The Heritage and Culture of Merthyr Tydfil
by Charlotte Barry
During May, the following talks will be held at Cyfarthfa Castle Museum and Art Gallery.
11 May – “Colonial Cyfarthfa: The Uncomfortable Truth Behind an Industrial Giant” – Chris Parry
14 May – “Women in Welsh Coal Mining: Tip Girls at Work in a Man’s World” – Norena Shopland
19 May – “Capturing the Crawshays” – Ben Price
Everyone is welcome. All talks start at 2.00 pm and tickets are available by following the link below.
In January, I published an article regarding the Prince of Saxony’s visit to Dowlais (https://www.merthyr-history.com/?p=8138). Here is a transcription of another German visit from “Dawlais Works, die Eisen- und Schienen-Walzwerke des Hauses John Guest, in London, 1844” by Carl Klocke.
Anticipation mounts and, finally, at the end of the valley, where the mountains close in, lie the Dowlais works, and to the left and across the top of the peak is the hamlet Dowlais with a few protruding small churches and chapels. As we approach the place, our coachman identifies one of them as Sir John’s chapel, for it was Sir John Guest himself who had it built, then there is Sir John’s market hall and his estate situated directly above the works; next, the garden for Sir John’s horses and the three horsemen on an outing who are passing us, are none other than Sir John’s surgeons. Our omnibus terminates in front of a small, neat guesthouse on the High Street of Dowlais and we are finally at the end of our journey. One can hear the steam engines at work and the roar of the bellows; from the windows on the upper storey one can see the flickering flames of the blast furnaces which, like a nearby fire storm, then illuminate the bedrooms at night and it takes some adjustment in order to fall peacefully asleep. …
Yet, one would not have seen Dowlais properly without having gone for a walk over the surrounding heights during the late evening hours. At Dowlais, Sir John can offer his guests illuminations and fireworks every evening. By comparison, the famous fireworks of the Surrey Gardens in London (where they fabulously depict the Great Fire of London in the year 1666) are but child’s play. The blast furnaces resemble a burning city, whereas further below, the fires and forges, together with the illuminated tall chimney stacks of the steam engines, looks like a city which has just recently burnt down. In the evening light, the not quite extinguished slags gleam like glowing lava; raised up to towering heaps, here and there on the outermost edge of tall mountains, they flow to the valley like burning streams of lava. … However, to witness one such sight, one must never come to Dowlais on a Saturday or Sunday, because Sir John Guest not only quotes Nelson in saying ‘that he expects every man to do his duty’, but he also adds ‘that he likes to see every man enjoy his Sunday’.
It is for that reason that – except for the blast furnaces which, naturally, cannot suffer any disruption – at a fairly early hour each Saturday afternoon, all other fires and steam engines cease their groaning, and the workers and drawn carts swarm from the near and far factories towards town.
Following on from the recent article about Gwaunfarren House (https://www.merthyr-history.com/?p=8282), here is a pictorial look at just ten of the magnificent ‘grand’ houses that we once had in Merthyr, but have been swept away by ‘progress’.
Firstly, the aforementioned Gwaunfarren House…
The home of the Guest family – Dowlais House…
The home of the Homfray family, Penydarren House….
The home of the Crawshay family (pre-Cyfarthfa Castle), Gwaelodygarth House….
Gwaelodygarth Fach…
Sandbrook House, Thomastown…
Gwernllwyn House, Dowlais…
Vaynor House…
Ynysowen House, Merthyr Vale…
Bargoed House, Treharris…
All photos courtesy of the Alan George Archive.
If anyone has any more information or any memories of any of these houses, please get in touch. Also, if anyone has any photos of other lost houses or landmarks in Merthyr, please let me know.
by Andrew Green
The Society ‘continued to flourish for some considerable time’. Members met in the Dynevor Arms in Georgetown, and listened to and debated lectures on all kinds of scientific and technological subjects, with a decided emphasis on astronomy. Owen Evans lectured on ‘the use of the globe’, while John Jones spoke on astronomy; both were Unitarian ministers.
