Dylan Thomas . The house was demolished in the 1960s and is now the Redcliffe Apartments.
Morgan's three daughters Emma, Agnes and Alice lived on Caswell Bay from 1877 and built many of the houses that are still standing today. The houses also include their own bay house, which stands over the middle of the bay. The sisters planted many of the pines that are typical of the bay today.
In 1883 a windmill was built on Redley Cliff to pump water for the surrounding houses. The windmill was damaged in a storm after five years and was no longer used after 1900. However, the mill remained standing until 1930 when it was demolished for safety reasons after it was damaged in a fire. There are also remains of an Iron Age fortification on Redley Cliff .
In the late 1890s, a still existing water tank was built at the foot of the cliff to collect water from a small spring to supply the houses. Around the same time, a pumping station was built on the east side of the bay, which consisted of two buildings. At the end of the First World War, the pumping station was no longer needed and served as a café for a while. The younger of the two buildings is still standing today, of the other only the foundation remains.
For over 40 years, Caswell Bay was at the center of a mysterious murder case in the 20th century. Less than two years after George Shotton and his wife Mamie Stuart moved into their house on Caswell Bay, the woman mysteriously disappeared just before Christmas 1919. When police tracked down George Shotton in 1920, they believed he had murdered his wife but they couldn't prove it to him. On November 5, 1961, a sack of bones was found in an abandoned mine in neighboring Brandy Cove. An investigation officially determined that the find was the remains of Mamie Stuart. Another search for George Shotton revealed that he had died and was buried in Bristol three years earlier .
On the cliffs in the middle of the bay now stand the Caswell Bay Court Apartments, which were built in the 1990s on the site of the Caswell Bay Hotel. The hotel had grown out of a normal house built in the 1850s and then constantly expanded.
Caswell Bay was named one of the best beaches in the UK by the Guardian in 2006 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Caswell Bay Swansea . britishbeaches.info. Retrieved June 11, 2014.
- ↑ Beaches & outdoor . City and County of Swansea. Archived from the original on July 20, 2014. Retrieved June 11, 2014.
- ↑ 10 rockpool hotspots . guardian.co.uk. Retrieved June 11, 2014.
- ^ Bishop's Wood Local Nature Reserve . Sustainable Swansea. Retrieved June 11, 2014.
- ↑ a b c d Morgan, P. (1981) Caswell - The Making of a Landscape. Gower journal of the Gower Society, Vol. 32 (1981), p. 6-10.
- ^ Gabb, G. (2000) The Dillwyn family in Mumbles. Gower journal of the Gower Society, Vol. 51, (2000), p. 20-30.
- ^ Cave - Caswell Bay - East . SwanseaHeritage.net. Archived from the original on May 29, 2007. Retrieved October 30, 2012.
- ^ Watkins, Vernon (Phillips) . Welsh Biography Online. Retrieved October 3, 2013.
- ^ A b The Windmill at Caswell & The Water Supply . sites.google.com. Retrieved October 3, 2013.
- ↑ HLCA087 Caswell Bay . The Glamorgan-Gwent Archaeological Trust. Retrieved October 30, 2012.
- ↑ Caswell Bay . The Geological Society. Retrieved October 28, 2012.
- ↑ Grisly find solved old mystery; Time to remember. . The Free Library. Retrieved October 4, 2013.
- ^ Caswell Bay Court . caswellbaycourt.com. Archived from the original on March 3, 2016. Retrieved October 28, 2012.
- ↑ The UK's top 50 beaches publisher = guardian.co.uk . November 22, 2006. Retrieved October 28, 2012.