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The recent demolition of Killay House left a lot of memories without an anchor. It was a familiar shape to the thousands of people who travel on Gower Road daily, and it had been so for over 120 years. Growing up in Heol Glasnant (where the houses are tall), and going to school in Hendrefoilan (futher up the hill) meant that the old building was always in our line of sight when we looked across the bay to the view’s focal point, Mumbles Head. I understand that before NCH sold the site there was talk of getting the building protected: why this didn’t happen is not something I know.

One of the surprises when I converted my grandparents cine films to digital format was almost four minutes of footage from the 1968 Killay House Garden Party; here it is in it’s entirity.

It was a surprise because it was a film I’d never, ever seen, but I suppose there are some films that will bore a four year old that thirty years later he’ll watch repeatedly, so I can understand why it was never considered of interest to me.

The Fields That Became Killay

Killay House was one of the first buildings in the modern (i.e. non-farming) Killay, and when new it was by far, one of the most grand. Almost all the old buildings are now gone, victims of the weather, and a lack of foresight. Over the hill to the north Llanerch Farm (what we called “The Old Farm”) was still standing when I was a kid, both stables and farmhouse, but I recall it deteriorating to just a shell before it was eventually demolished to make way for the Hendrefoilan housing estate. The Llanerch Fach farmhouse was also still a fairly looming structure on the north side of Derlwyn until sometime in the 80’s. The farms that gave Goetre Fawr and Goetre Fach their names were long gone, as was Wimmerfield House, which stood on the corner of Dylan Road and Landore Avenue.

If you grew up in Wimmerfield, or attended Hendrefoilan School, you’ll probably find this photo a bit of an eye opener. It’s Killay House, circa 1900, when all around was just fields.

The small light coloured field in the top left still enjoys the same boundaries today, but it’s now the site of Hendrefoilan School. I wasn’t sure if the photo really is of Killay House at first, so using Google Earth I created an overlay of the old field boundaries from the 1884 Ordnance Survey map and used that to help me get my barings.

The field-boundaries are a perfect match and the overlay may be of general interest to anyone tracing the growth of Killay, because it shows how house construction was grouped according to the land that was available at different times. See it in Google Maps, or download it to view it in Google Earth.

My memories of Killay House

We (my friends and I) were very fortunate that our mate Martin’s dad used to look after the place, with the biggest bunch of keys in the world, so when we went round Martin’s house, he had a bigger back garden than any child could wish for, and what’s more, it was a remarkably well tended garden thanks to Mr. Cunningham. The grass was always cut, so we could play ball games, or ride our bikes around like nutters.

Incidentally, the year of the video (1968) was the year that Mr. Cunningham became the gardner.

Many hours were spent around the small pond at the source of the killay spring (susprisingly few residents know it exists, but it’s on maps) just outside the grassed area, where the slope of the woods falls away. Over that pond, which was often no more than a muddy bog, some of the older boys had somehow made a rope swing. This was a proper rope swing, one made of several misatched pieces of rope and attached to the tree by magic, because it was inconceivable to us that someone could have climbed the tree due to it’s height and lack of branches anywhere but in the canopy.

The other thing we found you could do very effectively with several acres, is have a really good game of hide and seek, or mob, or any other game that is normally limited by people complaining that you’re hiding in their garden. I must have picked up more grass and mud stains in the gardens of Killay House than any other single place.

Killay house was also one of the only places that had it’s own racetrack. Admittedly it was supposed to be a one-way drive for visiting vehicles (so as to maximise safety), but it formed a complete loop, an oval, laid with smooth tarmac - how could we resist? The laps we did on bikes and skateboards must number in the thousands.

Indoors

Most of the time we spent outside, but there were occasions when the buildings were used. Attached to the main building by a covered walkway was what I remember as a brown, probably wood-built hall where I recall the whole class gathering for Rachels birthday party (8th I think). This event was cetainly a disco, possibly a “roller disco”.

A few years after these more youthful pursuits I fondly remember Diane Shaw (official courtesy title “Martins Mum”) opening the house up on Tuesdays during the long wet winter nights, I definitely rememeber playing table tennis, and on reflection the rooms and hallways seemed huge; their spendour when first built must have been quite imposing when Morgan Bransby Williams built the place in the late 1800’s.

2006 and beyond

It’s a tiny bit sad that the view from Hendrefoilan School will be forever missing one of it’s foreground gemstones, as the picture from circa 1900 has today been inverted: instead of Killay House, surrounded by fields, there’s a housing estate abutting an empty space. I rather hope the next generation of inhabitants will have similar enjoyment to our own; I know any kids growing up there are going to love the woods.

Hopefully the building will stop soon; the thing that made Killay special was all the fields, and they’re nearly all full of houses these days.