Dowlais – Page 10 – The Melting Pot

Maggie Davies – Eos Fach

Today marks the 93rd anniversary of the death of one of Merthyr’s greatest musical talents – Maggie Davies. Nowadays, however, she is almost totally forgotten.

Maggie Davies was born in Broad Street, Dowlais in November 1865. Her father, Evan, was a puddler at the Dowlais Works, and both he and his wife, Mary, were staunch members of Bethania Chapel, where Evan was a deacon. It was at Bethania Chapel that the young Maggie got her first rudimentary musical training, and was soon considered to be a prodigy, and her musical talents were often called upon around Dowlais.

After performing for two years with Brogden’s Swiss Choir, a famous touring group, Maggie returned to Merthyr for formal musical training with Edward Lawrence, the organist at St David’s Church. Under Lawrence’s tutelage, Maggie won a scholarship to study at the Royal College of Music in London. Before, her departure, the people of Dowlais organised a grand concert held at the Oddfellows Hall in her honour to raise money to help with her expenses.

At the Royal College of Music, she studied with Sir Hubert Parry and Sir Walter Parratt, and she also spent a season in Paris, studying with the world-renowned soprano Pauline Viardot. Such was Maggie’s talent and promise that the scholarship, which had been for a period of three years, was extended for a further three years, an unprecedented occurrence in that period.

Although she appeared for a season with the Carl Rosa Opera Company, it was as a concert singer that she made her name. She appeared regularly all over Britain, and sang annually at the National Eisteddfod, and it was here that she was christened ‘Eos Fach’ – Little Nightingale.

In 1896, the prominent composer Sir Charles Villiers Stanford asked Maggie to sing the lead role in the premiere of his new opera ‘Shamus O’Brien’, a role he had written specifically for her. At first she was reluctant to accept the offer, as she did not want to return to the operatic stage, much preferring her career as a concert and oratorio singer. She was finally persuaded to perform the role by the composer, and she received excellent reviews in most of the newspapers and periodicals of the time.

Although she occasionally performed in opera productions, notably in Joseph Parry’s operas ‘Blodwen’ and ‘Arianwen’ in Cardiff, she continued to confine her career mostly to the concert platform, and took part in concert tours to America and South Africa.

In 1903, she married George W Hutcheson, a Scottish solicitor residing in London, and retired from the concert stage.

By the 1920’s, ill-health had begun to take its toll on Maggie, and in 1925 she embarked on a voyage to the West Indies with a view to improving her health. Upon her return, however, her condition had worsened and she was admitted to a nursing home, where she died on 1 July 1925. In her funeral, the Rev H Elvet Lewis, in his prayer, referred to “the use the Creator had made of the gifts of her great art, which had brought joy to so many during her time”.

The Town that Died

Has anyone read R L Lee’s remarkable book ‘The Town that Died’? The town in question is Dowlais, and the book recounts his memories of growing up there.

Dowlais is not a bad place at all, but when you compare the town today to how it was – for a lot of people from cherished memories, for others, relying on photographs, you can see that the epithet is a just one.

Below is an excellent photograph of Dowlais taken in 1920’s from the mountain behind the Ironworks (the present day Goat Mill Road). You can see what a large and bustling it place it was. A lot of the more prominent buildings are numbered and identified beneath the photo.

1.      Gwernllwyn Chapel
2.      Hermon Chapel
3.      Shiloh Chapel
4.      Elizabeth Street Chapel
5.      Bryn Sion Chapel
6. Dowlais Works

7. Temple Buildings
8. Ivor Works
9. Elim-Tabernacle Chapel
10. Oddfellows Hall
11. Bethania Chapel

Almost everything in the photograph has gone. Of the buildings numbered above, only Bethania Chapel still remains.

The Town that Died indeed.

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!

Jet engines clearing the snow at Dowlais

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.

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.

Hughesovka Blast Furnaces in 1888. Photo courtesy of http://www.alangeorge.co.uk/index.htm

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.

A Dowlais Hero

From the Evening Express 109 years ago today…..

Dowlais Stables

One of the oldest and most impressive buildings still standing in Merthyr is Dowlais Stables.

In the early part of the Nineteenth Century, despite Merthyr being at the forefront of the industrial revolution, and indeed pioneering the first steam-powered locomotive in 1804, Dowlais (and all the other) Ironworks were reliant on horses and ponies to bear the brunt of the heavy haulage work. In July 1819, it is recorded, Michael Faraday the eminent scientist visited the Dowlais Works, and walked with Josiah John Guest to the hay fields near the Works where the hay made there was used to feed the 150 or so horses which the Dowlais Iron Company used.

