Image Bank
Swansea
Swansea Market
You are in Swansea Market, and we can guess that this photograph was taken on Saturday 22nd February, 1941.
The town has been fighting fires caused by bombing, with fire engines drawn in from a wide area. A Blackpool fireman who had been sent to Swansea to help remembered helping to save this building until the night of 21st – “when we saw it we felt we had lost a battle.”
This huge space is normally filled with stalls, laden with meat, fish, fruit, vegetables and shellfish, a lot of it from the nearby countryside of the Gower peninsula. Today the stallholders are selling off the backs of lorries outside. Quite soon the mess will be cleared, and for 20 years the market will keep going without a roof.
(The new market which opened in 1961 is a bustling part of Swansea today, with plenty of the old style traders still in business.)
Activity: Time Tourists
Look at the picture and read, listen to, or print the story.
Now think about how life must have been during World War 2 and write a review for a Time Tourists Magazine.
Download the Time Tourists Writesheet to help you write your notes.