The Melting Pot – Merthyr Tydfil's History and Culture
In Association with the Merthyr Tydfil & District Historical Society
Below is a fantastic lithograph of Merthyr in approximately 1850. It is a view roughly from present-day Thomastown looking over the town. Some of the important landmarks have been labelled. It is remarkable how much the town has changed in the 170 years since this picture was drawn.
| 1. St Tydfil’s Church 2. Twynyrodyn Unitarian Chapel 3. Tramroadside North 4. Old Market Hall |
5. Ynysfach Ironworks 6. Adulam Chapel 7. St David’s Church |
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.
Memories crush upon me so rapidly with respect to the High Street, that one, at least, of those there in 1834 have slipped. It is the Printing, Bookselling and Stationery Establishment of Mr H W White. It was situated opposite to the the residence of Mr W James, just above the Globe Inn, on the same side. After his removal across the road to the corner, since occupied by Messrs Farrant and Frost, the business in those premises was in drapery. When first remembered by me it was the only one in town of note.
Mr White’s brother, Isaac, was the assistant in the shop, but there was a staff of persons in the printing and book-binding branches, two of whom are well recollected, one, Mr Rees Lewis, who afterwards opened on his own account in the shop adjoining the Bush Hotel, which business is now being carried on by his son; the other Benjamin Davies, who went to Australia and became a member of the Legislative Assembly of Victoria.
The shop was not large, but fully fitted. Noticing a bar of wrought iron about 2 ¼ diameter recently fixed, and asking the reason, I received a reply there was so much stock in the room above he was fearful of the joists giving way and causing very considerable damage. Thinking of Mr H W White recalls that he married one of the Misses Williams, of Mill Street, and as the others all married from there lest it may slip, I may state that one married Mr Thomas Joseph, another the Rev T Davies (minister of High Street Chapel then, but subsequently principal of Haverfordwest College), and the other Rev Enoch Williams (father of the present recorder of Cardiff).
We now return to John Street, and keeping on the first shop on the corner was kept by a David Davies – it was a draper shop on one side and grocery on the other. Its scrupulous cleanliness is yet impressed upon me. A son of Mr & Mrs Davies was a doctor at Mountain Ash for many years, and the first medical officer of health of the local board of that town. It cannot be stated positively whether Mr Edward Morgan’s residence came next or a few more doors above, but a watch and clock business was carried on by William Williams exactly opposite the entrance to Glebeland Street. He had a small square turret, say four feet square or so, projecting above the roof, an observatory from which the necessary observations were taken, to keep all his works in order it was said.
There was another house then used as a residence, and then the premises of the Brecon Old Bank, of which Mr David Evans was managing partner. These premises have been altered and enlarged.
Immediately abutting on these bank premises is the road leading to Thomastown. It was then nothing like as wide as it is now, and being, perhaps, the only one now living who can evidence what brought about the change, I will tell the tale.
The road was then only used as a thoroughfare to Professional Row and the Tramroad. After the building of St David’s Church and Schools it became expedient to enclose them. I was asked to make necessary drawings and superintend the carrying of it out. Subscriptions for this were not enough to carry the railings all around, so it was determined to build a wall on the southern side, but even a wall required money, and Dr Thomas, of the Court, after whom the district is named, was approached, and upon the promise of the wall being set back far enough to make a good opening contributed £90 towards its building, but it must not be understood that this took the road up as far as the Tramroad, for it covered only as far as the church property near.
Then came a garden appertaining to the end house of the row, and for this small additional distance I then heard £200 had been paid. There is no deed of conveyance with respect to the land given up by the church. It was all well-known to the committee, and that most excellent man – Rev James Colquhoun Campbell, then rector. Time has now given an irreproachable title for it was done over half a century ago.
To be continued at a later date…..
by Barrie Jones
My paternal grandparents lived in 12 Union Street, Thomastown, Merthyr Tydfil. My grandfather Caradog JONES was born in Troedyrhiw in 1896 and was one of five brothers who were coal miners, as was their father, grandfather and great-grandfather before them. Crad’s great-grandfather John Evan JONES was born in Abergwili, Carmarthenshire, in 1814, moving to Duffryn, Pentrebach, sometime in the 1840s to work in the local Plymouth Work’s mines.
By contrast, my grandmother Margaret Ann nee BAILEY was born in Merthyr Tydfil in 1898, her great-grandfather Abraham BAILEY, was born in Bristol, Gloucestershire, in 1804, arriving in Merthyr town with his extended family sometime in the 1850s. Abraham was a street hawker of earthenware goods, and for a while in the late 1850s to 1860s, ran a china and earthenware shop in 6 Victoria Street, Merthyr Tydfil. For the most part, he and his sons Abraham and Thomas, and his son-in-laws were street traders. My grandmother must have inherited the Bailey entrepreneurial gene, as to augment the family income and help purchase number 12 Union Street; she took in boarders, mainly ‘travellers’ and ‘theatricals’. My father once commented that coming home from school each day he was never sure where in the house he would be sleeping.
12 Union Street is one of 23 terraced properties in the northern portion of the long street that runs at right angles to the top of Church Street. The southern portion of the street contains the imposing Courtland Terrace. The dual terraces of Union Street leads off Church Street up to the boundary wall of the now derelict St Tydfil’s Hospital, formally the Merthyr Tydfil Union building, the ‘Workhouse’. A terrace numbered 1 to 11 on the left hand side and a terrace numbered 12 to 23 on the right hand side. All the houses were three bedroomed apart from numbers 1 and 23 which had extended frontages on Church Street and were much bigger properties. Number 12 being an end of terrace property was flanked by the lane leading up to Thomastown Park and thence on to Queen’s Road.
Union Street is in the Thomastown Conservation Area, the first area to be designated in Merthyr Tydfil. Built from the 1850s onwards on a grid-iron pattern, Thomastown has the largest group of early Victorian buildings in Wales. Built for the middle classes, the professional and commercial people of the town, its best examples are Church Street, Thomas Street, Union Street (Courtland Terrace) and Newcastle Street. This area (Thomastown) striking toward the higher and open ground of the ‘Court Estate’ was the first exclusively residential area to be created by those in the top stratum of Merthyr’s population. Thomastown was the forerunner of what was to occur at the end of the 19th century in the northern part of the town between the parklands of Cyfarthfa Castle and Penydarren House. These later developments contained even larger and more prestigious properties.
The two terraces of Union Street must have been one of the later developments. The 1876 Ordnance Survey Map shows only the single terrace of numbers 1 to 11. The 1881 census records both terraces but 7 of the 23 properties are shown as uninhabited, (numbers 3, 6, 7, 15, 16, 17 and 18), indicating that the development of the street was barely finished in 1881.
The census returns for number 12 clearly shows that the occupiers in the early years were part of Merthyr’s ‘middle’ class:
3rd April 1881 – Margaret PRICE, retired publican
5th April 1891 – James JONES, decorator
31st March 1901 – Thomas GUNTER, boot and shoe dealer
2nd April 1911 – Thomas GUNTER, boot and shoe dealer
(Thomas GUNTER was the manager of the Leeds Boot Warehouse, no. 33 Victoria Street and was a leading figure in both the Merthyr Chamber of Trade and St. David’s Parish Church.)
To be continued…..
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”.