B4292

The southern end of the former B4292

The B4292 was a narrow, and in many places very twisty, road that made its way up the east bank of the River Tawe from the inner Swansea suburb of St Thomas to the edge of the Llansamlet coalfield, passing through an area of heavy industry in the lower Swansea Valley – heavy industry that began to decline in the 1930s and has by now almost entirely disappeared.

Quite apart from the fact that its route began at a point separated from the centre of Swansea by a drawbridge which often led to long traffic tailbacks, a further factor preventing the B4292 from ever being a major gateway for the town was a railway bridge which crossed the road on a double bend near its Llamsamlet end with width and height clearances of barely 3 metres (single-deck buses could just about squeeze through).

By 1970 (when both these bridges had gone) the road had been upgraded and renumbered to become the A4217. Later still, nearly 3 km of the route's central section were moved to a new broad alignment further down the valley side, enjoying gentle curves and a long straight stretch. The parallel "old route", through Pentre-chwyth and along Jersey Road, Bon-y-maen, became a B road once again, though for reasons which remain shrouded in mystery, the B4292 number was not revived: instead this section was given the well out-of-sector designation of B5444 – a duplicate, to boot, of a road already bearing that number in Mold, Flintshire!