page_title: Penarth
section_title: The town today
hierarchical_section_title: Penarth / History / The town today
caption_attribution_description: Penarth Marina Basin
context_page_description: Penarth is a town and community in the Vale of Glamorgan, Wales, approximately 4 miles southwest of Cardiff city centre on the north shore of the Severn Estuary at the southern end of Cardiff Bay. Penarth is the wealthiest seaside resort in the Cardiff Urban Area, and the second largest town in the Vale of Glamorgan, next only to the administrative centre of Barry.
  During the Victorian era Penarth was a highly popular holiday destination, promoted nationally as "The Garden by the Sea" and was packed by visitors from the Midlands and the West Country as well as day trippers from the South Wales valleys, mostly arriving by train. Today, the town, with its traditional seafront, continues to be a regular summer holiday destination, but their numbers are much lower than was common from Victorian times until the 1960s, when cheap overseas package holidays were introduced.
  Although the number of holiday visitors has greatly declined, the town retains a substantial retired population, representing over 25% of residents, but Penarth is now predominantly a dormitory town for Cardiff commuters. The town's population was recorded as 20,396 in the United Kingdom Census 2001.
context_section_description: The coal trade from Penarth docks eventually petered out and the docks closed in 1936, only reopening for commercial and military use during World War II. From the 1950s, and up until 1965, the basins were utilised by the Royal Navy to mothball dozens of destroyers and frigates from the no longer needed wartime fleet of warships, until they were sold to foreign nations or broken up. By 1967, after barely a hundred years of commercial operations, the docks lay unused and derelict, and much of it was used for landfill. The largest basin, No 2 dock at the Cogan end, is now completely filled in, grassed over and surrounded by roadways.
  In 1987, the new Penarth Marina village opened on the disused docks site. The No 1 dock and outer basin were re-excavated or dredged out to provide some 350 yacht berths, surrounded by extensive modern waterside homes and several marine engineering yards. The original dock office and Excise House is now in use as a popular restaurant, with only the Grade II listed Marine Hotel remaining derelict and boarded up, awaiting suitable redevelopment plans. The Penarth Marina development was one of the key catalysts to the similar later redevelopment of the Cardiff Bay area.
  Penarth is one of the most affluent areas in the Vale of Glamorgan and property prices continue to remain high. Marine Parade or 'Millionaires' row', with its grand, substantial Victorian houses or modern designer villas with views across the Bristol Channel, is considered to be the finest street in Penarth, although several larger properties are now split as apartments or adapted as residential care homes. Houses in Penarth vary from imposing three storey red brick Victorian houses found on both Plymouth and Westbourne Roads to compact stone terraces in Cogan and upper Penarth. Many of the Plymouth Road, Westbourne Road, Victoria Road and Archer Road houses, originally large family homes with servants' quarters on the top floors, have now been adapted for multi-occupancy as flats and apartments. Penarth Marina in direct contrast features trendy modern townhouses, apartments and designer penthouses.
  In 1930, the General Post Office (GPO), later British Telecom (BT), built its main telephone engineers' college on the corner of Lavernock Road and Victoria Road, where engineers from all over the UK attended basic and advanced residential courses lasting up to eight weeks. The college closed in the 1980s and stood empty for many years before being demolished for a new development of residential housing.
  In 1965, the combined Cardiff Universities built the multi-storey International House on Plymouth Road near the end of Cliff Parade to provide Halls of Residence for up to 300 overseas students attending University College, Cardiff and the University of Wales Institute of Science and Technology. Abandoned in the late 1990s, after just 30 years in its original use, International House is now converted as a specialist residential care home. There is now a plan to build a new boutique hotel in Penarth called the Marine Hotel, in Penarth Marina, subject to planning permission.
  Penarth has been used as a film location for several BBC TV series including several episodes of Doctor Who such as "The Stolen Earth". The scene where a Dalek shoots The Doctor was filmed at the junction of Arcot Street and Queen's Road. Scenes for Torchwood, The Sarah Jane Adventures, Gavin & Stacey and Casualty have also been filmed in Penarth.
  Penarth was named one of the best places to live in Wales in 2017.
  Starting in September 2018, hundreds of consignments of allegedly radioactive mud from the Somerset coast (adjacent to the Hinkley Point nuclear power station) are being deposited off Penarth, Wales under cover of darkness; each shipload is about 2,000 tons.
caption: The Penarth Marina development. Pictured are vessels tied up in what was the outer basin of Penarth docks.
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA", "Image Make": "OLYMPUS OPTICAL CO.,LTD", "Image Model": "C5050Z", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop 7.0", "Image DateTime": "2006:11:11 06:11:53", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image PrintIM": "[80, 114, 105, 110, 116, 73, 77, 0, 48, 50, 53, 48, 0, 0, 20, 0, 1, 0, 20, 0, ... ]", "Image ExifOffset": "524", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "1218", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "4299", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/800", "EXIF FNumber": "5", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "100", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "0000:00:00 00:00:00", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "0000:00:00 00:00:00", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "2", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "17/10", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash fired, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "71/10", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "650", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "426", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "0", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "Low gain up", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal"}