Month: April 2023

Steam pies

Do you remember the steam pie? That working man’s (and woman’s) favourite is now banned but many an Italian cafe used to prepare them in the 1950s and onwards.
Where in Merthyr and district were the best places for a steam pie?  Did your family business ever steam and serve them?
Is it time to recall a bit of everyday South Wales heritage now lost?
Happy to hear from you at editormerthyrhistorian@gmail.com

Memories of Old Merthyr

We continue our serialisation of the memories of Merthyr in the 1830’s by an un-named correspondent to the Merthyr Express, courtesy of Michael Donovan.

But I have wandered somewhat, so to return – having given Cyfarthfa its innings, and let us begin with the personnel of Plymouth, or rather, of Plymouth, Pentrebach and Dyffryn.

Part of the derelict Plymouth ironworks in the 1900s. Courtesy of the Alan George Archive

The upper part formed a portion of the taking of Mr Bacon, and the ‘Furnace Isaf’ was leased from him by the father of Messrs Hill. Upon his death the firm became Richard, John and Anthony Hill. Richard, the eldest son, was a fine specimen of the old English gentleman. John was not so robust, but keen, fond of horses, betting and of gaiety. Anthony, studious, precise and particular. He lived to become the sole proprietor after years of hard work and earnest attention.

As characteristic of Richard Hill, he, as well as his brothers, were Tories, and on the return of a member for Cardiff had a chairing. He was known as ‘Honest Dick from the Mountain’. Richard Hill  died at Court yr Alla, and rests in the churchyard near there (Michaelston-le-Pit, I believe). John in Bath, and Anthony lonesome at Pontyrhun. They had a sister who died a spinster at Clifton in 1847 or so. It is a matter of regret that the trustees of Mr A. Hill’s will did not see their way to let the works pass into the hands of one of the relatives, but that is forestalling events.

References to ‘Mushet on Iron’ will show that the blast furnaces at the Dyffryn and the blowing engine there were of note. The engine was a departure from the ordinary proportion which was between the steam and blast cylinders, and, as far as can be recalled, the blast cylinder was the largest (120 inches diameter) and the furnace boshes were also the largest, but the greatest achievement of Mr A. Hill was the utilisation of cinders. This he patented, and heavy litigation followed. He won the first action, and being defeated at a subsequent time, would not go on again, as he was strongly advised to do. This soured his feelings, and he always entertained a bitterness of feeling with respect to it, for he verily believed perjury had been used.

There was another matter in the making of iron he was virtually the pioneer of, viz, the use of oxides of iron in the blast furnace. The manager of the furnace was a Mr Edward Thomas, the great-uncle to Mr Wm. Thomas of Oakfield, Aberdare. When Mr Hill was quite clear that pig iron could be commercially made from hematite, he endeavoured to come to an arrangement with the Earl of Lonsdale for him to find the necessary coal and Mr Hill the ore, so as to make iron at Whitehaven. Should any of your readers be in that locality and find the original engine-house yet in existence, they will find a goat’s head with ample horns cut on the keystone of the arch in the walls. This was as a compliment to Mr Thomas.

Shortly after Mr Thomas went to America , and erected works there. He returned toward the end of the thirties, and after spending a few months at the Ivor Works, I think led a quiet life. Upon leaving Dowlais, Sir John Guest desired him to return after a while, although he promised to think over it ‘after the cuckoo had come’, he never returned there.

To be continued at a later date.

The Dark Side of Convict Life – part 5

by Barrie Jones

Chapter IV recounts Henry’s arrival at Dartmoor Prison, Devon, and describes Dartmoor’s systems of hard labour: work gangs and the “crank,”.

The Dark Side of Convict Life (Being the Account of the Career of Harry Williams, a Merthyr Man). Merthyr Express, 19th February 1910, page 9.

