(Shared from ~ Members of Glynneath news and views for the community, Face book page)
Introduction:
I found David’s memories on the Members of Glynneath news and views for the community Face book page a few months ago. David’s memories are still quite vivid of his time visiting his family in Glynneath, Cwmgwrach and Aberdare, he even spend 6 months, in the early 50’s, living in Dunraven Street with his Aunt Nelly the Scron, as she was known, and attending Blaengwrach school. He was to take many holidays over the years visiting his mothers family as you will read below.
David has sent me a potted history of his parents early years, and I hope I have transcribed them correctly. (let me know David, if there is something not quite right). He mentions in the memories below his mother left Glynneath when she was 14 years of age to go into service in London. She eventually trained as a nurse and probably met David’s father at this time as he was a nurse as well. They eventually moved to Oxford together with David then being born on the outskirts of Leicester at a place called Oadby.
He grew up in Carlshalton, which is close to Croydon, South London. In 1954 the family moved to Meanwood in Leeds where his parents had new jobs.
Looking at the places they moved to it is clear to see they were all close to Hospitals, so I guess they moved to new jobs in their nursing profession.
David father was from Devizes in Wiltshire, they would catch the Waverly Paddle Steamer from Cardiff across the Bristol Channel then followed the North Devon coast down to Clovelly where his Uncle Harold would meet them in his car at the top of a very steep cobbled road. (Ed note:If you seen any pictures of Clovelly you would know what he means.)
They would then all go to his Uncle Harold and Aunty Win farm in Pinkworthy farm, Pyewothy, Holswothy in Devon.
The memories below tell of his time visiting his relatives in Glynneath, Cwmgwrach and Aberdare, I think you will all know the places he mentions, and some will remember his family as well.
Wales:
Even though it is hard to believe nowadays as I was only around 10 years old, I was taken up to Victoria Coach Station in London by my Mum and Dad and put on a coach to Aberdare in South Wales via Cheltenham. They spoke to the driver and he sat me on the front seat of the coach with a lady. I was met by my wonderful Grandma and I ended up living and going to school near Glynneath in The Welsh Valleys but that’s another story.
My Mum had left The Welsh Valleys when she was 14 years old to go up to London and start work in service. I haven’t a clue how she ended up training to be a nurse in Oxford – another mystery. Every year we spent our holidays in Wales. In fact, one day we were walking up Park Hill on our way to catch our train from Carshalton Beeches train station to travel up to Victoria Coach Station, and travel down to Wales and the weather was atrocious: thunder, lightning and pouring down with rain. I can remember getting upset because I did not think we would be able to go. But we did.!!
In 1954 when I was twelve and we were about to leave Carshalton to move up to Meanwood near Leeds where my Mum and Dad had new jobs, some friends and neighbours of ours had a leaving party for us. There were Teddy Boys and Girls there and just about the only dance was one called The Creep. It involved a boy holding his arms around a girls waist and the girl holding hers around the back of the boys neck. It was very boring to watch. They shuffled forwards and backwards whilst the song was being played, which went like this .. Everybody Does The Creep, This Way, Everybody Does The Creep. and repeat.
The family whose party it was had one of those Australian dogs that cannot bark, called a Besenji. Richard Gibbs, whose Mum and Dad held the party went on to go to Ernshaw public School.
South Wales:
Next stop Meanwood, Leeds, Yorkshire. Before I go on about Meanwood and Leeds, I feel I must say more about our many holidays at my Grandmother’s in South Wales. In fact, they were more than holidays more like a second home especially as I actually lived down there a few times.
My Mum was from the village of Glynneath in the Neath Valley, Glamorgan, South Wales. She left home when she was fourteen years old to go into service with a family in London. She obviously had a very strong Welsh Valleys’ accent but with all the mickey-taking that she got in her new place of work she made a real effort to lose it in a very short time.
Pop was not my Mum‘s Dad but my Gran’s second husband. (another mystery). My Gran’s first husband may have been killed in the First World War. My Mum’s Dad was a Williams and, I believe, a teacher who had a lot to do with the revival of the Welsh Language. I can remember Mum talking with a real plum in her voice. One particular occasion that sticks in my memory is from when we lived in Leeds. Driving over the Pennines, we saw a reservoir with yachts sailing on it. My lovely Mum exclaimed, “What! Yachts in Rochdale?” in a very loud upper crust accent.
