If you enjoyed reading the previous article, or if you enjoy music, why not join the Merthyr Tydfil Opera Lovers Group?
We are a friendly group who meet once a month and listen to, watch and chat about opera…….nothing too deep or heavy. We also, on occasion, get tickets to see dress-rehearsals at the Welsh National Opera.
We can even offer you a free cuppa and a biscuit!!!!
We meet on the last Tuesday of every month at 2.00pm at High Street Chapel Schoolroom, and it’s £2.00 per meeting (to cover costs) or £20 for annual membership.
So if you like a bit of music, please feel free to come along and join us.
Merthyr was always famous for its musical tradition, not only for the many talented musicians produced by the town, but for the internationally famous musicians that performed here.
Without doubt, the most celebrated musician to ever perform in Merthyr was the legendary Norwegian soprano Kirsten Flagstad, who gave a concert at the Theatre Royal 70 years ago today – 25 November 1951.
By 1951, Flagstad had already achieved ‘legend’ status in the operatic world, and was acclaimed as the greatest Wagnerian soprano of her day. Nowadays however, she is regarded by many as the greatest soprano of the 20th Century. What an accolade for an industrial town in the Valleys to secure her services for the only appearance she had made in Britain outside London at the time.
Merthyr Express – 24 November 1951
Below is a review of the concert by the music critic of the Merthyr Express.
John Nixon was born at Barlow in Durham on 10 May 1815, the only son of a tenant farmer of that village. He was educated at the village school and at Dr. Bruce’s academy at Newcastle-on-Tyne, famous as the training-place of many great engineers.
Leaving school at the age of fourteen, Nixon was set to farmwork for a time, and shortly after was apprenticed to Joseph Gray of Garesfield, the Marquis of Bute’s chief mining engineer.
On the expiry of his indentures he became for two years overman at the Garesfield colliery. At the end of this time, in 1839, he undertook a survey of the underground workings of the Dowlais Company in South Wales. Some years later he accepted the appointment of mining engineer to an English company, working a coal and iron field at Languin near Nantes. He perceived, however, that the enterprise was destined to fail, and did not hesitate to inform his employers of his opinion. After labouring for some time to carry on a hopeless concern he returned to England.
During his first visit to Wales Nixon had been impressed by the natural advantages of Welsh coal for use in furnaces. On his return from France he found that it was beginning to be used by the Thames steamers. He perceived that there was a great opening for it on the Loire, where coal was already imported by sea. At the time, however, he was unable to obtain a supply with which to commence a trade. Mrs. Thomas of the Graig Colliery at Merthyr, who supplied the Thames steamers, was disinclined to extend her operations, and Nixon was compelled to return to the north of England. But business again taking him to South Wales, he chartered a small vessel, took a cargo of coal to Nantes, and distributed it gratuitously among the sugar refineries. He succeeded also in inducing the French government to make a trial of it. Its merits were at once perceived; the French government definitely adopted it, and a demand was created among the manufactories and on the Loire.
Returning to Wales he made arrangements for sinking a mine at Werfa to secure an adequate supply. After being on the point of failure from lack of capital he obtained assistance and achieved success. Continuing his operations in association with other enterprising men of the neighbourhood, he acquired and made many collieries in South Wales. In 1869 he began sinking the Merthyr Vale No 1 Colliery, and the first coal was mined in 1875.
Merthyr Vale Colliery. Photo courtesy of the Alan George Archive
In 1897 the output of the Nixon group was 1,250,000 tons a year. Nixon succeeded, after a long struggle, in inducing the railway companies of Great Britain to adopt Welsh coal for consumption in their locomotives. He had great difficulty also in persuading the Great Western Railway Company to patronise the coal traffic, which now forms so large a part of their goods business.
Much of Nixon’s success was due to his improvements in the art of mining. He introduced the ‘long wall’ system of working in place of the wasteful ‘pillar and stall’ system, and invented the machine known as ‘Billy Fairplay’ for measuring accurately the proportion between large coal and small, which is now in universal use. He also made improvements in ventilating and in winding machinery. He was one of the original movers in establishing the sliding-scale system, and one of the founders of the Monmouthshire and South Wales Coalowners’ Association. He was for fifteen years chairman of the earlier South Wales Coal Association, and for many years represented Wales in the Mining Association of Great Britain. Nixon materially contributed to the growth of Cardiff by inducing leading persons in South Wales to petition the trustees of the Marquis of Bute in 1853 for increased dock accommodation, and by persuading the trustees, in spite of the objections of their engineer, Sir John Rennie, to increase the depth of the East Dock.