But the Cyfarthfa Philosophical Society was far from being a usual collection of establishment figures and technocrats absorbed only by science. It was also a crucible of radical political and heterodox theological thinking. Its presiding figure was Rhys Hywel Rhys of Vaynor. He was a stonemason, self-taught astronomer and poet, and also a Jacobin, who subscribed to the radical newspaper The Cambridge Intelligencer. His atheism was overt. When he died in 1817 an englyn was carved on his gravestone that conveys his atomistic philosophy:
‘Rol ing a gwewyr angau
I ddryllio fy mhriddelau
Rhwng awyr, daear, dwr a than,
Mi ymrana’n fân ronynau.
After the pains and pangs of death
Will have shattered my earthly tenement
Between earth, air, fire, and water,
I shall separate into minute particles
Charles Wilkins, who as the son of a Chartist was sympathetic to radical causes, writes this about Rhys Hywel Rhys:
He devoted himself with great energy to the collection of a fund by which most valuable instruments were bought, such as were far beyond the individual means of any one of the members. Then, when these were bought, the members named Rhys as their president, and many an evening was passed in the endeavour to solve the most difficult questions with which their favourite sciences abounded. On the formation of the Society, it was wisely decided to confine the meetings solely to scientific matters, excluding political and religious subjects. This was rendered all the more necessary as the members were great readers of controversial works, and disposed to form opinions of their own, instead of having them formed for them. But it is not to be expected that a Society of thoughtful minds would assemble without occasionally diving below the current, and endeavour to solve to their own satisfaction certain points of science and the Bible, which, in their day, were believed to be sternly conflicting, and in discordance with each other. And this they did at friendly meetings, even if they were rigid enough to exclude the subject at their Society. We can readily believe that such discussion, with gleanings from “Tom Payne,” Mirabeau, Volney, and the Rational School, had a tendency to awaken doubt, and the failure to reconcile the God of the Hebrews with the God of Nature to confirm those doubts, and warp some of them from sect and creed to Deism. A few, we understand, became Unitarians, and some remained Orthodox. We should not be surprised at this, for the ranks of the French doubters were composed of men of high reputation, and the sallies of Gibbon and of Hume against the citadel of the faith had been keen and well sustained. The very intellectual atmosphere, so to speak, was one of doubt, and all this was in natural sequence.
Elsewhere Wilkins outlines the advanced thinking of the Philosophers gathered around Rhys Hywel Rhys:
In the days of its infancy, the members were exposed to considerable sarcasm by the ingenious efforts of Rhys, who, in order to exercise himself in mechanical ingenuity, constructed a duck ‘that did everything but quack.’ Good, but foolish people, inferred from this that the society aimed at rivalling the deity, and condemned them; while others made it a theme for constant raillery. The members were deep thinkers—astute politicians and though debarred from discussing any polemics in their society hours, yet they were only too happy to tread the debateable tracks of religious politics and philosophy; and some even indulged in opinions which led the Cyfarthfa school of philosophers to become rather unjustly associated with positive Atheism. Paine and Voltaire had their admirers; and when it was a punishable offence to read the works of the former, a few, who thought highly of his Rights of man and Age of reason, would assemble in secret places on the mountains, and, taking the works from concealed places under a large boulder or so, read them with great unction. But if Paine had admirers he had also enemies, for at the same time religious men had the nails in their boots arranged to form T. P., that then they might figuratively tread Tom Paine underfoot.
The Society was just one of many institutions in Merthyr that nurtured a spirit of questioning, dissent and protest. The Calvinists were relatively weak in the town, whereas Unitarians and other less rigid, free-thinking churches had many adherents: many of the Society’s early members belonged to the Unitarian chapel in Merthyr or the Hen Dy Cwrdd chapel in Cefn-Coed-y-Cymer. Many ‘friendly societies’ – the precursors of trade unions – were set up in the town around the time of the Society’s beginning. Together these and other local institutions helped to build an autonomous political culture of confident radicalism that would make Merthyr a natural centre for industrial strikes, Chartist reform, trade unions and other workers’ movements later in the nineteenth century.
Wilkins is vague about the subsequent history of the Cyfarthfa Philosophical Society. After the deaths or removals of many founders the Society almost collapsed. It was resuscitated for a while, with a new subscription and set of rules. Further scientific instruments were acquired, and books added to a library. But ‘a few years ago’ the Society was dissolved and it became amalgamated with the Merthyr Subscription Library. Charles Wilkins himself became Librarian of the Library when it was established in 1846; its co-founder and Secretary was Thomas Stephens, the literary historian, reformer and Unitarian.
