Saturday 30 January 2010

Death Junction

Any self-respecting story blog should include a little bit of history, so here's an interesting fact about the point where Crwys Road, Mackintosh Place, Albany Road, City Road and Richmond Road converge, a spot known locally as 'Death Junction' (see below for a photo).

I always thought the junction got its morbid nickname from the chaotic traffic (anyone who's driven there will know it can get a bit dodgy, especially at rush hour), but a small plaque I noticed on the wall of the NatWest revealed something a lot more intriguing:

After a bit of Googling, I discovered that the junction is in fact the site of the old Gallows Field, where countless criminals (and, apparently, innocents) were hung. The men mentioned on the plaque were priests hung for practising Catholicism, which was outlawed at the time.

This little find just goes to show that there's a lot more to Cardiff than meets the eye, and there's a vast, exciting and sometimes bloody history waiting to be uncovered - all you have to do is look for it.

2 comments:

  1. The old Tut and Shive pub used to have a wall display about the history. Shame it's gone now, the pub became Poet's Corner and I think they cleared it away.

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  2. Great post! We're writing a post for Guardian Cardiff on death junction if you'd like to contribute? We'd love to link to this post and the photo of the plaque in particular.

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