He died in London, on 3 June 1899 at 117 Westbourne Terrace, Hyde Park, and was buried on 8 June in the Mountain Ash cemetery, Aberdare valley.
This article is a transcription from a publication now in the public domain:Dictionary of National Biography (1st supplement). London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1901.
A gentleman contacted me recently to tell me that he had found a Merthyr tram ticket whilst renovating his home……..IN ABERDEEN!!!!
Even though his daughter, Poppy, wanted to keep the ticket, he decided, with Poppy’s agreement, to send it to me. I will pass it on to the museum of course, but I have taken the opportunity to scan it and share it with everyone first.
Here is a photo of a tramcar at Cyfarthfa Park gates in the 1930s, on the route of the above journey.
Photo courtesy of the Alan George Archive
I wonder how it found its way to Aberdeen!!!
Many thanks to Phil Thompson, and especially to his daughter Poppy Reith-Thompson, for sending this to me and allowing me to share it with everyone.
185 years ago today, a terrible explosion occurred at the Dowlais Ironworks. To mark the anniversary, eminent historian, and biographer of Lady Charlotte Guest, Victoria Owens, has written the following article.
Although nineteenth century industry relied heavily upon steam power, people were slow to recognise the dangers that it presented. In 1836, an accident occurred at Dowlais which showed just what elemental peril high pressure steam could present. Dowlais House, home of ironmaster Josiah John Guest and his family, stood on the very margin of the Dowlais Ironworks and in her journal Guest’s wife Lady Charlotte wrote a graphic account of the boiler explosion that took place one November morning.
An excerpt of the 1851 Public Health Map showing the proximity of Dowlais House to the Ironworks
Guest had risen early. His nephew Edward Hutchins hoped shortly to purchase a share in Thomas and Richard Brown’s Blaina Iron Company and the two men planned to visit the Browns’ Works on the Ebwy fach riverin the course of the day. Charlotte got up while her husband was breakfasting, and as she dressed, she distinctly felt the house tremble. At first, it reminded her of what she had read about earthquakes – not a phenomenon of which she had any direct experience – and she reasoned that ‘something – not perhaps very awful – must have happened at the works.’ Hearing a window rattle she assumed, undaunted, that her fourteen-month old son Ivor was amusing himself by shaking it.
A vast explosion, the crash of a falling stack and the sound of bricks cascading onto the roof of the house disabused her of her error, and hearing the sound of escaping steam, she guessed that a boiler had burst. It was, she realised, ‘the centre one of the New Forge Engine, and consequently very near the House, towards which all the fury of the explosion was directed.’ While it was not unusual for eighteenth and early nineteenth century industrialists to live close to their works, 1836 plans of the Dowlais Works show the New Forge with its engine actually bordering the gardens of Dowlais House which was left ‘strewn with bricks, cinders and broken glass.’ Amazed and appalled, Charlotte later found a brick in her bed and discovered a heavy piece of iron ‘weighing several pounds’ embedded in an internal wall. Apparently it had passed straight between two servants as they chatted in the first-floor corridor. Meanwhile, a couple of workmen on the charging platform by the furnaces had an equally lucky escape. According to Charlotte, a ‘steam pipe fell between them and the furnace they were charging upon the bar they were using, which it knocked out of their hand.’ If the sentence-structure is somewhat awkward, it may reflect her shock at recalling how she saw the projectile strike the bar used to thrust coke, ore and flux into the furnace mouth clean out of the men’s hands. George Childs’ 1840 depiction of Dowlais labourers gives an idea of the impact that the sight must have made on her. ‘Most thankful I was,’ she wrote later, ‘that we were all in the house together. Had Merthyr [her private name for her husband] been in the works (which he would have been a quarter of an hour later) my alarm would have been infinitely greater.’ Caught in the blast, the boiler stack seemed to rise from its base to pause, ‘as if poised,’ in the air before crashing down from its 120 foot height across the Guests’ lawn, breaking all their windows’ and killing a man and a boy as it fell..
Outside her bedroom, Charlotte found Susan the nursemaid with young Ivor in the passage. As they ran downstairs in search of John, they felt the whole building shake. John was, in fact, already hastening upstairs to look for them and husband and wife simultaneously realised, appalled, that neither of them knew what had happened to their two-year old daughter Maria. Charlotte thought she had been eating an early breakfast with her father while John, in the stress of the moment, could not remember what he had done with her or whether she had even been with him. After a few moments of numb alarm, they found the little girl safe with the housekeeper, neither hurt nor unduly frightened. Seeing a crowd surge across his garden John went out to comfort them as best he could, before seeking to assess the extent of the damage to the works’ buildings.