Reproduced with the kind permission of Andrew Green. To see the original, please click https://gwallter.com/history/the-cyfarthfa-philosophical-society.html
by Andrew Green
The end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century saw the rise of local ‘literary and philosophical institutions’ throughout the British Isles. They aimed to bring together like-minded people to discuss issues of the day. The label ‘philosophy’ usually meant not logic or metaphysics, but an interest in the latest developments in science and technology, at a time when their study was in rapid flux as the industrial revolution gathered pace. Typically, members gathered to listen and respond to lectures by visiting speakers. Some societies also owned premises, issued publications, maintained libraries and museums, and even, as in the case of the Swansea Philosophical and Literary Institution (later the Royal Institution of South Wales), equipped and ran a scientific laboratory.
Most literary and philosophical societies were dominated by the upper and middle classes: members of the gentry and clergy, scientists, industrialists and engineers. And so, on the face of it, was the Cyfarthfa Philosophical Society, set up in Merthyr Tydfil in 1807. But all was not quite as it seemed.
At this time Merthyr was entering its heyday as one of the most dynamic and rapidly expanding towns in Britain, thanks to the numerous iron works set up in and around its centre. The ironworks – Cyfarthfa was one of the two largest – employed large numbers of skilled and semi-skilled workers, and the town also housed the works’ owners, engineers, managers and agents, and others like shopkeepers who serviced the residents. Early on in its explosive growth, despite its lack of physical infrastructure, like decent housing, sanitation and schools, Merthyr had a lively community culture, centred on its many chapels. From the start of the nineteenth century its people developed a tradition of industrial protest and political radicalism. In 1831 disaffection boiled over into what became known as the Merthyr Rising.
Most of what’s known about the Cyfarthfa Philosophical Society comes from Charles Wilkins’s A History of Merthyr Tydfil, published much later in 1867. This is how Wilkins (left) describes how the Society began, apparently with a strong interest in astronomy:
On December 15th, 1807, sixty persons, living in Merthyr and its neighbourhood, met together, and subscribed a guinea each towards buying such apparatus as was deemed suitable; but that sum proving inadequate, it was augmented by a good many of them subscribing another half-guinea. The instruments were had, a code of rules drawn up, and a few books on astronomy purchased. It gives us a tolerable notion of the capacity of the members when we learn that the list of instruments was composed of a good reflecting telescope, a pair of globes, a microscope, a planetarium, an orrery, an equatorial, and other philosophical apparatus. (p.269)
Wilkins gives the names of the most prominent of the founding members:
J. Bailey, Esq., an M.P., and a large iron-master; the poet and stone-cutter, Rees Howell Rees; John Griffiths and William Williams, afterwards famous as engineers and mechanicians; William Aubrey, the mill contractor; Thomas Evans, the philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician, of Cyfarthfa ; Benjamin Saunders, the ingenious moulder; Henry Kirkhouse, the mineral agent; and several others more or less able in their respective callings.
Joseph Bailey was the nephew of Richard Crawshay, the founder of the Cyfarthfa Ironworks. He inherited a quarter share in the works, but sold it in 1813 and bought the Nant-y-Glo works. Later he added the Beaufort works. He converted much of his large profits into land, and lived at Glanusk Park. Possibly Bailey was chosen as the ‘respectable figurehead’ of the Society.
Most of the other men Wilkins mentioned were highly skilled technologists connected with the Cyfarthfa Ironworks. John Griffiths and William Williams were both engineers there. Griffiths built steam-engines. In 1829 Williams invented the first machine for testing the tensile strength of metals. In later life, it was said, he became so large that he had to be moved around the works in a specially built trolley. His son, Morgan Williams, became the leading Merthyr Chartist. William Aubrey of Tredegar helped design the extensive water systems at Cyfarthfa. ‘None of his contemporaries’, his obituary in Seren Gomer said, ‘was as skilful as he was in inventing and setting up all kinds of engines and machines worked by fire and water’. Benjamin Saunders, the ‘ingenious moulder’ at the Cyfarthfa works, later described as ‘an amalgam of an inventive brain and a deft hand’, built a planetarium, a quadrant, a thermometer, a water-gauge and a weather-glass. Henry Kirkhouse was the mineral agent at Cyfarthfa for more than half a century, and ‘retained the respect of all who came in contact with him – from Mr Crawshay to the humblest miner’.
