Stood tall at the head of Cardiff’s Queen Street is a commanding statue of Aneurin Bevan, the Welsh NHS stalwart guarding the gateway to what used to be one of the city’s most well-to-do thoroughfares. Once made up of shopping centres, department stores, and nightclubs the almost-half-mile-long high street was considered one of the busiest in the UK.
People would be bussed in from all over to admire the shoes in Dolcis, try and keep up with the latest new-age technology at the largest Dixons in the country, or – at one time – spend the day at the Capitol theatre.
The street was a hubbub of activity, a key part in the redevelopment of Cardiff as a modern-day city, a place people wanted to visit. But now, nearly 50 years since it was fully pedestrianised, Queen Street has changed. As the city grew around it, dwarfed by shopping centres and high-rises, it fell behind.
