THE DUSTY DECADE

by E.S.G.PARKHOUSE

The Dusty Decade

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This is 1 of seven copies produced between November 1999 and March 2000 by R.N. Parkhouse, 83 St Kingsmark Avenue, Chepstow, Gwent NP16 5SN

[previously, two copies were produced 7 October 1997] tel.: +44 (0) 1291 629687

e-mail: roy@parkhouse.org.uk or rparkhouse@bigfoot.com website: http://www.parkhouse.org.uk

© The Estate of E.S.G.Parkhouse

The picture of Edward Stanley George Parkhouse on the front cover was taken in 1931.

The title “The Dusty Decade” was what he wanted it to be.

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Preface 5 Biographical Note 7 The Early Years 9 The Dusty Decade 31 The Strike 65 After The Strike 73 Afterword 85

Illustrations

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The manuscript for this document is in the possession of the editor, R.N.Parkhouse. It comprises the following:

1. A “Walker’s” 80 Sheet Pad, 9”x7”, with a green cover, a product of TJ & J Smith Ltd. The first note states “Since these notes are merely jotted down at odd moments (when the memories come into my mind) I have made no attempt to sort them into any sort of se-quence or chapters”. Another note states “13-6-83 Rang Roy & Greta, who said ‘carry on, so -” This suggests that it was started in June 1983. There is also a note indicating how the pages, numbered 1 to 45, should be read.

2. A W.H. Smith Loose Leaf Pad, 11¾in x 8¼in, 80 leaves. This has been numbered 46 to 98. The first, un-numbered sheet, contains some notes. Since the numbers follow on from the previous item, it is presumed that the writing dates also follow on. A note on the last page indicates that both the “Walker’s” and the “W.H. Smith” pads had been completed by 1st August 1983.

3. A number of 8in x 5in yellow cards, numbered 1 to 23 in an envelope marked “The 1926 Strike”. This is presumed to be the “earlier piece he did for Carol”.

4. A selection from earlier writings, contained in a foolscap buff-coloured pouch, on odd sheets of yellowing lined paper, some of which at least, apparently date back to the 1920’s.

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Edward Stanley George Parkhouse was born on 2 April 1906, the second child of Alfred James Parkhouse and Mary Elizabeth Haynes Easton, who were born and married in Somerset, but moved to Aberkenfig, just north of Bridgend, South Wales, in search of work. They had six children before Alfred James died 20 Janu-ary 1914 at the age of 39 years. The death certificate records that he died of 1) In-fluenza 2) Acute Meningitis, exhaustion.

Mary Elizabeth was left alone to raise four boys and two girls, their ages ranging from two weeks to 10 years. She died 7 September 1933, when her youngest child was 19 years old.

Edward Stanley George became a miner in September 1920 and, apart from peri-ods of unemployment, remained a miner until he went to join his elder brother, Al-fred Charles Easton, at Oxford, in October 1930.

Alfred Charles Easton had found a job in the Pressed Steel Works at Cowley, Ox-ford. He helped Edward Stanley George to get a job there polishing cars. Their youngest brother, Alfred James Frank, was to join them a few years later.

Shortly after starting his new job, he married Edith Alice Bass, the second daugh-ter of William James Bass and Alice Jane (née Oak), of 40 Elm Street, Cardiff, a light haulier.

Their brother, William Cyril James, remained in the Aberkenfig area all his life, as did their two sisters, Ethel Bertha May, and Blodwen Doris Mary.

This document is Edward Stanley George’s recollection of his early life and the ten years between 1920 and 1930 which he thought of as his “dusty decade”. He lived in Oxford all his life apart from a period of compulsory service in the Royal Air Force during World War 2 , between the years of 1942 and 1945, most of which was in India. He retired from British Leyland (Austin-Morris) Limited on the 31st July 1970.

Edith Alice Parkhouse (née Bass) died 26 May 1972. Edward Stanley George Parkhouse died 27 February 1985.

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The

Autobiographical Writings

of

Edward Stanley George Parkhouse

(born 2nd April 1906 at Bridgwater, Somerset, died 27th February 1985 at Oxford)

Married Edith Alice Bass 16th August 1933

Children :

Roy Norman born 7th November 1933 Jean Hilary born 12th Decefnber 1934

Kenneth James born 6th April 1936 Carol Edith born 8th Deceniber 1937

Shirley Elizabeth Bass born 3rd August 1947

Transcribed from the manuscript by R.N.Parkhouse

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I was born at 8 Kimberley Terrace, off the Bristol Road, in Bridgwater, Somerset, on April second 1906. Mam always said that I was born half an hour after mid-night, but I have always had the firm belief that I came into the world half an hour before midnight. Mam would not admit it. She was very superstitious and did not like the idea of her newborn son being an April Fool!

Bridgwater days are but a vague memory in my mind. I know we lived near, per-haps next door, to a family named Merrett and one of Mam’s favourite stories re-gards one of the Merrett boys. A sweet lodged in his throat and Mrs Merrett sought our Mam’s help. Mam, so she says, found him blue in the face and rapidly choking. She stuck her finger down his throat, groped a while, with fast-beating heart - and, by a miracle, she claims, hooked the sweet free and saved his life.

One of my earliest memories is of Grandfather Parkhouse’s funeral from Rose Cottage in Puriton. It was on September 26th 1906, when I was only six months old. I close my eyes, remembering that day over seventy years ago. I see again BIG, BIG horses and a BIG, BIG hearse. The enormous driver sat on a seat, which was at least halfway to heaven way up in the sky. I have always found it hard to convince the family that the recollection is real, but I believe anyway, the dates in Roy’s family tree prove it.

Later, perhaps on one of our visits during the Somerset/Wales - Wales/Somerset interludes, I recall walking along the banks of the river Parrett watching young lads slipping down the greasy slope into the water to recover what we then called “sea-apples”. I suppose the fruit had been washed into the stream from the orchards when the tide was up or the Parrett was in flood. Quite close to where we lived there were some brickfields and at least one place where they manufactured “Bath Brick” used for cleaning cutlery, especially knives. The Blake statue in the middle of town is a misty memory and I am sure that my last visit to it was at Carnival time, complete with fireworks. I think it still goes on today.

Though I found out later that Mam’s name was Mary Elizabeth Haynes Parkhouse, she was known as Polly to Dad and the other grown-ups and Auntie Polly to the children. Aunt Eva, Dad’s sister, and her husband, Uncle Bill Redding lived in Bridgwater and I have confused memories of them coming to see us and of us visit-ing them. When we went to see Auntie Eva and family I quite clearly remember

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climbing stairs to their living rooms, which were over a shop. Whether it was their shop or not escapes my memory, but I do recall that Auntie Eva was one of our favourites. (Sometime or other I gathered that she had married quite young - 16 or 17).

Taunton is far more rewarding, with a fund of memories. We must have lived in Taunton much longer than in Bridgwater. Where in the town? I remember Hayman’s Buildings at one end of the town, not far from the tram terminus. I recall a small number of very tiny cottages built around a sort of courtyard, on one flank the dwelling-houses and on the other flank a group of primitive toilets. Grandmother and Grandfather Easton lived in one of these tiny houses. I remember a stone step outside their front door, upon which, our Mam told us, Granfy had been known to do his own special dance accompanied by his own special songs, when he could af-ford some beer.

He was tiny as I remember him, probably just over five feet tall. Granny Easton remains a vague picture in my mind - but I know I liked her. Inside the cottage, by a small window overlooking the courtyard, was a little table, upon which rested an opened family bible and a spectacle case. I am almost sure that Granny and Granfy used the same pair of glasses - except that, according to the marriage cer-tificate of Mam and Dad, George Easton (Granfy) could only make his mark.

Jumping forward. Some years later, when we were living in Aberkenfig, Mam was visiting Auntie Rose and Uncle Bill at 74 Oakfield, Ogmore Vale. A telegram ar-rived to say poor Granfy Easton, our Mam’s Dad, had been found dead. Charlie must have been in work (Like me, he started at 13), so Mrs Mainey, our next-door neighbour at Mount Pleasant, lent me some money, gave me strict instructions, and away I went. I walked to Tondu railway station, caught a train to Nantymoel, found 74 Oakfield, and delivered the awful news to Mam.

