A hundred years ago today……
Month: March 2018
Merthyr’s Chapels: Wesley Chapel
The next chapel in our series is Wesley Chapel in Pontmorlais.
In 1790 Samuel Homfray, owner of the Penydarren Ironworks introduced a new process for making iron and needed to send to Yorkshire and Staffordshire for men to help carry out this new process.
The new workers were followers of John Wesley’s doctrines, and so started their own cause, meeting at their cottages near St Tydfil’s Church.
As the cause increased a larger meeting place had to be found and the ever-growing congregation started meeting in the Long Room of the Star Inn.
Again the congregation increased and it was decided to build a chapel. A piece of land was acquired beside the Morlais Brook near the small wooden bridge that carried the then small road from Merthyr to Penydarren and Dowlais.
Money was collected and the foundation stone was laid in 1796. Thomas Guest, son of John Guest the founder of the Dowlais Iron Works, who was an ardent Wesleyan and also a preacher, contributed £50 towards the building fund, and indeed preached at the chapel when it was completed. The chapel was completed in 1797 at a cost of £602.13s.7d. This was the first English chapel in Merthyr.
The congregation continued to grow and in 1860 it was decided that a new chapel should be built. The builders were Messrs Morgan & Edwards of Aberdare. There was a disagreement between the minister, Rev Josiah Matthews and the congregation about the size of the chapel, so after the site for the new chapel had been marked out with stakes, Rev Matthews waited until that night, went out to the site and moved the stakes to make the chapel larger. This subterfuge was not discovered, and it was not until the chapel was finished did Rev Matthews reveal what he had done. The chapel was completed in 1863 at a cost of £880 and was officially opened on 15 January 1863. Incorporated into the building was a house on the north side of the chapel which was intended to be used as a manse for the minister, but it was never used as such and was instead let to private tenants.
In 1871 the trustees of the chapel decided to have a new pipe organ so set up a fund called the “Debt and Organ Fund” to raise enough money to purchase an organ and pay off the remaining debt on the chapel. By 1873 enough money had been raised for the new organ and it was installed at a cost of £192.10s.0d.
In 1913, it was decided to build a new and very grand Central Wesleyan Mission Hall on Pontmorlais Road West across the Morlais Brook from the chapel, on the site of the Old Drill Hall. It would have been connected to the chapel by an arcade. Plans were actually drawn up for the Mission, but before building began the First World War broke out. Due to the subsequent upheaval, the plans were shelved and the Hall was never built.
The chapel closed on 30 December 1979 due to prohibitive costs for necessary repairs to the chapel, and the congregation moved to Dowlais Wesleyan Chapel. The building has been since used as a furniture shop, and an arts and crafts centre.
Merthyr Memories: Iron Lane, Georgetown
by Tudor Jones
Although it is almost 60 years since I moved away from Iron Lane, memories remain fresh in my mind.
In many ways it was a typical Welsh working class community replicated in Merthyr and throughout the whole of Wales. I lived at Number 29 with my parents and grandmother. These are personal memories. I am certain that others who lived in Iron Lane would remember other facets of the community. I will divide my memories into three sections – the house, the street and the people.
The house was part of a terrace of cottages. It consisted of a two up, two down with a ‘lean-to’ at the back. None of the modern conveniences were in the house – no indoor toilet, bathroom, piped hot water etc, so when I was old enough to realise, I knew that the area was ‘slum clearance’.
To enter the house, there was a large step going into the front room – ‘the best room’ for special visitors, with heavy Victorian furniture. This led to the next room – for eating, television and radio. Stone stairs led upstairs where a walk through bedroom led to another bedroom.
At the back downstairs was the ‘lean-to’ – for cooking, washing, food storage, plus one sink the ‘bosh’ with an electric water heater. This led to the garden – a path dividing raised sections. I remember having my part to grow flowers. There were tulips, chrysanthemums, bluebells etc. At the top right was the ‘coal cwtch’ with an asbestos roof with ‘snow on the mountain’ covering it. On the left a non-flush toilet – cool in the summer, freezing in the winter. To modern readers it seems an age away.
However, Iron Lane was a close community supporting each other in time of need. The street was parallel to the present day Nantygwenith Street. It was bisected by Howell Street. Iron Lane was a long street with the Georgetown Schools at the top and George Street at the bottom. At the top was a small factory belonging to ‘Dai the Up’ – an upholstery business. Leading off Iron Lane were some courts. Next door but two to Number 29 was Chandler’s Court, with a few houses leading to a small shop – Dai Chandler’s, and Nantygwenith Street. None of the houses had modern day conveniences.
