Tag: Hoover Ltd

Merthyr Historian Sale

The Merthyr Tydfil & District Historical Society is pleased to announce a very special offer price for back issues of Merthyr Historians.

All books are as new and are offered at £2.00 each or 3 for £5.00.

Postage is £3.50 per book, or books can be picked up from depositaries in Merthyr (on arrangement).

If you would like to buy any of these volumes, please contact merthyr.history@gmail.com

The volumes on offer are:-

VOLUME 15 (2003)  ISBN 0 9544201 1 X Ed. T.F. Holley
1.  Dr. Joseph Gross by Glanmor Williams
2. Attraction and Dispersal by John Wilkins
3. Mrs. Mary Ann Edmunds by Mary Patricia Jones
4. Bacon v Homfray by Eric Alexander
5. Cheshunt College, Hertfordshire by Barrie Jones
6. Striking Features: Robert Thompson Crawshay’s Large-Scale Portraits by Jane Fletcher
7. Margaret Stewart Taylor. A Notable Woman of Merthyr Tydfil by Carolyn Jacob
8. Iron Working in the Cynon Valley by Douglas Williams
9. Owain Glyn Dwr – After Six Hundred Years by Glanmor Williams
10. Merthyr Amateur Theatricals, 1860’s by H. W. Southey
11. Shon Llywelyn of Cwm Capel by Lyndon Harris
12. Hoover Transport, 1948-98 by Gwyn Harris M.M.
13. David Jones (1760-1842), Merthyr Clockmaker, Revisited by W. Linnard, D. Roy Sears & Chris Roberts
14. The English Bible by J. W. Bowen
15. He Came, He Saw, He Conquered Merthyr Commerce – Thomas Nibloe’s Story by T. F. Holley
16. Colour Supplement – Merthyr Buildings

VOLUME 17 (2004) ISBN 0 9544201 3 6 Ed. T.F. Holley 
1.  & Pastimes in the 18th & 19th Century, Merthyr Tydfil by Geoffrey Evans
2. Celtic Connections: Early Quoiting in Merthyr Tydfil by Innes MacLeod
3. The Will of the Revd. William Price Lewis, 1839 by T. F. Holley
4. The Dic Penderyn Society and the Popular Memory of Richard Lewis by Viv Pugh
5. The Welsh Religious Revival, 1904-5 by Robert Pope
6. Reporting Revival by Neville Granville
7. A French View of Merthyr Tydfil and the Evan Roberts Revival by William Linnard
8. Songs of Praises: Hymns and Tunes of the Welsh Revival, 1904-5 by Noel Gibbard
9. Revival, Cwm Rhondda, 1905 by William Linnard
10. Diwygiad 1904-5. A Select Reading List by Brynley Roberts
11. Rosina Davies, 1863-1949. A Welsh Evangelist by Eira M Smith
12. Evan Roberts, the Welsh Revivalist by J. Ann Lewis
13. Evan Roberts at Heolgerrig, Merthyr, January 1905 – Transcribed
14. Sir Thomas Marchant Williams & the Revival – Transcribed
15. Potpourri, a Medley by The Editor
16. What Wales Needs – Religiously, 1907 by Evan Roberts
17. Joseph Williams, Printer. TYST A’R DYDD. 1903 by T. F. Holley
18. Dr. Thomas Rees (1825-1908), of Cefncoedycymer by John Mallon
19. Everest & Charles Bruce (1866-1939): The Welsh Connection by Huw Rees
20. The Lusitania Catastrophe and the Welsh Male Voice Choir by Carl Llewellyn
21. Merthyr Amateur Theatricals, 1860’s. Part Two by H. W. Southey
22. Books, Old and New. Short Reviews by The Editor
23. Night Mrs. Evans by Ken J. Mumford
24. Some Early History of Park Baptist Church, The Walk, Merthyr – Transcribed
25. Letter re: Wool Factory, Merthyr Tydfil

VOLUME 22 (2011) ISBN 0 9544201 8  7  Ed. T.F. Holley
1. A Visit to Merthyr Tydfil in 1697 by Brynley F. Roberts
2. A Pedestrian Tour Through Scotland in 1801: New Lanark before Robert Owen by Innes Macleod
3. Note for Merthyr Historian by K. H. Edwards
4. Charles Richardson White, Merthyr Vale by T. F. Holley
5. Isaac John Williams, Curator by Scott Reid
6. The Merthyr Historian. Some Statistics by J. D. Holley
7. Thomas Evan Nicholas, 1879-1971 by Ivor Thomas Rees
8. Eira Margaret Smith: A Personal Tribute by Huw Williams
9. Saint Tydfil’s Hospital 1957. A House Physicians Recollections by Brian Loosmore
10. John Devonald, 1863-1936. Aberfan Musician and Remembrancer of Musicians by T. F. Holley
11. The Remarkable Berry Brothers by Joe England
12. Albert de Ritzen: Merthyr Tydfil’s Stipendiary Magistrate 1872-1876 by Huw Williams
13. A Scrap of Autobiography by Charles Wilkins, Annotated by His Great Grandson by John V. Wilkins, OBE
14. Industrial History of Colliers Row Site and Environs by Royston Holder (the late)
15. The Life of Maria Carini by Lisa Marie Powell
16. Lecture by J. C. Fowler, Esq., Stipendiary Magistrate, 1872 ‘Civilisation in South Wales – Transcribed
17. Gwyn Griffiths -‘The Author of our Anthem. Poems by Evan James’ – Book Review by Brian Davies
18. Enid Guest – ‘Daughter of an Ironmaster’ by Mary Owen – Book Review by Ceinwen Statter
19. Caepanttywyll – A Lost Community by Christopher Parry
20. James Colquhoun Campbell (in four parts) – T. F. Holley
(A) The Social Condition of Merthyr Tydfil, 1849
(B) The Venerable Archdeacon Campbell, 1859, Biography
(C) St. David’s Church, Merthyr Tydfil, Visited, 1860
(D) J. C. Campbell and the Census Record, Research by Mrs. C. Jacob
21. Interesting Book Plate

