Making Tracks: Rhiwbina

Jon Gower visits an elegant garden village in north Cardiff which has a very rich cultural history.

Rhiwbina Garden Village is just a fifteen-minute train ride from Cardiff Central.

Along the way you pass the ginormous bakery at Birchgrove, where the eight-acre site of Memory Lane Cakes produces no fewer than 42 million sponges and traybakes each year and, as Christmas approaches, the conveyor lines fill with two million Seasonal Yule Logs.

Then the grey of the industrial estates gives way to the green space of Hill Snook Park and you enter a leafier part of Cardiff altogether.

At Rhiwbina you can encounter an early experiment in living, a garden village designed to give working families better housing.

Unlike the majority of cottages of the time, each house had its own supply of gas for cooking and lighting, along with clean, running water and an ample area of garden to grow flowers and a supply of vegetables.

Of course there had been people living in this area going way back. It’s believed that the last native Welsh Prince of Morgannwg, Iestyn ap Gwrgant, may have been killed in a battle north of Rhiwbina towards the end of the 11th century, near the present-day Butchers Arms public house.

The stream nearby is still called Rhyd Waedlyd, which means ‘Bloody Ford’. There’s also a 12^th century fortification, a motte, one of the biggest in the county, just a half mile from the centre of the village. As with pretty much all of Wales, history here is in abundance. 

Rhiwbina Garden Village was the brainchild of Professor Stanley Jeavons, who – inspired by developments such as Hampstead Garden Suburb and Letchworth Garden City – established the Cardiff Workers’ Cooperative Garden Village Society in 1912.

It was envisioned as a place full of long tree-lined avenues and squares — Y Groes as it is today — while another square was planned near Rhiwbina Halt, where the library now stands.

‘Rhubina’ village, as it was then known, was envisaged as an initial development of 300 homes, with plans to expand this number to a thousand houses, although financial constraints meant that only 189 were ever built. With their dairy cream-coloured walls and green painted trims, the elegant houses have been part of a conservation area since the 1970s. 

Retired architect and local historian Nigel Lewis was kind enough to take me on a guided tour. As he averred: “It is quite special. But the sad thing is that it was built for local people in the agriculture industry, just ordinary workmen, but nobody could afford it. So, within 10, 15 years of building these homes they all left because they couldn’t afford the rents. And it was then populated by academics and people who were moving out of Cardiff to greener pastures. So it’s sad, really.

“But because of the conservation area, people maintain it well. It’s almost preserved in aspic but that makes it special anyway. When you look at the Bournevilles and the Letchworths and Hampstead Garden suburb, they’re wonderful. This is the only little bit we’ve got, you know, and so that makes it special.”

John Newman’s book about the county’s buildings fully confirms Nigel’s opinion, describing this as “The most extensive and best-preserved Garden Village in Glamorgan.”

Walking around the place I’m reminded of the American author John Updike’s description of a weekend in small town America: ‘It was a Saturday then, of small, sunlit tasks, caretaking and commerce.’

One of the garden village’s cutest features is the so-called Wendy House, with its Peter Pan connotations and concertinaed garden. This was used as a meeting room for the Residents’ Association and served as an ARP station during World War II.

Here I met former TV newsman Mike Slater, whose small, sunlit task for the afternoon is mowing a very compact lawn.

Mike moved here about 12 years ago. He wanted to move completely outside of Cardiff to live in the countryside. “My wife was very much, ‘nope, we’ve got to stay in Cardiff’. Rhiwbina is a sort of halfway house, really.

You can still see the hills from here. That was a good compromise and it’s worked out very well.”

In the early days, a convenient railway link and the presence of Rhiwbina Halt helped boost the development of Rhiwbina, and Mike is an enthusiast for today’s train connections with the city centre: “Generally, you can set your watch by it, you know. It’s there on the minute, great for commuters and it’s a fast way of getting into town. If you just keep your eye on the timetable, you can be in town in 12 minutes and back out again, no problem. I’ve done the whole trip in there, shopped and been back out in an hour.”

This leafy suburb, with its steeply slated roofs and the privacy of thick, trimmed hedges has long attracted literary types, much as its winter flowering camellias draw the eye.