So, going back to Hayman’s Buildings in Taunton, Mam took me with her for the funeral. I remember a dear old neighbour of Granfy’s, Mrs Clench, providing me with a bed - and I’ll never forget that, on a little bedside table, there was a real clock, unheard of before to me. I will never, never forget its fascinating “tick-tock, tick-tock”, one of the sweetest lullabies in my young life.

While at this end of Taunton, among others, I had a friend about my own age. We would visit a nearby park together and, beyond the trams, walk through some large cider-apple orchards. Children were allowed to pick up the windfalls - and Frankie Wood and I would engineer our own special windfalls when other children had passed through before us. After dark (and I can’t imagine how I was ever al-lowed to do this!) we sometimes played “Dickie Show the Light” with a candle-stub stuck in a jam jar.

Sometimes Frankie and I were given the honour of joining some local farm la-bourers. We’d take a slice of bread and jam with us and trudge out into “the coun-try”. The men would throw their jackets and breadbaskets in the hedge and then get to work hoeing the turnips, mangolds and swedes. When the time was right, Frankie and I would be sent to the farm on a ritual errand. Here we would be pro-vided with a firkin (small barrel) of cider, which we carried back to the men by

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means of a stick through an iron ring in the firkin, which we held between us. I remember being urged to have a taste of the raw, tangy liquid - and it was home time when I woke up!

While at this end of town, I attended Rowbarton church and Rowbarton church school. It was the same church where Mam and Dad were married on 26th June 1902. I get all mixed up about schools at this point because later, as I will try to explain as the tale unfolds, when we moved to the other end of Taunton, we at-tended Trinity church and I went to Trinity church school, where, among other things, I learnt to knit! Still, when we went back again to Wales, I attended the in-fant classes of Tondu Boys’ school.

So, to come back to Rowbarton. Apparently, I was very slow at reading, so I was “kept in” during the whole of one playtime and given extra tuition. Curiously, from that critical point right up to now, I have been quite good at reading, spelling and composition. Many years later, at Mount Pleasant one Christmas, Mam received a half-pound fancy tin of her favourite tea from Auntie Lizzie. Mam made it last as long as possible and then – (surprise, surprise!) - when she came to the bottom of the tin, she found a bright new shilling. The smile on Mam’s face at that moment was worth a whole tin-full of shillings.

While at Rowbarton, a very important person came into my life. Her name was Auntie Lizzie. She was our Mam’s very closest friend. They had worked together for a number of years in a nearby laundry. One thing I recall about Auntie Lizzie was that she was nice in the best sense of the word. She always dressed nice, smelt nice (yes!) and, somehow it meant a good deal to me, she had a nice voice and a nice way of speaking. She was with us quite often and, later, when we were again living at No 1 Mount Pleasant, Aberkenfig, she spent a holiday with us. I think it must have been during the birth of one of the girls, Bertha or Doris, because, in one of the front bedrooms our lovely china bowl and jug were filled with steaming hot water and there was “scented soap” (toilet soap) in a lovely little china dish covered in roses.

I do recall going with Auntie Lizzie (who wore white cotton gloves) on the long walk up Mynydd Bach, sitting in the Devil’s Arm Chair, and back home the “long way” around Court Coleman.

Back at Rowbarton, with Mam and Aunt Lizzie, we often walked to the big house adjoining the laundry where they had laboured so long together. Here there was a tennis court and Charlie and I were given a number of well-worn tennis balls, with which we later played for weeks on end. Also at Rowbarton, I dimly remember, was a bicycle factory, where Dad’s bike, complete with solid, bone-shaking tyres, was made to measure, no doubt at some expense! (The same bicycle was raffled in Aberkenfig after Dad’s death just before World War 1). [Ed: note that the photo-graph showing him with a bike has pneumatic tyres].

Now came a change, must have been an important one too. We moved to another part of Taunton, Alma Street (or Terrace?). The house was No. 54. It had bay windows in the front, gas, at least for lighting, and a nice, big back garden. Dad was then an engineer (?) in a brewery. As he was a strict teetotaller, Dad swapped

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his allowance of free beer with a farm worker living nearby for his free milk. Dad was also entitled to a free supply of “pop”. I remember seeing the bottles in a cup-board in the front room. Lots and lots of colours on one shelf and a smaller num-ber of bottles on another shelf. These were for Stanley, who didn’t like the others. Good old Dad!

Dad once took me with him to the brewery and he showed me his very own per-sonal cupboard, opened the door, and there on the shelves were identical groups of bottles - the next consignment for Alma Street! Worth mentioning is the fact that St Mary’s church must have been quite near, for I remember being enthralled with the soaring music of its peal of bells all the time I was with my Dad at the brewery

Dad was a Tory and I remember there must have been a general election while we lived in Alma Street (1912?). Charlie and I sported medals with a picture of the Conservative candidate, a Mr Wills. We sang with others: “Vote, vote, vote for Mr Wills. Drive old Shankey (?) from the land. If it wasn’t for the law, I would smack him on the jaw and he wouldn’t be a Liberal any more!” Election Day must have been a holiday, for we didn’t go to school, and Dad walked us up to the brewery where he worked.

Entrance to the works was through huge double doors. These were now closed and entirely covered by some royal blue material. Dad was always straight and tall, but today, just then, he seemed at least a foot taller, his black curly hair glistened, his dark moustache shone, and his smile - well, what a memory! That night, when Mam had packed us off to bed, I was told that Dad had gone to the parade to see who had come top of the poll. Wondering, I fell asleep imagining lots of people climbing a pole which stretched way up into the night sky. I think “we” won, but I’m not sure.

Sunday mornings, presumably while Mam cooked the dinner, Dad took us to see the soldiers (redcoats then) on a church parade. As the soldiers marched along the street, Dad would hoist me on to his shoulders, where I proudly watched and lis-tened to the band, way above the others. (I also remember sitting on Dad’s shoul-ders watching a football match over the top of a fence while he did the same thing through a convenient knot-hole!).

We often visited Vivary Park, sometimes with Mam and Dad, sometimes with other children. Here was held the annual Flower Show, finished off with a fantastic firework display. My memory tells me that the whole of Taunton was there! Per-haps it was here; it was surely in some large, open space, that I was taken to see my first aeroplane fly. We watched while this strange little machine, with a whir-ring thing in front, coughing and spluttering, trundled towards a distant hedge. Time and time again it happened, but the thing stayed quite firmly on the ground. So, disappointed, somehow defeated, we made our way back home. Then the shout went up. “Listen. Look! Oh look!” We traced the unaccustomed sound, glued our eyes on that bit of sky, and there, fussily, bravely, triumphantly, the tiny machine crossed the sky above us. We cheered. I was thrilled. I had seen it flying!

(Here I must emphasise that, to add confusion to the muddled memories of one so young and small, some of them, and I don’t know which, are divided by trips to

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Wales and back to Somerset, or the other way round). Anyhow, Alma Street. We got our coal then from a yard at the top of the street, in wicker baskets mounted on a sack-truck, I believe in hundredweights. Norman Chinn, my friend, and I helped each other on this dirty errand. After delivery to his or our house, it was our duty to return the empty basket and sack-truck to the coal-yard. We had an ex-cellent system of sharing the pushing or riding. First Norman rode in the basket and I pushed. Then we changed over. But we were both pushing when we finally entered the yard.

But, one day, our cherished system went wrong. On arrival at the yard, the coal merchant was checking the return of his property. One glance and we were in trou-ble. There, clearly visible in the sooty coal dust at the bottom of the basket, were the confused boot prints of Stanley and Norman.

Somewhere quite near (Duke Street seems to ring a bell) was a shirt factory. Wandering round the walls of the building, we boys could often pick up discarded elastic back-studs. Fitted in the correct manner around an empty cotton reel, with a matchstick as ammunition, we could sit in the gallery of one of the local churches and bombard selected members of the congregation below during the hymn singing. Another memory of the same galleried church comes to mind. Charlie and I were given a halfpenny each for the collection. On our way there we had to pass a little house where a plump old lady made delicious treacle toffees. Sometimes we would pause awhile. Then only one halfpenny found its way into the collection plate, and Charlie and I would be much too busy munching treacle toffee to join in singing “Onward Christian Soldiers”.

Looking back, I am sure that Charlie must have been the leading light on these occasions. After all, he was three whole years older than I was, half a lifetime older at that age.