VOLUME 23 (2012) ISBN 0 9544201 9 5  Ed. T.F. Holley
1. Vince Harris, 1904-1987 by Margaret Lloyd
2. All Change for Plymouth: A Year in the Life of a Mining Engineer by Clive Thomas
3. Who Was The Real Lydia Fell? by Christine Trevett
4. Sewage Pollution of the Taff and the Merthyr Tydfil Local Board (1868-1871) by Leslie Rosenthal
5. Redmond Coleman, the Iron Man from Iron Lane by Carolyn Jacob
6. The Assimilation and Acculturation of the Descendants of Early 20th Century Spanish Industrial Immigrants to Merthyr by Stephen Murray
7. David Williams, High Constable, Merthyr Tydfil 1878-1880 by T. F. Holley
8. John Collins, V.C. by Malcolm Kenneth Payne
9. Marvellous Merthyr Boy – Transcribed
10. A Remarkable and Most Respected Enterprise, J. Howfield & Son, Merthyr Tydfil, 1872-2001 by Mary Owen
11. The Uncrowned Iron King (The First William Crawshay) by J. D. Evans
12. Watkin George 1759-1822, The Mechanical Genius of Cyfarthfa, The Pride of Pontypool by Wilf Owen
13. Opencast History (Illustrated) by Royston Holder
14. The Laundry Trade by T. F. Holley
15. Grand Concert at the Oddfellows Hall, Dowlais – Transcribed
16. Guidelines for Contributors – By courtesy of the Glamorgan History Society

VOLUME 24 (2012) Ed. T.F. Holley
1. Elphin, Literary Magistrate: Magisterial Commentator by Brynley Roberts
2. Picturing ‘The Member For Humanity’. J. M. Staniforth’s Cartoons of Keir Hardie, 1894-1914 by Chris Williams
3. William Morris, Yr Athraw and the ‘Blue Books’ by Huw Williams
4. Hugh Watkins by Carl Llewellyn and J. Ann Lewis
5. Gomer Thomas J.P. 1863-1935 by Wilf and Mary Owen
6. Oddfellows and Chartists by Lyndon Harris
7. John Roberts, Ieuan Gwyllt, Composer of Hymns by G. Parry Williams
8. Georgetown? How Was It? By Clive Thomas
9. Book Review: Bargoed and Gilfach – A Local History
10. A History of Ynysgau Chapel by Steven Brewer
11. ‘Mr Merthyr’ S.O. Davies 1886-1972 by Rev. Ivor Thomas Rees
12. Historical Farms of Merthyr Tydfil by John Griffiths Reviewed by Keith Lewis-Jones
13. National Service, Doctor With The Gurkhas by Brian Loosmoore
14. A Year of Anniversaries: Reflections on Local History 1972-2012 by Huw Williams
15. The Family of Dr. Thomas Rees, Revisited by John Mallon
16. Merthyr District Coffee Tavern Movement, 1880 by T. F. Holley
17. Henry Richard (1812-1888) – Apostle of Peace and Patriot by Gwyn Griffiths
18. Owen Morgan – Miners’ Reporter by Brian Davies
19. The Tredegar Riots of 1911 – Anti Liberalism ‘The Turbulent Years of 1910-1914’ by Lisa Marie Powell
20. Adulum Chapel by Carl Llewellyn
21. Cyfarthfa’s Curnow Vosper Archive by Gwyn Griffiths
22. Whithorn Gas, 1870 by Innes Macleod
23. A Journey from Merthyr to Sydney, A Talented Portrait Painter by Graham John Wilcox
24. The Merthyr Bus Rallies by Glyn Bowen

