There is a street in Cardiff's Roath (a) neighbourhood named simply The Parade. It gets its name from the days when a girls' college was located on the eastern end of the road and a boys' college on the western end. The street was a popular place for the young men and women to see and be seen.
Similarly, parallel street The Walk served as a quieter area for the students to meet, and, in the words of the old lady who told me all this, "do more than look at one another."
(a) Roath, by the way, gets its name from the Irish word "ráth" (prosperity). The area was once home to an enormous Irish population. These days it is home to a load of students. I feel as if Cardiff lost something in that change.
3 comments:
Interesting. I was there this afternoon having a check-up at the dentist, a less attractive destination than in its past then.
I've previously spent a lot of time on the Walk - but I didn't know any of those stories, I guess that's because I didn't speak to enough old people in my time there.
I never knew what RATH meant, but it makes sense. It's a bit ironic, in this capital of Welsh national pride, that such a vast proportion of the white population are descended from Irish immigrants.
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