The following year, Josiah John Guest had stables built to house the horses. The architect of the building is unknown, but it was (and still is) a striking building. The complex is of symmetrical design, in the form of a rectangular plan of ranges set round a (formerly railway-served) central yard. The façade has two-storeys with centre and end pavilions separating 9-bay ranges and there is a tall central arch, through which the railway passed, with a circular clock face. This façade is roughly 450 feet long, and the central block rises to over 50 feet, with the central arch being roughly 30 feet high. This is topped with a decorative wooden cupola.

It is said that when the stables was built, a number of contemporary newspaper cuttings, and several items of memorabilia were hidden behind one of the arch stones to be revealed “when the building falls down”.

The stables were well used; towards the end of the nineteenth century, the Dowlais Iron Company were employing “over a dozen blacksmiths, several stable lads and a score of other hands to tend the several hundred head of horses now owned by the Company and stabled in the very heart of Dowlais”.

As well as being used as for stabling horses, soldiers were stationed in the building for several years after the Merthyr Riots of 1831. Also, of course, Lady Charlotte Guest famously used the large first-floor rooms as a boys school until Dowlais Central Schools were opened in 1854-5.

The stables closed in the 1930’s and the complex became derelict; in the late 1970’s unauthorised demolition was started, but was brought to a halt. The site was subsequently bought by the Merthyr Tydfil Heritage Trust in 1981, and despite the façade partially collapsing in 1982, the building was eventually rebuilt as flats; the south east facade walls were also substantially rebuilt. Of the original structure, only the southeast range and Stables House on the north west range currently survive.

Dowlais Stables after the partial collapse in 1982

Merthyr’s Chapels: Elim Chapel, Penydarren

In our regular feature on the chapels of Merthyr, we next take a look at the history of Elim Baptist Chapel in Penydarren.

In 1841, Rev William Robert Davies, minister at Caersalem Chapel in Dowlais decided that a new Baptist cause should be started in Penydarren to cater for the ever growing population there. Land was leased from the Penydarren Iron Company and the chapel, named Elim was built in 1842.

In 1849, the infamous cholera epidemic struck Merthyr which caused the death of 1,682 in Merthyr and Dowlais alone (see previous entry – www.merthyr-history.com/?p=123). On 4 August, cholera struck Rev Davies’ household, when his daughter died of the disease. Despite his grief, Rev Davies continued to visit the sick and comforted their relatives. One of the results of the cholera was a sudden upsurge in chapel attendance, and on the last two Sundays of August alone Rev Davies baptised no less than 150 people.

By this time he had begun discussing with the deacons the possibility of appointing another minister to help him continue the work at Caersalem. However, before this could be acted upon, Davies was himself struck down by the cholera on 1 September. He became suddenly ill at nine o’clock in the morning, and by seven o’clock that same evening he was dead. He was buried in the same grave as his daughter at the graveyard at Elim Chapel. He was 51 years old.

Elim continued to be considered as a branch of Caersalem until it gained its independence in 1852. The congregation continued to grow however, and the chapel was rebuilt in 1858.

By the 1930’s it had become obvious to the members that the chapel needed a new schoolroom to accommodate the burgeoning Sunday School at Elim Chapel. The materials necessary to build the school room were offered to the chapel at a very reasonable price on the condition that the members of the chapel could collect them. As this was the time of the Great Depression, and the Dowlais Works having recently closed, most of the men at the chapel found themselves unemployed, so they collected the materials, and built the school room themselves. The women of the chapel organised many activities to raise money towards the building. The schoolroom was opened on 18 July 1933.

Elim Chapel, Penydarren in 1933 showing the recently built new schoolroom

On the night of 23 December 1977 Elim was severely damaged in a storm, the roof was blown off. The chapel was beyond repair and had to be demolished the following year. Services were subsequently held at Williams Memorial Chapel until that chapel closed, and the remaining members of the congregation rejoined their mother church at Caersalem.

Elim Chapel following the collapse of the front wall as a result of the storm

A development of flats for senior citizens has now been built on the site of the chapel and is called Hafan Elim.

Councillor Isaac Edwards, J.P.

Today we look at another important Merthyr resident – Isaac Edwards, business man, magistrate and mayor, who died 74 years ago today.

Isaac Edwards was born in Dowlais on 10 May 1872. Educated at the Dowlais Works School, at the age of thirteen he began working at the mill manager’s office at the Dowlais Ironworks.

At the age of 25, he left and opened an accountancy and auctioneering business in Dowlais. Within two years he was joined in the business by his elder brother and they began trading as Edwards Bros. As the business grew they purchased the practice of Mr Henry Lewis, auctioneer in Merthyr and opened a branch office in Market Square Chambers, Merthyr.

In 1910, he accepted an appointment as district valuer for the Caernarvonshire, Anglesey and West Denbighshire area in the Wales Division Board of the Inland Revenue. He remained in the position until 1916 when he returned to Merthyr and acquired the business of Messrs J M Berry & Son.

