Gavin and Stacey's Barry

I watched the Gavin and Stacey Christmas Special on BBC1 on Christmas Day night while at my friend Alice's house. I didn't really want to; I'd never sat through any of the episodes that made this South Wales/Essex sitcom a national classic. I had caught snatches of it, and had not been impressed.

There were two reasons for my disdain.

Reason One: I was actually brought up in Barry, where the South Wales part of the show is located. It seemed to me that G&S had given the town a cult status it didn't deserve. Welcome of course, if it brought tourists flocking to the town. But a false image. People had heard of Barry because of G&S, and thought it looked like that. And full of Staceys and Nessas and Uncle Bryns. That's what 'Barry' and 'Barry Island' meant to them. But although the show used genuine locations, the producers had made it seem more glamorous than it really was. The gritty, dirty Barry with coal staithes and banana boats and shunting trains in dingy goods yards has vanished, but the ghosts remain. There used to be kids with dirty knees and sticky hands. Lorries delivering coal. Rag and bone men with their carts. Gypsies with posies for sale, wrapped in silver paper, who knocked on your front door. Or drunks on crutches. Stern policemen with huge authority, who would frighten you. None of this on G&S, which shows only a modern, cheerful, cleaned-up Barry, sanitised for a snowflake generation.

No, 'my' Barry has always been a much scruffier place, and I wasn't simply relying on childhood memories up to age eleven (in 1963) when we moved to Southampton in Hampshire. I've made repeated return visits to Barry ever since 1966, and in fact I was walking around the Barry Docks part of the town only last September. I know some bits of Barry very intimately. I've seen the place evolve (or stand still) over every decade since the 1950s. I have lots of photographs.

My point is: it's not really like it seems on TV. It's poorer and tattier.

Does it nevertheless have warmth, personality and a heart of gold? Just as you see on the screen? Well, as much as any bog-standard B-list coastal place does. In Sussex there are ordinary and not-very-inspiring coastal equivalents to Barry - places like Littlehampton, Lancing, Newhaven and Seaford. I dare say that they too have warmth, personality, and a heart of gold. Once you really get to know them. It's the saving grace of any downmarket town.

Tatty or not, Barry lures me back every couple of years, and I wallow in nostalgia and many memories, good and not so good. There's an unknown and unrecorded part of my childhood hidden there - something lost, or something I never had - a precious thing that I want to find and understand. So I keep going back. I wouldn't want to live in Barry in preference to my Sussex village, but if I had to move home for any reason, and if it had to be South Wales, then I'd certainly see what Barry could offer in its nicer parts. It is, after all, a sunny place, and it's on the coast. And I do know it well. It's 'home' in a deep sense that no place I've lived in for the last sixty-odd years has ever been.

Reason Two: G&S is all about relationships, and the situations you get with family life, when there are parents and children around. Aunts and uncles too. But I don't have parents, aunts and uncles any more, nor any children. So the show can't really speak to me. It depicts the kind of people I never knew well enough to matter, in situations that I can barely relate to now.

Nevertheless, there I was, captive at Alice's for the duration of the hour-long Christmas Special, and I had to watch. And I did gradually get interested in the storyline. I thought the script and the acting were very good. I was also, obviously, keen to see which locations they used.

My verdict? Well, if there is a new series, I'll give it a go. And if any repeats are available, I might have a look. It wouldn't be a priority, but I wouldn't dismiss it out of prejudice.

I've just looked at my collection of Barry and Barry Island photos. I've actually got a photo of the hill - Trinity Street - that Stacey lives on. Here it is, in a shot I took in October 2015:

Stacey would be living on that top section in the distance, in a red-brick, slate-roofed terraced house with white detailing, as in this picture of Hilda Street nearby, which I also took in 2015:

Or indeed in a street like Miskin Street, where we lived at number 4. Here it is in 1973, 2014 and 2018 - no real changes, except for the cars parked. Fiona is in the 2014 and 2018 shots.

Red-brick houses with slate roofs are standard for a lot of older Barry. In 2005 a local historian was able to take a series of photos from a church tower, which he published on the Internet. Here are a few, and you can see (a) what a hilly place it is; (b) how the long rows of terraced houses make patterns; and appreciate that (c) many streets in Barry have a sea view, or a docks view, or (as we did) a view of Barry Island.

