“Uncle William made all his own figures and the behind-the-scenes room was always littered with various pieces of wax anatomy.” William D’arc was an uncle of Mrs Esme Barron, who recalled: Later, Louis Tussaud exhibited there for a short while. When the waxworks first came to Cardiff in 1866 they were known as D’arc’s Grand Waxwork Exhibition.
The waxworks exhibition was on two floors, reached by a steep stairs from the street, and the premises had originally been used as a rather superior Temperance music hall. “Together with the usual array of celebrities – royalty and stars of stage and screen there was Alfred the Gorilla, the Tattooed Lady of Port Said, the Torture of the Hooks and several automatons and illusions, particularly the transformation of Dr Jekyll into Mr Hyde.” And I wasn’t the only oneĪs John Phillips, an expert in marionettes, writing in a magazine called Animations some years ago, recalled: “I remember the Waxworks at 90 St Mary Street, Cardiff as being the most theatrical I have ever seen – Musee Grevin, in Paris not with standing. It was nothing like the Cardiff Continental Waxworks that used to be in St Mary Street two or three doors from the Royal Hotel.Īlthough I was only 10 years old when it closed in 1946, it made a lasting impression on me. On holiday a year or two ago I visited Barcelona Waxworks and I must say that I was really disappointed. William and Edith D'Arc who at one time owned the Cardiff waxworks (Walesonline)
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