Money doesn’t seem to have been very important in those Taunton days. Perhaps it was because my sole income was one penny a week pocket money. Remember that my “pop” was free. Then, as forever since, I was an ardent window-shopper and one day the item in the middle of the toy shop window display had me goggle-eyed. It was a fireman’s helmet, a shining, almost real fireman’s helmet. As the fire station was quite near, I had often watched the galloping horses belting out of the fire station on an alarm call. The driver wore a helmet and the man who stood ringing the bell like mad also wore a helmet. I wanted to wear a helmet. And there was one in the window.

So --. Well, for weeks I denied myself whatever I usually spent my penny on and then came the day. Fearfully, I gazed in the toyshop window. The fireman’s helmet still gleamed and glinted there. Almost as brave as a real fireman, I stalked into the shop, opened my sweaty little hand and plonked fourpence on the counter. Then my heart almost stopped beating. Even when you are little people’s faces tell you things, and I knew that what the shopman’s face was telling me was bad news. And I also knew he was sorry for me. “Sorry, sonny,” he said quietly “the fireman’s helmet is sevenpence halfpenny. For fourpence you can have - “.

But I did not hear any more. Making sure of my money, I hid myself somewhere

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and cried my eyes out - and for the life of me I can’t remember what I did with my fourpence. (Anyway, later, in Wales, and for free, I did have a fireman’s hel-met to play with - and a policeman’s, a soldier’s, a sailor’s and lots of other nice things, but not for keeps. And all because Mam, by then a widow with six kids, took in washing).

In town, near the bridge over the river Tone, we often gathered to watch the trains. Sometimes they would stop outside the railway station, waiting for the sig-nals, and we would say nice things to the passengers. Sometimes they would throw out a couple of coppers, for which we scrambled, not always. On one of these oc-casions, copperless, I met my Granfie Easton. He put his arm around my shoulder (I don’t think he was much bigger than I was!) searched his pockets and put a half-penny in my hand. I went into a nearby toy shop and asked what I could have for a halfpenny. I was shown a number of items, out of which I selected a water whis-tle. Outside, holding it in a small puddle, I tried the plunger - and it came apart in my hands.

Again I found somewhere to hide and cry, after throwing the useless whistle be-hind some newspaper boards standing outside the shop. While we were attending Trinity church and school, Charlie and I joined the Sunday school on a train excur-sion to Weston-super-Mare. We had hardly arrived when I spotted a toy tin trumpet on a nearby stall. By the time I had decided not to buy it the rest of our Taunton party had moved on and there was I, a little boy lost on the sands of Weston. I cried my eyes out. A man and woman took me under their wing, but it was tea-time before they were able to re-unite me with the rest of the Trinity crowd.

This happened in a hotel where the party was booked for tea. I remember being pushed into a crowded room, where Charlie was removing a pencil and rubber held to a show-card by elastic. I don’t believe anyone had missed me!

In Taunton I first went to “magic lantern” lectures, and also my first moving pictures. Silent of course and, inevitably Westerns (cowboy pictures) and slapstick comedies. Two lantern titles I remember are “Curfew Shall Not Ring Tonight” and “The Signalman’s Daughter”.

My earliest clear memory of Wales is when I seemed to be starting school all over again! First Rowbarton, then Trinity, in Taunton, now it was Tondu Infants’ school. Mam escorted me. From Mount Pleasant, past Chappel’s stable and cart-shed, down the gulley past Chappel’s bakehouse and shop and on to the Bridgend road. We turned left, past the Star hotel, past the cinema, a big tin shed at the top of a steep flight of concrete steps. Down the Rock hill, through the village, up the Catholic hill, under the red railway bridge, past Evanstown brickworks (where later I went to work) and there was the school.

One awful incident remains in my mind of the early days of Tondu School. I was accused of saying a dirty word, pushed into the cloakroom, where my mouth was ceremoniously washed out in a hand-basin.

Perhaps to balance the painful memory, I clearly recall a Christmas party we had at which we all stood around a large canvas “ship”, the most of which was a tall

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Christmas tree, from which we kids received presents. Mine was a tin railway en-gine painted chiefly in a lovely green. I am sure our Mam was there among a lot of other parents.

Dad was a great one with his hands and he had a complete set of tools for one of his hobbies, which was picture framing. Talking of pictures, we had a lot of them when we lived at Mount Pleasant. In our living room, we had quite large ones, all about the Boer War. There was a portrait of Sir Robert Baden-Powell, one of General Redvers Buller, and one portraying either the Relief of Mafeking or La-dysmith!

We had a huge perambulator with a large undercarriage which we called “The Mailcart” and I can remember walking out with Mam one warm Sunday, pushing one of our babies in this. We went a very long way. We finished up at some pit-head over towards Pencoed way, where Dad fried an egg on a shiny shovel he was using to stoke a boiler.

Family Disaster

Quite suddenly, in January 1914, the bottom dropped out of our little world. At the age of 39, our Dad died, leaving Mam a sorrowful widow with six children. Charlie would be eleven in March - 3 years older than me. Jim was but a fortnight old, Bertha, Cyril and Doris sandwiched in between. We lived then in Dunraven Street, number 22. Soon Bertha was taken for a stay in Nantymoel with Auntie Rose (Dad’s sister) and Uncle Jim Hooper. They shared a house with a doctor. (Years later they moved to 74 Oakfield).

I spent about 3 weeks with Auntie Emily (Dad’s sister) and Uncle Jim Hunter, who was a French-Canadian. They lived in Aber Houses, a row of terraced dwell-ings, perched on a shelf of the Ogmore Vale. There were four Hunter cousins, David, Eddie, Gladys, and Rose, all much older than me. I can remember refusing to eat fatty bacon, and having my boots confiscated so that I could not go out.

Uncle Jim was a big, tall man, with one eye, and very, very gentle. He had an old-fashioned piano upon which he spent hours, laboriously picking out haunting French Canadian airs. Soon it was summer and - how and when it happened I can’t recall - we were back at No 1 Mount Pleasant. I was brought back home and Doris went instead to stay with Auntie Em Hunter in Ogmore. Round about now I dimly remember the Great War starting in August 1914.

Another Uncle Jim came into my life - on a bicycle! He was Dad’s brother from Bawdrip in Somerset, a man, I later found out, who never stopped working. He had cycled from his farm-market-garden to Weston-super-Mare, crossed to Cardiff on the Campbell paddle steamer, and continued on his bike to stay with the Hoop-ers in Nantymoel. It was arranged that I should go back to Somerset with him for an indefinite period.

So, early one morning, along came Uncle Bill Parkhouse on his bike and cousin Eddie Hooper on his bike. I sat in front of Eddie on his handlebars, Uncle Jim pedalling alongside. Before we reached Bridgend, I had managed to put my foot

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through Cousin Eddie’s front wheel! But, eventually, we reached the railway station at Bridgend, where a label with my name was pinned on my jacket and I was put in the care of the guard in his van, bound for Cardiff. On reaching Cardiff, I was collected by Uncle Jim (where had Cousin Eddie gone?) and transported to the docks on the top bar of his bike. When the old paddle steamer reached Weston, Uncle Jim again placed me in the care of the guard at Weston railway station, while he continued on his homeward journey on two wheels.

Finally, (don’t ask me how!) I found myself dumped at the tiny railside halt, which was Bawdrip. There was nobody to meet me so I did what any eight-year-old who do when finding himself far from home without his Mam - I cried, and cried, and cried. After a while I was rescued by a very friendly signalman, who took me up a scary ladder into his box, where he pulled levers and rang bells so busily that I dried my tears.

And then I was claimed by my cousin Beatie, who seemed to be tickled pink be-cause my name, like hers, was Parkhouse! A long walk through country lanes and we reached the farm. Uncle Bill (no sign of his bike!) was already hard at work digging spuds - and in no time at all I joined the labour force. My Aunt - another Emily - helped me change into some old clothes and soon I was busy loading po-tato haulms into wheelbarrows, which were carted away by Beatie and Rosie, a younger cousin. This went on and on until dark, and I can remember being more tired than I had ever been before in my 8 long years.

