On The Beach, Barry Island - A lovely Valentines Series postcard view which dates from around 1910. [001]

The trestle bridge carries the railway from Barry Town station to Barry Island and on, through the tunnel to the Pleasure Steamer Pier of the Barry Railway Company which was situated in Jackson's Bay or so I thought! In early December 2017, a gentleman named Mike Munro kindly contacted me to inform me of the research he had undertaken :

'Dear Dockmaster,

An excellent website - stumbled upon it while searching for info on Penarth Alabaster.

On a brief perusal of a few of the pages, I noted on this page that the stated location of the postcard at the top of the page seemed to be incorrect for the following reasons:
 - At that point in the old harbour, there has always been much more mud than sand.
 - The bridge looks to be too lightly built to carry a railway.
 - There has never been (until recently !) a building directly behind the railway bridge.

A check on the OS 1:2,500 maps of 1901 & 1920 confirmed this, and indicates that there also ought to be sloped stone walls (and evidence of railway lines!) in the background, not the heavy timber sea defence as shown in the postcard.

Initially, I thought the image may have been taken at the east end of Whitmore bay, as a bridge is shown there on the 1901 map, but with no buildings behind it, this still didn't fit.  The 1920 map however shows a bridge to the west end of Whitmore bay, with the buildings on Paget Road behind this, and in the right orientation - a much closer fit with the image on the postcard.

Furthermore, some Googling brought up photographs of Whitmore Bay by Francis Frith, and on zooming in on one of them, towards the righthand side, the timbered sea defences at the top of the beach are evident.

Hope this makes sense ! Keep up the good work. Cheers,  Mike Munro.'

It makes perfect sense Mike! Thank you so much for the correction and I am impressed with your local knowledge and logical detective work. The postcard photograph was probably taken from point 'b' on the map below whereas my original thought was that it was from location 'a'. The OS map dates from the 1900's. [398]

On The Beach, Barry Island - An enlargement with the children lined up to be shown the one of the boats on the sands. Given the supervised, well dressed children, and the tents, it is probably a church outing from the Rhondda valley. For many of these children, it would be the first sight of sand and sea in their lives. How lucky I was to grow up close-by the sea. [001]

The Sands, Barry Island - A lithographic print from 'The Wonder View Album of Penarth & Barry Dock District' published in the 1890's. Many visitors take the Bristol Channel air as they stroll on the sands. Distant are the masts of ships in the Barry Dock. [001] [393]

The Pier, Barry Island - Another finely worked lithographic print from 'The Wonder View Album of Penarth & Barry Dock District' of the pier which was situated in Whitmore Bay. [001] [393]

Barry Island - 'as it might have been: illustration of development in sale catalogue of 1877' With credits to the Glamorgan Record Office. [248] Note that the pier in the above is shown with a steamer alongside. The general lines of the old harbour and the location of the dock development of the 1880's is clear. Also the origin of the name of Barry Island becomes clear. The image was borrowed from a fine book, 'Barry - The Centenary Book' - and a highly recommended read it is too especially to while away those long winter evenings by the fire. [371]