VOLUME 25 (2013)  Ed. T.F. Holley
1. The Merthyr Tydfil 1835 Election Revisited, Lady Charlotte Guest’s Account by E (Ted) Rowlands
2. John Josiah Guest at Auction by Huw Williams
3. Conway and Sons Dairies Ltd. – Some Notes by G. Conway
4. John Petherick; Merthyr’s Man of Africa by John Fletcher
5. Travels in the Valleys. Book Review by Glyn Bowen
6. Plaques by John D. Holley
7. William Thomas Lewis 1837-1914 by A Family Member
8. Boom Towns by Brian Loosmore
9. The Taff Valley Tornado 1913 by Stephen Brewer
10. Plaques by John D. Holley
11. From Mule Train to Diesel Lorries. The Dowlais Iron Company Connects the Coast by Wilf Owen
12. Review CD. Some of the History of Merthyr Tudful and District via Its Place Names by John & Gwilym Griffiths by Keith Lewis-Jones
13. Caedraw Primary School, 1875-1912 by Clive Thomas
14. Charles Butt Stanton, 1873-1946 by Revd. Ivor Thomas Rees
15. The Merthyr and Dowlais Steam Laundry Limited, 1891 by T. F. Holley
16. Dynamism, Diligence, Energy and Wealth. Trade and Commerce in Merthyr Tydfil 1800-1914 by Mary Owen
17. YMCA. Merthyr Tydfil Lecture 1861 by J. C. Fowler – Transcribed
18. John Nixon and the Welsh Coal Trade to France by Brian Davies
19. Tydfil School, Merthyr Tydfil, 1859-1873 by Evan Williams – Transcribed
20. Gossiping in Merthyr Tydfil by Carolyn Jacob
21. Penywern to Pontsarn. The Story of the Morlais Tunnel. The Writer’s Early Impressions by A. V. Phillips
22. Short History of the Thomas-Merthyr Colliery Company. Merthyr Tydfil, 1906-1946 by Ronald Llewellyn Thomas – Transcribed
23. Morien and Echos of Iolo Morgannwg by T. F. Holley
24. Merthyr Tydfil’s Stipendiary Magistracy and Walter Meyrick North (1886-1900): A Case Study by Huw Williams

VOLUME 26 (2014) ISBN 978 0 9929810 0 6 Ed. T.F. Holley
1. Three Generations of a Dowlais Medical Family 1860-1964 by Stuart Cresswell
2. Viscount Tredegar, Balaclava Veteran, 1913 by T. F. Holley
3. What Makes a Country Great? Lecture by Stipendiary Magistrate – J. C. Fowler – 1858
4. Billy ‘The Doll’ Williams by Malcolm K. Payne
5. Evan James, Dr. William Price and Iolo Morganwg’s Utopia by Brian Davies
6. John A. Owen (1936-1998), Dowlais Historian: An Appreciation by Huw Williams
7. Welsh Women and Liberation from Home: Feminist or Activist? By Lisa Marie Powell
8. Gwilym Harry (1792-1844), Unitarian – Farmer – Poet by Lyndon Harris
9. ‘Aunt’ Emma’s Ronnie by Clive Thomas
10. Morgan Williams: Merthyr’s Forgotten Leader by Joe England
11. Matthew Wayne (1780-1853) by Wilf Owen
12. The Contribution of Hunting to the 1914-18 War, 1914 by T. F. Holley
13. The Difficulties of M.T.C.B.C.’s Financial Management and Administration, 1926-1937: Maladministration, Political Ideology or Economic Reality? By Barrie Jones
14. The Rail Accident at Merthyr Station, 1874 by Stephen Brewer
15. Courtland House, 1851 by Mary Owen
16. Formation of the South Wales and Monmouthshire Brass Bands Association, 1891 by T. F. Holley
17. Moses Jones (1819-1901) by Annette Barr
18. Dr Richard Samuel Ryce, M.D. M.Ch.: An Irish Doctor by T. F. Holley
19. Cwmtaf – A Drowning of the Valley and its Consequences by Gwyneth Evans
20. A Professor Gwyn A. Williams Symposium
a. Recollections of Professor Gwyn Williams, University of York, 1967-70 by Frances Finnegan
b. Memories of Gwyn at York by Brian Davies
c. Professor Gwyn Alf Williams. A Personal Remembrance by Viv Pugh
21. Merthyr Tydfil at War, 1914 by Stephen Brewer
22. Photo Feature – Archaeology by T. F. Holley

Saturday Football in our Local Community

by Brian Jones

Allan “Salty” Jones has recently published the centenary story (1913 -2013) of football played by a myriad of local teams. His account draws on a vast number of photographs of boys and men who set out to enjoy Saturday football on pitches of variable quality from the north to the south of the Merthyr Borough. Their faces shine out of the black/white and coloured prints spanning a number of generations the vast majority of whom are sadly not still with us. Nevertheless their spirit epitomises their love for the game, and perhaps more importantly, their camaraderie bound together by work, community, church or public house.

The names of the clubs who played in the MERTHYR LEAGUE ring out through the ages. Merthyr Trams, Aberfan Thursdays, Bethania Chapel, Court Rangers, Gellifaelog Youth Club, Mountain Hare, Hoovers, Castle Rangers, Miners Hall, Great Escape and Vaynor Quarries. The list is endless. A review of the history of local football mirrored the social and industrial changes spanning the 100 years. Gone are the teams representing local employers such as Guest Keen, Lines, B.S.A , Teddington Controls, Kayser Bondor, Welsh Products to name but a few.