Glynneath:
Anyway, I digress. My Gran lived in an old detached house called Wellfield Place at the bottom of a hill. She and Pop, ‘Grandad’, had a lovely big garden that backed onto woods. They kept chickens and had a big vegetable plot and a greenhouse. I can picture my Gran sitting on a chair at the backdoor, slicing runner beans from the garden to go with our roast Welsh Lamb and new potatoes also from the garden. For our Sunday Dinner, as a young lad about ten years of age, I was allowed to chop on a board the mint for the mint sauce which was sprinkled with sugar for easier chopping.
My grandparents grew lots and lots of dahlias. Every time that I go into a greenhouse and get that lovely warm smell of tomatoes I remember my Gran and Glyneath.
As well as my Gran and Pop, my Mum’s step brother John also lived at Wellfield Place. We called him Big John as opposed to my brother John. It was Big John who built us boys a complicated array of rope swings and rope walks high up in the trees.
There was also a lodger called Reece who got really well looked after.
My earliest memory of Glyneath is when the Circus came to a field nearby. My Mum and Dad had to take me out of the show as I would not stop crying. Actually, the truth is I don’t remember it but as I was reminded about it many times it feels like I do.
I have fond memories of sitting on a horse-drawn hay turner as it stacked the stooks and sheaves in a nearby meadow and of cutting my feet as I walked through the stubble with my sandals on.
Glyneath Marching Band used to stop at my Gran’s for refreshments after they had finished marching up and down Glyneath, all of their instruments laying about everywhere.
In Glynneath there was an Italian Ice Cream Parlour, called Frankie’s. Many towns and villages across South Wales had their Italian Coffee Bar and Ice Cream Parlour back then. Many Italian people had trecked across from the Apennine Mountains and in particular the town of Bardi, and I believe that the South Wales Valleys countryside was similar to where they had come from. They were a big part of the community in the 1940s. Frankie’s Ice Cream and Lollipops were made right next to my Gran’s House. Lovely smell!
What was not as nice was my brother John waking me up in the middle of the night to mention that there was a big rat sat on the end of the bed.
We would visit a big house called Aberpergym House which had a huge glass conservatory with, among other things, numerous Venus flytrap plants. Another large building which was not nearly as old was The Welfare. Built for miners and their families, it had a library, a cinema and obviously a bar and concert room. Glyneath was a mining area and there were many coal tips as evidence of this, including the one where, as a child, my Mum had slipped and cut her bottom on broken glass whilst scrabbling around for bits of coal for the fire.
For all that, Glyneath was surrounded by mountains and some lovely countryside with rivers and waterfalls. Back then only locals knew about these places but it did not take my Dad long to take us all exploring them. The Lady Falls was one of them and we used to follow The River Melte along for a few miles until you could actually hear it. When you eventually got up to it you could scramble over the rocks and stand behind it and watch the water cascading down, before exploring the caves that were behind the falls. My brother John was a keen fisherman so he was happy fishing in the nearby ponds.
Cwmgwrach:
We used to visit my Gran’s a sister who lived in a village called Cwmgwrach which was about six miles (Ed Note: as we know it’s only about 1/2 a mile between the villages) away from Glynneath. She was called Nellie The Scron, named after Scron farm where she used to live. This is where I went to live for six months when I was about ten years old. I cannot remember her husband’s name but I can remember him coming back home after working at The Pit, or Colliery as they called it and getting washed in a zinc bath in front of the fire.
There was also Doris, Nellie’s Daughter, and Dick, the lodger who once brought home a lovely big salmon. Nellie used to get a bit annoyed if I didn’t have cup of tea with my Dinner. Tea was served in an ornate china cup with saucer.
I went to the village school whilst I was living there, which was a bit strange for a young lad with a southern accent. There was plenty of mick-taking. The lessons were a bit difficult as well. There was quite an emphasis on singing, as you can well imagine, and also Welsh Lessons. I think even the blooming English Lessons were in Welsh. They might just as well have been.
A special treat was to catch the little bus to Glyneath and go to The Pictures.
