Who knew? - by Penny Snowden

There are some things you didn’t think you’d do over the last year as opposed to things you would have done but didn’t - or couldn’t.

I’ve been to Splott and that’s something that wasn’t on my radar. That’s where one of the larger vaccination centres is. Now I know that is placed there for very good reasons but it isn’t very easy to find. No, I don’t have a sat nav I hear you asking. So I ventured into uncharted territory and who would have thought that going to Splott would be a high adventure.

The name of the original farm that was Splott would seem to be Middle English "splott", from Old English (speck, blot, patch of land) and the word is to be found in other place names in the Vale of Glamorgan, Gower, and Pembrokeshire, as well as in Somerset and Devon, in the West Country of England.

So I investigated. There's a lot more to Splott than a name; there’s a rich history, a community, and a microcosm of a radically changed Cardiff. It once existed in the shadows of the East Moors steelworks, whose closure in 1978 was a big part of the wider de-industrialisation of Cardiff, and was a tightly-knit community of steelworkers' families living in rows and grids of terraced houses.

Entire streets have disappeared since then and been replaced by parkland, where a row of trees replaces the view that would have been the huge steelworks. Residents remember roads alive with children spending all day playing in front of long streets of open front doors. It also had its tough side and there are stories from the 1980s of groups of "Splott boys" heading to the docks to fight their equivalent down there.

More recently Splott has become a place for first-time buyers to get their feet on the housing ladder, which has seen some claim the tide of gentrification is finally beginning to arrive on Splott's doorstep.

Splott was formed from land reclaimed from the sea by English settlers who came to the area in the 1200s and built a seawall around the coastal salt marshes, drained them and created plots of land.

Between then and the late 1800s, Splott was farmland, worked by Upper and Lower Splott Farm. Neighbouring Tremorfa had its own farmstead in Pengam Farm. Though the land changed ownership a number of times, for six hundred years, Splott was a rural area dominated by farmland.

So I would never have found out any of this if not for this strange year. Also, I find myself contributing to this blog which is again an unexpected development. There’s also mask etiquette too but that’s a whole new issue. Are people smiling or not? Wearing a physical mask is a protection yes, but also a disguise!