To be continued……
Reproduced with the kind permission of Andrew Green. To see the original, please click https://gwallter.com/history/the-cyfarthfa-philosophical-society.html
From the Cardiff & Merthyr Guardian 160 years ago today….
by Laura Bray
During the Second World War an initiative was introduced in the form of Gliding Schools. The schools came out of the Air Training Corps, itself a successor to the Air Defence Cadet Corps, which had been founded in 1938 with the aim of training boys aged between 14 and 18 in “all matters connected with aviation”.
The ADCC was a huge success – it organised itself into squadrons of 100 boys subdivided into 4 “flights” and within 5 months of its foundation, 41 squadrons had been formed. During 1939 more than 16,000 boys and 700 officers were members of the ADCC.
Indeed, by 1940, ADCC was making such a contribution to the recruitment for the RAF that it was decided by the War Cabinet to establish an organisation to provide pre-entry training for candidates for aircrew and technical duties for both the RAF and the Fleet Air Arm. Thus the Air Training Corps was born. It became one of the most important pre-service training organisations, providing the RAF with recruits who were “air-minded” when they enlisted.
Merthyr, it will not surprise you to learn, had an ATC, founded in the summer of 1941, and on 5th August 1944, a gliding school was opened, by Air Marshall Sir Robert Brook-Popham. The Gliding School was situated at the top of the Swansea Rd, and the opening was attended by the usual civic dignitaries. Before the presentation ceremony, the officers of the various squadrons in the area, the cadets and members of the Women’s Junior Air Corps were inspected by the Air Marshall. It was noted that Merthyr had sent several hundred boys into the RAF from the ATC and that they had benefited hugely from the training they had received there, training which would now include gliding. Indeed, so committed were the ATC to this that the boys had worked all winter to build a hanger for their glider, without any help from the Air Ministry or Council and squadrons from Aberdare, Treharris and the surrounding area would be using the base as part of their training.
It is clear from the Merthyr Express report of 5 August 1944 which covered the opening, that the ATC sent boys into the army as well as the RAF, as Air Marshall Brook-Popham was keen to stress that the skills learnt in the glider school were just as valuable to that branch of the armed services.
The Gliding School was disbanded in 1945 and is now largely forgotten – unless perhaps you were there…..
by Barrie Jones
Chapter XI. Henry recounts examples of good and bad prison warders in Portland Prison.
The Dark Side of Convict Life (Being the Account of the Career of Harry Williams, a Merthyr Man). Merthyr Express, 9th April 1910, page 11.
Chapter XI
During the whole time I was at Portland, I never kept myself four months clear of a report, although I had a clean sheet on my arrival there. I can well remember a certain officer at Portland, who was truly a good man and quite different from all the rest. He had been over twenty-five years in the service and was well up to all the games practised by lags, and it would take a good man to take him down. I can remember saying something to him in the year 1900 in the separate cells, when he was engaged at the time giving me a special searching according to orders. He said something in answer to one thing I told him, and I said, “Now speak the truth.” “Speak the truth,” says he, “I never speak the truth in all my life, and I am not going to start now.” Of course, I know that was merely a joke of his, for I have reason to believe that he was one of the most truthful officers in the whole prison.
He did me a kindness, although small in its way, and I thought a great deal of it. I happened to be undergoing a course of bread and water punishment, and it was at Christmas. When he handed me my eight-ounce punishment loaf he remarked, “Look here, Williams, my boy,” says he, “you have a long sentence, and I am heartily sorry to see you on a day like this on bread and water, but hang it,” says he, “I will break the rules for once in my life.” Whereupon he immediately went to the cookhouse, which was situated 50 yards away, and brought me another loaf, although it was strictly contrary to rules, and I do believe he would have gladly given me a plum pudding if he dared. Many a time I had good advice from that man, for a man he was in the best sense of the word, but where there is to be found one good officer you will find many the reverse.