A little further up the road going up towards the mountain lived my Aunty Vera and Uncle Trevor. The back of their house backed on to an old quarry face which is where they kept their hens and ducks.
It was at my Aunty Vera’s where I first tasted Laver Bread with Bacon.
A man used to come round on a horse and trap selling cockles using a tin pint measure.
My Uncle Trevor worked in the mine further up the mountain. I can see him in my mind’s eye even now, after sixty-five years, walking down the mountain path after his shift at the mine. He always had kindling wood for the fire tied up in a bundle with a belt over his shoulder. The miners used to cut and split the old timber mine roof props. It was the type of coal mine that went directly into the mountain side. There were huge, very heavy iron trucks and several of them linked together and towed along using a winch and a very thick metal hawser. They would go right into the mine entrance and onward to the mine face.
After the Colliers ‘Miners’ had filled the tubs up they would be hauled to the mine entrance and then almost free wheel down the mountain to The Railway Line where they went over a gantry and automatically tipped their loads into the waiting empty railway wagons. Then when empty they were hauled back up the mountain to start again. They really did go down the mountain side at a heck of a speed and you had to listen out for the sound of the hawser whistling for them coming. It wasn’t unusual to see a dead sheep at the side of the narrow rail track.
If you continued walking up the mountain track you would eventually come to a man-made pool which I think had something to do with the mine. I can remember the water being quite warm.
This route further up the mountain took you to yet another of my grandmother’s Aunty Ginny and Uncle Morgan, who had a small mountain farm called Foch Gorgh or something like that. They had a daughter called Hirwaune who was a student nurse in Cardiff. The farm was fairly small and they used horses for everything as the terrain was far too steep for tractors. I can remember staying there for a couple of weeks or so and visiting them as a family. On top of the doorway of what I presume was the dairy was a huge pair of bull’s horns. The toilet was in a shed in the farm yard. It had two wooden toilet seats side by side and a mountain stream had been diverted to run under the toilet and back into the stream. Don’t ask!!
My uncle used to look after the pit ponies when they came up out of the mine for their holiday and a rest. People would say that they were better looked after than the miners.!!. There was another cousin on the farm and sometimes she would let me go with her to bring the cows in for milking. We would go on horseback as the cow’s pastures were quite a long way from the farm. I once had the wonderful experience of going hay-making with them and sitting on top of the hay as the horses pulled the hay cart back to the farm.
I can vividly remember my uncle riding on ahead to the top of the mountain, standing up in the saddle and waving his hat in the air as if he was Roy Rogers on Trigger and I got upset because I could not go with him.
Aberdare:
After my stay in Cymcrachg ( sic. Cwmgwrach) I returned home to Carshalton. My next visit to Wales would not be to Glynneath but to Aberdare, a larger town about twenty miles further up the Neath Valley where my Gran had opened a Café called The Copper Kettle, next to a cinema called The Rex which was very handy for us boys. The café had an upstairs eating area as well as the ground floor one. The downstairs was used by the bus drivers and conductors and other working people whilst the upstairs was for the local doctor and solicitor plus other local business people.
My Gran was famous for her Welsh faggots and peas. She mixed all the ingredients together in a zinc bath on top of the kitchen table. I must add that this was all the zinc bath was used for. Us boys were sometimes allowed to help mix it. She also used to make Welsh Cakes, which she cooked on a griddle, and her legendary pikelets. Another favourite was her blackberry and apple pies with the blackberries sometimes picked by us, along with hazelnuts. When she lived in Glyneath she would often go for a walk through the forests picking blackberries and hazelnuts.
When we stayed with my Gran in Aberdare my bedroom was next to the road side of the house and early every morning we would hear the siren going off which was to let the Colliers/Miners know their shift would be starting soon and a little while after you could hear the sound of their boots on the pavement as they marched past on their way to the pit head. Many of the miners used to catch the bus and the Aberdare buses had wooden slatted seats supposedly because upholstered seats would have been impossible to keep clean. This was the days before Pit head baths and showers.
After the war my Aunty Amelia and her G.I.American husband, my Uncle Bob, came to stay with my Gran. The first morning uncle Bob heard the siren going off for the miners and he jumped out of bed in a panic thinking it that it was the war time siren warning of incoming enemy planes.
