Gorseinon‘s working men’s club is coming down.
The new owner of the Brighton Road building has told Swansea Council he wants it demolished to make way for houses, and the last hurdle, a bat survey, has just been cleared.
The Gorseinon and District Working Men’s Club called time on 11 December 2023. Its last weeks looked like any other autumn there: a Freddie Mercury tribute with bingo in the interval, a Halloween night with cocktails, the Rugby World Cup on the screens.
Then an urgent members’ meeting, and a post on the club’s Facebook page saying it would cease trading at once. “Very sad times and our members and staff are obviously upset at this terrible time,” it said, blaming “many contributing factors”.
“We greatly appreciate all the customers that have supported us through our 100 years of service in Gorseinon and a heartfelt apology to the huge loss it will leave in our community. We will miss you all.”
It went to auction with Dawsons with a guide price of £100,000, and is reported to have fetched £140,000, with the sale completing in February. The listing counted two bar areas, an entertainment room 46ft by 58ft with a 37ft stage, a first-floor snooker room and three cellars.
“No longer fit for purpose”
The demolition papers, submitted by new owner Victor Johnson, say the building is “no longer fit for purpose” and that no business could use it. Knocking it down, they say, will let the owner “realise his ambitions to re-develop the site with an exciting residential development” in the town centre.
There is no design and no planning application for the houses yet. Once the club is gone the plot will be cleared, levelled and fenced off.
The two-storey front on Brighton Road will be taken down by hand because it sits right on the pavement. Work would run 8am to 6pm, Monday to Saturday, with lorries using the one-way system and told to avoid the busiest times.
An asbestos survey has still to be done.
The bats that weren’t there
The council refused to let demolition go ahead in July until the owner had checked for bats. Ecologists spent two August evenings outside the club, from dusk until nearly 11pm, watching the roofline.
Pipistrelles flew past, feeding along the western edge of the site, but none came in or out of the building. The surveyors found no roosts, and say no licence is needed. They want a bat box and a swift brick built into whatever replaces the club.
The school next door
The papers say the school next door “is also being brought forward for development”.
That is the old Gorseinon Junior School on Pontarddulais Road, empty since the town’s new primary opened at Parc y Werin in 2020. Its annex was destroyed in a fire in September 2024 that took crews from six stations to put out, and which the fire service said was started deliberately.
Between the two sites, a chunk of the town centre between Brighton Road and Pontarddulais Road is now heading for redevelopment. What either will look like, and how many homes, nobody has yet said.
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