Of the hundreds of teams who joined then left the League was S.W.E.B. who played post World War II into the early 1950s. The South Wales Electricity Board team of young men who served in the Army, Navy or Royal Air Force and went to work in an industry which blossomed with the surge in demand for an alternative power source. The sprint was on to convert homes from coal gas to electricity. Mains cables had to be laid in streets, Electricity meters installed and wiring to be linked to light switches and power points. Who can recall the demand for one shilling coins for the electricity slot meters to ensure the lights stayed on during dark winter nights!

The S.W.E.B team of 1954/55 played their home games in Heolgerrig and perhaps there are readers who are the grandchildren and great- grandchildren of those in the photograph. Were they players of great skill, who knows, but we can be assured that on their Monday stint in their work base at the Traction Yard in Penydarren they would certainly be enthusing about the win, draw or loss of the previous Saturday game

P.S. The author is the eight year old in the photograph

Gwyn Thomas and Merthyr Tydfil

by Daryl Leeworthy

In March 1955, on assignment with the Welsh Empire News, the novelist, playwright and television personality, Gwyn Thomas, turned his unique gaze to postwar Merthyr Tydfil. It was a rare outing for a writer more commonly associated with the Rhondda or with Barry, but Merthyr Tydfil had been the byword for poverty and neglect in the 1930s and so he was keen to see what, if anything, had changed. From the perspective of historians, the mid-1950s were a time of relative affluence, when the worst that could be said of Britain was that it was a bit damp, drab, and dismally grey. In place of mass unemployment, there were new factories – signature installations like Hoover at Pentrebach – and the population was rising again, albeit slowly, after three decades of decline. But, warned Gwyn, ‘South Wales is full of things that people forgot to sweep up’. Places, as well.

Gwyn Thomas in Pantywaun. Photo courtesy of the Alan George Archive.

A few years after that Empire News article was published, Gwyn was called back to the area. This time the request came from the BBC, who wanted him to give a piece to camera about the impending demolition of Pantywaun. The experience in 1962 formed the basis of a memorable passage in A Welsh Eye, in which Gwyn described the ‘liquidation’ of the village, the transfer of the remaining residents to council houses closer to Merthyr town, and the belated installation of a public call box ‘just in time for the villagers to tell their friends that they were leaving’.

Pantywaun was being sacrificed for the expansion of the ‘Royal Arms’ open cast site. This, it was said, was progress. In the view of older generations, it was the likely fate of all pit villages once their economic root had gone. As the slogan of the 1984-5 miners’ strike put it, ‘close a pit, kill a community’.

These visits were all part and parcel of broadcasting, of being an eminent public voice. Gwyn’s relationship with Merthyr Tydfil was older still, of course. His most important novel, the acknowledged masterpiece All Things Betray Thee published by Michael Joseph in 1949, was set in a fictionalised Merthyr. Christened in fiction as Moonlea, this was the Merthyr of the 1830s; the Merthyr of the unrest focused on the Court of Requests, of Dic Penderyn and Lewis the Huntsman, of Chartism and the campaign for a democratic voice. It was a place in which artists could sit and talk through grand political ideas, through the very tenets of philosophy that ought to have governed society but did not. Similar themes would emerge from Gwyn’s more anarchic play, Jackie the Jumper, first performed at the Royal Court Theatre in London in 1963.

Raymond Williams, the eminent writer and scholar, believed All Things Betray Thee to be the most important novel of the Welsh industrial tradition, capable of standing tall alongside its English or American or European counterparts but distinctively Welsh at the same time. During the Cold War, the novel was widely translated, notably into Russian, Polish, Bulgarian, and Romanian, bringing knowledge of Merthyr and its history to new audiences abroad.  Those very same audiences, of course, who understood the old joke, apparently invented by Gwyn A. Williams, that had Anna Karenina looked down from the train she would have seen ‘Made in Dowlais’ marked on the rails; or who understood the lineage connecting Stalino (now Donetsk) in Ukraine with Hughesovka and, of course, with Merthyr Tydfil itself.

We may ask what Gwyn Thomas knew of the 1830s, and how that knowledge had been acquired. In the 1930s, having graduated from Oxford University and unable to find stable, permanent work, Gwyn taught classes in industrial history for the Workers’ Educational Association in the Rhondda. This was the period when working-class history – the history of the coal valleys of Glamorgan and Monmouthshire – was first being written down and taught; when it was turned into self-styled pageants with input from national figures like Benjamin Britten and Montagu Slater; when it was made into literature by A. J. Cronin and Rhys Davies, at one level, and Lewis Jones and Richard Llewellyn at another, or turned into drama for production by companies like the Aberdare Little Theatre. But this history was not yet in the form of professional historiography of the sort we have come to expect from university-trained boffins, it was still framed by a social and political purpose. Ness Edwards, the leading local historian of the period, later the Labour MP for Caerphilly, wrote his small books and pamphlets above all to ignite passions. The same was true of poet Islwyn ap Nicholas.

