School from Gadlys Road
Looking towards the school from Gadlys Road. The school clock tower is obscured
by the tree in the distance to the left. The picture was taken from a point
opposite to where the Western Welsh bus depot used to be. Somewhere on the
left of this road was a barber’s shop where we could get a hair cut of
the sort that boys wanted in those days, not the sort that our parents wanted
us to have! On the right, closer to the school was, and still is, a small shop
where we could buy sweets (and also loose cigarettes in ones and twos I think!)
The building on the right with the elaborate facade was once a cinema, the
Park Picture Palace, but this closed before we arrived at ABGS. Click
here to see an equivalent picture from the RCT Libraries photo archive
taken when the cinema was still open. Next to the cinema was Bracchi’s
Café, shown in this more recent picture, by permission of the RCT
Archive. It is now a takeaway but still has the Bracchi’s name carved
in the stone over the window. Drew Haman has commented that in the late
50’s,
when he was in school, a group of Hungarian refugees would hang out in
this cafe, principally to meet the girls from the Gadlys School. At the
time it was a bit of a disreputable place!