Like my memory of it, the farm was something of a mixture. There was a horse and a high trap. There were some cows and some chickens and an apple orchard. On at least two of the fields, there was a big, big hole; from these, Uncle Jim quarried stone, wheeling a barrowload at a time along planks, which looked very dangerous. One of these quarries, was a favourite of mine because it had a large pool of clear water at the bottom, in which I often bathed myself.

But my chief job turned out to be scaring the cows off the corn with a huge rat-tle and a shout. Very occasionally, Uncle Jim appeared with a shotgun, which he discharged over the field of corn, and then went on his way, reminding me to keep rattling and shouting. I can remember so well how I hated the long, lonely days in that blessed cornfield. On market days, Aunt Em and Uncle Jim would pile the high old cart with vegetables and take them to Burnham-on-Sea.

Sometimes, very rarely, they took me with them. On these occasions, it would al-ways be raining, and I would spend what seemed hours and hours under the seat, huddled up on some old sacks, while Uncle Bill and Auntie Emily visited a large building in Burnham. Remembering their smiling faces now on their return to the trap, it is quite obvious it must have been a pub!

One day, Rosie and I had to cut thistles in one of the meadows. Using reaping hooks, it was a backbreaking job, but Rosie had a wise head on her young shoul-ders, so that the job was completed under the apple trees in the orchard. At last, a lot of local help was hired, the corn was cut, the gleaning was done - and I lost sight of that stupid rattle. Then my Mam was on the scene, and I was wafted away to Granfie Easton’s place in Taunton.

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I’ll never forget the look on the little man’s face when he saw me. “Good gra-cious, Polly,” he burst out, “Look at the boy’s hair! First thing in the morning, haircut”. And it was he who took me to the barber’s shop on a sunny, lazy, lazy morning. And soon we were back home at 1 Mount Pleasant in Aberkenfig! Just like that. So ended my first taste of what came to be known as a working holiday!

Towards the end of 1916, when I was ten and a half years old, I began to be-come aware of the fact that there was a War on. Charlie passed what we called the “Labour Examination” and went to work at the local brickworks. I was to follow him as a spare-time lather boy in the barber’s shop. Before that I had earned the odd copper helping Albert Talbot or Reggie McCann with their evening newspaper rounds.

Now I was a lather-boy. For a start, I called at the newsagents on the way home from school at noon to collect the barber’s daily newspaper. Then at teatime, I called for his packed tea sandwiches at his home in Coronation Street. On Saturday, from 9 till 9, I was the lather boy. For this, I received one shilling and ninepence, plus a copper or two in tips. Later, Cyril took over this lower-order job and I spent evenings as well as Saturdays lathering scrubby chins. For this, I received five shillings, plus tips. The favourite topics of conversation between the barber and his customers, mostly miners, were the War and horse racing. As Mr Jenkins was an ex-jockey, he brought more know-how to the art of having a quick tanner on a horse than the strategy of trench-warfare.

The barber, Charlie Jenkins, did a lot of hair-cutting and shaving out of shop hours, chiefly for invalided Servicemen, and on his weekly half-day off, he visited local military hospitals to spruce up the patients. A few of these servicemen were able to visit the shop, dressed in the all-too-familiar hospital-blue uniform, and while I lathered, sponged, wiped and powdered all sorts of chins and cheeks, I would be thrilled by hair-raising tales of life (and death!) in the muddy, bloody trenches in France.

Charlie Jenkins was a member of our local Reception Committee, whose duty it was to meet, at Tondu railway station, the train which occasionally brought a hero home on leave. On this occasion, the welcomed one would be driven through the streets in what must have been the only motor car in the village. There would al-ways be a show of flags and sometimes the local band led the parade.

Our own vital problems were quite simple (?). Dad was dead, none of us boys was old enough to serve in the Forces, there was no widow’s pension then, and only Charlie (by special decree, at the age of thirteen) was old enough to go to work. Mam, so I dimly remember, would not apply for Parish Relief (“Charity!”), so where was the money to house, feed, and clothe our Mam and six children com-ing from?

So, calling on the experience of her younger days in Taunton, she took in wash-ing. The younger ones couldn’t have known, and even I could barely have guessed, the dour and grim battle she fought with the ever-boiling copper, the wash-tub and board, and the flat irons, big and small, for ever heating up on the hobs and trivets of the open fir. How our neighbours, the Maineys, Joneses, and Maloneys ever

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The Dusty Decade

managed to get by her ever-full clothes line, strung and propped across the yard, I shall always wonder.

I can recall quite a lot of fetching and carrying in those days, warned by Mam not to get the bundles of washing - soiled ones, clean and ironed ones - mixed up and “Ee make sure now to get the money!” Mam never, never, lost her rich, Som-erset accent, and, as far as I remember, none of us ever learned to speak or read Welsh, though, quite naturally, I suppose, we kids acquired a Welsh accent as broad and as long as any of our playmates and friends. Indeed, looking back over the years, I wish I had learned the local language. Some of my so-called poems, had they been written in Welsh, would have found a ready outlet in the “Welsh Col-umn” of the “Glamorgan Gazette”, then published in Bridgend nearby.

(Here I must add that, much later, I was to contribute regularly to that newspaper through the medium of my own (!) column, “The Tondu and Aberkenfig Para-graphs”. I really cannot tell you how proud I was of this minor achievement - until the same pride made me give it up.)

Naturally, to all of us Parkhouses anyway, we were staunch C. of E. churchgoers. Sunday was Sunday, Mam saw to that. Holy Communion (when we were old enough to be confirmed), morning Sunday school, matins at eleven a.m., afternoon Sunday school, and Evensong at six-thirty. In addition, over the years, I was to be organ-blower, choirboy, lamplighter, bellringer, sidesman, and general dogsbody, and I even had one of my poems published in the parish magazine.

How Mam managed it is a mystery to me, but we all had “Sunday best” clothes, suits for the boys, dresses for the girls. On Monday, Mam would wash the girls’ dresses, brush and sponge the boys’ suits and put them away until next Sunday. But back to the War years. Rationing came in and I was elected family scribe for the necessary form filling for ration books. I dimly remember certain “off-ration” com-modities. For these you needed money, and that kept us off.

But one thing I remember quite clearly: it was the birth of the “Queue”, now so very well known. Word would come through “on the grapevine” (no “wireless or “telly” then) that there was jam (or whatever) at so-and-so’s in Bridgend. Mam would call me aside. I was to have a headache, backache or tummy-ache. One of the younger ones would deliver a note to Mr Bird, Tondu Boys’ headmaster, and “Ee remember now, Sssssssssshh!” When the coast was clear next morning, my ache would suddenly get better. Mam, Mrs Jones, Mrs Mainey and Stanley, suitably equipped with shopping bags and baskets, and wrapped as well as possible against the icy winter wind, would set off on the three-mile trudge to Bridgend.

On arrival at the, then, small market town, we found and joined our queue. Look-ing back, it always seemed to stretch for miles. After, at least it seemed so to me, hours and hours of moving forward inch by inch, if we were lucky, we got a prize for the pantry - once, I well recall, it was a four pound tin of strawberry jam more often, it was black treacle. Our spirits on the three-mile dawdle home would vary. We were always cold and tired. If we had secured nothing, we would be dead tired and blue with cold. But if we had got something, however small, we would sometimes sing.

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Although the War years were a bitter struggle against awful odds, we didn’t al-ways have our noses to the wall. (Indeed, I doubt if Cyril, Bertha, Doris and baby Jimmy even had the remotest idea what a War was). Of course, we had no radio or “telly”. Very few people could afford a gramophone and records to match it. But we did have a tin-shed called a cinema (silent films of course) and before I be-came a lather boy, I was able to go to the Saturday matinee and sit goggle-eyed on the long, wooden forms for one penny. “Davies the Cinema” was both manager and pianist and (how he managed it I can’t even guess) he would see that each boy or girl would receive a bag of sweets or, when available, an orange on the way in.