But Gwyn Thomas stands out from this crowd and from those mythologisers who came after him, men like Harri Webb, because he did not fall for the romantic illusions contained in terms like ‘Merthyr Rising’. Instead, Gwyn’s act of rebellion was one of ideas, of art, of a people conscious of themselves and aware of their capacity for creative invention. He was using literature to write history – as the novel’s working title My Root on Earth suggested – encouraging the use of culture to define who weare as a people, and the use of historical truth to lend weight and veracity to it all. You see, in Gwyn’s mind Merthyr Tydfil was the root of industrial experience, the origins of an ‘American Wales’, as it might legitimately be called, and the Rhondda its great flowering. The two were indelibly linked: the Cain and Abel of our unique story.

There is an epilogue to all this aspect of Gwyn’s career involving the screenwriter Alan Plater who found in the Welshman an ebullient model, the man placed at the top of the Hullensian’s fantasy league of writers. In gratitude, Plater set about bringing two of Gwyn’s works onto radio and television. The first was the memoir, A Few Selected Exits, which aired on BBC television in 1993 with Anthony Hopkins in the title role. It won a Welsh BAFTA. The second was All Things Betray Thee which went out on Radio 4 in the spring of 1996. Plater tried for years to translate Gwyn’s writing for a contemporary broadcast audience. He succeeded, if only briefly, in the mid-1990s. Writing in the Independent newspaper in 1994, he lamented ‘the neglect of Gwyn Thomas since his death in 1981’ adding that ‘perhaps rough justice will be done, if we hang around long enough’. Now is the time to bring Gwyn Thomas to the heart of Welsh literature, I suggest, to understand at last the Fury of Past Time. We have waited far too long.

 

If you want to find out more about Gwyn Thomas, Daryl’s new biography of him has just been published and is available in all good bookshops, direct from Parthian, or an independent such as Storyville in Pontypridd.

Jimmy Edwards, Nancy Whiskey and an 11 year old Boy

by Brian Jones

The  atmosphere  in  the  red  double-decker  bus  was  a  mixture  of excitement and apprehension – the experienced pupils were pleased to renew old acquaintances, whilst the nervous first year boys and girls tended to quiet reflection. The bus, with the conductor keeping a watchful eye, meandered down Twyn hill, up the High Street to Pontmorlais, then skirted Merthyr General Hospital and finally reached its destination at Gwaelodygarth, near the  top gates of Cyfarthfa Park.  A mass of buses disgorged hundreds of Cyfarthfa Castle Grammar School pupils, 120 of whom were about to begin the first day of a new adventure.

The ten minute walk through the park would be repeated innumerable times over the next seven happy and eventful years. Amongst the wave of children, some marched at a brisk pace, others moved slowly and deliberately, whilst a few set off on a hurried race ignoring the beauty of the park. Soon each of the four seasons would pass leaving each of their distinctive colours and smells lingering in the memory – the odour of wet leaves crushed underfoot in autumn, the snow and ice of winter, the showers of  rain  that  heralded  a new  spring, and finally the shade of the trees providing some relief on the occasional hot days of summer.

Photo courtesy of the Alan George Archive

The girls peeled away – on the path to the rear of the school while the boys from 11 to 18 years of age followed the gentle downward slope to the front of the school. Only the sixth form and teaching staff could enter through the quadrangle, while the Lower and Middle schools walked a little further through the yard and into the long school corridor.

In 1957 Jimmy Edwards (left) was the star of the B.B.C television comedy series “Whacko” which was shown on small black and white television sets with poor picture and sound reception. Jimmy’s trademark handlebar moustache, mortarboard and black academic gown marked him out as the incompetent schoolmaster, forever jousting with that errant pupil “Taplow”. Their fictitious school mirrored some of the features of “The Castle” – the academic dress of the staff; the occasional corporal  punishment;  the management of the pupils by the school prefects, all of who seemed like giants to that very small 11 year-old boy. The prefects would dish out lines for the slightest perceived misdemeanours saying “100 lines by tomorrow boy” then to rattle off at breakneck speed, “Deep harm to disobey seeing as obedience is a bond of rule”.

In other respects the school where Jimmy Edwards ruled the roost was very unlike “The Castle”. There all pupils were “posh” whereas at Cyfarthfa the school was a delicious mix of children of professionals, tradesmen and unskilled workers – the sons and daughter of teachers, · electricians and fitters, production operatives at Hoovers, I.C.I, B.S.A and Triang Toys. In the comedy series all of the children were English through and through, with appropriate English surnames. In my class there were Bernstein, Lozano, Jones, Walsh, Robertson, Olsen and Muller reflecting the local ethnic mix, as a result of immigration spread over the previous century.

A few months earlier the 120 new entrants to the school had passed the  11 Plus Examination whereas on that first morning of term they assembled in the old school hall, which would soon be converted into extra classrooms. The stern looking Headmaster, Mr W.  Lloyd Williams M.A. (right) began the introductions and commenced the allocations to forms by asking, “All those who wish to study Welsh hold up your hands!” Then thirty or so pupils were placed into form 2A and the remainder allocated into three streamed forms of 2B,  2C and 2D.