That's Romilly Junior School (as I knew it from 1957 to 1959) in the centre of that photo - red-brick like the other buildings.

That's the Baptist Church opposite the Anglican church tower that the historian was on. My younger brother Wayne and I had to attend that Baptist Church for two or three years - rather unwillingly in my case - after a neighbour suggested to Mum and Dad that it would be a good way to get us both out of the house for a morning. Neither was religious, so I suspect an Ulterior Motive not explained to us children.

That road led to Miskin Street. The sandy bay at the top of the shot is the Old Harbour. Off to the left, and out of shot, is Barry Island.   

And in this westward direction (just above) is a row of large houses, once the homes of the best-off in Barry, and now mostly apartments. The road leads to newer developments on Westward Rise and the lovely Porthkerry Country Park. Western Barry, overlooking The Knap (below, in 2018 - back now to my own photos) was and remains the nicest part of the town. I don't think it figures much in G&S, though.

Still largely unaltered from the early 1950s, when Mum and Dad would push me along the promenade here in my pram. 

Where would Stacey nip out to, if wanting a local shop just around the corner? Barry High Street. Here it is in reality - more 2015 shots.

I'd been here, on this High Street, in August 1986, twenty-nine years before: 

Amazing. The general appearance of the street, and its atmosphere, had not changed between 1986 and 2015. Mind you, not much ever does change in Barry. I doubt if the High Street is any different now, in 2019. And I could swear that it looked much the same in 1960, when I'd come here with Mum. Gosh, look at that yellow sign for Double Diamond beer - it Works Wonders, you know!

For the 'big shops' like the Dan Evans department store there was Holton Road, further east, in the area around the Town Hall. That's where you would go for fancier stuff than the High Street could provide. In its heyday around 1900 it looked like this (the next two shots aren't my own).

In 1955 it still looked very traditional. A red Western Welsh bus, methinks.

By 1986, there was some modernisation, as seen in this shot of mine just below. Dan Evans was still thriving, though.

But in 2019 - last September - I saw that despite more new building and tarted-up street furniture, things had gone downhill a bit. Cheap shops for vaping and suchlike abounded. Holton Road was still busyish, but a shadow of its former self. Another dying town-centre shopping street.

No Dan Evans now, nor anything to compare with it. Sad.

The Town Hall was still imposing, and had been extensively modernised within, but the piazza outside was dull. I couldn't tell whether this mattered to any of the local people. 

Finally, Barry Island. All rather nicely lit up at night on G&S. The daytime reality is scruffier. I took a lot of shots in 2014, only five years ago - long after the three main G&S series had been produced and aired. The sands at Whitmore Bay are really good, and remain so; the promenade has some new constructions; but the once-flowery gardens are much plainer now; and the buildings and amusement arcades are tackier than ever. 

It was 18th June 2014 - a Wednesday in early summer - the fairground was shut, and not much was open. No crowds, no noise, no atmosphere. To be really fair to the Island, I need to return on a busy Bank Holiday and get some pictures then. Maybe they have improved Barry Island in recent years. made it smarter, the weedy remains of Butlins finally redeveloped, the now-humdrum funfair restored to its former frenetic glory. You can revive a once-iconic seaside spot - at Whitley Bay, for instance. Barry Island (as I found it in 2014) looked tired and needed a revamp. I hope it has now become cool and attractive, fit for the new decade. But it won't have become tasteful and genteel. 

Finally, that word 'lush' - extensively used in G&S as part of the local Barry vernacular. Well, I can confirm that back in the 1950s it was a word used in both the Barry schools I went to. It meant 'gorgeous' or 'incredibly good'. But it was strictly a kid's word then. No adult would have said 'lush'. So this is one thing that has changed - if the G&S scripts are to be believed. I have never heard 'lush' said by anybody within my earshot on my various visits over the years. 

For reference, here's a map of Barry. The red flag marks Trinity Street, where Stacey lives. The green flag marks where we lived, in Miskin Street. The blue flags mark where I went to school. The yellow flags mark the shopping streets. The purple flag marks the church tower from which that local historian took his photographs.