Rhiwbina Garden Village: What it could have looked like

By Nigel Lewis

We’re all so proud of the Garden Village and many will already know of its history.

The neat cream-coloured houses with green-painted windows, all under steeply-slated roofs, and half-hidden behind neatly managed hedges, still catch the eye to this day.

It’s almost an anachronism today; an estate of pre-WWI houses trying to exist in a rapidly-changing twenty-first century. An estate designed before the advent of the motor car, electricity – even the telephone. An estate designed by forward-thinking planners and academics in an attempt to provide better housing for local workers.

Each house was provided with running water and gas for lighting and cooking, and also a garden for growing vegetables and flowers. It was so different to the Victorian (and even earlier) housing that had been built locally.

‘Rhubina Fields’ as it was first called, probably developed because a convenient railway link had been established nearby.

There were great plans for this pioneering project. Based on the early-twentieth century developments at Hampstead Garden Suburb and Letchworth, the ‘Rhubina’ village was originally planned to provide over a thousand houses; but only 189 were ever built. The first 34 houses, along Pen-y-Dre, Lon-y-Dial, and the ‘village green’ Y Groes, had been built by 1913. But because of the outbreak of WWI, the remainder wouldn’t be built until the 1920s.

The Cardiff Workers’ Cooperative Garden Village Society had been formed a few years earlier in 1911, and acquired 110 acres of land from the Pantmawr Estate, at a cost of £200 an acre!

Raymond Unwin, one of the principal planners on the Hampstead Garden Suburb was invited to join the cooperative and produce a design for the whole project. His layout showed just how extensive and ambitious the project was. Sadly, less than 4% of his scheme was ever realised.

By 1916, T Alwyn Lloyd, who had been an assistant to Raymond Unwin, produced an alternative layout for the now renamed ‘Rhiwbina Garden Village’. The layout is reproduced below and shows just how large the scheme was. The small part already constructed around Y Groes is shown hatched, but the remainder is enormous. It extended west as far as Pantmawr Road and followed the railway line to the south. The grainy illustration is hard to read, but gives a real flavour about the ‘dream’.

Like other pioneering garden village schemes, it envisaged long tree-lined avenues of houses with prominent views. There were proposed developments for municipal buildings at important junctions. And there were squares (a bit like Y Groes) incorporated strategically throughout the development to form local interest. A square was proposed at Rhiwbina Halt, where the library/hub now is, and another even grander square further along, with Whitchurch station forming one side.

Pentwyn Farm (now the golf clubhouse at Whitchurch Golf Club), which was a thatched farmhouse back then, formed one of the ‘end stops’ of an avenue. The farm pond was even incorporated as a corner feature on an informal junction. T Alwyn Lloyd envisaged a substantial and important building to close the view at the end of Lon Isa. Ironically this didn’t happen, but he designed and built a house for himself on the very spot! The house was built about 1920, and he called it Hafod Lwyd. I’m sure he’d be pleased that it’s the only house in the conservation area outside the ‘boundary’.

To the west, there were houses proposed along Pantmawr Road, even a future link to Providence Place on Pantmawr Road, near to the Hollybush pub.

Most amazingly, had this scheme been completed, it would have prevented the construction of Manor Way/A470. The avenue of houses he had planned for the south western corner, running up to Pentwyn Farm occupies the same ground as the incredibly busy arterial highway we know and ‘love’ today. I know which version I would prefer!

But as we know, only a tiny part of this thousand-home scheme ever came to fruition. Another 150-odd houses were built along Pen-y-Dre and Lon Isa, and the remaining houses along Lon-y-Dial, but not much more. The streets beyond have houses and bungalows quite different to the Garden Village style, but still enjoy being close neighbours.

But what about the rest of the land proposed for the garden village? The option that the cooperative society held, lapsed in 1912, and an embryonic golf club acquired the land as the first nine holes of the Whitchurch Golf Club. The ancient thatch-roofed farmhouse became the new clubhouse, even though the members recognised that the facilities were very primitive. These first nine holes were opened in 1915, with the farm pond, envisaged by T Alwyn Lloyd as a special feature in his garden village design becoming a water hazard instead.

We’re told that it took another seven years before the club could acquire the fields adjacent to create an eighteen-hole course.

And what happened to T Alwyn Lloyd? Well, he moved into his new home in Heol Wen, but he later invited one of his junior architects Alex Gordon to join him in partnership with offices in Cathedral Road. This grew to become one of the largest and most important post-WW2 architectural practices in Cardiff, designing so many of the important buildings in Wales we know today.

This story was shared at a recent meeting of the Rhiwbina Memories local history group which meets monthly at Rhiwbina Library/Hub (the second Wednesday at 2.00pm). If you’d like to pop along to learn more, or to share your own stories you’d be very welcome. It’s all free (and there may be a cuppa)!

Contact Nigel with your stores at AWEN@thelibrary (awen.cymru@gmail.com)