CONCEDE DEFEAT ON BRIDGE

Graham Williams, columnist, 19 July 2005

Several people have approached me in recent weeks to ask why I have not broached the subject of the Slip Bridge in this column. Basically, there is a very simple reason inasmuch as I like to make these columns as lengthy as possible, and the whole sorry saga of the Slip Bridge can be summed up in just one word: ludicrous.

Some readers may recall that I did offer an opinion or two when the relocation of the bridge to its new site on the promenade was first announced some time ago.

It was a daft idea then and it is a daft idea now, and it will still be a daft idea when children, yobs and drunks begin falling from the highest points of the structure and clogging up the A &E unit at Morriston Hospital. Non-drying paint - what a brilliant idea. Does this mean that in a few weeks time it will be covered in grains of sand, dead leaves and empty crisp packets that have stuck to the metalwork?

I maintain that the council should either have put it back on the stone abutments or scrapped it altogether.Plonking it down in a prominent position on the seafront is no solution at all, and is as about as aesthetically pleasing as the notion of inviting the good citizens of Swansea to bring along their old fridges, cookers and rusting bicycles and setting them in concrete on the promenade.

Regular readers will have realised that I am something of a nostalgia freak and believe that Swansea's architectural heritage should be preserved.

I would even dispute the oft-repeated description of the bridge "lacking architectural merit", since in its original position it possessed a strength and a sense of purpose.

But what has been done with it now smacks of trying to preserve one's deceased pet dog by having it stuffed, mounted and placed on the hearth: it might bear a vague resemblance to what it had been during its lifetime, but it will never be the same again.

Better by far to concede defeat and give the poor thing some dignity in death.Truth to tell, I have never been a great one for the seafront in any case.

This weekend I visited the Maritime Quarter to watch some of the events held as part of the Swansea: A City That Dances festival and was genuinely shocked at the manner in which the physical approaches to the marina have been allowed to deteriorate.

The area surrounding the skateboard park at the side of the leisure centre, for example, has become a hugely intimidating and run-down stretch strewn with earth, wood chippings and black tyre marks made by boy racers, while the arches leading to the marina positively reek of despair (and worse).

It will undoubtedly remain like this until the leisure centre (perhaps the only example in the UK of a building which was constructed the wrong way around but no-one spotted the mistake until it was too late) is revamped and brought up to scratch.

Even then, however, the leisure centre will have its own built-in "lifespan" after which it will, after a few short decades, be declared unfit for its purpose. What a blessing that the likes of Sir Christopher Wren did not work to similar guidelines - after 20 odd years the dome of St Paul's would have been torn down and replaced by a branch of Lidl.