The sun shone on the Swansea Canal as a little piece of history was brought back to several of its historic structures. In the canal’s heyday all its bridges had names, often relating to the farm or business that the road or track over it led to. But most names have fallen out of use or been forgotten. As part of the canal’s 225th anniversary celebrations, those names are being rediscovered and name plaques are being installed on five of the canal bridges.

We were delighted to be joined at Pont John bridge by staff and pupils from St Joseph’s School, Clydach, and at Trebanos bridge by staff and pupils from Ysgol Trebanos, to see the first two plaques unveiled. Both schools took part in our anniversary celebrations last year, and pupils had great fun doing some model bridge building exercises alongside the canal this morning. David Morgan and David Viner from Glandŵr Cymru (Canal and River Trust in Wales) also joined us as funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund has enabled the plaques to be provided and installed by Glandŵr Cymru.

Our chairman Councillor Gordon Walker said a few words about local history at each bridge, before revealing the plaques to much applause from under a red satin curtain!

We also had cakes with images of the plaques, which Gordon ceremonially cut before passing them over to the schools to take back and share amongst their pupils.

It was rewarding to be reintroducing these small snippets of canal history to the public, and we hope to install the remaining plaques on other bridges during the summer.