I remember a few events in the street. In 1955, a group of children marching and singing:
“Vote, vote, vote for S. O. Davies.
He is the bestest of them all.”
Later on I remember a fight int he street. A highlight (pardon the pun) was a fire in the top part of Dai the Up’s business.
Georgetown was convenient was convenient for town, but it also had its own schools, pubs, shops, chapels, a club, a ‘community centre’, fish shop and small factories. It was indeed a living community.
The people in Iron Lane I remember vividly. Next door were Uncle Willy and Auntie Maggie (not relations), an elderly childless couple. Auntie Maggie took me once to a service in Bethel Chapel on a Sunday morning. Next to them, Mr & Mrs Phillips and their daughter Beryl – so the names go on – Cloakley’s, Chamberlain’s, Twose, Coleman’s, Richards’. It was a working class community with the men (and some women) working in factories, in the pit or for the council. Of course there were no cars or phones. We children played in the street, or on the tip, or on a field by Chapel Row. We all went to local schools – Georgetown Infants, Abermorlais Junior and then in my case to Cyfarthfa.
I continued visiting Iron Lane as my grandmother was still living there until 1975 when she passed away. As time went on and people died or moved away, the houses were boarded up. My last visit was in the late 1970’s when there were just a few people left until the bulldozers came to destroy what was once a living, breathing society.
Women’s Suffrage in Merthyr
From The Pioneer 104 years ago today…..
A New Train Service
From the South Wales Echo 132 years ago today….
There is snow and then there is SNOW!!!
A few weeks ago most of us were house bound due to the snow. However, the snow that fell then is nothing compared to the snow we had in 1947.
In 1947, snow began to fall on 22 January, and with very few breaks, blizzards continued until the middle of March. At the height of the bad weather, snow drifts of up to 15 foot were recorded in some parts of Merthyr.
Below is a small piece that appeared in the Merthyr Express 71 years ago today.
The weather deteriorated so severely and so quickly that between 30 and 40 people were trapped overnight when a train got stuck in a 10 foot snowdrift between Fochriw and Dowlais. Over a hundred soldiers from Brecon Barracks travelled to Merthyr to try and release the train.
The situation on the railways around Merthyr got so bad that the Great Western Railway drafted in the RAF who brought two jet engines to clear the snow. Unfortunately, even though they were successful at clearing the snow, they were also successful at dislodging the sleepers that the rails were resting on!
Even though the snow was pretty bad a few weeks ago…..it could have been a heck of a lot worse!!!!
Do you remember the snow in 1947? If anyone has any recollections, or any stories regarding the snow in 1947, please get in touch.
The Old Court House
How many of you have either visited, or driven past Merthyr Labour Club and not realised that it is actually the old Court House – one of the oldest buildings in Merthyr?
The main building that stands today was built in 1717, but there is evidence that there was a building on the site as far back as the 12th Century. During renovations at the house in the 1700’s, an old carved oak bedstead was found in a room in the cellar with the letters MCL carved into it – the Roman numerals for 1150.
Some sources say that the ancient house was the site of the 12th Century Court of the Welsh Prince, Ifor Bach, and it is said that it was actually from the Court House that Llewelyn Bren, great-grandson of Ifor Bach, set out in 1316 with 10,000 armed men to face Payne de Turberville of Coity, who had cheated him out of the position granted him by the Earl of Gloucester. The house passed down through the descendents of Llewelyn’s brother Gruffydd.
The house subsequently passed through the hands of several families. Records show the house was occupied by the Ifor family in Elizabethan times, and a Mr Edward Lewis owned the house until he left in 1717 to build a manor house near Caerphilly. The house was then bought by the Rees family of Llanelli and rebuilt in 1717.
The new house was built of local stone, enlarged and had new windows built, and a description of the building in 1787 described it as looking like a large farmhouse, surrounded as it was at the time by green fields. In 1827, the house (and the attached 172 acre estate) was bought by Dr William Thomas, the prominent local magistrate. The estate would go on to be developed and named Thomastown in his honour.*
The house, after again passing through a number of families, was rented by Dr William Edwards in the late 1800’s and converted into a private school for young ladies run by the Misses Edwards.
In 1908 the building was leased to a syndicate “…for the purpose of providing accommodation for artisans and other working men” (Cardiff Times – 14 March 1908). The accommodation was to house 100 single men in cubicles in the 12 bedrooms, and a bathroom containing six baths was installed.
The building was eventually converted into the Merthyr Labour Club, and although it has been modernised, some of the old features still remain, including the old front door and several fireplaces on the upper floors.
*If anyone would like to find out more about Dr William Thomas, I would urge you to read the excellent book ‘Doctor Thomas of the Court’ by prominent local historian Wilf Owen.