As a boy and young man, Isaac Jones was a member of Bethania Chapel, Dowlais where he continued to worship until he moved to North Wales. Upon his return to Merthyr he became a member of Zoar Chapel where he was elected as a deacon and became a Sunday School teacher. He was also elected President of the North Glamorgan Association of Independents; president of the Glamorgan County Association; chairman of the Independent Union Sustenation Fund, treasurer of Bangor College and in 1930 was elected president of the Welsh Congregation Union – only the fourth layman to be elected to the position since its formation.

He also made his mark outside the chapel. He was elected president of the Merthyr Chamber of Trade, as well as serving as secretary South Wales and Montmouthshire Federation and vice-president of the National Chamber of Trade. He was also appointed as a magistrate for the county in 1922. An Independent councillor since 1921, Isaac Edwards was elected as mayor in 1938.

Isaac Edwards died on Sunday 19 September 1943.

James Neilson’s Hot Blast: Pierre Armand Dufrénoy and Lady Charlotte Guest – part 2

by Victoria Owens

In September 1836 advertisements for On the use of hot air in the Ironworks of England and Scotland […] appeared in the London newspapers. Published by the august firm of John Murray, it was a modest octavo, priced at 5s 6d. To all appearance, the English text was anonymous, the title page stating only that the work was ‘Translated from a report made to the director-general of mines in France, by M. Dufrénoy in 1834 [sic]’ without naming the translator. The entries in John Murray’s ledgers were equally uninformative about the origin of the English version, referring to the work only as ‘Hot Air (On the use of)’ with a caret mark adding the scribbled note ‘By M. Dufrénoy’. The illustrations, however, carry some mark of Lady Charlotte’s involvement. Murray’s publication re-cycles the engravings which had appeared in Dufrénoy’s Rapport, but with an addition. Examination of the English text reveals the initials ‘C.E.G.’ – Charlotte Elizabeth Guest – in her distinctive handwriting beside each picture, presumably as confirmation to the printer that the image is to be bound in with the text.

Illustration of the Dundivan Heating Apparatus from On the Use of Hot Air in the Iron Works of England and Scotland […] (London: John Murray, 1836). The initials ‘C.E.G’ and date ‘March 1836’ appear below the engraved diagram.

To remain anonymous may have been her choice. Not only were mid-nineteenth century publishers apt to view women writers dismissively – it was why the Bronte sisters took masculine pen-names – but her mother had been less than happy about her marriage. For all his acumen, the industrialist John Guest was not the husband she would have chosen for her daughter – she preferred Robert Plumer Ward, a barrister-cum-novelist, whose proposal Charlotte resolutely declined. Charlotte, what was more, had loved South Wales from her first sight of the ‘blazing furnaces’ of Dowlais and the ‘broad glare of the fires.’ By contrast, when Lady Lindsey visited in August 1834, she thought the Glamorganshire countryside ‘wild enough for banditti’ and likened the ironworks to ‘a den of thieves.’ It seems unlikely that she would have viewed her daughter’s work on the Rapport sur l’emploi de l’air chaud with much enthusiasm. Nevertheless, Charlotte’s achievement did not remain secret for long. In December 1836 the local newspaper jubilantly identified her as the translator of On the Use of Hot Air and carried a story full of praise for her disregard of all ‘temptations to indolence’ and ‘frivolities of fashion,’ and ready devotion of her ‘time and talents to useful […] works by which mankind may be benefitted, and the interests of Science advanced.’

Her book had a print run of only two hundred copies but in iron manufacturing circles, it sparked considerable interest. On 1 October 1836, when it had been out for less than a month, John Wilson, co-proprietor of the Clyde Ironworks and member of the syndicate which held the patent rights to the Hot Blast process, called on Lady Charlotte to request a copy of her translation. He was apparently ‘anxious to see [it], as he did not understand French.’

If it yielded little financial return, the engagement with Dufrénoy’s survey of the British iron trade nevertheless set the course of Charlotte’s future. It is no coincidence that in her journal entry for 26 September 1836 – just when the book went on sale – she should mention having ‘undertaken the office of Merthyr’s secretary, to write all his letters and keep them copied and arranged.’ It was, she thought, a ‘beginning in earnest’ for which she had ‘been training for some time.’ Her remarks were prescient indeed, for on John’s death in 1852, she succeeded him as head of the works, and would soon have to bring all her acuity to bear on resolving a strike. Disputes aside, commerce gave her immense satisfaction. ‘I am happy to see we are at the head of the iron trade,’ she wrote in April 1839. ‘Otherwise I could not take pride in my house in the City, and my works at Dowlais, and glory (playfully) in being (in some sort) a tradeswoman.’

