IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Oxford Street, SWANSEA, SA1 3BJ

Women's clothes shop at 232 Oxford Street, facing Plymouth Street. Reeds pastry cooks and bakers shop is on left. The vacant shop on the right used to be Toni & Guy's hairdressing salon.

Very few buildings in the centre of Swansea survived the heavy and sustained bombing of the docks and city centre by the German Luftwaffe from 19th to 21st February 1941. However, if you're observant you will spot a building or two that appear to remain as they were before 1941. Today, this ornate looking building is Waterstones book shop but in a previous life this was the Carlton Cinema. Looks are deceiving though - mostly, only the façade is what remains of the original building. Much of the rest of the building was reconstructed after the War - however it's great to see a small glimpse of Swansea's older building styles.

Woolworths stores now fading from existence

Traditional pub named after one of the characters in Dylan Thomas's "Under Milk Wood"

Theatre and Arts Wing in Swansea's Singleton Street. The theatre is Victorian, dating back to 1897. http://www.swansea.gov.uk/

This view was taken in 1979, a couple of years after this old cinema closed (29th October 1977). It was said that the bow window was once the cinema's cafe. In its last days, the lady in the ticket booth which was on the ground floor, would clump up the stairs to the auditorium and turn out the lights so the film could start - no dimming just on, then plunged into darkness.

This is the longer (Plymouth Street) side of the city centre pub at 24 Oxford Street. The Reverend Eli Jenkins is a character in Swansea-born Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood, a "play for voices" first broadcast on January 25 1954 on the BBC's Third Programme radio channel.

Now a branch of Bonmarche, 21 Oxford Street was built in 1893 as the premises of John S.Brown, ironmonger. From 1929 to 1960 it was Macowards. Although a tower has been removed from the central section on the roof, the two lions remain, gazing out across the city.

City centre shop at 235-237 Oxford Street. A British Heart Foundation charity shop is on the left.

Building society branch, New Oxford House, The Kingsway. Nationwide was the biggest UK building society that did not convert to a bank in the so-called demutualisations in the decade from the late 1980s. It is now bigger than all the other remaining UK building societies combined.