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Wales Online
Wales Online
National
Sandra Hembery

The story behind the elephants on the beautiful art deco facade of this Swansea city centre building

Walk past the former Coral building in Swansea's High Street and you could easily miss one of the most iconic art deco buildings in the city.

For above the former betting shop is a magnificent example of architecture from the 20s and 30s.

Complete with ornately-designed elephant heads, the decor hails from a different era long before the bookmaker became its latest tenant.

The building is now being let to a new tenant, but its post-WWI architecture actually dates back to Sir Montague Burton.

The founder of men's fashion chain Burton, he set up the company in 1903 under the name of The Cross-Tailoring Company.

After World War II, Sir Montague was one of the suppliers of demob suits to the British government for demobilising servicemen - it including a jacket, trousers, waistcoat, shirt and underwear.

But by the time of his death in 1952, the company was the largest multiple tailor in the world.

While the Burton name still carries on to this day, it is the architecture of his buildings that forms a key part of Montague Burton's legacy.

Beginning in 1923, his company began to acquire freehold sites in order to build its own custom-designed stores.

Prominent town centre corner sites were preferred, with Burton often moving just a few doors down along the same street in order to acquire the corner site.

Architect Harry Wilson was hired, and the Burton "house style" building design was born.

Take a look inside Swansea's archives:

Stores ranged from the more restrained red-brick with scroll headed columns to the fully-fledged Art Deco, as in Swansea's site, including the distinctive white tile, geometric patterns and stylised elephant heads.

These distinctive Art Deco motifs are typical of the Burton-Wilson collaboration - and can also be seen at the castle end of Queen Street in Cardiff .

The familiar elephant head can be spotted by those who look skywards when they pass the current Starbucks store.

Other examples of the style are overlapping concentric quadrants, a signature style visible in Abergavenny, among other places in England.

The elephant head motif made its way onto several store fronts. Aside from Swansea and Cardiff, examples include Barking, Belfast, Greenwich, Halifax and Oldham.

All are believed to date from the brief period between 1931 and 1932, and often sit on top of a pillar.

But the exact significance of the elephant's heads has never been explained.

And the blue of the stone at the Swansea store is believed to be unique.

Meanwhile, Burton's may have long since left High Street, but it still has a presence in Swansea - in the Quadrant Shopping Centre - as well as at Morfa Shopping Park.

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