I remember one who used to take charge of parties when the regular officer would be doing night duty, and he would lose no time in reporting half the gang before the proper officer came back. This, of course, is done chiefly to show the other officer up, for even officers sometimes cut each other’s throats; that is to say, they do their best to get each other the sack, in order to make a name, so to speak. The man I am speaking of was always on the lookout for trouble. Properly speaking, he carried trouble in his pocket. I remember on one occasion a poor old warder, and one of the good sort, to give him his due, one day forgot accidentally to put the double lock on one of the cell doors, and the assistant warder happened to be on patrol shortly after, and while going around trying the doors, discovered a cell door on a single lock. Thinking to make his name quickly, he lost no time in giving information to the Senior Principal, with the result that the poor old warder was fined three half-crowns, what is called amongst officials half a sheet. This same officer was once in charge of a gang of convicts known as the special party, and they were employed in an enclosure where there were situated twelve separate boxes, and in the centre of each is a block of granite stone, fast to which is an iron hammer and ring, attached to a chain.
Each convict is employed breaking flint into dust, and as this is a dangerous form of employment they are supplied with wire goggles to protect the eyes. A convict was one day hammering away at a piece of this flint when suddenly it flew up and struck him in the eye, cutting right through the goggles, seriously injuring sight, and he had to go under an operation, but without success. When the Medical Officer made inquiries as to how the accident happened it was reported that the man did it purposely, with the intention of getting into the infirmary, but it was nothing of the kind. No man in his proper state of mind would injure his eyesight merely for the sake of a few days on hospital diet.
A few years later I met the same man at Parkhurst Prison, Isle-of-Wight; he had come back for a fresh term of penal servitude, and I could not help feeling sympathy towards him, for, sad to say, he was stone blind, the injured eye having affected the other one, and now the world is dark to him for ever. As to the truth of all this, the man can corroborate.
To be continued……
110 years ago today……
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.
After Dowlais House there was, I think, a house, but it was enlarged for Mr George Martin, who lived there some years after. Then came the surgery, and the entrance to the furnace yard beyond. The railroad for bringing the limestone from the quarries crossed the turnpike here, and cottages continued for some distance on the road to Rhymney.
The road to the Ivor Works runs alongside the old limestone road, and just on the corner is the residence of Mr E. P. Martin, his brother, Mr H. W. Martin, occupying the smaller one adjoining.
The first was built for Mr John Evans, and occupied for some years by him, but Mr Joseph Lamphier, who occupied the smaller, moved to Cwmavon, and both he and his sister (for he was a bachelor) rest in a grave there. My first visit to Mr John Evans’ house was when he resided at Gwernllwyn Isaf. His brother, Thomas, lived near, and also the rector, Rev Thomas Jenkins. There was also a school there – small, very small in comparison with the present, but there it was.
A short way further, and the Ivor Works are come to, but a road crosses leading up to the houses behind the works. These were built just after the starting of the works in ’33 or ’39, and several of them were the quarters of the military stationed there after the Chartist Riot at Newport. The captain had been abroad, and brought a coloured nursemaid back. This girl was was an object of curiosity to the tip girls, and, they being so much so, took an opportunity of inspecting if that was actually the colour of her skin beneath her clothes.
Instead of turning to the right, if we turned left we should be on the continuation of the road which is mentioned as turning up the side of the Dowlais Inn. Proceeding along this, we come to the stables on one side and the Market House on the other. The church is a short distance further on the same side as the stables.
With the introduction of the railways, no doubt there has been some improvement, but the impression yet existing is that there is more squalor – perhaps less care for appearances. That some feeling of this kind did exist is shown by what was done when a great personage was there.
There was a large order for rails in the market, and the high position of the firm stood them in good stead. To understand my meaning, it is proper to state the town residence of Sir John Guest (8 Spring Gardens) was celebrated; it was here the episode of the balance-sheet took place as described in Roebuck’s “History of the Whigs”. The order was secured, and a Russian prince was coming to see the works. Between the entrance to the works, opposite the Bush and Dowlais House, on the left side of the road going up, were a lot of cottages. They were somewhat above the average at that time, but the gardens in front were not tidy, so Mawdesley, the engineer of the Ivor Works, was called on to design and erect an iron railing which was done.
To be continued at a later date…….