We usually saw a “big picture”, a two-part comedy, a newsreel and the serial. The latter were usually shown in fifteen two-part episodes, each episode ending on a breath-taking, nail-biting note - thus “cliff-hangers”. Some titles I still remember, such as “The Broken Coin”, “The Voice on the Wire”, Peg o’ the Ring” and “The Black Box”. At the War-time matinees (until I became a lather-boy) I joined “Davies the Cinema” at the piano and hundreds of boys and girls, singing “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary”, “My Daddy’s in the Navy”, “Pack up your Troubles in your old Kit-bag”, “There’s a Long, Long Trail A-winding”, and many other stir-ring and uninhibited War-time songs, like “Keep the Home Fires Burning”. We had our own version of “Pretty Redwing”:

“Oh, the moon shines bright on Charlie Chaplin, His boots are cracking For the want of blacking, And his old baggy trousers they want mending Before we send him to the Dardanelles”

And Mam, bless her great, big Somerset heart, liked the “pictures” too. Indeed, some of her cronies insisted on it, for our Mam was able to read out the sub-titles for them. She went twice a week, Mondays and Thursdays, when the programme changed. Don’t know how she managed it, but she also had some sweets to suck, or monkey-nuts to crunch. Yes, our Mam did enjoy her “pictures”.

We were all great readers. I remember at No 1 Mount Pleasant, before the elec-tric was put in, our kitchen (not the “back-kitchen”) table, a large oil-lamp standing in the middle, surrounded by Mam and family, reading “The Christian Herald”, “Peg’s Paper”, “The Boys’ Magazine”, “Chips”, “Comic Cuts” and many, many more I cannot remember.

What I do remember though (but not the date) is when Woolworth’s came to Bridgend. Better than a circus, for it came to stay. And what do you know? You could buy a book in hard covers for sixpence, a tanner! Gee whiz! Was I thrilled! I still found that even sixpence was hard to come by, but when I proudly bought my first “Readers’ Library” volume at Woolworth’s, I was at least half a million-aire. It was called “The Little Shepherd Of Kingdom Come”, and I read and read it so many times that it finally fell to pieces. My second one was even better, a collection of Bret Harte’s Western short stories under the title “The Luck of Roar-ing Camp”, and among the great stories were some of his poems. One I shall never forget was called “Dickens in Camp” and began:

“The moon above the pines was slowly drifting, The River sang below.

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The dim Sierras in the distance were uplifting, Their minarets of snow.”

Thrilling! We kids had to make our own fun outdoors, skipping, hop-scotch, ring-a-ring-o-roses, fox-and-hounds, catty-and-dog, rounders, cricket, football, marbles (several versions), leap-frog, and many, many, more. We felt no need of gear and special kit for cricket. We fashioned our own bats from the stout branch of a tree, sometimes faced with flattened condensed-milk tins, the handle bound with old inner tubes from bicycles. When you can’t have a proper football, what’s wrong with an inflated pig’s bladder?

We played soccer and rugby, and often the same ball did for both. Who needs goalposts when a couple of coats will do? We had bags of pitches for cricket, soc-cer and rugby, on either the common alongside the Bridgend road or Pen y fai common. And teams could be anything up to thirty a side, depending on availabil-ity. Referees? Umpires? Never heard of ‘em!

Whenever anybody was out at cricket, it was never clean bowled, caught or leg-before-wicket, but as a result of losing the furious argument which always ensued at the time. Of course, the ball was never a real cricket ball, but a wooden one “borrowed” from the cokernut-shy when a “show” visited Pandy fields. We had a fair supply in stock, and half a dozen or so would be soaked in a bucket of water overnight ready for the next day’s game. Curious things cokernut-cricket balls. On a few occasions, the “out” argument would be further complicated by the fact that one of us would be held to be caught and bowled simultaneously, the ball having split in two.

Which reminds me. We had no pads or gloves and wicket-keeping duties (“stumper” we said were shared between us. One day, however, (when I was work-ing in the pit) we had a real cricket bat and a genuine ball. The “stumper” picked himself simply because he had a pair of gloves with him. It all looked so very real to see that lad crouched and tense behind a huge pair of gloves. One of our faster bowlers was sending ‘em down on our more than uneven pitch. He took his usual long run, unwound, missed the bat, the wicket, the stumpers gloves, and hit him clean between his eyes. When the lad at last came round, he insisted on leaving the pitch, taking his gloves with him.

About this same period, I remember playing football, soccer and rugby, on top of the old washery tip. This, for me at any rate, soon palled, because the ball was frequently kicked over the edge of the tip into the wastelands far below. What fol-lowed reminded me of the monologue “Sam’s Musket” (“Thee knocked it down, thee pick it oop”). It was a swift and slushy descent and a slow, slow slimy crawl back up.

The end of the First World War, even to a twelve-year-old lather boy, was really something. It was the evening sessions at Charlie Jenkins’, the barber, shop and we were dealing with only a few casual customers. It was getting on for closing time, a precious hour for me. Suddenly, there was a lot of noise in Aberkenfig’s main street: the sound of children shouting and singing and banging tins. We had all heard rumours - rumours of the one thing that could bring smiles and laughter back again - the end of the War.

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The barber, an ex-jockey, was only a small man, but as he dashed to the shop door, he seemed to grow in stature. As he opened the door, the clatter from the little street grew louder still as the marching boys and girls came abreast of us. He shouted something, I don’t know what, and was answered in a chorus of shouted words that made no sense to me and yet my mind said the War was over. “It’s over! It’s over”, the barber cried. Stanley, get your apron off. Quick! No sooner said than done. As I rushed towards the door, he dipped his hand in his pocket and passed me a threepenny bit, and in no time at all I was mingling with the mob of girls and boys and advised to get a biscuit-tin from the back of Perkins, the baker’s, shop. I can’t recall the next few moments. Whether I got the biscuit tin or not, I found myself marching, shouting, jostling along at least as far as the Red Bridge.

The noise, in a street usually so quiet that time of night, was almost deafening. Then, as quickly as the shouting had begun, it died down and further deadening, awful news filtered through. The War was not yet over. It was a false alarm. Again, my mind is a blank until next day, the 11th of November 1918. We were, as usual, at school, busy with our various lessons. Then, quietly, almost mysteri-ously, we became aware of teachers moving from one classroom to another, and odd whispers, excited whispers, and then we were summoned to the main hall. There, we were told, officially, that, at eleven-o-clock that very morning, an armi-stice would be signed between the Allies and the Germans.

While we were trying to come to terms with the word “armistice”, the headmaster told us with a joyous smile that the War was over - and that we could all go home. Hooray! Hooray! I can’t remember having any dinner at 1 Mount Pleasant that day, but I do remember that my friends and I walked to Bridgend to buy some fireworks. I completely forgot to call at the local newsagent’s shop to collect the barber’s daily paper - and when I saw him next, he threatened to sack me. That is the same man who blithely handed me a silver threepenny piece the night before! No, he didn’t sack me after all.

After the War was over, I don’t seem to remember any marked improvement in Mam’s finances. We were always hard up. Lots of men we never saw any more. Some who came back were shell-shocked and shattered. In the barber’s shop, the conversation shuttled between horses and a thing called “The Peace”. In 1919, I took the “Labour Exam” in school, which Charlie had passed three years before. (He was now working down the pit).

The August holiday came and I was a lather-boy full-time, Wednesday early clos-ing. After shop hours and on Wednesdays after one o’clock I joined my gang (Sam Meade’s) at cricket, football, tree climbing, swimming and so on. After dark, when I could elude Mam’s motherly eye, we went scrumping in certain orchards that shall be nameless. As in Taunton so many years ago (it seemed) we also played “Dickie Show the Light”.

We children were growing up. So were our appetites. Mam kept mumbling “I wonder if ee passed”. Then she could wait no longer. Face shining, hair slicked down, best suit on, I was persuaded (commanded might be a better word, come to think of it) to walk all the way up to the top of Tondu to the headmaster’s house,

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The Dusty Decade

take off my cap, and ask if I had passed the Labour Exam. I was always small and skinny and shy. That day, I was all these plus. I hoped he would be out. He was in. When I made known the purpose of my visit, he was in a temper too. When I crawled back home and told Mam (who was never a bold woman, not even pretend-ing) she put her arms around me, consoling us both with the certainty that it could-n’t be much longer.

Nor was it. First day back at school, myself and one other boy were summoned to the headmaster’s office, handed a magic piece of paper, and sent home. Soon, my skinny legs and waist enveloped in a pair of Army-surplus trousers several sizes too large for me, and accompanied by Mr Mainey (back from the War), I was on my way to work. The job was tea-boy to a gang of men building a new by-product plant (whatever was that?) on the site of the old coke-ovens near Park Terrace in Tondu.