The following week’s edition of the Cardiff and Merthyr Guardian carried not only a report of the explosion but also a comprehensive description of the boiler. A new installation, it was apparently 42 feet long and 6 feet in diameter. Despite weighing 18 tons and being embedded in solid masonry, it had burst with enough force to thrust it clean off its foundation and carry it over some ten yards’ distance before coming to rest at right-angles to its original position. A large piece of flying masonry had hit a house nearby, home to seven people. The man who had been sleeping in the room into which it actually landed somehow avoided injury, but not all the inhabitants were so lucky. John Howe, a fireman, and the boys David Thomas and John Jones both lost their lives, while ‘the wife of Daniel James, founder’ was badly injured. Meanwhile the New Forge where the boiler had been located, was blown to smithereens – ‘damage’ which the newspaper estimated at not less than £1000, ‘without taking into account the loss occasioned by the suspension of the works.’
At the inquest following the explosion, the jury returned a verdict of accidental death upon the deceased. Significantly, the coroner explicitly ruled out any question of culpability on the part of the Dowlais Company’s chief engineer John Watt. Local opinion – and presumably Watt himself – linked the cause of the explosion to the rupture of a boiler-plate immediately over the fire. The Dowlais Company’s decision in 1838 to name a new plateway locomotive ‘John Watt’ may well reflect the esteem in which John Guest held his colleague.
Dowlais Ironworks in the 1840s by George Childs. Photo courtesy of the Alan George Archive
Whilst doing some research, Terry came across a fascinating article in the Merthyr Express dated 23 June 1956. Here he has written his version of the story, and what better time to post it than day after we remember the fallen of both World Wars.
In 1937, due to the escalation of atrocities against Jewish people by the Nazi party in Germany, Stanley Baldwin, the Prime Minister, made a wireless appeal on behalf of Jewish children in Germany for British families to help them.
One of these children was 13 year old Edgar Adolf Fleischer, son of Herr Max Fleischer of Berlin. Young Edgar left his parents and embarked on one of the Kindertransport, eventually arriving in Britain in April 1938. Here he was adopted by Mr F Wallace-Hadrill, a house-master at Bromsgrove School.
A keen musician, amongst the meagre possessions that he was allowed to bring from Berlin, Edgar carried with him a small violin case, holding his most precious possession – a violin. He had actually taken a few lessons at the Berlin Conservatoire until the Nazi racial laws forbade Jews to receive such lessons. Upon arriving in Britain however, he once again pursued his musical ambitions.
With the outbreak of the Second World War, and as soon as he was old enough, Edgar wanted nothing more than to join the British armed forces and fight the hated Nazis. In 1944, having taking the necessary oaths of loyalty to Britain, and officially changing his name from Fleischer to Fletcher, he joined the Royal Army Service Corps, and soon rose to the rank of Sergeant, and was selected as a cadet for further training for a commission.
Before he could complete his training course, in the aftermath of the D-Day landings, he was posted to Normandy to reinforce the British Army’s campaign to liberate Europe.
In 1945, he returned to Britain to complete his training, the last stage of which took place at Rhayader in November 1945. With just two days until his commission was due, Edgar took part in the final exercise – an assault exercise on a steep hillside. As he reached the summit, he slipped on the shale and fell forward on to his Bren gun and was killed instantly when it discharged. The only positive from this was that he never lived to find out that both his parents had been murdered by the Nazis in one of the death camps.
Edgar Fletcher was buried with military honours at Cefn-Coed Jewish Cemetery on 24 November 1945. His headstone bears two inscriptions – one in Hebrew and one in English:
Hebrew: ‘O let his soul be bound up in the bond of life’,
English: ‘Who falling among friends shares their promised land’.
Johnny Owen Statue & plaque sited at St Tydfil’s Shopping Centre, CF47 8EL
Johnny Owen, 1956-1980, began boxing at the age of eight.
By the time he was 24, he was the British, Commonwealth and European Bantamweight Champion.
He was shy, kind and unassuming outside of the ring which was the only place where he was ‘comfortable’. He became known as ‘The Matchstick Man’ owing to his skeletal frame .
In 1980 he was knocked unconscious in a World Title fight in Los Angeles. He went into a coma and died six weeks later.
John Nixon was born at Barlow in Durham on 10 May 1815, the only son of a tenant farmer of that village. He was educated at the village school and at Dr. Bruce’s academy at Newcastle-on-Tyne, famous as the training-place of many great engineers.
Johnny Owen, 1956-1980, began boxing at the age of eight.