Merthyr’s Trams

78 years ago today saw the last tram journey run in Merthyr. To mark the occasion, local historian Keith Lewis-Jones has provided the following fascinating article.

The first thoughts of a tram system in the Merthyr area were in 1878, when a scheme was proposed by Messrs. Taylor, Forester and Sutherland, to construct a horse or steam tramway between Merthyr and Dowlais. In 1879, a public meeting was held at the Bush Hotel in Dowlais for the three promoters to explain their plans and to canvass support for the proposed system. The tramway failed to materialise for a variety of reasons, both financial and fear that the toll on the horses hauling trams up gradients, as steep as one in eleven, would make the tramway unprofitable to work.

By 1890, the population of Merthyr was 60,000, and the service of horse cars and brakes was wholly inadequate for the transport needs of such a large population. By this time a large section of the working population was employed at the Dowlais Works, with many living along the Brecon Road corridor and in Cefn Coed

It was therefore proposed to lease out, to a private company, the right to construct Light Railways between Cefn Coed and Dowlais, with a branch running to the centre of Merthyr at Graham Street. As is always the case with such progressive ideas, a great deal of vigorous and influential opposition was forthcoming from vested interests. It was decided to set up a commission to hear evidence and propose a way forward.

In May 1898 the Merthyr Tydfil Electric Traction and Lighting Co. Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of British Electric Traction (BET), made an application for a Light Railway Order under the Light Railways Act of 1896, and the order was granted on 16 May 1899.

The Light Railway Order authorised the construction of three railways.

Railway no. 1 was to be 3 miles 1 furlong 2.8 chains long and was to run from opposite the Morning Sun public house in Cefn High Street via Cefn Bridge, Brecon Road, Pontmorlais Road West, Penydarren Road, High Street Penydarren, New Road & High Street Dowlais to a terminus opposite the Bush Inn.

The section from the Morning Sun to the Merthyr side of Cefn Bridge was not to be constructed until Cefn Bridge had been re-constructed or replaced.

Railway no. 2, 3 furlongs 3.5 chains in length, was to run from the north side of the Owain Glyndwr on Pontmorlais Road West to Graham Street via High Street, terminating at the west end of Graham Street.

Railway no. 3 was 1.7 chains in length and formed the third side of the triangle at Pontmorlais, joining railway no. 1 with railway no. 2 on the east side of the Owain Glyndwr.

The Tram Depot, known as the Traction Yard, was constructed on the site of Penydarren Ironworks and was reached by way of a branch line which left the Dowlais route at the Trevethick (sic.) Street Junction. As well as providing facilities for tram maintenance, the site also housed the generating station for 550 volts direct current. As can be seen in the Company’s name, not only was it set up to operate trams but also to provide lighting within the area.

For the opening of the system, thirteen single deck and three double deck trams were obtained. The single-deckers, nos. 1-13, were built by the Midland Railway Carriage & Wagon Co. Ltd., of Shrewsbury. They seated twenty-six passengers.

The open top, double deck trams came from the Electric Railway & Tramway Carriage Works Ltd. (ERTCW), of Preston – part of Dick, Kerr & Co. Ltd. They were numbered 14-16 and seated forty-eight passengers.

The first passengers were carried 6 April, 1901 with Dowlais route trams displaying a triangle and Cefn route vehicles a square on the front. The trams ran between 5.15 a.m. and 10.15 p.m. Passengers fares were one penny per mile or part thereof. Some examples being – Merthyr to Dowlais 2d and Cyfarthfa to Merthyr 1d. The fare for a journey from the Morning Sun in Cefn to the Bush Hotel in Dowlais would be 4d.

A tram outside the Bush Hotel in Dowlais

1903 saw the only serious accident to affect the tramway. On 22 January car number 10 left the rails while descending New Road, Dowlais causing no serious injuries, but the tram was badly damaged.

Passenger numbers had declined to 2,086,684 by 1936. The 1930’s had seen a decline in the number of passengers carried, partially due to the high rate of unemployment in the Borough – 41.7% in 1936.

The Corporation had been prevented from competing with the trams under the provisions of the Merthyr Tydfil Corporation Act of 1920 and so the tramway was eventually purchased by the Corporation for £13,500 in 1939, and abandoned on 23 August, leaving the Company to continue electricity generation until 1948.

During its life, the tramway carried an estimated 85 million passengers and the tramcars covered a distance of around 8 million miles. Apart from the system in Cardiff, Merthyr’s tramway was the longest lasting in South Wales.

A fuller account of Merthyr’s Tram system by Keith Lewis-Jones can be found in Merthyr Historian volume 20.

All photos courtesy of http://www.alangeorge.co.uk/index.htm