As team was going up to Premier League, Swansea’s former home was coming down.
It was once the heartbeat of Swansea football but now the final whistle for the city’s Vetch Field site is rapidly approaching, thanks to Cuddy Group. Swansea Council’s £700,000 grant from the Welsh Assembly Government marked the beginning of a new fixture for the 1.5 hectare site. But much has happened since then.
When the demolition and site clearance contract began in February, the 20-man Cuddy team erected fencing to make the area safe and secure before removing asbestos and soft-stripping the site of all loose fixtures and fittings. Sentimental items such as seats, turf and advertising hoardings had already been removed by fans after the last game, before the stadium was boarded up.
Throughout the ensuing 14-weeks, Cuddy then razed the Vetch’s four stands to ground level utilising a combination of machinery including a CAT 345 high reach, 60 tonne excavators and dumper trucks. Having commenced with the North Bank in February to gain access to the centre of the site, the team moved onto the South Stand and West (double-decker) Terrace.
The 15 metre high East Stand – more affectionately known as the Toshack Stand after a former manager – posed perhaps the most complex structure to remove. Of a much newer construction, the heavy steel cantilever frame with floodlight tower atop, required slow, meticulous dismantling with a 250 tonne crane, rather than conventional demolition. But the stand’s location – not only on the sea front but incredibly close to residential gardens – proved an added challenge. Scaffolding was erected and Cuddy removed dirty sheeting from the stand by hand so that properties were protected as much as possible.
This then paved the way for Cuddy’s civil-engineering team to move in. The team is now bringing the project to a close by undertaking an 8-week package of cut and fill earthworks, remedial works to boundary walls, road and footpath surfacing, drainage and topsoil laying.
“We are about to finally mark the end of an era at the Vetch. There is naturally a lot of nostalgia attached to this stadium as it hosted many nail-biting matches in its heyday, but having sat redundant for many years, it had not only become an eyesore but also a health and safety risk,” says Cuddy Group’s senior contracts manager, Peter Smith. “Now the site has a bright new future ahead of it, as does Swansea City Football Club it seems, following its recent Premiership promotion.”
As always, sustainable working has been a key consideration throughout the project. Cuddy Group reports that around 98 percent of site materials – including steel, plastic seating, clean timber and soil – have been recycled and 5,000 tonnes of concrete rubble has been reused on the project in soft and hard landscaped areas.