If you would like a copy of the book, please get in touch and I will pass all enquiries on to Wilf Owen.
Russia still honours a Merthyr Tydfil immigrant
by Irene Janes
Dowlais 1814, baby John James Hughes pushes his way into the world and the Merthyr Tydfil air filled his lungs, and although he took his last breath 75 years later, and on a different continent, the story grows, even today.
Unlike many other babies born that day in Merthyr, John had a chance of a better life. The proud Dad was head engineer of the Cyfarthfa Ironworks. Although John was semi literate, unable to write and only read capital letters he was a quick learner in the ironworks under the supervision of his father.
Full of innovations and ambition, in 1840, John joined the Uskside Foundary in Newport. Here he patented a number of inventions in armaments and armour plating. His fortune was set and by the age of twenty-eight, he owned a shipyard and eight years later a foundry, but like Merthyr Tydfil, Newport could not hold him for long.
His reputation was extended not only over the borders of his homeland but those of continents when as manager of the residual Millwall Iron Works Company in London he was credited for the iron cladding of wooden warships for the British Admiralty. Along with this, he designed a gun carriage for heavy cannons, which were eagerly bought by our Navy and other European countries.
The Imperial Russian government wanted plating for a naval fortress being built at Kronstadt on the Baltic Sea. Naturally enough they sought the services of John and the Millwall Iron Works. John was thrilled to accept a concession from the Imperial Russian government to develop metal works and acquired a piece of land, a steppe, north of the Azov Sea, Russia.
Just imagine the apprehension, excitement, fear and anticipation when a year later John Hughes had acquired the services of over a hundred skilled labourers, iron workers and miners from Merthyr and the surrounding valleys, some with their families. What faith they must have had in this man to follow him to a country, two thousand miles away with freezing Russian winters, scorching hot summers, the forever-stalking cholera, and a language they did not know. Eight ships filled with people, but mostly equipment, set sail not knowing what difference they would make to a piece of wasteland. Nevertheless, John’s vision extended to beyond building a metal works. He personally provided a hospital, good quality housing, school, bath-houses, tearooms, a fire brigade and an Anglican Church. An established town quickly grew when the steel plant went into full production and the sinking of several coalmines. The town was named Hughesovka (Yuzovka). Nevertheless, I doubt if even John Hughes even dreamt that in 2018 he is still being honoured there.
Sadly, while on a business trip at the Angleterre Hotel in St Petersburg on, 17 June 1889, John took his last breath. His wife arranged for his burial in West Norwood Cemetery, London. Four of his six sons took over the management of the works. By 1913 the works in Hughesovka was the largest in the Russian Empire producing seventy five percent of all Russian iron.
In 1924, after the revolution and under soviet rule, in a bid to re write history, communist U.S.S.R leaders decided to rename Hugesovka to Stalino (Stalin).
The name of the town was changed again in 1961, to distance it from its former leader Stalin, to one, which is more familiar – Donetsk. Nevertheless, it’s good to know one of its areas is still called Hughesovka (Yuzovka )
The United States of Soviet Russia is no more and Donetsk is now a city in the Ukraine. Its political landscape has changed many times. In May 2014 a referendum was held where it is said 90% of the voters wanted independence. A month later it was declared that the town was the self proclaimed Donetsk Peoples Republic. The European Union and the United States said the referendum was legal although Ukraine does not recognise it. Sadly, this transition has not been bloodless and many battles have been fought in Donetsk this century.
However, the town remains a testimony for John Hughes and those Welsh workers and their families who shaped a piece of land into what is today a major metallurgical industries centre with a population of over two million.
In 2014 his statute was erected outside their engineering university. There were plans for a museum in John’s honour, but again the people of Donetsk have had political issues to deal with.
Many thanks to Irene for contributing this fascinating article.
The Ultimate in Entertainment
From the Merthyr Guardian 177 years ago today – the epitome of a good night out – and such excellent value….especially if you are a mechanic!!!
Who says that Merthyr wasn’t once at the cutting edge of entertainment?
Merthyr Historian Books
The Merthyr Tydfil Historical Society is pleased to announce that a number of back copies (as well as the current edition) of the Merthyr Historian series of books are still for sale.
The volumes that are available are:-
For details of the contents of all volumes of the Merthyr Historian, please download the PDF document at the link below:
www.mths.co.uk/pdfs/MerthyrHistorianContents.pdf
Each book is individually priced as shown, and the cost of postage and packing (UK) is £2.90.
If anyone is interested in buying a copy of any of the books, please get in touch via the email at the top right of the blog, and I will pass all orders on to the Merthyr Tydfil Historical Society.