The water was boiled in a large copper placed in one of the old coke-ovens. The men were mostly Irish giants, each of whom could have picked me up with his lit-tle finger. The tea-boy I was replacing was a boy whom I remembered was not a “good scholar” at school. Only a little bigger than me, he had all the cheek and confidence I lacked. I was scared stiff. On payday, the other tea-boy made me stand with him as those awful men were paid, caps on the floor, shouting “Don’t forget the tea-boy!” Poor Mam was shocked when I tried to explain such things as bad language, no proper WCs and so on........

Three weeks later I was working in Evanstown Brickworks, where Charlie had worked until he was 14, old enough to go down the pit. There, I “made a go of it” until I, in turn, was old enough to follow Charlie down below.

Here, at the age of thirteen, one of the men of the family, earning twenty-seven shillings and sixpence a week, I worked on the elevators and screens which supplied the chutes to the presses on the floor below - and I began a life-long interest in seeing things being made. From a huge hole in the ground, the clay came up in trams, was tipped into the huge, whirling pans, where it was rolled and squashed until it was small enough to be squeezed through the little holes in the bottom of the pan and fed into elevator buckets up through the screens (which I kept clear), down the chutes, into the press, from where it was barrowed into the baking kilns. What a sight!

Drifting back for a moment to the tea-boy of sad memories (for me), years later I discovered that he was a traffic manager for an important bus company. So there! So anxious was Mam to get a bit of extra money that I found myself starting down the pit on a Thursday afternoon (“traffic” shift) and my next week was night work. I was to spend the next ten years in and out (because of strikes, stop-trucks and so on) of the mine until I followed Charlie to Oxford in October 1930.

Cleanliness was a major problem. I had never seen a bathroom. We bathed in Mam’s wooden washtub on the mat in front of the fire in the “big kitchen”. Water was boiled on the open fire, in buckets chiefly. If Charlie and I were on the same shift, he first knelt in front of the tub and washed to the waist. I followed, then the ladies retired to either the back-kitchen or the front room and we completed our

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23

ablutions standing in the tub. Welsh old wives’ tales said the back should not be washed every day because that would weaken it. Charlie and I disagreed with this, so we had our backs washed every day. We both seemed to spend a long time in front of the mirror, clearing our eyelashes.

(Some years later, when I was in Oxford, Jim washed in the pits. But he was able to come and go in his “tidy” clothes because they had pithead baths by then). The pit I worked in then (Coytrahen Park Colliery) was an open-light mine. We used oil-lamps and candles chiefly. We placed our candles in a “spike” stuck into a convenient post. It took some getting used to at first. As it was a slant as opposed to a straight up-and-down pit, we rode up and down on a train of low (very low!) wooden carriages. We lads reported with our mates or butties at the fireman’s cabin. He, with his safety lamp (for gas testing) and stick (for sounding the “top” or roof) had already examined the working-places. His word was law.

It was the old stall-and -pillar system of coal getting, and when I started there, the heading where my mate’s stall was already about a mile from that point, so I was almost whacked when I reached the coal-face. Payday for all shifts, men and boys, was on Friday. The three shifts were manned, then, each by one man and one boy. The man cut the coal and the boy filled it into trams, which made a “journey” drawn by a pit pony to the “parting” at the outer end of the heading, from whence they were pulled by rope to the pithead. The men were paid by the ton, so good, easy-to-dig (“free dig”) coal meant good money.

I was paid six shillings and tenpence per shift - 6 shifts on days, 6 for 5 on af-ternoons and nights (if you lost a day on the latter, you lost a shift and a fifth). All the money was collected by one man for his shift mates and himself. When the money was good, he paid me seven bob a shift, no stoppages, and perhaps a five bob tip. Here and now, I swear I earned every last penny I got. In the language of the trade at that time, I “sweat my guts out”. I was only a scrawny, shy, little whippersnapper but, by God! I must have been tough. Mam was pleased and, with Charlie also earning, her worries eased quite a bit, but it was still a fair old strug-gle, because the younger ones, Cyril, Bertha, Doris, and Jimmy, were, naturally, getting bigger, eating more and needing to be clothed as well.

As my years in the pit went by, I did a variety of jobs in turn, some of which carried only the minimum pay - stoppages deducted and no tips. I was brattice-boy, nailing up strips of brattice-cloth to supplement the ventilation system, dragging heavy rolls of brattice, a bag of large-headed nails and a hammer through the dark, damp, narrow workings. And towards the end of my spell in that seam, “Rock Fawr”, I became assistant to a dear old man we called Morgan Gwaengwaddod.

Our job was patrolling the miles and miles of airways and return passages leading up to the fans on top. We had to keep the life-flow going at all costs, clear minor roof-falls and timber them up, sometimes crawling miles and miles in a single shift (“Days regular” now). It was a lonely job too. Sometimes, after reporting at the fireman’s cabin, we would not see anyone for days and days.

Here I must remember to say that wages went down in the period from 1920, when I started, to October 1930, when I went to Oxford, that I was only getting

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two pounds and five shillings after stoppages when I was 24. This dusty decade in-cludes lots of Miners’ Union activity, the 7-hour day, the 8-hour day, the 1921 strike and the disastrous 1926, soup-kitchen strike. Sunday for us was still the Sab-bath day. Best clothes, church and Sunday school. How I loved the hymn singing, especially at Easter and Harvest Festival. We also had after-church sacred concerts, sometimes in the local cinema, silver collection please.

I was Sunday school teacher, secretary of the Young Peoples’ Guild, a Rover Scout and Assistant Cub-Master. We had enjoyable camps in the woods guarding the rustic hamlet of Merthyr Mawr. Oh yes, we had plenty to do if we didn’t have much money. Of course, I was a strict abstainer, although I smoked as many Woodbines as I could afford. They were twopence for a paper packet of 5, four-pence for a “double” in a cardboard pack. Players were sixpence for ten. If you had money, you could buy a good suit (3-piece) for two pounds ten shillings in the Fifty-Shilling Tailors.

When we could afford it, we had a trip to Ninian Park to watch Cardiff City play; half-a-crown return on the Luxury Coach. We could treat ourselves, on special occasions, to a bob-special three-course lunch at R.E.Jones’s near the railway station and watch the soccer on the “bob bank” for a shilling. A Hercules bicycle with 3-speed gear was £3-19-9d. and a Raleigh £5-0-0. Those were the days? Not a bit of it. Cheap as all these items seem compared to now, they were very hard to come by.

Times, as always, were changing. Horse-drawn vehicles of all kinds were gradually giving way to motorised versions. The brewery dray, the baker’s and butcher’s vans, the milk float, and even the sombre hearse, were losing their horses for other kinds of horsepower. We still had bicycles, but some had motor-cycles and motor cars, but, I well remember, the Parkhouse family stayed on “shank’s pony” - until Charlie bought a second-hand bike from the Riggs’s for 29 shillings. Somehow, it seemed he didn’t want much to do with it, so I took it over.

I had almost forgotten the way we took a day by the seaside (Porthcawl or Og-more-by-Sea) when we were young ones. We usually joined up with the Jones’ or the Mainey’s and hired either Chappell’s or Moles’s brake - single or double horse, according to how many of us were in the group. I can remember that we kids were expected to get out of the brake and walk whenever we came to a steepish hill. Of course, we always took our own food and drink, we could not afford to buy our meals, and anyway, all those years ago, I doubt if it would have been possible, at least at Ogmore-by-Sea, which was much, much smaller then (I suppose what I really mean is that it was much less developed then than now).

I also remember a rare treat when we walked to Tondu railway station to join a “cheap day-excursion” to Porthcawl. I recall that these trains were always packed solid with sweating, shouting humanity, chiefly women and children. Oh, yes! I al-most forgot. I remember the charabancs, long, high, petrol-driven contraptions, hired for day-trips, in which the passengers sat 3 or 4 in a row, facing the driver. I went in one (after a day-trip in the train to Weston-super-Mare) with our bible class to Cheddar. When it rained, we passed the telescopic canvas top, hand-over-hand, along the seats. I can still see the steaming canvas when the sun at last came out.

