Tag: Abercanaid Coal Tips

I remember that…..

by Eira Hopkins

The before – Graig Houses. I knew, loved and lived in these houses
Graig Houses in 1968. Photo courtesy of Clive Thomas.
  1. I remember the after, before they were torn down in the mid to late 1970s supposedly because of subsidence, only to have 4 new Bungalows built on the same land.
Old Graig Chapel and Chapel House. Photo courtesy of http://www.alangeorge.co.uk/index.htm

2. I remember only the house remaining where the Pritchard family lived and playing in the cemetery hide and seek, and also with no disrespect at the time being a child. Swinging on the chains around one of the graves. No damage or vandalism was done just childhood fun.

3. Like you Stephen and many others from Graig Houses and Pond Row I too remember the slag tips covered by grass and the times I played hide and seek. Even sliding down, the deeper ones when snow came.

Photo courtesy of http://www.alangeorge.co.uk/index.htm
Afon Taf School. Photo courtesy of http://www.alangeorge.co.uk/index.htm

4. I remember the day I went to Afon Taf High School and was scared out of my mind. From Abercanaid Infants and Juniors with a total amount of pupils maybe 100 to a school of 1500 and no preparation for the transfer, unlike pupils of today. I recognise people in the picture besides Mr Powell Headmaster, does anyone else?

Gwaelodygarth House. Photo courtesy of http://www.alangeorge.co.uk/index.htm

5. I remember the day I started my nursing career at Gwaelodygarth House Merthyr Tydfil, myself and my soon to be friend Susan Payne started in April 1974 where we were among the 30 who started that day. That was a very important day for us all, we learned how to do the nursing procedures from basic and how the body and its anatomy worked. The Matron would check that you were doing your assignments correctly and if not, boy didn’t you and everyone else in your group know, no softly, softly, approaches then, unlike today.

I remember that….

In the start of what I hope to be a new series, I have made a list of five things….places, occasions, feelings etc. in Merthyr that I remember from my childhood (I have mentioned several other memories such as hot chocolate in Ferrari’s Café in Dowlais – undoubtedly the best memory elsewhere).

  1. The strange multicoloured polygonal playing frame in the precinct. Whatever happened to that?
St Tydfil’s Shopping Centre in the 1970s. The climbing frame is towards the top centre.
  1. Queuing as far as Burtons to go and see the first Star Wars film at the Scala (Temperance Hall)…..I was only 8 at the time, and I made my aunty take me to see it six times – I don’t think she ever forgave me.
  1. In connection to the above, collecting the plastic Star Wars figures. I remember buying them from a shop in the High Street called ‘Cards and Gifts’ (or something like that) – if I remember correctly one of the few places you could get them, and then being totally bereft when the building burnt down. My cousin and I would play for hours with the figures, re-arranging all of my parents’ house plants into various jungle ‘scenes’.
  1. Spending hours playing on the old coal-tips in Abercanaid (by this time grass-covered), and being traumatised when the powers that be took them away (not to mention my grandfather’s garden – a fact he bemoaned until his dying day), to build the extension to the Hoover Factory, and new road into Abercanaid.
  1. Being told never to use the subway under the road in Caedraw…..but being daring, and doing it anyway with the other local children, and being scared to death.
Caedraw in the 1970s. The subway can be seen at the bottom of the picture at the end of the bridge.

Now it’s your turn. What do you remember from your childhood?

Let’s try to make this a successful feature – send me an e-mail at merthyr.history@gmail.com and share your five Merthyr-related childhood memories.