Published in Coast magazine, July 2005

The Zeta effect

It may have links with a Hollywood star, but the fashionable Welsh village of Mumbles is coincidentally enjoying its own turn in the spotlight. By William Ham Bevan

WHEN Catherine Zeta-Jones began to build a multi-million pound mansion at Mumbles – ostensibly for her parents to live in, but with a private apartment for visits with Mike and the kids – Britain’s showbiz press raised a collective eyebrow. Indeed, one headline writer thought it sufficient just to list the couple’s portfolio of homes: ‘New York, LA, Bermuda, Majorca, Aspen…Mumbles?’

The joke was lost on those lucky enough to have their own home in the South Wales village: the Zeta-Joneses’ building plans have coincided with a time of unprecedented prosperity. Whether the movie star’s interest has been the cause, a symptom or mere coincidence is a moot point; but that hasn’t stopped local media from christening this upturn in fortunes ‘the Zeta Effect’. Never mind that three years on from the start of construction, and after a litany of construction problems and legal wrangles, the movie star’s house has yet to be completed.

The Sunday Times recently declared Mumbles to be ‘the most fashionable address in Wales, outside of a flat in Cardiff Bay’, and many residents would argue that the proviso is unnecessary. The property market is only just beginning to cool down after a period of manic growth. Semi-detached properties now fetch more than half a million, and tiny fishermen’s cottages in the steep alleys up the side of Mumbles Hill – thoroughfares still known to older villagers as ‘drangways’ – cannot be had for less than £150,000.

Demand for new-builds is heavily oversubscribed. When, two years ago, it was announced that 36 new apartments were to be built on the site of a bayside hotel, all were snapped up even before the foundations had been laid. So – accepting that it takes more than one haughty blessing from Hollywood to bring about this sort of buzz – what’s the story behind Mumbles’s rise to Wales’s property A-list?

Having once lived there, some 12 years ago, I made a return journey to find out. To my mind, Mumbles has always had a split personality. On the one hand, it is a well-preserved Victorian seaside resort, and the gateway to the Gower Peninsula – Britain’s first designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. On the other, it is a not-quite-assimilated satellite of Swansea, a city of which it has rightly been said that the town planners finished what the Luftwaffe began.

By the early Nineties, Mumbles was looking tatty. Its landmark sights still sparkled through the neglect: the Norman ruins of Oystermouth Castle; Langland Bay, with its characteristic terraces of green-and-white beach huts; the elegant pier stretching out from the twin rocks of Mumbles Head – the ‘mamelles’ (‘breasts’, in Old French) from which the village is supposed to have gained its name. But the place had become most famous – or notorious – for the Mumbles Mile, the stretch of pubs along the seafront. Each weekend, these became an alcoholic Gomorrah for students at Swansea’s two universities, and a magnet (so it used to seem) for every stag and hen party in South West Wales.

Now, as I walked along the main drag, from Oystermouth Square towards the Pier, the difference was palpable. New cafes and restaurants have opened at a prodigious rate, while boutiques and fine delis have sprung up on the sidestreets. Most instructive, though, is what has happened to some of the infamous pubs themselves.

Take the George Inn. Formerly a drab Beefeater steakhouse and pub, it has been bought up by Brains, the Cardiff brewery and Welsh rugby sponsors. Reborn as Salt, an airy, multi-level bar, it makes good use of its bayside situation for the first time, with a sun-trap balcony overlooking the yacht moorings. Significantly, it was the first bar on the Mile to enforce a strict ban on stag and hen parties.

Likewise, the Prince of Wales pub used to perform the important civic duty of keeping off the streets those who were barred from all the other licensed premises. After closure and brief dereliction, its premises have been absorbed into Mumbles’s best restaurant, Patricks, which serves up imaginative modern Welsh cuisine. The expansion has meant accommodation can be offered in situ, which is particularly good news. While Fairyhill Restaurant and Hotel, a 25-minute drive away on the Gower Peninsula, has deservedly won lots of plaudits (and in March, hosted a family party thrown by Paul Newman for his daughter’s wedding) a top-notch billet in the village itself has been sorely missed until now.

Yet for all this new-found café-culture chic, it’s even more heartening to find that the best of the old Mumbles continues to thrive. Ten-minute queues still assemble outside Joe’s, the Welsh-Italian Ice Cream Parlour, even when the sun gives way to drizzle: one taste of their award-winning vanilla ice demonstrates why. A still-loyal clientele packs out PA’s Wine Bar – originally opened by the owners of Fairyhill – and it is always animated in CJ’s bar and grill, where surfers have congregated to swap tales for the past 25 years.

For real-ale aficionados, there’s the Park Inn, a snug, backstreet pub never discovered by the Mumbles-Mile rabble. And the well-to-do still seek membership of the Bristol Channel Yacht Club, Kingsley Amis’s ‘Little Garrick beyond Wales’. (When once asked by an interviewer what he did there, the inveterate boozer said: ‘No bloody yachting, that’s for sure’).

What’s more, the club recently swept away 100 years of tradition to admit women for the first time. Could this change be another manifestation of the ‘Zeta Effect’? All eyes, I’m sure, are on the membership applications.