ABSTRACT
In its earliest days the Loudoun Square area, or “Tiger Bay”, as it is more popularly called, appears to have been a busy iron-working centre as well as a maritime quarter. An 1895 map of Cardiff shows the Loudoun Foundry on one side of the Glamorganshire Canal and the Bute Iron Works on the other, and at least up to 1905 the sheds of the old iron-masters, dismantled and ruinous, still remained. The actual urbanization of the district can probably be traced back to the foundation of the new church of St. Mary the Virgin in 1845, and it was certainly complete some time before 1886, for a further map of the town dated that year shows all the present-day streets in being with their modern names, with the single exception of Frederica Street for the present-day Angelina Street. Loudoun Square itself was offered in 1888 by the then Lord Bute as an open space for all time, and the offer was accepted by the Council. 1 The present facilities there, already mentioned, were constructed by the Corporation a few years ago from what had once been a bowling green and natural spring. For, cosmopolitan as the district is today, almost up to the time of the First World war the well-built and not unhandsome three-storey houses of the Square were the residences of a well-to-do class of sea-captains, lawyers, business people and other prosperous members of the bourgeoisie. Indeed, in the early days of Cardiff’s maritime and industrial expansion, this was the “natural” location of the wealthy and rising class—outside the city itself, but within convenient distance of its centre by carriage. For their material needs there were great emporia in Bute Street where all their shopping could be done. For their spiritual needs, the original parish church of St. Mary’s, which had previously stood in the city proper and was eroded and rendered derelict by the River Taff in the early part of the 16 th century, was resuscitated in 1845. The older foundation had a long history, being first mentioned in 1102. The present large and imposing structure, with its internal fittings and equipment, pays full tribute to the affluence as well as the devotion of the inhabitants of the then “suburb”. Much the same might be said of the present-day Methodist mission on the other side of the Square. Though its origins were historically and traditionally much less auspicious, it, too, flourished in its day; but as the chronicler of nonconformity in Cardiff puts it, “many people left the neighbourhood to reside in the (newer) suburbs, and the Church went down rapidly”. 2 Its career as a Mission church began in 1893, and so we may take it that the more prosperous and respectable inhabitants of the area had begun some years earlier to recede before the tide of fresh immigrants whose appearance in the streets surrounding the Square was an index of the city’s steady encroachment throughout the 19th century.
