Tales of the Craig Nedd river bank:

I moved to 32 Craig Nedd, Glynneath on New Years Eve 1955 when I was one and a half years old. The council estate we lived on had all new houses and flats and there was an abundance of recently married couples with their young children moving in at the same time as us. 

The street we lived on was right next to the River Neath and you can imagine as a young child the pull the river had on us youngsters. We spent many a happy hour on it’s banks or in the river itself, times have changed now and I don’t think you would see the children of today being allowed to do what we did in our time. There was even a wood across the river for us to play in, and beyond that the main railway line and the branch line which crossed the river at the Langy Bridge to the Glynneath sidings.

The following article will trace the history of the river during my time of living at Craig Nedd and all the changes that have taken place over that time. It will follow the events that have taken place from floods, cold spells, changes to the river bank due to the floods and will also look at the river during all seasons. I was lucky enough to have a father who was a photographer, so I will use his photograph collection to illustrate the events as they took place at the time. I will also lay out my memories of my time living and playing and fishing in the river and on the river bank. Also included are some of the strange events that have taken place in the river that I remember.

So let’s start at the beginning. Just before I was born. The housing estate we were to live in was built on two fields to the right of the Cwmgwrach river bridge as you leave the village, you can see the fields and the river before the houses were built below. My mother clearly remembers that these two fields were regularly flooded, but nevertheless the council decided to build there anyway, nothing changes eh!!

Early memories:

I mentioned we moved in on New Year’s eve and on that first night one of my first memories was listening to all the whistles and bells being sounded at the stroke of midnight from the local collieries and the steam trains at Glynneath railway station and siding’s. This went on for a number of years until in June 1964 Beeching, sharpened his axe, and closed down the railway lines. Then under a Thatcher government the collieries closed and the iconic sounds of New Years Eve ended, such a shame.

Another memory was having to help my father to clear the back garden from all the building debris as well as a tree that had been felled in the garden and was chopped up for firewood. Although I must say I was very young at the time so I was probably more of an hinderance than a help. (See photos below) I remember my mother and father always reminiscing about the fantastic crop of potatoes they had the first year they planted up the garden.

The Big Freeze:

The winter of 1963 was a particularly bad winter with a record cold spell which lasted from just before the New Year to the first week in March. I remember it as it was the only time I have seen the river completely frozen over for weeks on end, and if I remember correctly, the schools at the time were also closed due to frozen pipes. Put these two together and you get the ideal set of circumstances for the children of Craig Nedd to come out and play on the river.

Sledges were quickly fashioned and winter woolies donned for some fun on the ice, it was like a scene from the film “Frozen”. The photograph on the left below show my friends and neighbours having some sledging practice along with Tinker the dog. I am at the front of the sledge, Terry Kelly at the back with Tinker, Keith Atkins standing and Alma Biggs on the right kneeling down. The river was completely frozen over to it’s full depth of about six inches, so there was no fear of us falling through the ice.  The second photograph shows the view from the river bank down towards the road bridge into the village of Cwmgwrach. Again you can see people on the ice down by the river bridge playing on the ice, I think the person in the foreground is probably myself, as my father took the picture.

There has been many large snowfalls since, in 1982 and 1991, but we have not seen such a cold spell to completely freeze over the river like it did in 1963.
For a more detailed explanation of the Big Freeze, see link here .

Summer Sunshine:

If the winter of 1963 was a particularly bad winter, then in contrast, we did have some nice summers growing up as well. We took advantage of the sun to spend some glorious hours paddling in the river and swimming in the deeper pools. You can see in the photographs below us children cooling off in the river and collecting firewood.

There were many children living in the estate and in the summer we would spend hours paddling in the river and catching small fish in the pools at the side of the river, (Bombleyes, catfish, minnows), although I don’t think that’s the proper ichthyologist name for the fish. We would even try to dam the river when the river level was low. There were even some deeper pools were you could swim a little bit, but overall it was mainly paddling. 

Other activities enjoyed by us youngsters:

As we grew older there were other activities that drew us to the river. When the fishing season started on March 1st, you would find us rod in hand along the river bank, where we would catch eels and sometimes trout, and as the river was tidal up to Neath I once actually caught a flat fish, it must have come up on a flood.

We would build dens along the river bank or in the woods across the river where we would also climb trees, play Cowboys and Indians making our own bows and arrows, looking for bird nest’s and generally having a good time.

