Swansea's Grand Christmas Bazaar

TOGETHER WITH

Good morning, Swansea!

Taking a stroll into Swansea city centre at the beginning of the last century, you couldn’t miss it - Ben Evans - a vast, elegant department store that stood on the corner of Temple Street and Castle Bailey Street, right where Castle Gardens is today.

This week, we look back at its Grand Christmas Bazaar, a huge annual event that thousands of families flocked to from Swansea and beyond.

Catch you on Sunday!

Andrew.

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Founded by Carmarthenshire-born Benjamin Evans in 1863 as a modest drapery, it grew into a retail landmark. By the 1890s the shop had expanded so rapidly that adjoining properties were bought and absorbed into a single block. When the rebuilt store opened in 1894, it was large enough to house more than a hundred live-in staff on its upper floors.

Locals called it “the Harrods of Wales” - and at Christmas, its Grand Christmas Bazaar drew thousands of excited children and parents through its doors.

The department store went all out to promote its Grand Christmas Bazaar. Adverts in local newspapers from the early 1900s promised the “The Finest Display in the Principality of Toys, Dolls, Games, and all things that appeal to the juvenile fancy,” with another calling it “Swansea’s Great Yuletide Attraction,” promising visitors “all the novelties of the season from the British and foreign markets.”

Aside from print, there was real-world marketing that wouldn’t look out of place in a viral social media post today. The homemade “Express Delivery” machine pictured was one of several seasonal stunts the store used to announce that the Christmas Bazaar had begun. Driven around town with Father Christmas perched inside, it doubled as a rolling billboard. On its side, a bold sign reads: “All toys from Ben Evans & Co’s Bazaar Delivered Personally by Father Christmas.

Local papers ramped up the excitement, with long columns describing in detail what was actually inside the Christmas Bazaar.

In December 1910, the South Wales Evening Post listed everything from “full-jointed dolls with rosebud lips and unbreakable heads” to rocking horses, model motor-cars, and even a walking dog based on King Edward VII’s pet, Caesar.

Mechanical toys were also a major draw: steam and hot-air engines, clockwork trains, and the “Jolly Boy” who “does a bit of clog-dancing to a gramophone.” For older boys, there were “War Game” sets that taught them how to position troops on a battlefield, and early Meccano.

For younger children, there were model villages and wool and fur animals described as “quite untearable.” And for Boy Scouts, semaphore signalling kits.

Meanwhile, parents were reminded of gloves, fans, leather goods, umbrellas, lace collars, and the seasonal boxes of Tom Smith crackers.

Such was the popularity of the Christmas Bazaar that Ben Evans more than once bought space in the local papers to warn shoppers that the store simply couldn’t cope with the crowds.

One notice in 1905 admitted that “the number of visitors to the Bazaar on Saturday last so far exceeded expectations, that the accommodation provided proved quite inadequate, and it is possible that some customers may have been inconvenienced in consequence, to these a full apology is offered.”

To prevent it happening again, Ben Evans expanded the Bazaar into an adjoining showroom.

This is what remained of Ben Evans in February 1941. During the third night of the Swansea Blitz, incendiary bombs hit the block around Castle Street and Temple Street. The much-loved store that had once housed the Christmas Bazaar, the mechanical displays, the toy departments and winter crowds - was completely destroyed.

The David Evans department store next door was gutted but later allowed to rebuild, but Ben Evans wasn’t so lucky. Instead, it was torn down and the council decided the site would become a green oasis in the centre of town - a ‘Garden of Rest’ - later renamed Castle Gardens.

Ben Evans eventually reopened on Walter Road as the “House of Quality,” but it never regained the scale or prominence it had before the war.

Dylan Thomas was in Swansea during the Blitz, and later wrote about the post-war destruction for the 1947 BBC radio broadcast, Return Journey.

His narrator asks someone about the fate of a favourite pub (the Three Lamps) and Swansea's premiere shopping store, the enormous Ben Evans shop. The conversation goes: "What's the Three Lamps like now? "It isn't like anything. It isn't there. It's nothing mun. You remember Ben Evans' stores? It's right next door to that. Ben Evans isn't there either... "

When someone pointed out the missing Three Lamps pub, another replied: “You remember Ben Evans stores… Ben Evans isn’t there either.”

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Sources

So you think you know Swansea?: Ben Evans Express Delivery Santa

So you think you know Swansea? Ben Evans summer sale

Swansea Past and Present: Ben Evans after the 3 night blitz.

Dylan Thomas Centre: ‘Return Journey’ and the Three Nights Blitz