Penarth RFC

Penarth Rugby Football Club is a Welsh rugby union club based since 1924 at The Athletic Field, Lavernock Road, in Penarth, in the Vale of Glamorgan in Wales.

Team history

Origins and early history

Penarth RFC was founded in 1879 by Cyril and Llewellyn Batchelor, sons of the John Batchelor whose statue stands in The Hayes, Cardiff. Originally known as the Batchelor XV the team amalgamated with Penarth Dreadnoughts in 1882 and renamed as Penarth Football Club - soccer being known as Association football at the time. Locally the team became known as the "Donkey Island Butcher Boys", a nickname that occasionally remains to this day, along with the familial name of the "Seasiders". Early games had been played on land owned by Glebe Street butcher and early club benefactor, David Cornwall and located on the field where All Saints Church now stands in Victoria Square.

In 1891 the pitch was relocated to land owned by the Earl of Plymouth roughly where the Masonic Hall now stands on Stanwell Road, behind Victoria School. During the 1914 - 1918 Great War the pitch was dug up and used to grow vegetables for local residents. During the war seventeen Penarth RFC players were killed while performing their army service in France and are commemorated by the Memorial Stand above the clubhouse’s Long Room. At the end of the war the club moved again, this time to a field on Lavernock Road opposite the Penarth County Grammar School sports field, owned by Fred Davies of Morristown. After a brief spell on Thurston’s field (where Erw Delyn School now stands) the team finally relocated to its permanent home at the Athletics Field, provided to the community by the Earl of Plymouth for use by the town's rugby, cricket and hockey teams.

Penarth

Coordinates: 51°26′N 3°10′W / 51.43°N 3.17°W / 51.43; -3.17

Penarth is a town in the Vale of Glamorgan (Welsh: Bro Morgannwg), Wales, 5.2 miles (8.4 km) south west from the city centre of the Welsh capital city of Cardiff and lying on the north shore of the Severn Estuary at the southern end of Cardiff Bay. Penarth is the wealthiest seaside resort in the Cardiff Urban Area, and the second largest town in the Vale of Glamorgan, next only to the administrative centre of Barry.

During the Victorian era Penarth was a highly popular holiday destination, promoted nationally as "The Garden by the Sea" and was packed by visitors from the Midlands and the West Country as well as day trippers from the South Wales valleys, mostly arriving by train. Today the town, with its traditional seafront, continues to be a regular summer holiday destination (predominantly for older visitors), but their numbers are much lower than was common from Victorian times until the 1960s, when cheap overseas package holidays were introduced.

Penarth (disambiguation)

Penarth is a town in the Vale of Glamorgan, Wales.

Penarth may also refer to:

Penarth (Newtown and Llanllwchaiarn)

Penarth is a timber-framed house set back from the A 483 road near to Newtown and close to the banks of the river Severn. It is within the parish of Llanllwchaiarn, within the historic county of Montgomeryshire, which now forms part of Powys. It is amongst the best examples of the ‘‘Severn Valley’’ timber-framed houses. The Penarth vinyard stands within the grounds of the house.

Architectural Description

Penarth is a two storey hall house with two forward projecting gabled wings. The two bayed construction of the hall with a central cruck truss is likely to be the earliest part of the house and could be 15th century. It was originally suggested that it was an aisled hall, but restoration work in 1964 showed this was not the case. A chimney stack is positioned so that a Lobby entrance is formed, a typical feature of Severn Valley houses. The two gabled wings on either side of the hall are jettied with the second floor projecting forward and the timber framing forming a decorated geometric pattern. .