We would make camp fires on the river bank and sometimes if we found some lead we would melt it down in an old tin can on the fire, then pour it into a heart shaped mould in a local Evan Bevan, Onllwyn brick to make a nice lead heart. (see photograph at the end of the article) Obviously no such thing as Health and Safety back in those day’s to hold us back.

The woods were also our supply of wood for Bonfire night, although it was a long way to drag the wood from the woods down to the river bridge and back up to to our house, but somehow we managed it. Then it was all about protecting the bonfire from being set alight early by other gangs, but we would also try to set fire to their bonfires as well, I remember we fashioned a bazoka out of a bit of piping and would fire rockets through it at the bonfires.. You can see below my cousin Howard and myself building our bonfire at the bottom of the garden.

During the early day’s of living in Craig Nedd it was not a strange sight to see people who were walking on the river path to use the stile at the bottom of the garden to take a short cut into the estate. My mother and father thought nothing of this, as if it was a normal experience, but I found it a bit strange to say the least. My father eventually replaced the stile with a gate and people seem to not want to use the gate for some reason so the practice died out. The photo below shows me standing on the stile looking out across the river for Red Indians or Bears in the woods opposite our house.

Fishing:

As I grew older I took up fishing, as I mentioned above, and as there were many children living on the estate fishing became a shared pastime. You would see many boy’s fishing in the various pools along the river. We would all look forward to the 1st of March (St Davids day) when the fishing season would start and a few weeks before that we would have gone up to the Welfare Hall in Glynneath to get our fishing licence. I had a green fibre glass rod about 8 foot long, I still have it somewhere tucked away in the garage.

We would fish during the flood what we called “running worm” where we would bait the hook with a worm and run it downstream with the flow of the river. After the floods we would fish in the various pools along the river again using worms as bait, we would bait the hook and cast it into the pool, laying the rod down on a suitable stone and wait for the fish to take the bait which was shown when the tip of the rod would flex up and down. A few trout were caught but it was mostly eels we caught, which were difficult to get off the hook. 

As we grew a bit older we would try “spinning” with a spinning reel and “mepps” (spinners). You would cast you lure across the river and use the spinning reel to bring it back, hoping a trout would see the shiny spinning lure and take the bait, but more often than not we came back empty handed.

I remember one day we saw Mark Antony fishing on the river and asked him how many he had caught, he told us he had caught 18 trout which was the maximum you were allowed to catch, with all the fish having to be 7 inches or over, if not you had to return them to the river. It put the measly 2 trout we caught to shame.

Another story that comes to mind is my father coming home from fly fishing on the river with his split can fishing rod broken into three pieces. He had hooked quite a large Sewin and the strength of the Sewin in trying to get away snapped my fathers rod into three pieces, another fisherman’s tale of the one that got away.

Memories of some of the river pools: 

Some of the names of the pools I remember are:

Pwll Pentre at the bottom of Pentre Street. I remember I had bought a blue snorkel, facemark and flippers and decided to try them out in Pwll Pentre, it wasn’t deep enough to swim in and I probably couldn’t swim by then anyway, but I could crawl along the bed of the river pulling myself from stone to stone to propel myself. Then I remember seeing a small’ish trout about 6 inches long and being able to follow it for a few seconds, it’s funny what you can remember.

Black-magic, (which we named ourselves) which had a “small coal” beach and was was formed by the brick covered stream outlet across the river which run under the hill where Ynys Las was,  which carried small coal across the river and deposited it on Blackmagic. (Ed note: The outlet was probably built when the railway was being built prior to it being opened in 1851.) This small beach was our main fishing spot for us children.

When I was quite young a few boys including my cousin Howard and myself tried to build a dam across the river at Blackmagic. Unfortunately half way across I managed to get my arm trapped under a large’ish stone with my head just below the surface of the water, and was unable to free myself. Luckily Howard saw I was in trouble and came to my rescue, I had to go home soaking wet after having quite a fright. Thank you Howard.

The Railway bridge and the White bridge also had pools we would fish in, catching mostly eels at the railway bridge. I remember being a little older and fly fishing down from outside my house working my my way downriver and ending up at the Railway bridge pool. My father came to watch me as I caught a reasonably sized trout, but was unable to land it as I was in the middle of the river and couldn’t get hold of it, so it got away, another fisherman.s tale. 

With regard to the White Bridge I remember catching a flat fish there which had probably swam up river on a high tide.

