Gyfieithu i'r Cymraeg
Ely is your community – and this is your community site. It is the aim of ‘my-local-community’ to help the residents, businesses and organisations in Ely to forge better relationships amongst each other - for the benefit of all concerned.
Our site has several ways to allow you to communicate with other community residents in Ely, with FREE forums and FREE classified ads for all private residents we are sure you can get your message heard.
Got a problem? Need help? – why not ask the community? – you may be pleasantly surprised.
Kids off School? - visit our Kids-2-Teens pages.
Ely (Welsh Trelai tref town + Elai River Ely) is a suburb primarily dominated by council housing in western Cardiff.
In Roman times, Ely was the site of a Roman villa. There is also thought to have been a Roman road near the site linking to Cardiff Roman Fort and eastwards to Newport.
In 1855, the first horse race took place at Ely Racecourse, which took over from the Great Heath racecourse.
In the 1880’s the ancient village of Ely was isolated from the rest of Cardiff. Reports about travelling along the main road over Ely common to Cardiff talk of pot holes and no shelter and a terrible journey on foot.
The 'Ely Industrial School' was home to orphaned children originally from Cardiff. The school was demolished some years later and an infectious diseases isolation unit was built on the same site.
Most of Ely was still farmland feeding Cardiff's population. A railway station had only recently been constructed, and gave the surrounding area further potential for mass housing development.
Ely Racecourse, who's grandstand was destroyed in a fire in 1937 and was then closed in 1939. The land was once owned by the Earl of Plymouth, who dictated that alcohol may not be sold on the land. As a result, like other plots of land with similar conditions (including the Manselton area of Swansea), the boundaries of the old estate can be approximated by the locations of public houses around the area.
To attract business from nearby areas, establishments would be built as close to it as possible without actually being in Ely (local establishments are actually in Caerau and Fairwater).
Ely's rapid expansion of housing began in the 1920s to provide 'homes fit for heroes' after World War I. This came with the construction of council houses to rehouse people from Cardiff's inner-city slums.