Swansea 50 - Friends of Mayhill Washing Lake and Hillside Community Food Garden

The 37th event in our celebration of Swansea's 50th birthday saw the Friends of Mayhill Washing Lake and Hillside Community Food Garden join us in the Mansion House for supper.

The lake, though it is more the size of small pond is situated on the hill below Nicander Parade. The Community Food Garden is below it, just above Hewson Street. The group started off as an initiative to carry out regular litter picks and grew into something much bigger.

In trying to find out more about the group I came across this piece from local historian, Nigel Robins:

One of the most important physical features of Anglo-Norman Swansea still exists above ground!

A good reliable water supply was essential for any town and any stream or spring that was used quickly became a central part of local life. The sandstone of Town Hill provided many springs of good clear water which the earliest Norman inhabitants of the town prized very highly.

As is common in most cultures, prominent physical features were given names, many of which survive cultural and language changes. This stream which arises from a spring on the hill above Swansea Institute was the most famous and useful spring to supply the early town with its water. It was known for hundreds of years as ‘Washing Lake’ which is derived from the Old English words ‘waesse’ and ‘lacu’ meaning wet or swampy stream.

English language place names date from the earliest history of the town of Swansea. Indeed some local Welsh place names have been shown to be derived from original ancient English names.

The Washing Lake ran from the field above the original Workhouse which was known as Cae Cwm in the 1830s, down through the workhouse enclosure and down the side of the road known as Bryn Syfi. The modern road of Mount Pleasant is the small valley carved by Washing Lake as it made its way down to the river. The stream had a number of tributaries which made it a substantial torrent by the time it got to the bottom of the hill.

Some of the large houses at the bottom of Mount Pleasant built bridges and culverts for the stream. One of the original culverts can still be seen in the rear wall of the Windsor Lodge hotel.

By the 1700s the stream was used to feed the large tannery that was built on fields on the western side of the medieval town (where The Hanbury pub is today). The stream has never been known to dry up and provided much of the western side of medieval Swansea with their water supply. The lower reaches of the stream were equally useful as a sewer which emptied into the town ditch.

The stream figured heavily in early attempts to build reservoirs in the 1800s. It still has traces of the cast iron pipes and sandstone walls from that time. The name Washing Lake receded into history when the stream ceased to be important. Washing Lake miraculously survived redevelopment in the early 1900s, 1920s, 1950s and the 1990s, and remains an enigmatic survival of the medieval town. It still survives today as part of the local wildlife corridor.

It was a pleasure to meet the many volunteers who are helping to transform this area, and to retain a strong sense of community in the small area Mayhill and North Hill.