Former Ragged School, Pleasant Street, Swansea
This building was originally a school for poor children. Its backers included the local feminist, writer and industrialist Amy Dillwyn.
Swansea’s Ragged School was founded in 1847 in nearby Orchard Street. The school’s supporters funded a qualified teacher, on a salary of £65 a year, to teach reading, writing and arithmetic to poor children in the daytime, and grammar and geography to “poor youths” in evening classes.
There was a religious aspect to the education. Alderman David Meager, the school’s superintendent for decades, said in 1905 that the school aimed to “lead scholars to the feet of the meek and lowly Jesus”. By then the school had c.600 pupils.
The photo, courtesy of West Glamorgan Archive Service, shows children from the Ragged School on their annual outing to Langland Bay in 1907. The children had marched, behind the school banner, to Rutland Street station, where the Mumbles Railway's manager ensured that they safely boarded the train to Mumbles. Tea, biscuits and sweets were distributed at Langland.
Outside school hours, the school was a venue for temperance meetings, a soup kitchen, evening classes for adults, Sunday School and other activities. In 1910 the school site was acquired for an extension of the central police station (which still stands). The building we see here today was the replacement school building, large enough for 300 children.
The school closed in 1956. In 1997 the building became the home of Swansea Spirit, a centre for healing and psychic development.
Commemorative stones on each side of the entrance were laid on 24 August 1911 by Roger Beck (1841-1923) and Amy Dillwyn (1845-1935). Roger was a director of steelmaker Baldwin’s and chaired the Swansea Harbour Trust.
Amy belonged to the wealthy Dillwyn family of Hendrefoilan. She wrote successful novels, transformed her late father’s spelter works in Llansamlet, and campaigned for better education and votes for women. You can read more about her on our page about Amy Dillwyn Park.
Postcode: SA1 5DS View Location Map
With thanks to Gail Allen, of Women’s Archive Wales, for Amy Dillwyn information