Chapter IV

Before beginning this chapter, I should like to say that the two officers at Exeter Prison did not go unpunished, for according to what I afterwards gathered, they were both dismissed from the service. The journey from Exeter to Dartmoor was not a very long one, the distance being only forty-four miles, and it was not long before I arrived at Tavistock, where I got out of the train into a sort of cab, for there were seven miles of road to cover before reaching His Majesty’s Prison. Those who have been to Devonshire know what beautiful scenery there is to be witnessed across the moors. It was not long before I was nearing Princetown, a picturesque village in South Devon, near which the prison is situated. Gangs of convicts could be seen on the roads, some breaking stones, some in charge of horses and carts; while here and there, standing at their posts, were civil guards armed with rifles. At last the prison was reached, and I was hurried into a place called the separate cells, where, in answer to the chief warder, I gave in my register number, sentence, and name. This was also a place of punishment, commonly called by the convicts as “chokee,” and I could hear the hum of the crank machines at work, which told of some poor wretch straining his vital power over this instrument of torture. This crank, or machine, is a kind of clockwork encased in an elevated iron box outside the convict’s cell door, and a needle something similar to the hands of the clock, recording the number of revolutions completed by the convict within, who turn a heavy handle fixed in the wall. Should the man fail to complete 9,000 revolutions a day, he is further awarded a fresh term of bread and water, consisting of a pound of coarse bread per day. I have done twenty-one days in this way, completing 9,000 revolutions a day, with the perspiration pouring from me in the depth of winter.

On my reception, as aforesaid, I was placed in a cell and supplied with another suit of khaki, two pairs of bog boots, one pair of low shoes, a guernsey, and a pair of moleskin leggings. I was taken to the hospital, and examined by the medical officer, who immediately ordered me tea instead of porridge, and white bread instead of brown, because I had a delicate stomach at the time. The doctor was a very nice gentleman, and well liked by the convicts. I was then taken to another part of the Prison known as B4 hall. The cells here a very small, and of corrugated iron, the iron door being raised about a foot from the ground. There is no light from the interior of the cells; the only light afforded is from the exterior of the prison, and that is very little indeed the cells being so dark that candles are allowed to be lit during meal hours. A hammock, extending from one end of the cell to the other, prevents the convict from even turning around without difficulty. Convicts have dwelt for periods of over twenty years in those dungeons. The next morning, after my arrival at Dartmoor, the prison bell rang me up at a quarter past five; we had breakfast at a quarter to six, church at seven, and at half-past seven I was told off to join No. 39 party – a gang of twenty-five men. After going through a short search drill on parade, I was marched with other convicts straight through the front gate to my place of work about four miles away from the prison. I was there employed in trenching the ground, and no easy work it was, either. Before long, the man in charge was felled to the ground by one of the gang. Convicts are really human beings after all, and they should be protected against officers who are sometimes very cruel towards them, for they seldom, if ever, interfere with an officer unless driven to desperation.

To be continued……

The Glamorganshire Canal – and the Rise of Rail

By Laura Bray

We all know the story – a wager between Samuel Homfray  of the Penydarren Ironworks, and Richard Crawshay of Cyfarthfa that Trevithick’s steam locomotive could haul ten tens of iron from Penydarren to Abercynon, and we all know that Homfray won his bet, and Merthyr became known across the world as the home of the first railway.

But have you ever wondered why the bet was made? Perhaps it just a whim between two very rich two men with money to burn. After all the bet was sizeable 500 guineas or something like £40,000 in today’s money.  Perhaps it was because Homfray, who had used Trevithick’s engines to drive a hammer in the ironworks, was a pioneer.  Or was it because of the Glamorganshire Canal…..?

The Glamorganshire Canal in Merthyr. Photo Courtesy of the Alan George Archive

By the late 18th century, Merthyr was probably the most important manufacturing town in Britain, with a population 8 times larger than that of Cardiff, which was the nearest port.  However, the river wharfs in Cardiff were rapidly reaching capacity and could not keep up with the maritime demands made by Merthyr’s four ironworks.  In addition, it was prohibitively expensive to get the goods from Merthyr to Cardiff, costing the ironmasters something like £14,000 p.a. – a sum equivalent to around £1m today.

