Over the years, Merthyr has produced some excellent historians, and I would like to introduce a new feature celebrating some of them. To mark the 110th anniversary of his death, we kick off with Merthyr’s first ‘official’ historian – Charles Wilkins.
Charles Wilkins was born on 16 August 1830 in Stonehouse, Gloucestershire, the second of nine children of William Wilkins, a Chartist bookseller, and Anna Maria Wilkins. In 1840 the family moved to Merthyr, with William Wilkins opening a shop on the High Street (opposite the current Lloyd’s Bank), and eventually becoming postmaster at the post office adjoining his business. At the age of fourteen, Charles left school to work with his father as a clerk at the post office.
In 1859, Charles married Lydia Jeans and they settled at Springfield Villa in Thomastown. The (by contemporary accounts) idyllic marriage was shattered in 1867 when Lydia died giving birth to their third child.
The following year, Charles married Mary Skipp in Topsley, Herefordshire, and she would bear him two further children.
In 1871, William Wilkins died, and Charles took over as postmaster.
From 1846 to 1866 he was also librarian of the Merthyr Tydfil Subscription Library of which Thomas Stephens was secretary.
From the age of fourteen, Charles began writing articles for local and national Welsh newspapers, and in 1867, he published ‘The History of Merthyr Tydfil’, the first ‘official history of the town. It was subsequently extended and re-published in 1908.
As well as writing some fiction, he also wrote several other major historical works including:-
- Wales, Past and Present (1870) (The History of Wales for Englishmen)
- Tales and Sketches of Wales (1879, 1880)
- The History of the Literature of Wales from 1300 to 1650 (1884)
- The History of Newport (1886)
- The South Wales Coal Trade and Its Allied Industries (1888)
- The History of the Iron, Steel, Tinplate and Other Trades of Wales (1903)
In 1877, he was “initiated into the mysteries of the Druidic lore”, and at the 1881 National Eisteddfod, held in Merthyr Tydfil, he won a £21 prize (approximately equivalent to £2,100 in 2019) and gold medal for the best “History of the Literature of Monmouthshire and Glamorganshire from the earliest period to the present time.” In 1882 he founded ‘The Red Dragon: The National Magazine of Wales’. That same year, it was reported in the Western Mail (7 December 1882) that, “after careful examination of the various works written by Mr. Wilkins”, he was “unanimously elected to the super graduate Degree of Literature (Lit. D.)” by the Druidic University of America and its affiliate in Maine.
Charles Wilkins retired as postmaster at the end of 1897 after almost 50 years of service. He died at Springfield Villa on 2 August 1913 and was buried at Cefn Cemetery.
Although his history of Merthyr contain some inaccuracies; bearing in mind when it was written, and that a lot of it was based on oral history; it is a remarkable work, being the first of its kind to chronicle Merthyr’s history, and it is an invaluable resource to use as a starting point for further research.
You can download the 1867 version of Wilkins history of Merthyr here:
https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_History_of_Merthyr_Tydfil/FWk1AQAAIAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0
The 1908 revision is available here: