THE NORTH STAR
North Road
After the Taff Vale Railway (TVR) sliced through the countryside in 1841, the half-anglicised nonsense word ‘Maindy’ usurped Llystalybont and Blackweir as an alternative name for the peaceful rural area inhabited by a small working-class community alongside the Glamorganshire Canal (opened 1794). Heavy duty industrialisation arrived with the railway in the form of four highly polluting ‘Patent Fuel’ Works crammed into just over one mile between the Canal and the TVR – from north to south, the Cambrian Works (1875-1893), the Anchor Works (1866-1929), the Crown Works (1857-1898) and the Star Works (1874-1927). A deep clay pit was dug to supply bricks for housing to accommodate the influx of workers from England (the pit became the site of Maindy Stadium in 1951) and, to cash in on the increasing population, the Maindy Inn opened in 1884 close to the Crown Works on the west side of North Road opposite Maendy (Stone House) a large 18th century dwelling on the east side of North Road (demolished to make way for Cathays High School in 1930). The new pub, plus the TVR’s fatal impact on the finances of the Glamorganshire Canal, eventually eradicated the older pubs at Blackweir and along North Road that had served generations of canal workers: the Machen Forge, the Hope and the Homfray Arms.

Over a century passed in which the Maindy had become firmly rooted as a vital component of the still predominately working-class district encompassing Maendy, Blackweir, Mynachdy and northern Cathays. But Cardiff University had other ideas. Ditching its founding commitment to Cardiff and Wales, it developed delusions of grandeur and began pursuing size as an end in itself. The phenomena of ‘studentification’ took hold and, after Cathays had been turned into a giant campus, endless expansion moved northwards and evicted Cardiffians from the pub’s catchment area with vast new blocks of student flats while wiping out everything not pitched at the juvenile student market. The Maindy closed in 2008, having suffered exactly what had happened to the Canal pubs a hundred years earlier: its customer base disappeared into the ether. Then thrusting ‘entrepreneur’ Jahan Abedi came to the rescue in 2009, renamed it the North Star, gave it a lurid electric-blue paint job, filled it with whimsical paraphernalia and, abracadabra, Cardiff was lumbered with yet another generic student honey-trap.

As with all such intrinsically unsustainable projects, it didn’t last long. Abedi gave up the fight and the pub closed again in 2016. Step forward local hero John Bassett, who had worked wonders resuscitating Cardiff pubs like the Four Elms in Roath and the Queens Vaults in Westgate Street. He got rid of the dreadful blue paint, refurbished the interior and re-opened it as the brazenly student-targeted College Tavern in 2017. Alas, even Bassett couldn’t make it work and he wisely offloaded the burden to optimistic Tom Edwards in 2020. Edwards restored the North Star name and chucked more student-friendly gubbins into the mix – but, despite his best efforts to make the independent viable, the pub closed for good at the end of 2025. The simple fact is that pitching a public house at the student demographic is doomed to fail, given that students are by definition fickle, transient and here today, gone tomorrow, that the 18-20 demographic is far too narrow, impecunious and off-putting to the remaining 99% of the population, and that Cardiff University’s total domination by students from England and China guarantees a complete lack of interest, affinity and knowledge that might otherwise imbue a scintilla of loyalty in a pub’s clientele.

So the over-the-top and self-important farewell statement issued by landlord Edwards and manager David Rowlands strikes a very dud note indeed – ridiculously reading as if a routine pub closure is on a par with some ancient Greek tragedy. I recommend they browse through the multitude of Cardiff pub closures I have catalogued in this Pubocalypse series alone to help them put the North Star’s demise in perspective. When I think of all the wonderful lost Cardiff pubs that were genuinely important and cherished community assets, the fourth closure in 17 years of what was only an excluding, divisive ghetto for immature know-nothings trying to get laid barely counts as a footnote. Hey boys, get over it – like generation after generation of Cardiffians have had to do before you.