Mr Bernard Jenkins (English) took charge of form 2B. A lover of golf he proved a humorous, if strict form master. Later that day we would meet our new teachers such as May Treharne (Latin); Mr  J H Davies (French) a short man nicknamed “Twiddles”; Mr  A G Harris (Geography) known as Gus who prior to World War II  had married a former school P.E mistress, Miss Florence Price, and set up home near Penydarren Park; Maud Davies (Biology) who lived in Treharris and was a cousin of the Headmaster; the History teacher, Mr G L Williams nicknamed “Nero” and Mr Trevor Jones (English) who lived in Twynyrodyn and who joined the staff in 1952.

Mr Harvard Walters (Welsh) (left) had been at the school since 1936 and much later became the Deputy Headmaster. One of his tasks was to begin the long and frustrating attempt to teach the Welsh National Anthem and school song, the first 2 lines of which were:-

Ienctyd y Castell, Caer I Ddysg a Hedd,
Gloewn Ein Harfau I’r Gad Ddi-gledd.

Many a time he would despair at the “Wenglish” of most of the pupils moaning that they were “a lot of Dowlais Cockneys”.

At lunchtime we marched to the canteen sited in its own ground to the rear of the school where under the keen eyes of the prefects we were taught dining room etiquette. Each pupil was careful to walk slowly to each of the afternoon lessons with leather satchels becoming heavier as the day progressed. New friends were quickly made and by the end of that school day new groups ambled back to the buses, however most of the pupils soon had their school tie askew, and gold trimmed school cap set at an angle.

The journey home on the bus was light-hearted although the prefects still remained in firm control. The older boys whistled the catchy tune of the song  “Freight  Train”  which  had  been  recorded  by  the  singer  Nancy Whiskey, just at the end period of the Skiffle craze. The new boy alighted from the bus at Penuel Chapel on Twyn Hill, with his school satchel seeming to “weigh a ton”, however as each of the years passed it lost its shine and became as “light as a feather”.

I remember with affection Jimmy Edwards, Nancy Whiskey and that first day at “The Castle”.

Photo courtesy of the Alan George Archive

Sinclair C5: Sir Clive’s motoring mis-step

by Richard Bremner

Follow the death of Sir Clive Sinclair recently, here is an article about one of his less successful inventions with a Merthyr connection….

The Sinclair C5 came in a cardboard box delivered to your door, it was built in a Hoover washing machine factory and it was narrow enough to drive down your hallway. Which many concluded was the best place for it.

This was a cheap new revolutionary vehicle for the masses, reckoned millionaire computer whiz Sir Clive Sinclair, whose qualifications for this forecast were founded on his successful launch of one of the earliest pocket calculators and the famous ZX Spectrum home computer. Well, the Sinclair C5 was certainly cheap compared to a normal car, and it certainly looked revolutionary. But not in a good way.

Genesis: 1979

Its emergence was the result of Sinclair’s long-running interest in electric cars, which lead to the start of the C1 project in 1979. Sinclair asked a former Radionics colleague Tony Wood Rogers to consult on the project, and design specialists Ogle to style it.

Ogle subsequently revealed that they never believed in the project, their concentration on its aerodynamic properties – critical for an electric vehicle, even with the modest 30mph target top speed of the C1 – resulting in an unhelpful weight gain that probably undid all the aerodynamic wins. That made the C1’s 30 mile range a near-impossible goal, despite a lightweight polypropylene body built only for one.

Better than a moped?

Sinclair’s aim was to build a better vehicle than a moped, and at a price vastly undercutting a car’s. But by spring 1983 he abandoned this project to raise more funds, undeterred by Ogle’s prophetic view that the C1 wouldn’t sell because its range was limited, it wasn’t weather-proof and it was too slow.

Sinclair raised £12 million by selling shares in Radionic, over £8 million of it dedicated to the newly formed Sinclair Vehicles. Within months the project was back on, and the Hoover domestic appliance company contracted to build the vehicle, as Sinclair preferred to call it, at its Welsh factory. And at the staggeringly optimistic rate of 8,000 a week – quantities to rival Ford.

Lotus engineering

The project got a boost of sorts when the government introduced legislation, lobbied for by bicycle-maker Raleigh, that allowed electrically-assisted two and three wheelers onto UK roads. But only at speeds up to 15mph. That the electric motor could only be as powerful as 250 Watts and the vehicle weigh no more than 60kg also had an unhelpful impact on Sinclair’s motor-assisted recumbent tricycle.

But within these limits, it was well-engineered, Lotus hired to develop the C5 from Wood Rogers’ prototype. Like a Lotus it had a backbone steel chassis, a welded composite two-piece body and it was built down to a weight. An electric fan motor drove a single speed, belt-driven gearbox and it was steered by handlebars that lay below you, where they were easy and relaxing to reach, an ingenious solution devised by Wood Rogers.

Sinclair C5 engine: you

But the main source of drive was not so much the motor as you, and the Sinclair’s big, square pedals. The C5 was simply a tricycle with a part-time 12-volt motor, and it should have been sold that way to avoid disappointment. But marketing it as a tricycle would never have scored the colossal publicity that came its way because it was presented as a car, all of this preceded by the usual pre-launch fanfare.