Unusual sightings on the river:

I remember seeing a 6 inch tsunami type wave coming up the river, it must have been generated by a particularly high tide at the mouth of the river. I also saw a similar sized wave coming down the river, but I couldn’t work out what could have caused that wave.

Another anomaly was that the river would turn brown, I think, twice a day when the collieries up river would release water from their screens.

Two doors down from our house was Mr and Mrs Redwoods house, with the Biggs’s in-between. When I was about 14 (1967) I was returning from school walking along the riverbank and could see by the Redwood’s house in the river a very large fish and a smaller fish by its side. The larger fish, which was dead, was at least 6 foot long and the smaller fish, probably its offspring, was about 3 foot long. I think they could have been Sturgeon. About a week later I was coming home from school again walking on the river path and saw 3 or 4 men carrying the larger fish on their shoulders making their way down the path towards the road bridge. The smaller fish by this time had swam away never to be seen again. Over the years I have wondered if there were any records of this fish being in the river, but I never managed to find out, does anyone else know anything about this very large fish?

Another time again walking along the bank from school, a few years older by then, I saw in the river swarms of eels, there were hundreds or even thousands gathered together every few yards in swirling balls. I can only assume they were gathering to swim together to begin their long, 4,000-mile journey back across the Atlantic sea to spawn in the Sargasso Sea, where they died and their young then returning to the rivers carried by the tides.

One of the other seasonal events in Autumn was the return of the Sewin, you would see them jumping up over the small waterfall in front of the Langy bridge, making their way upstream to their spawning grounds, quite a sight to behold, but unfortunately a sight not seen in recent years. 

My father called out to me one day to come and see what was in the river. When I looked up the river there was a seagull perched on a stone in the river. It must have been an unusual occurence at the time for my father to point it out to me. Now they are every where.

Floods:

There have been a number of big floods over the years, mostly in the spring, where we would see from the comfort of our upstairs bedroom window whole large trees being carried.down the river and sometimes getting stuck under the Cwmgwrach road bridge. If these floods coincided with a big tide the depth of the water would be further increased,

Looking back at the changes to the river bank over the years, most of the changes that affected the course of the river can be attributed to flooding or major roadworks. It seemed that the rainfall in the 60’s and 70’s was a lot more severe than what we get now, there was definitely a lot more storms with thunder and lightening then if my memory serves me corretly. The result of which was that we had many more severe floods over these early years.

One memorable flood that took place on Sunday night and Monday morning the 15th and 16th of October, 1967, washed the river bank and gardens completely away, up to about six foot of some of the houses further down the street, as well as the path and trees along the bank as can be seen in the photos below. The storm happened during the night and the rescue services evacuated all the houses from the bottom of the street right up to but not including our house, they let us sleep all night not knowing there was a problem. (Ed note: I still have nightmares to this day that the house will be washed away by a flood.) As can be seen in the photographs below they then reconstructed the bank using large stones, this meant we could no longer access the river easily.

The river on some occasions would actually come into the bottom of the garden as can be seen in the photos below.

Changes to the river:

On the 10th January, 1994 they started to build the “Missing Link” dual carriageway between Aberdulais and Glynneath which was opened for traffic on the 24th February 1997. A few years after it was built it was found that the water was being diverted from the far river bank to the side where the houses were and the river was eroding the bank. After this was pointed out to the river authorities they carried out an investigation and concluded that a Flood Defence Wall needed to be built and the company Carillon Construction was contracted to build the wall along the river bank. This wall has certainly helped with flood defence, but now makes it impossible to access the river as we did as children. The photo below shows how the river bank looked like in 2010.

Now you can no longer see people fishing on the river as there are few access points to get down to the river. Unfortunately as well, the river appears lifeless due to the pollutants flowing off the forestry and farmland higher up the valley. You can no longer access the river or the woods we once played in as children all those years go. The river has been cut off by the flood defence wall, and the woods have been cut off by the Neath to the Heads of the Valley dual carriageway now running where the old Neath to Aberdare main railway line lay.

Progress? I’m not too sure!

I hope you have enjoyed this short article on living along side the River Neath for so many years, and it certainly helped me to jog some childhood memories.

I have included a few more photographs for you to enjoy. I have also included some links where you can find more photographs on this subject, in the People’s Collection Wales website.

https://www.peoplescollection.wales/items/1268296

https://www.peoplescollection.wales/items/1268256

https://www.peoplescollection.wales/items/1268321