Porthcawl:
My Mum, Dad and us three boys would spend part of our holiday in a caravan near Porthcawl on the coast. It was great. We spent all day on the beach and clambering around the rock pools. My Dad had bought us a huge beach ball and of course it ended up in the sea, slowly getting washed away. My eldest brother John swam after it but it was just so big that he couldn’t get hold of it and it just disappeared.
One day my young brother Gareth must have had too much sun and his vest ended up sticking to his back. My Dad had to peel it off. My poor brother yelled his head off.
A big treat for us was when my Gran came down by bus to visit us. The bus came from Aberdare over The Maerdy Mountains with its hairpin bends right on to Porthcawl. She would bring extra provisions and, better still, take us boys down to Coney Island to go on The Water Chute and The Big Dipper. Not to mention the waffles. Yummy!! I would give anything to have just a couple of the many photos that my Dad took.
In fact we explored many parts of the South Wales coastline, from Kenfig and Barry Island to as far as Rhosilli on the Gower Coast. We once went to Kenfig and my dad told us about the novel by R D Blackmore who also wrote Launa Doon which was based on the area of Exmore in Devon on the opposit side of the Bristol channel to Kenfig. What is not commonly known it that Blackmore also wrote a novel called The Maid Of Sker who was a foundling child found washed uo on the beach near Sker farm very close to Kenfig.
One year The National Eistedffod of Wales held its annual Welsh Cultural get together in Aberdare Park which is a huge beautiful park with a boating lake and ornamental gardens, By coincidence, my Mums sister, Auntie Ameia, who was a GI Bride, and her husband Bob had only recently come across from America to visit my Gran and they were invited on stage. It was a big thing at the time. I can clearly remember my Gran wrapping me up in a shawl and carrying me to Aberdare Town Square where hundreds of people were singing Welsh hymns. It was something that I will never forget.
The smell of tomatoes in the warm green house, picking blackberies and hazelnuts up in the mountain behind my Gran’s house, slicing runner beans whilst sat on the back step, helping to mix faggots, eating my Gran’s Welsh Cakes, fresh from the Griddle on the open fire, chopping the mint for the roast lamb for Sunday dinner, Taking a plate of food round to one of the neighbours “because she was getting on in years(!)” when in fact she was younger than my Gran. These are some of the many things I will always remember about my Gran.
Face book discussion:
Richard Brown to David Bartlett:
your Gran’s sister lived in Heol y Felin Cwmgwrach. She lived in the house next door to our cottage. I didn’t know her as Nellie, but as Bopa Thomas the Scron. Dick the lodger was from Machynlleth in Mid Wales, and he cycled to Cwmgwrach to work in Aberpergwm Colliery. Doris was married to Morgan, who worked on the railway. (They took me as a child to Bristol Zoo, using Morgan’s concessionary railway pass). Vera and Trevor lived up the hill (Primrose Cottage) and they would bring chickens down to Nellie for her to Kill, feather, and dress them at Christmas time. At Christmas they would also leave their open fire go out, and just above the grate there was a shelf in the lover chimney, where they would balance two shoes (I’m sure they were an odd pair!) and tell me father Christmas was up the Chimney. I would of course be down on my knees trying to see him up the chimney. They also had a dog called Bruce. I loved the dog and would love to play with him. I spent many hours in with Bopa Thomas. Another thing I remember is her dipping bread in her cup of tea to soften it before eating it.
David Bartlett to Richard Brown:
Richard thank you so much.I just don’t know what to say. Maybe I’ll let it sink in. Amazing .I remember Nellie /Boppa Telling me that I should drink tea with my dinner. The back of Auntie Vera’s House was like a Quarry.
Richard Brown to David Bartlett:
Vera and Doris had another sister Gwladys. Yes, the back of Vera’s cottage did have a kind of Quarry where they kept the chickens. Spent many hours in their company. Dick the lodger used to return home to Machynlleth for his holidays, and eventually retired there.
Richard Brown to David Bartlett:
Another thing I remember was they had a large framed photo of a horse surrounded by cups which the horse had won. The horse was called Bismark, he was a colliery show horse that was a prolific winner in the showring. I also remember a pair of large china dogs they had as decoration.
My Mum Eleanor.
