The Pub
A Wetherspoons pub never is never small and cosy with a real
fire burning in the corner. Many are in
large old buildings of notable architecture. I wouldn't describe the Ernest Willows in City Road, Cardiff as being of notable architecture. Art deco would even be stretching it. The building apparently used to be a garage
and also a bicycle shop. It is however friendly,
spacious and has an outside area with its own mini-Gorsedd Circle feature around
the side.
What the pub lacks in charm is
more than made up for by its fabulous award-winning toilets. Before you men get too excited, I'm mainly
here talking about the ladies toilets, not that I've seen them firsthand of
course.
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| The ladies toilets in Ernest Willows. Wish I could go in here! |
The opulent ladies toilets are full of marble and mosaic
tiles with a central feature that wouldn't be out of place in the middle of an
Italian town. I'm not sure of the history of the ladies toilets but I imagine
the builder was told 'If you do a good job for us here then we've a 1000 more
for you to have a go at'.
Our visit.
We did a bit of exploring of the area by first visiting Roath Farmers Market and lunching on the tasty vegetarian bibimbap and beef
bulgogi from Seoul Food Wales . That meant arriving in the Ernest Willows on a cold day we
were just in need of a coffee to warm ourselves up but then it was quickly on
to sampling the real ale. The pub serves
a range of real ales, some originating from Wales. I went for a tasty pint of Jemima's Pitchfork
brewed by Glamorgan Brewing Co. The beer is named after the Welsh heroine Jemima Nicholas.
At the 1797 Battle of Fishguard she rounded up and captured 12 drunk French
soldiers, armed only with a pitch fork.
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| A nicely poured pint of Jemima's Pitchfork |
The walls of the pub are lined with pictures of famous
Cardiffians, including of course our hero after which this pub is named. Ernest
Willows was a pioneering airship designer born in 1886. His well-researched
biography by Alec McKinty is entitled 'The Father of British Airships'.
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| This would have been an apt beer to choose if it had been on. |
Ernest Willows - the aviator
Ernest Willows constructed a number of airships, the naming
of which probably didn't take up too much of his time. Willows 1, powered by a motorbike engine, was
constructed in his workshop in East Moors Cardiff in 1905 when he was just 19 years old.
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| Willows I in 1905 (IPC Transport Press) |
In 1910, in Willows 2, he succeeded in flying it to the city
centre and landing near the City Hall netting him a £50 prize for the first
aerial voyage in Wales. Buoyed by his
success and now with a bit of publicity behind him, he did the same three days
later, this time in front of a crowd of 40,000.
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| Willows II landing outside Cardiff City Hall (from Alec McKinty - the Father of British Airships) |
A new local hero was born. Ernest advanced airship design in that he
made his steerable, something that is no doubt a great advantage if you are
trying to get somewhere in particular.
His next notable achievement was to fly from Cardiff to
London in Willows 3 and become the first person to fly an airship over the
Bristol Channel, something he could hardly avoid doing as it was on the way.
Channel hopping became all the rage and in November 1910 he
was the first person to fly an airship from London to Paris and the first to
fly an airship over the English Channel at night (and no I don't know who the
first person to do it in daylight was but it probably made for a better
spectator sport). The flight wasn't
without mishap and he had to put down soon after reaching France for repairs.
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| French magazine depiction of Willows landing in France - being charged customs duty for the gas he is carrying. |
You would have thought by now that fame and financial
success would no doubt follow but I'm afraid not. A number of things happened which stopped
this, most notably the outbreak of WWI and the invention of the aeroplane. Ernest did however play a role designing the
tethered barrage balloons which prevented
enemy planes getting too low over London to seek out their targets. He spent
much of WWI managing the building of barrage balloons in Westgate Street,
Cardiff.
The technical achievements of Ernest Willows and his
airships are well covered in McKinty's
biography and also in a number of other blogs such as Then and Now. and Phil Carradice. What interests me maybe more is his family history.
Ernest Willows - Family History
Ernest Willows was born in July 1886 just around the corner from
the pub at No.11 Newport Road in a row of houses known as Brighton Terrace that
became part of the University. His
father, Joseph Willows, was a dentist who originated from Hull and his mother
Evaline Willows, nee Garrett, was born in Bath.
By the age of four Ernest and the family had moved to Queen Street in
Cardiff. Young Ernest started school in
Richmond Road and may even have gone to Cardiff High for a short period of time
but most of his education was in Clifton College, Bristol where he lived with
an aunt. He was all set to follow his
father's career and started training to be a dentist but evidently didn't take
to it and soon working on airships became his passion, one his parents it seems
fully supported.
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| The young E T Willows (South Wales Echo) |
In 1908 Ernest marries sixteen year old Irene Davies from
Haverfordwest in Lambeth, London. Their
first two children Evelyn and Clifford are born back in Cardiff. Evelyn dies on the eve of her first birthday
in Deri Road, Penylan, Cardiff in 1910.
Poor Clifford was to die in 1932 aged 22 in a motorcycle accident on his
way to work as a draughtsman in Whitley aerodrome, Coventry. They have two more children; Dorothy who was
born in West Bromwich in 1912 and died in 1980 and Ernest Joseph Denman Willows
born in Hendon, London in 1914 and died in 1989, neither of whom married, so unfortunately
it appears there are no living decedents of our hero Ernest Willows. Ernest did have two sisters, Daisy who died in
infancy and Doris. It is from this line where
it gets interesting from a local history point of view where one of Doris's
daughters marries into the Crouch family, the famous Cardiff jewellers.
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| Ernest Willows in 1911 |
Anyway, I digress.
What of Ernest himself I hear you ask.
Unfortunately he doesn't have a lot of luck either. He never seems to make a lot of money from
his airship business. In 1921 he loses
all his worldly belongings overboard from a ship in off the Isle of Wight and
ends up living with his family in a schooner moored up in Chiswick on the
Thames. His post-war career appears to
be based on giving people joy rides in balloons. One night in 1925, his balloon
escapes from its mooring in the Wembley Exhibition and crashes into the house
of Sir Hector Rason, a former Premier of Western Australia, wrecking the porch,
knocking off the chimney pots and filling the house with hydrogen gas.
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| Ernest takes off on his journey from Cardiff to London (Flight magazine) |
Ernest Willows life is cut short at the age of just 40 when
he died in a ballooning accident in Bedford when taking two others for a ride
in the balloon. The basket gets detached
from the balloon and plummets to the ground.
He is buried in Cathays cemetery in Cardiff along with his parents and infant
child Evelyn.
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| Willows family headstone in Cathays cemetery |