Spin it any way you like, but the Sinclair C5 launch was a disaster. Problem one was that it took place on January 10 1985, the cold not only reducing the range of its puny 12-volt battery but also treating the assembled hacks to the shivering reality of pedalling a C5 in the cold, wind and rain.

Problem two was the location. North London’s Alexandra Palace is an attractive venue, partly because it’s built on a hill. But it didn’t take long for the hacks, serial long-lunchers among them, to discover one of the C5’s many problems.

Hill-climbing often overloaded the motor to the point of cut-out – a state signalled by a forlorn electronic peeping – and when the motor wasn’t overworked a modest gradient would soon flatten the plastic trike’s battery. Some C5s didn’t decimate their batteries – but that was only because they didn’t work at all.

Still, orders came, but at nowhere near the rate needed to absorb the 8000-a-week torrent spilling from Hoover’s Merthyr Tydfil factory. There was plenty of brave talk from Sinclair Vehicles on the fizzing interest in their £399 transport revolution, and how better weather would help sales.

Surging criticism

But it wasn’t enough to staunch the surging criticism. Testers found the range was more like 10 miles rather than the claimed 20, and less on a clement day. They felt hugely vulnerable on the road, a feeling undiminished by the optional high-visibility mast, which added to the deep feelings of foolishness that swept over anyone stepping into this pedal-powered plastic bath.

Although that was nothing to the embarrassment you’d feel at fitting – and wearing – the Sinclair’s wet-weather gear, which consisted of fabric panels covering its sides and your legs, and a matching hooded anorak. Putting all this on would have added another 15 minutes to your dismally slow journey, and made you feel almost as humiliated as a naked hotel guest trapped in a lift.

There was no heater – although you’d soon get warm pedalling when the motor stopped whining – there was no reverse gear and it had the turning circle of the trucks threatening to squash it.

Beautifully designed… in parts

Examine the C5 in detail, though, and you’ll spot some subtle industrial elegance. It wasn’t a beautiful design, but parts of it were beautifully designed. Gus Desbarats, a Royal College of Art graduate hired to style the C5, later described his contribution as ‘convert[ing] an ugly pointless device into a prettier, safer and more usable pointless device.’

Its pointlessness was proven by the fact that of the 14,000 produced – less than two weeks’ production at full tilt – only 5000 were sold.

Sir Clive Sinclair: deep belief – in the wrong idea

The C5 was the product of a man with the means believing deeply in the wrong idea. No more than rudimentary market research would have revealed the C5’s flaws and near uselessness in the harsh environment of a late 20th century road network.

Its vulnerability made a superbike look safe. But perhaps the most powerful killer of C5 sales was that you looked an idiot when driving it. And cars – or bikes – that humiliate their users make a hard, hard sell.

Some might say that the C5 was ahead of its time, but it’s doubtful that a tricycle travelling at snail-speed in the company of artics would be allowed on the road today. It would face the same construction and use troubles impeding the decidedly more brilliant Segway, which isn’t allowed on the road either, but has many more uses.

Curiously, one of those is providing ‘safari’ rides in the grounds of Alexandra Palace.

Many thanks to Richard Bremner for allowing me to reproduce this article. To view the original, please go to:-

https://www.retromotor.co.uk/great-motoring-disasters/sinclair-c5-sir-clive-mis-step/

Bare Knuckles, White Ladies and Martyred Rebels: The Mythic Townscape of Merthyr Tydfil

by Gareth E Rees

The article below is copied, courtesy of Gareth E Rees from his website Unofficial Britain. To view the original article, please follow this link: http://www.unofficialbritain.com/bare-knuckles-white-ladies-and-martyred-rebels-the-mythic-townscape-of-merthyr-tydfil/

In the year leading up the (Not So) Great Pandemic, I was fortunate enough to take a trip around Wales, researching my book, Unofficial Britain on a sunny weekend in spring.

It was just me, my car and a smartphone. Plus some underpants. Clean ones, at that. No expense spared. Those were the days when you could buy pants on a whim, simply by walking into a clothes shop.

One of my aims of my trip was to explore the Brymbo steelworks near Wrexham, where my grandfather worked until his death in 1976, and where my uncle worked until the factory closed in 1990.

As I was to discover, the ruins of the Brymbo works are haunted by a bottom-pinching phantom steelworker and two black dogs, which I saw with my very own eyes, but that is a story you can read in the book when it comes out.

While I was in North Wales, I was accompanied to the secret mustard gas factory nestled in the Rhydymwyn Valley by Bobby Seal, who wrote about it for Unofficial Britain in 2015: The Valley Works: Mendelssohn, Mustard Gas and Memory.

On the second day of my mini-tour I drove to South Wales, stopping at Port Talbot to look at its still-functioning steelworks, where a monk is said to haunt the grounds of Tata Steel (more of that in my forthcoming book, too).

As I approached Cardiff, I decided on a detour to Merthyr Tydfil, once the great industrial centre of the British Empire, dominated by four ironworks: Plymouth, Penydarren, Dowlais and Cyfarthfa. By the 1830s, the latter two had become the largest in the world.

