A devilish old favourite has made a comeback – just in the nick of time.
The Swansea Devil is once again taking pride of place in the city’s Quadrant shopping centre.
The city’s very own Devil, Old Nick Himself, is watching over the thousands of shoppers who pass under his gaze every day – and over an old rival.
The carved wooden figure has a chequered history dating back to the 19th century and has attracted a fair bit of controversy in his time.
But Quadrant Shopping Centre manager Alan Wallace has sympathy for what has become a piece of local folklore.
He said: “It apparently dates back to the 1890s when the contract was going out for the building of St Mary’s Church and there was a local architect who was very confident he would get the job.
“But when it went to a London man, Sir Arthur Blomfeld, it put our guy’s nose out of joint and when he had the chance to take his revenge he did so.
“He bought a row of old cottages opposite the church, tore them down and put up a row of brewery offices but he also commissioned a local woodsman to carve this figure and he stuck it up on the new buildings opposite the church.
“The legend is that the church would be cursed and destroyed but it took 50 or 60 years before the Luftwaffe came along and dropped a bomb on the church in the Swansea blitz.”
The figure of the devil survived the 1941 bombing and after the war the church rose again but when the old houses were bulldozed the ‘devil’ disappeared too.
Alan Wallace added: “The Swansea Market was on the empty land and my grandparents had a butcher’s stall there and the rest was a car park until they built the Quadrant in the late 1970s.
“In the meantime the devil had gone but he was tracked down a few years ago to a shed near Gloucester and brought back to the city.
“They offered it to C & A who occupied the space where New Look is now but they didn’t want it – perhaps they would still be in business if they had taken it.
“We were looking for somewhere to put it and it just seemed appropriate that he should be close to his original position.
“I occasionally get a bit of stick from people who complain that we shouldn’t be displaying a statue of the devil but I think he’s part of Swansea’s folklore and I’m not even sure he was intended to be the devil.
“He looks quite like Pan, who was a woodland deity, and perhaps that’s a more likely subject for a local woodsman to have carved.
“He was evidently a man of considerable skill and we’re very glad to have his statue here as a part of Swansea’s heritage.”
