Patti Pavilion

A glass and iron structure with roof of Tudor arch profile. This is the Winter Garden of Craig-y-Nos, Abercave (q.v.), dismantled and brought to Swansea as the gift of Adelina Patti in 1919. It was reassembled in Victoria Park in 1920 and opened to the public in 1922. In order to make it more suitable as an entertainment venue, the glass roof and upper side walls were covered in sheet iron and a stage was installed along one side of what became the new auditorium. There was no balcony, and the flat auditorium floor had no permanent seating. Single-storey red-brick annexes were added to either side to house cloak-rooms and other public facilities. By the early 1990s the Council-owned building was in rapidly declining condition and it seemed likely that it would be permanently closed and (but for its listed status) demolished. In summer 1994 a crash programme of repair and re-equipment costing £750,000, undertaken as part of a television ‘challenge’, was completed in less than three days. The roof was re-covered, the walls re-glazed, dressing rooms and bars updated, modern lighting and sound equipment installed and the building redecorated inside and out. The stage was moved to a position facing the entrance. The results of this refurbishment have been criticised in architectural conservation terms but, for the time being, it broke a cycle of neglect and inaction.