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Radio, which we then called “the wireless”, came slowly but surely into our lives, though we never had a set in our family. The early ones were temperamental gadg-ets which worked on a crystal. You just fiddled with something called a “cats whisker”, while you endeavoured to coax some music out of the ether into a pair of large headphones. Magic! My first experience was at one of our fetes in the rec-tory field. The Woodhouses, father and son, had built a set, which they housed in a tent. We paid threepence each to go into this hallowed place, fit on the earphones and have a tiny listen. I can still recall, quite vividly, fiddling with the adjuster thing - and hearing Big Ben, all that way off in London, striking seven o’clock.

The next time was when I pedalled furiously over to Bill Reek’s house in Brynme-nin. Their lodger had a new battery set, on which we tried to follow the last few overs of what became known as the “body-line Test match” in Australia - Lar-wood’s Test. When the battery was fading, and atmospherics were competing with the commentator, it was sheer agony - especially as this was in the early hours of the morning and I had to carry on to work. The younger ones were growing up, going to school and leaving school.

Mam, Charlie and I had a real battle to keep Cyril from getting a job down the pit. Two miners in one family, two separate worries for Mam, especially when we were on different shifts, was all that Mam could stand.

Luckily, Cyril secured a job as apprentice to the India and China Tea grocery shop in the village and, as Mam said thankfully, he didn’t need a bath every day for that. Typically, as an apprentice, Cyril did a lot of work for little pay there, but it kept him out of the pit. When he finished his time, the only job he could get was manager of a cut-price grocery shop in one of the valleys, where he got very little more pay and had to do all the heavy work because his assistants were young girls. Eventually, he got a counter job in “our” Co-op in Tondu and, every word I write is true, I have never known anybody before or since handle the com-plicated shelving and booking system with such speed and courtesy. His reward was, when the Co-op started a so-much-a-week club in the area, he was given the job - and remained with it until he retired, by then married and living at Merlin House, Cefn Cribbwr.

I believe Bertha’s first job was a ward maid in Angelton asylum. I can’t remem-ber what Doris did first, but by the time I went to Oxford, they were both in serv-ice, Bertha in Cowbridge and Doris in Bridgend. On the Sunday I had to bus to Cardiff to collect from Bertha the only suitcase we possessed. On the way, I saw hoardings outside newspaper shops with the headline “R101 CRASHES IN FRANCE”. (Later, doing my initial R.A.F. training at Cardington in 1940, I wrote a few verses called “The Altar Grave” and gave it to one of the local publicans, who was so pleased that he displayed my typed copy of it in the bar).

Because I had started evening-classes, I met Jimmy’s daytime teacher, Mr An-thony, and was told Jimmy was a bright boy. Again, I am not quite sure, but I think he was the first in the family to leave school as old as fifteen. His first job was as a stoker in Hurley’s Joinery Works at Brynmenin, but, alas, he too was doomed to go down the pit, which, pithead baths or not, I would not recommend.

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Later, Charlie went to Oxford in 1926, I followed in 1930, and Jim came up in 1932 to become a welder in Pressed Steel. But I am too far forward. Back to the earlier days. I can’t honestly remember how news items got around before the “wireless”. It must, of course, have been the newspapers and cinema newsreels. I sold newspapers, but I can’t remember us having a regular delivery. Anyway, news was filtering through about a pension for widows. The younger ones, blissful in their ignorance, were unaware of the family excitement shared by Mam, Charlie and me.

As family scribe, I wrote to the “South Wales Echo” in Cardiff and, without spending money on buying too many copies, we contrived to watch the answers printed in the queries column of that newspaper. When the big day came at last, we were happier than I can ever remember. I had asked whether Mam was entitled to a widow’s pension under the new act, giving STANPAR as a pen name. And there, in black and white before our popping eyes was the answer: “STANPAR. Yes, your mother is entitled to a pension”. What a load off our minds. Mam was so excited. Forms were obtained, filled in and despatched - and back came Mam’s bright, brand-new pension book. All Mam had to do was sign her name to the chit and collect her pension from the Post Office on the appointed day, EVERY WEEK!

Somewhere about this time, the urge to write, especially verse, became a must for me. My English, naturally, after such an elementary schooling, was sadly lacking in the scope I now desired. So I began evening classes, and I discovered that I wasn’t the only one who required further education in the mother tongue. Not many courses were available but all of them, including the then popular one for the Fire-man’s (underground) Certificate, entailed a written examination - and English was not a part of the course. My chief benefit from the lessons was the encouragement of an excellent teacher and the introduction still deeper into the world of books.

So I read and read and read. I bought a cheap notebook and pencil at Wool-worth’s and wrote and wrote and wrote, blithely ignorant of all the mechanics in-volved. Mam and the family couldn’t help noticing. I was dubbed a dreamer reach-ing for the stars. There was nowhere I could sit down and write in peace and quiet. I sat on the floor at the foot of the stairs, but the cold wind whistling under the front door soon discouraged me. I retired to the outside lavatory, stuck a candle on the wall in a lump of clay. I wandered along the river side or up to Mynydd Bach, making up verses in my head and, when I thought no-one was looking, I would take up my note-book and pencil, squat down somewhere, anywhere, and write down my brain-children.

I said before that we had a front room, which we hardly ever used, except when some Uncles and Aunts came down from Ogmore or Nantymoel. Sheer waste it must have been but --. After the usual bath and feed one never-forgotten day, Mam had that lovely twinkle in her eye and seemed to hover over me somewhat. It was lovely and warm in the front kitchen, though a wee bit steamy from the bath water. When I had finished with the usual sigh and a fag: “Stanley”, Mam said, “I want to show you something”.

I followed her through the front kitchen door, into the passage at the foot of the stairs. She paused at the front room door, slowly opened it and said, “There!”

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27

I was dumbfounded. The best lamp was lit and standing in the middle of our lovely table, the paper blinds were rolled down - and there was a lovely fire in the grate. “M-M-Mam!” I gasped. “Wh-what?” “For you to do some of your silly writ-ing”, she whispered, and closed the door behind her. Mam, if you can hear me now, ta very much!

From then on I could read and write in comfort. But, of course, it didn’t always have to be done in the front room. I could now join the family circle around the front-kitchen table with their magazines and games - and take out the little notebook and pencil without being laughed at.

It seemed quite soon after this, but it must have been longer than I imagine, the Rector called me into his study and told me he had recommended me to take over a spare-time job of writing the Tondu and Aberkenfig Paragraphs in the Glamorgan Gazette. It was a weekly column, reporting local news, concerts, meetings, lectures and so on, but chiefly funerals and weddings, because a long list of names of mourners at one and guests at the other sold copies.

After work, I visited each of the local parsons (and there were quite a number of them), secretaries of this and that society, and kept my eyes open for possible local news of interest. After all my self-appointed homework at my literary efforts, it was pleasing to note that very little editing of my bits and pieces was deemed necessary. It gave me valuable experience and a great deal of pleasure. The money wasn’t much but it was extra - and for doing something I liked.

While Charlie was at work in the pit, Mam being a widow, we were entitled to a monthly load of “cheap” coal, but during strikes, lock-outs, and periods of unem-ployment, we scrounged wood from anywhere we could get it and kneeling in horri-ble, sliding, slushy mess, picked coal on the washery-tip. I was doing this one freezing Saturday morning, surrounded by other pickers, including a couple of hefty Irish housewives. Suddenly, I picked up the trend of their conversation. They were describing what they would do, if they ever caught him, to the so-and-so who put that bit about them in the “Gazette”. I cannot describe the absolute joy I felt at that moment.

Memories of my Dad, both in Somerset and Wales, are few, and sometimes vague, but I recall a few incidents now and hasten to write them down. He must have been about six foot tall and “nicely” built (certainly not fat). He had a thick mass of black, curly hair and a neat moustache. Looking back with hindsight of my feelings today, he was “all man”. He was very strict and used his belt - a wide leather strap with a brass lion’s head buckle. When I say used his belt, I don’t mean as a chastisement, more of a clarion call. If he wanted us (we were aware of this and kept within range!), he would stand in the yard outside the back door of No. 1 Mount Pleasant and shake it until we had heard the buckle ring, which never took very long.

However, there was one well-remembered occasion when he did use it to punish me. It must have been one of our earliest occupations of No. 1 Mount Pleasant. Charlie, three years older than I, had outgrown his overcoat. Mam, who, of neces-sity, was handy with her thimble and sewing needle, made the necessary adjustments

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to suit my skinny frame. Came a cold day and, when Charlie and I were washed and fed, Mam held up the coat for me to put it on to go to school. I refused to wear it.