Richard Crawshay. Courtesy of Cyfarthfa Castle Museum & Art Gallery

It was within this context that Richard Crawshay took the lead in lobbying for a Parliamentary Bill in order to get the powers to build a canal from Merthyr to Cardiff, and in 1790 the Glamorganshire Canal Act was passed. The Act provided that a company be formed of The Company of Proprietors of the Glamorganshire Canal Navigation with power to purchase land for making the canal and to carry out the necessary works.  The Act also laid down the route that was to be followed, authorised the raising of £90,000 to meet the cost of completing the canal, and laid down the maximum charges for carrying various classes of goods, up to 5d. per ton per mile for carrying stone, iron, timber, etc. and up to 2d. per ton per mile for carrying iron stone, iron ore, coal, lime-stone, etc. It also stated that the distribution of Company profits was not to exceed £8% per annum upon the capital sum actually laid out in making the canal.

The Canal Company appointed a Committee from amongst its shareholders to be responsible for the management of the Company’s affairs, and the first Committee meeting was held on 19 July 1790 at the Cardiff Arms Inn, when it was decided to enter into a contract with Thomas Dadford senior, Thomas Dadford junior and Thomas Sheasby to construct the canal at a cost of £48,228, exclusive of the cost of land. This is about 3 times the annual cost of sending goods to Cardiff, so it was estimated that all costs would be recouped in as little as three years.

Construction work started in August 1790 and it was a massive undertaking – over its length of 25 miles, the land drops by 543 feet, so it was necessary to build 51 locks, some double, and one in Nantgarw, a triple lock; some locks were 10 feet high and the one in Aberfan topped 14’6″. In addition. there was the necessity for an aqueduct to be built at Abercynon, a tunnel under Queen St in Cardiff, several feeders to be created and, as the canal came closer to Merthyr, it had to be cut through sheer mountain rock.  By 1794, however, there was a functioning and effective new transport link between Merthyr and Cardiff at a final cost of £103,600.

Aberfan Lock. Photo courtesy of the Alan George Archive

But even before the canal was completed it had become clear that it needed to be extended beyond Cardiff so as to give access directly to the sea.  Another £20,000 was raised by subscription and a deal was struck with the Marquis of Bute, who owned the land, to build a sea lock and canal basin, which enabled ships of 200 tons to dock. The Sea Lock itself was 103 feet long with gates 27 feet wide.

The canal made transport to Cardiff very cheap, but generated very high revenues.  It was designed to take canal boats of up to 25 tons, each drawn by a horse, with a man and a boy.  By 1836 there were about 200 boats on the canal, each doing 3 round trips every fortnight.  That’s a lot of tonnage at an average of 3d a ton.

But all was not well in the Committee.  From the start, it was dominated by Richard Crawshay, who tended to regard the canal as his and his attempts to squeeze the profits of the other ironmasters was bitterly resented. As early as 1794 Richard Hill Of the Plymouth Works complained that the Canal Company was using water from the river that was legally his.  Guest, in Dowlais, was also vocal about how we could access the canal from his works.  A branch canal seemed impractical so a tramroad was proposed  to which the canal company contributed £1000.  This was competed in 1791 – before the canal.  The Crawshays built a second tramroad between the Gurnos Quarry and their works in Cyfarthfa and a third was built in 1799 by the Hills, linking the Morlais Quarry with the Dowlais to Merthyr Tramroad at Penydarren.

But by 1798, tensions in the committee were so great that they blew.  As a consequence, the other ironmasters were dropped for the canal committee, leaving only Crawshay, and it was another 26 years before they rejoined.  But discussions took place between them about how to break the Crawshay stranglehold of the canal, and the answer seemed to be the construction of a tramroad from Merthyr, to meet the canal at Abercynon.  This tramroad, which opened in 1802 and was built without an Act of Parliament, linking the two existing tramroads from Dowlais to Merthyr and from Morlais to Penydarren.  From the point of view of Guest, Homfray and Hill, although the trams using it were horse drawn,  this new tramroad avoided the delays caused by the locks between Merthyr and Abercynon.

This is the background to the bet that was made between Homfray and Crawshay.  Could the new stream locomotive pull a load of iron?  Could it supersede canal power?