Not one but two of the country’s best short story writers lived here at one and the same time, namely Kate Roberts and Dorothy Edwards. They knew of each other’s existence but never actually met. 

On the strength of novels such as Traed Mewn Cyffion and short story collections such as Te yn y Grug, Roberts was given the title Brenhines Ein Llên, the Queen of Welsh language literature. Dorothy Edwards, meanwhile, published only two books, namely the short story collection Rhapsody and a novel called Winter Sonata, which was lauded as one of the best books to appear in 1928.

Edwards’ adult life took her to Austria and to live on the fringes of London’s artistic Bloomsbury set, before she returned to Rhiwbina to look after her widowed mother.

A fellow author described by Elaine Morgan as ‘an outsider all her life’ took that life at Caerphilly station, throwing herself under a train. A tragic note found at the scene read: “I am killing myself because I have never sincerely loved any human being all my life. I have accepted friendship, and even love, without gratitude and given nothing in return.”

Rhiwbina has been the home of many notable figures in Welsh culture, including historian R. T. Jenkins and synth-pop musician Howard Jones, who has had no fewer than 40 hit singles in the UK, while today’s musical residents include Andy Fairweather Low.

One of Rhiwbina’s earlier literary denizens was W.J.Gruffydd, Chair of Welsh at what was then University College, now Cardiff University. Apparently he was the one who baptised the streets here, giving them Welsh names such as Hafod Lwyd, (Pale Summerhouse), Heol-y-Deri (Oak Road), Lon Ganol (Middle Lane) and Lon Isa (Lower Lane.)

A native of Bethel near Caernarfon, W.J. Gruffydd lived at 22 Lôn y Dail, where he edited the influential magazine Y Llenor and saw himself as a man living in exile.

In his autobiography Hen Atgofion, translated as The Years of the Locust, he said: “The truth is I have never lived in a community since I left Llanddeiniolen for Cardiff a quarter of a century ago. Here I simply reside – sleeping, working and eating; I do not live here…How sad it is that a Welshman should be an exile in Wales, for every Welshman living in Cardiff or its suburbs is an exile.”

Since Gruffydd’s day a huge number of people have moved into the city from other parts of Wales and he would no doubt be surprised to learn that the Victoria Park and Canton area now has the highest proportion of Welsh speakers in any part of the country.

On Lon-y-Dail there is a blue plaque commemorating another of Rhiwbina’s authors, Iorwerth Peate, founder of the folk museum now called the Welsh History Museum at St Fagans.

One of Peate’s most influential books is The Welsh House, although this details vernacular buildings, farmhouses and the like, quite dissimilar to those in Rhiwbina. Not far away from Peate’s place is another plaque marking the home of anthropologist Cyril Fox who was director of the National Museum. So Rhiwbina was home to not one but two men who each helped create a museum, both living just a jackdaw’s hop from each other!

Rhiwbina was a very productive place for the Merthyr-born novelist Jack Jones, whose connection with the village is commemorated by a plaque in the library. He first moved to live above a boot shop on the junction of Heol-y-bryn and Heol-y-coed in 1929, where he wrote the novels Rhondda Roundabout and Black Parade, as well as part of an autobiography Unfinished Journey and a play called Land of my Fathers.

He then moved to a house in Rhiwbina with a very exotic and poetic name, Sarandai which turns out to be more prosaically named after his parents Saran and David. He lived here until 1946, writing industriously and producing novels such as Off to Philadelphia in the Morning, Some Trust in Chariots, and River Out of Eden.

He also found love in the village, meeting and marrying Gladys Morgan, a library-assistant in Rhiwbina. Living at 57 Pen-y-dre, Jones wrote no fewer than five new novels, namely Lily of the Valley, Lucky Year, Time and the Business, Choral Symphony, and Come, Night; End Day, although they gradually dropped in standard from his earlier work.

Interviewed in his Rhiwbina home for the BBC’s Bookstand programme in 1962, Jones explained how he came late to writing, at the age of fifty: “I had an urge which became a passion and later an obsession to write about the fullness of my life in the south Wales coalfield and the closeness of my ties with the working class.”

