Coliseum Cinema

I worked briefly as Copy Boy for South Wales Voice – taking typed copy to the printers by bus from the Swansea editorial office, waiting for proofs to take back for checking. I could see the building was a former theatre, I was able to explore the main upper floor, but didn’t go into the printing lower section – this was in 1955. Every now and again it pops up in my memory – I can’t remember what the building looked like externally – nor even exactly where it was. I’ve worked out it was in Gurnos Road – but is it still there? What was the actual street address for it?

I spent much of my childhood, during the late 1940s / early 1950s, at Ynysmeadwy a village near to Ystalyfera. I knew the South Wales Voice offices and printing works quite well but at that time never associated it with having been a former cinema. I last saw the building in 1970 and even then it looked like an old fashioned print works , giving no hint of its former use.
Local legend has it that Ebenezer Rees was the grandfather of Donald Peers the well known 1950s singer of “Babbling Brook” fame. Several people have claimed that the young Donald Peers worked at the print shop and in the cinema on Saturdays and during his school holidays.