Victorian terraces in coloured brick surround a park lake with a lighthouse memorial, and the glasshouse conservatory beside it appeared in Doctor Who.
What Roath looks like
Streets off and run in straight Victorian rows, coloured brick terraces two and three storeys high behind small front gardens and iron railings. Bay windows project from most ground floors, and slate roofs carry a run of matching chimney pots the length of each terrace. Alfred Street and keep the pattern block after block, cars parked nose to tail along both kerbs. Most of the terraces date from the mid to late nineteenth century.
and Wellfield Road are the shopping streets, two and three storey buildings with shopfronts at pavement level and gabled bay windows in the flats above. Awnings and hanging signs crowd the pavement outside the parades on Wellfield Road, where a church spire rises behind the roofline. City Road runs wider and straighter, corner buildings painted in single bright colours above the shop signs.
Roath Park sits at the top of the neighbourhood, its 30 acre lake ringed by a stone promenade and mature trees. A white lighthouse memorial stands on its own rock base partway across the water, a ship weathervane and a working clock built into its tower. South of the lake, a long glass and brick conservatory faces a lawn with flower beds and benches.
Shot in Roath
Doctor Who filmed pickup shots inside the glasshouse conservatory in Roath Park's gardens for the 2008 episode The Doctor's Daughter. The unit worked in the conservatory on 18 January 2008.
Doctor Who, The Doctor's Daughter, 2008
Played the source room
The BBC used the conservatory as the source room for a pickup shot, the glass and brick structure standing in for the episode's own set. It is a short addition to the finished episode rather than a location seen at length on screen. Street View
The Welsh Streets in Toxteth are bay fronted brick terraces of the same scale and era as Roath's rows, and the streets have themselves stood in for another city's Victorian terrace on screen. Look for the same repeated gable ends and ground floor bays along a similar terrace. Liverpool's terraces run in darker brick and some streets carry boarded up gaps that would need dressing out of a wide shot. Try searching bay fronted brick terrace now.
Handsworth Park in Birmingham, West Midlands
Handsworth Park has carried its own boating lake since 1897, set inside a Grade II registered Victorian park in the same way Roath Park is. A wide shot across the water looks like a similar civic park scene. Handsworth's lake has no lighthouse memorial or equivalent tower, so a frame that includes one gives Cardiff away. Try searching Victorian park boating lake now.
Sefton Park has carried its own Victorian glasshouse, the Palm House, since 1896. A lake beside a period conservatory is not exclusive to Cardiff. The Palm House is a tall octagonal dome rather than the plain span roof at Roath Park, so a wide shot of the building itself would not hold the match. Try searching Victorian park glasshouse now.
.jpg)