We all know that it did, but broke the rails on the way down, so could not come back.  But progress had been made.  The Taff Vale Railway Company opened as far as Abercynon only 40 years later, and to Merthyr a year later and the canal’s decline was inexorable and it had all but ceased by 1900.

Looking back, it is reasonable to ask, if there had been no canal, where would the home of the steam locomotive be?  Not Merthyr, that’s for sure.

The Dowlais Communist, J.S. Williams

by his son Iori Williams

I was born on October 12th 1926, the second son of John Samuel and Jane. Later there were 4 other brothers and of this number 5 survived childhood. Our first home was a one up and one down terrace house in Dowlais. The one bedroom was divided into two by a draped blanket and the part where my brothers and I slept had a tiny window through which we used to watch the sky light up when the furnaces in the local steel works were working. The mother of this very happy brotherhood came from a family steeped in music. One of my uncles was the organist at Bethania Chapel. Another uncle, two aunts and Mam herself were members of the famous Dowlais United Choir.

The father of the family was from Bethesda in North Wales but due to a shortage of employment there the family moved south to the coalfield. Dad left school at the age of 12 to work underground. He was an avid scholar and throughout his life he read and read. He had thought of becoming a minister at some chapel but the more he studied the less enchanting that seemed. He was deeply concerned about society and the way it was structured with the few amassing capital at the expense of the hard-working exploited masses. He became a very active trade unionist and a founder member of the Communist Party. All this was looked on with disfavour by the mine owner and so he was sacked in 1923. We his children would never remember him working for cash. But work he did.

He continued to read and built up an impressive personal library the bulk of which David and I donated to the South Wales Miners Library at Swansea University College when we were adults. Another illustration of his love of learning was that he became the local organiser of the Left-Wing Book Club. He loved children and organised two camps for the children of the unemployed in 1934 and 1935. These were my first holidays shared by hundreds of other children. One of my clear memories of Dad was his taking me to the dentist but on the way, we called in several establishments and I was the mute witness to Dad’s scrounging equipment, food and cash to sustain those camps.

Dad was the founder and organiser of the local branch of the N.U.W.M.  (National Unemployed Workers Movement) and was the main organiser of the Hunger Marches from South Wales to London. Dad was a very good public speaker on the soap box or in a more formal setting. In 1935 Dad gave evidence to a Royal Commission on the status of the County Borough of Merthyr Tydfil and the Commission Chair Sir Arthur Lowry CB complimented Dad at the end saying that he ‘admired very much his ‘fluency and eloquence’. Afterwards he ‘disappeared’ from our lives to follow his convictions. The men who went to fight in Spain left in the dead of night and were careful not to involve their families. They never spoke afterwards about who had helped them get to Spain, not even fifty years after their return home. Dad was different, because before he left, he sat the family around a table and explained his reasons. He had encouraged young men to fight fascism in Spain and so he felt a moral obligation to go himself. He returned barely alive, suffering from malnutrition and various conditions and he did not live for long after his return to Merthyr Tydfil.

Mum was widowed when I was twelve years old and so she had to do all for us. Tom was seven, John five and Owen a babe of three. David aged fifteen left grammar school to become the bread winner. The family income then was a widow’s pension of ten shillings a week plus parish relief of two shillings and sixpence for each child. Mam herself supplemented this by cleaning for others, by taking in laundry and lodgers. The paying guests were key workers who came from N.E. England and Scotland to man the new shadow factories being built nearby. By this time of course we had moved into a new council house which had three bedrooms and a bathroom. The days of baths in a portable wooden tub were gone. The move into this house was the result of Dad’s pressure on the local council.

I was brought up in a family that loved music and that encouraged reading and scholarship and above all a sense of identity with the local community and its problems and challenges. I followed my older brother by winning a scholarship to a local grammar school that was located in Cyfarthfa Castle, a mock Norman castle built in the 19th century by a local ironmaster and set in a large park. Not all the castle became a school, a part of it became the local museum. There was a side door connecting school and museum and I quickly developed the tendency of sneaking into the museum and that has become a habit of a lifetime.