LAST week we featured a picture of Clarence Place in Newport.

I BELIEVE its Clarence Place near the Cenotaph – Newport War memorial. I remember as a child we used to celebrate Winston, go to Clarence Place and start a parade from there.

Janey Clay, Caerleon.

THE NOW and Then is of Clarence Place near by was The Coliseum Picture House was demolished and has flats built. There was once a sewing machine shop and a restaurant across the road was once the Odeon Picture house and the Ivy Bush public house. Also Kwitsave Tyre Place. Across the road opposite the Odeon was Newport Transport where conductors to drop off for there cans of tea and then they use it for dances and entertainments. Also in the area there use to be a pram shop and Hughes that sold washing machines etc and then you come to Newport Bridge.

M Reardon, Newport.

THIS is Newport’s Clarence Quadrant. The ‘then’ photo dates from the end of the 1800s.

The little shops on the left gave way to the imposing Clarence Quadrant building and the Coliseum cinema (now a distant memory). The building advertising Phillips Ales was and is the Ivy Bush Tavern, the only one of that line of buildings still surviving. The buildings going off on the right hand side of the picture gave way to the art deco Odeon cinema (also a distant memory). In the junction between the tram lines leading to Corporation Rd, Chepstow Road and Caerleon Road was a tram drivers rest hut, roughly where the Cenotaph now stands, the Cenotaph was erected in the 1920s to commemorate all those slaughtered in the First World War.

Dave Woolven, Newport.

Comments from July 14: THIS weeks Now and Then shows the ABC Cinema on the corner of Bridge Street and Station Street in Newport. This was the site of the old Lyceum Theatre which was demolished in the 1960’s. The ABC Cinema was later replaced by another multi-screen cinema, with an estate agent – Rennie, Taylor on the ground floor. This was later replaced by a Travelodge with a cafe/bar on the ground floor. Behind the opposite side of Bridge Street is the Queens Hotel.

Brian J J Jelf, Newport