S B Williams

Samuel Branton Williams, Died 9 Dec 1918, Aged 78, Licensed Victualler, 8 Despenser Street, Plot No L858

COWS IN BUTE-STREET

GLIMPSES OF OLD CARDIFF

City's Oldest Publican Memories There is one nook in the city of Cardiff where the good old days of fifty years ago" and more may be lived over again, and that is the parlour of the Temple Bar hostelry in Bute-street.

The very atmosphere is redolent of the past. The conversation of the aged wise- acres who sit. daily or nightly in the same seat year in and year out is exclusively reminiscent.

Oil paintings on the walls conjure up the dead past and re-call the gentle pastimes in which our grandfathers revelled, such as cook-lighting, badger baiting, and the like. Those pictures are looked upon with reverence. They recall scenes to memory ever dear.

As with the pictures, so with the conversation, which runs upon these lines:- "Do you remember when old Mr. So-and-So used to keep the Old Bull and Bush?" "Remember it? I think so! I knew his father well." "Dear me!" says another, "and didn't he marry the little widow whose husband used to keep the 'Jorge' and so on and so on.

Mine host of the Temple Bar is a very remarkable man. He has passed the Psalmist's allotted span of three score years and ten, is of ample proportions, the personification of jollity, and he takes life easily, does Mr. Samuel Braunton Williams, whose proud boast it is that he is the oldest licensed victualler in the city

They were talking about certain happenings in the old Angel, when one of our young men stepped in and gathered Borne bits of old Cardiff.

A Long Record

Laying aside his churchwarden." after a few moments of leisurely reflection Mr. Williams said, slowly and serenely, "I am the oldest publican in Cardiff "-an asseveration accepted with confirmatory nods.

I was born in Barnstaple on the 6th of January, 1840, so that I was 70 last birthday. I came to Cardiff years ago. In my time I have kept the Blue Anchor, Wharton-street, the Glastonbury Arms, the Queen's Chambers (once called the New Inn and lately known as Carey's, which when I kept it had a horse repository attached), and the Terminus, opposite the Western Mail offices. I can remember five head-constables, beginning with Jerry Stockdale, who, I remember, read the Riot Act outside the Queen's Hotel when Colonel Stuart was returned for Cardiff, and there was a funeral procession in honour of Mr. Hardinge Giffard, the defeated candidate. In those days I lived in Plucker-lane, as City- road was then called."

The pressman hazarded the view that Car- diff must have then been a very different sort of a place.

I should just think so," chipped in our septuagenarian. "Why, I mind the time when I saw 'em building a ship just where the Western Mail now stands.

"Where the Western Mail' and 'Evening Express' Offices are now situated there used to be a small pub which was very handy, and there were little houses all along St. Mary-street. At that time, too, Morisco, who is still about town as smart as ever, was the famous juggler at Hutchinson and Tayleur's circus; where Jemmy Haines was the popular musical clown. Why I have

Picked Watercress

in Crwys-road. I used to keep cows in Bute- street at the back of the Glastonbury Arm. Any number of cows were kept in Bute-street. The grazing ground was the Tanyard field in Penarth-road.

Discoursing on sport, the veteran said there was in those days no football, as the game is now played, but there was plenty of foot- racing, with ratting, badger-baiting, and cock-fighting for a-change. "I have," he said, 'held many a bird in my time."

As an "old sport," Mr. Williams has taken some 400 prizes for dogs, poultry, pigeons, and rabbits, and he is naturally everywhere well-known in South Wales-a familiar figure for year past at exhibitions and at coursing matches.

His brother, Mr. J. J. Williams, who is ten years older, is the owner of the Royal Hotel at Cadoxton, and lives in retirement at Cadoxton House.

Evening Express 16th April 1910

Welsh Newspapers Online