Decoration across the Interchange

Stokes Decorators have just completed a marvellous paint job on their large wall by Gabalfa Interchange. It serves to advertise both their business and something of what they can do.

Stokes seem to have been around forever. Well they've been around since 1920 anyway, which is nearly forever. I remember passing their sign on the way to school and thinking that whoever designed their paintpot-paintbrush logo was a genius.

When I was younger, however, this wall didn't exist. Instead, the shops at the top of North Road came to a point. If I remember correctly, Boots the Chemists had a door that was right at the apex of the triangle, and a triangular shop.

Sadly, these shops were demolished in the creation of the huge Gabalfa interchange and its flyover. I remember how excited I was that we were going to get a flyover!

I didn't realise then that this was just the industrialisation of the urban landscape, where the need to move cars more quickly took precedence over everything else. The architecture of the interchange makes sense f you're a car, but not so much if you're a human being.

It's a shame that the triangular shop is gone, but if you stand in front of Stokes' wall you're more-or-less in Boots the Chemists. At least that's where you would have been in the 1960s!

I would love to find old photographs of the area as it was. They seem to be few and far between. If only we'd had Blipfoto back then.