Jones was soon on a sort of mission: “I was trying to present the mining community, of which I was an integral part, to the world which was grossly unaware of their life and their work – the getting of coal and the working of steel and so on.”

When the words finally came they kept on coming: “I had a kind of eloquent rhythm, although only a limited vocabulary, having only had a few years schooling before the age of twelve, when I went underground with my father. I didn’t have many words at my command but somehow or other the rhythm and the lilt of of the speech of my people extended the vocabulary. Gradually I became a writer because my own people moulded me into one.”

One of the most colourful corners of Rhiwbina Garden Village is the art workshop and when I visit the end-of-term exhibition is in full swing. There’s work on the walls and on the ceilings, indeed everywhere you look.

One of workshop’s founding tutors, Genevieve Loxton told me its history: “It was founded in January 2013, so that’s 12 years ago now, by myself and a team of artists. We’d all been to art college and knew that art education was something really wonderful.

The idea was to make it available in the community at a level that would befit an art college education but not at art college prices.  The majority of the classes are for adults and we teach about 160 on average people a week but we also teach a junior art academy and that’s ages seven to twelve. We’ve got a teens art group as well.”

The folk attending the workshops are mainly drawn from north Cardiff but some travel from as far afield as Abergavenny or the Forest of Dean. Genevieve explains: “What we find is that a lot of people have never heard about Rhiwbina before and they especially haven’t heard about Rhiwbina Garden Village.  And we’re right on the edge of it here, and can direct people in to see what’s there.  And they’re absolutely astounded by the history and how beautiful Rhiwbina can be.”

The work on show in the exhibition spans a range of media, from prints through paint and watercolours to acrylics, much of it arranged around themes such as “corners,” or “trees.” Genevieve explains how “We make it about a particular theme in order to hang a lot of the ideas and the technical theory onto something specific. But within that there’s lots of room for creativity and to interpret the ideas themselves. There’s nothing scarier than being faced with a blank canvas, you need to have something to learn with.”

Kate Lowry is another tutor who’s been involved here right from the start. She started life as a paintings conservator and latterly worked in the National Museum in Cardiff. She tutors the watercolour class but isn’t a trained artist. “So I’m interested in technique first and foremost.”

Kate enjoys introducing people to art, especially those who are new to it: “It’s giving them a context, isn’t it? We like to make sure that people understand that they’re part of a tradition and that they can be part of that.”

Some of Kate’s students return year after year while others start in a spirit of experiment: “I have a few of what I call groupies who come again and again but I also have a steady flow of people who just want to experience what watercolour could be like for them. Some of them are a bit turned off by the technique and others really go for it. It’s good just to give them that experience, isn’t it?”

Former financial advisor Pete Hawkins has recently been a member of the watercolour class and is assessing his still life of vegetables alongside those of others in the group. He started at the workshop 18 months ago: “The thing about something like this is you have to get the shape, you have to try and get the appearance of roundness and then you’ve got the shadow. It gives you some idea of how to use different views of the object you’re looking at.”

Pete then introduces me to classmate Lynda: “Who is really good and she’s been doing it for rather longer than me. I follow her technique and try and do the best I can to copy what she’s doing.”

Lynda, it transpires, has a very appropriate name for an artist. Lynda’s surname is Constable and her husband also happens to be called John, like the famous English painter of bucolic hits as ‘The Haywain.’

Coming here was a gift for Lynda, quite literally: “My twin brother, who’s an amazing artist, bought a voucher for me for my 50th for the art workshop. And I came along not knowing what to expect. I loved art in school, did it at A-level. But then, you know, you get into work. So it was great to come back. All your stresses, you forget it all because you’re totally focused on the art in front of you. And you know it doesn’t matter if it’s not good, it’s the process isn’t it, it’s the enjoyment of doing it.”

At day’s end the view from Rhiwbina platform is like an object lesson in beauty, a sudden painting of nature in all its glory, as late autumn sun flares over the fields, a final burst of light and a reminder of its illuminations.

Jon Gower is Transport for Wales’ writer-in-residence. He will be travelling the breadth and length of the country over the course of a year, reporting on his travels and gathering material for The Great Book of Wales, to be published by the H’mm Foundation in late 2026.