As iron made way for steel in the latter half of the 19th century, the Ynysfach Ironwork closed. Its Coke ovens became a hub for the homeless, destitute and society’s outsiders. At the time is was considered a den of boozing, thievery and prostitution, but it may well have great place to hang out and – from the perspective of today – at least they could all be closer than 2 metres apart.

It was here where local bare knuckle fighter Redmond Coleman became locked in an epic battle with his rival, Tommy Lyons. The fight is said to have lasted over three hours, leaving both men flat out on the ground at the end, panting with exhaustion. It would have made the infamously long fist-fight scene in John Carpenter’s They Live seem like a minor playground scuffle. Redmond Coleman was so attached to the place that he later claimed his spirit would never leave Merthyr and instead would remain to haunt the Coke Ovens.

This form of afterlife was to be the fate of Mary Ann Rees. Alas, she had no choice in her decision to haunt Merthyr Tydfil. In 1908 she was murdered by her boyfriend, William Foy, whom she had followed into Merthyr on her final evening alive, suspecting him of sleeping with someone else. Her broken body was found in a disused furnace. Rees is considered to be the White Lady who today haunts the old engine house: a sad lady in a long, flowing dress.

The decline of the coal, iron and steel industries devastated Merthyr but it remained a hub for manufacturing. In the 20th century the Hoover factory employed over 4,000 people, with its own sports teams, social clubs, fire brigade and library.

In 1985, Sir Clive Sinclair’s infamous C5 battery operated vehicle went into production at the factory. A local urban myth was that the motors for the CV were, in fact, repurposed Hoover washing motors. They created only 17,000 units before operation was shut down six months later.

The factory closed in 2009 and remains a quiet hulk by the Taff at the edge of the town. Across the road is a derelict car park, its tarmac crumbling, with moss and grass creeping across the last faded parking bay lines.

A majestic pylon inside the perimeter of the abandoned car park slings electricity over the factory to the other side of the valley, where its brethren have amassed on the hills in great numbers. Whatever has happened in the past century, power still pulses through the town, coursing through the veins of Wales.

The fall of the Hoover factory was another blow to the economically stricken town, which might have lost its role in the world, but keeps its story alive in public artworks that I saw on my journey.

The past is never far away when you walk through Merthyr, a townscape saturated in industrial lore.

… Near St. Tydfil’s Church is an ornate drinking fountain on a raised plinth. It commemorates the pioneers of the South Wales steam coal trade. Its canopy is adorned with steel motifs of coal wheels, steamboats and a miner with a pickaxe.

…On a modern brick wall in the town centre, beneath a ‘To Let’ sign, is an abstract frieze of the industrial landscape.

….A pub that has opened in the restored water board building is named The Iron Dragon, with two resplendent golden dragons sculptures jutting from either side of the stone columns that frame the door.

…The Caedraw Roundabout outside the Aldi contains a sculpture by Charles Sansbury, which transforms an earth-bound pit winding gear into a 12 metre tall spire, surrounded by a crescent of standing stones, positing some link in the imagination between the Neolithic and the industrial revolution.

…Pink granite benches are engraved with poems about the industrial past. “the stalks of chimneys bloomed continuous smoke and flame”, says one by Mike Jenkins. Another quotes the scientist Michael Faraday:

“The fires from the hills shone very bright into my room and the blast of the furnace kept up a continual roar.”

On another bench I read lines from ‘Merthyr’ a poem by local lad, Glyn Jones:

“…I find what rustles/ Oftenest and scentiest / through the torpid trees / Of my brain-pan, is some Merthyr-mothered breeze”.

In that same poem, Jones describes the post-industrial town’s decayed slum areas mid-century as “battered wreckage in some ghastly myth”.

On this bench pictured below, was a reference to Dic Penderyn and the 1831 Merthyr uprising.

At that time, the town was home to some of the most skilled ironworkers in the world. But unrest was growing….

Locals were increasingly angry about their inadequate wages, while they were lauded over by the industrialists of the town. It was time for change, but they were hopelessly disenfranchised with only 4% of men having the right to vote.

In May 1831, workers marched through the streets, demanding Parliamentary reform, growing rowdier as their ranks swelled. They raided the local debtors’ court, reclaiming confiscated property and destroying the debtors’ records. Growing nervous about the rebellion, which was beginning to spread to other villages and towns, the industrial bosses and landowners called in the army.

On June 3rd, soldiers confronted protestors outside the Castle Inn and violence broke out. After the scuffle, Private Donald Black lay wounded, stabbed in the back with a bayonet by an unseen assailant.

Despite there being no evidence that young Richard Lewis committed the act, he was accused of the crime and sentenced to death by hanging, disregarding the petition of the sceptical townsfolk, and even doubting articles in the local newspaper. The government wanted the death of a rebel as an example to others, and poor Dic Penderyn was to be it, regardless of trifling matters like proof.

He is now an important cult figure in the working class struggle, buried in his hometown of Port Talbot, but remaining here in spirit, one small burning flame of Merthyr’s fiery legacy.

To buy a copy of Gareth’s book, please follow the link on his site.

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.