Thank you: we had so many memories this week that we will publish more next week.

THE photo is Clarence Place with the cameraman’s back to the river bridge.

The photo was taken before the Cenotaph was built in the early 1920s. Caerleon Road runs away on the left under the railway bridge. The left hand tram is coming out of Chepstow Road and the right hand tram is exiting Corporation Road. A few hundred yards down Corporation Road was the Newport Corporation Electricity Department Power Station and on the same site was the tram and bus depot. The small building with the lattice panels was a shelter for the cab drivers.

Dave Woolven, Newport

l THE location is at the crossroads at the start of Clarence Place, Newport. In the front of the photograph is the Cenotaph which has for many long years been the venue for the annual commemorative services for the servicemen lost in the 1st and 2nd World Wars and the other recent insurrections. Behind the cenotaph is the glass fronted office building which was once the local offices for every mans friend, the inland revenue. To the right just in view is the Artful Dodger pub which has now become the meeting place for fans on their way to Rodney Parade situated just around the corner to support Newport RFC, The Dragons or Newport County AFC. To the left just out of sight is the Health Club which was originally the Newport Transport Club.

In 1840 a year after the Chartists march this area was within the parish of Christchurch and was still farm lands with a few scattered small dwellings near the river. The land was farmed by Duckpool Farm, Fair Oak Farm and the nearest large house on this side of the river would have been Maindee House, the home of a local industrialist. At the location of approx. where the Cenotaph is today and recorded in the Parish census of 1841 was a toll house manned by the toll collector Charles Hopkins.

As the area developed with better roads, a railway, a new bridge across the river Usk, the area of Maindee and the Clarence continued to be developed with businesses, skills, trades and homes constructed all relating to the expanding urban industrial revolution. As can be seen in the older photograph there was by now a fine tram car transport system which extended throughout to the outer limits of the expanding town. Trams can be seen to the right and tram lines to the left with the new Maindee railway bridge in the distance. There are still remains of these rails buried under the road system which often come to view on road excavations in the town area.

John Guy, Newport

l THE Cenotaph at Clarence Place. All sorts of history here about all sorts of things. Although the central part with the Tax Office has changed, many of the older buildings along, Caerleon, Chepstow and Corpa Road are still there. This where the annual Remembrance Day parade ends with the service. Remember marching there with the 7th Newport Scouts in the fifties. What fun eh!

Jim Dyer, Newport