GOWER: Eight years after last orders, the Greyhound faces the bulldozers

The Greyhound at Oldwalls poured its last pint on a September Sunday in 2018. Eight years on, almost to the week, councillors will decide whether the bulldozers finish the job.

Swansea Council’s planning committee meets on Tuesday to rule on plans to demolish the vacant Gower pub and build nine homes on the site, with officers recommending approval.

Bradbar Homes’ application covers five open market houses and four affordable homes at the Llanrhidian site, with new accesses, parking and landscaping.

Housing here is not a new idea. Permission was first granted in February 2020, and the committee report notes the principle of nine homes is already established by earlier consents; this application replaces them with a new layout.

‘Affordable’, but on whose terms?

The village’s objection is not to homes but to the small print. Llanrhidian Community Council objects to the four affordable homes being offered as shared ownership rather than affordable housing.

The community council says it is concerned the rental part of the arrangement “would be managed by a private company, such as Bradbar Construction, and not a housing association, such as Caredig, who would be well placed to support people who rely on affordable housing”.

Shared ownership properties can also be more difficult to get mortgages for, the council warns in its objection.

The change is starker against the site’s original terms. Under the earlier permission’s legal agreement, the four affordable homes were to be social rented, handed to a housing association or the council, and fully built before work started on more than three of the market houses.

The Gower Brewery’s spiritual home

What stands to be lost is recorded with some feeling by CAMRA’s Swansea branch: a 19th-century inn remembered for its welcoming atmosphere and as “spiritual home to the Gower Brewery”, the local brewer’s ales lining the bar.

The beer garden and its children’s play area looked out over the Gower countryside, and each June the pub hosted the Great Gower Beer Festival, with campers pitching up for the weekend.

It shut “without much warning” on Sunday 16 September 2018, the campaign group’s record notes, having been up for sale for the two years before.

Eight years of standing empty have not been kind. The building is now a shell, its roof stripped to bare timbers, and the committee papers note the foundations and slabs of all nine homes have already been laid, under an earlier permission that remains live.

That, officers say, is why refusing the scheme on the grounds it sits in open countryside would be “futile and unreasonable”: the developer could simply build the version already approved.

The pub is not being cleared for open space. The site layout places the final house in the frontage row on the ground where the building now stands, with its garden and garage behind, meaning the eastern end of the scheme cannot be completed until the Greyhound comes down. Demolition has featured in every version of the plans since the first application in 2018.

The paper trail on the site is nearly as long as the closure. Change of use was granted in 2019 and housing permission in 2020, a bid to modify the affordable housing agreement was refused in 2021, a revised layout was approved in 2024, and this fresh application is intended to settle the site’s future. On the gable, a sign still points drinkers to the Kings Head, four miles up the road.

On sale before the vote

The developer is not waiting for Tuesday to sell the vision. Bradbar’s website already markets the scheme as Meadow Court, “an exclusive residential development”, while its brochure, under the name Meadow View Court, offers the five detached homes as custom-build plots.

The brochure puts numbers on modern living in this corner of Gower: £300,000 for a plot and £450,000 for the build, a total of £750,000 per home, with funding agreed through Swansea Building Society.

It also tells buyers each plot comes with “planning permission already secured”. Housing permission does exist on the site under the earlier consents; the layout being marketed is the one councillors will decide on Tuesday.

Bradbar itself is about as local as developers come, based at Little Cilibion a short drive away, with Fairyhill and Sant Ffraed among the completed developments its brochure invites buyers to view.

Dark skies over the beer garden

The site sits in open countryside within the Gower Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and the report notes the area’s new Dark Skies designation, with any lighting to be controlled by condition to protect the AONB’s night skies.

Highways officers raise no objection, with the frontage homes taking individual drives onto the road where the pub’s car park entrance once stood.

The committee meets on Tuesday 8 September. If councillors follow their officers’ advice, the Greyhound’s next landlord will be a housebuilder.