After much persuasion and argument, when Charlie had gone off on his own, Dad appeared on the scene. I was forced into the topcoat and forcibly moved across the yard, past Chappell’s stable and cart-shed to our gulley, which led to the road to Tondu School. For me, it was easy. The cart-shed hid me from Dad’s view, so I crept into the small passage between the shed and the bakehouse, scrambled up the little stone wall into the shed, and up into one of Chappell’s horse-brakes. As I lay on the floor of the brake, trying to get my breath back, I couldn’t help wondering what was going to happen when Mam and Dad discovered that I had “mitched” from school.

Dad must have been suspicious, because all of a sudden I am being roughly pulled out of the brake, rushed across the yard, dragged upstairs, actually belted with that awful lion’s head strap, and thrown into a spare bedroom covered all over with po-tatoes drying out. (Great. This establishes (spare room) that the family was incom-plete and that my Dad was a gardener).

Another side of my Dad: we children were allowed sweets, but only at his bid-ding. The walk was only a few minutes, but Dad would never go out without wear-ing his white tie. He would go across the road at the bottom of our gulley to Mrs Habbefield’s sweetshop. There, he would select a large jar of boiled sweets and a supply of pointed paper-bags. Then, as he or Mam decreed, we children would be given a bag of sweets. I now realise it was an early example of economy by bulk buying.

I think I have already mentioned that he was a teetotaller (beer for milk in Taun-ton) and I cannot ever remember him smoking. He must, somehow, have managed to save some money, because after he died in 1914, I remember hearing that he had one hundred pounds to his name in the Post Office Savings bank - which helped our Mam keep off the dreaded “Parish Relief”. Young as I was, I under-stood, somehow, that my Dad was not just a common labourer, and that his job en-tailed a certain amount of skill. Nevertheless, his wages were very small.

I remember Mam telling me once (after his death) that in one job he had while we were at No. 1 Mount Pleasant, he was paid only 35 bob a fortnight. So how on earth did he save? Church going was a regular habit with us, but I am not sure about Dad. I remember Mam telling us once, discussing Holy communion and con-firmation, that Dad, when approached on the subject, would always protest that he was firm enough already. It seemed quite natural to Mam, Charlie, myself, Cyril, Bertha, Doris, and Jimmy that, as our age allowed, we would kneel before the Bishop for the ceremony. And here, to contrast with today’s inflated monetary val-ues, I must mention church collections. At matins and evensong, we would quite proudly put a penny in the plate, but at early-morning communion (taken before breakfast), we would slip in a silver threepenny-piece.

If Dad was a teetotaller, Mam wasn’t. I remember quite clearly (Perhaps Charlie had started work) taking a jug to the pub called the Swan, just down the road, and

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getting Mr Sweet, the landlord, to put in half a pint of what she called her “supper stout”. And here I should mention that I can’t remember going into a pub after those occasions until I was in the R.A.F. and 34 years old!

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The ten years between September 1920, when I “went down the pit”, and October 1930, when I went to Oxford, I often call “The Dusty Decade”. While I still worked at Evanstown brickworks, Charlie and Mam were trying hard to get me “in” at Coytrahen - and one day this fairy-tale plan began. I liked swimming in the river and one fine day I was frolicking in a pool we called “Kitchener”, opposite Tondu Cricket Club ground.

Further down river, some other kids were playing “cock-hen-goose-gander”, skim-ming flat, smooth stones on the water. Somebody must have had an extra strong arm, for a stone was just about to reach the magic “gander” when it hit me hard just above the bridge of my nose as I was about to stand up in the shallows. The only one who seemed to notice my plight was a man just passing by, who promptly helped me to the grassy bank, helped me to dress and gave me a clean hanky to staunch the bleeding. His name was Barry, he said.

I was telling Mam. “Mr Barry! That’s the manager of Coytrahen.” So, the fairy tale plan. Me in my “tidy clothes”, Mr Barry’s washed and ironed hanky in my pocket, I am being shown into the Manager’s office. Yes, you’ve guessed it; he was a totally different Mr Barry! Red-faced Stanley, and Mam? Well!!!

But I got “in” quite soon after that episode. I was very small and skinny, and ever so shy I remember. One not only had to get used to working in the colliery but also used to working alternate shifts - “days” one week, then “nights”, then “afternoons” or, as I remember, we called it then “Traffic Shift”.

Working almost a year at the brickworks must have helped, but it was all so very different, especially going to bed in the daytime after the night shift. After a while, I began to appreciate that nights and afternoons meant Saturday off. We got paid six shifts for five worked, and if we lost a shift, we were docked one and one fifth shifts.

When I started at Coytrahen, preparing to go to work was much different from the same operation for Evanstown brickworks or, farther back, for school. Let’s make it a day shift. Mam would already have taken the dry kindling for the oven and got a good fire round the kettle. If there was time, we might have porridge and tea, if not, a slice of bread and whatever was going and tea. While I ate my breakfast, Mam would have packed my tommy-box with bread and cheese and cake (mostly), and filled my “jack” or bottle with cold tea.

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I would be wearing long pants (!), a vest, a Welsh-flannel shirt and black stock-ings. My trousers were ex-Army khaki, much too big for me. With strong string, I tied “Yorks” below the knees and above my ankles. Later, the shirt and trousers were to become much patched and the stockings much darned.

I wore heavy hob-nailed boots (“naily boots”) with leather laces which Charlie showed me how to keep supple with “Company oil”. Later, these too were greatly patched and cobbled with a do-it-yourself shoemaker’s last and old rubber tyres. Next, came my waistcoat in which I sometimes had a couple of smelly “nips”(dog-ends of cigarettes). Then my coat (jacket) into which, again prompted by Charlie, Mam had sewn a poacher’s pocket each side.

On went my scarf and my cap.

Into my inside coat pocket went my candles - three or four wrapped in newspa-per. (Later I would learn to tell the time with these). One poacher’s pocket held my tommy-box, the other my jack or bottle. Sometimes I carried matches, but more often I would leave that to the grown-ups. Later, I included a pair of homemade kneepads. Very occasionally, I would carry an orange, an apple or a few toffees.

Right then! Out the back door. “Ta! Ta! Mam”. “Ta! Ta! Stanley. Be careful, won’t ee!”. Across the yard, past Chappel’s stable and cart shed down the gully, past Chappel’s bakehouse turn right into Bridgend Road past the “Star”, the cinema and the “Angel”. Down the Rock Hill, past the “Rock” and the “Bell”, the Work-men’s’ Institute, the “Lion” and the Post Office. Then past a pub I can’t remember the name of, the Square, the “Collier’s Arms” and the “Prince” up the Catholic Hill, past St John’s Church and the Catholic Church. On into Tondu, past Evans-town brickworks, under the Red Bridge, past Tondu School, the wagon works and the crusher, the “Llynvie Arms” and I am nearly there.

With almost every step, I have been joined with miners and boys and the sound of our hobnailed boots echoes like an Army on the march. Turn right into Coytra-hen Park Drive, march, march, march - and at last I have arrived at the colliery bank. Must have been well over a mile.

Coming home, our teeth and eyes gleaming white through the sweaty coal-dust, we would be travelling lighter, having used up our food and drink and most of our candles. But, almost without fail, there would be one valuable addition, a “block”, for each of us carried a “Norway” off-cut under one arm. There would be much chatter about sport, politics or whatever, but those in front of the column had better keep a tighter grip on their blocks, for the jokers behind them could often throw their own block with such speed and precision that the unwary one’s offcut went hurtling ahead, being neatly replaced under his arm with that of the marksman in the rear ranks. That was a normal day, decent weather and no trouble. Bad weather - I will leave that to your own imagination.

When the dead-cart had been in use or the ambulance had rushed a miner or min-ers at top speed to Cardiff Infirmary, the mood was not so chirpy. Again, arriving at the Bank only to be told “No work today. Stop tracks.” was infuriating. No good shouting and swearing about Mr Baldwin and “them”. Turn around, shrug

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your shoulders and go back home. Get the bath water on and get cleaned up and into your tidy togs.

Bank meetings, except in special cases, were taboo. Union meetings were usually held in the top room of a pub, extra-big ones in the cinema. One special pithead meeting I well remember. A miner, well known to, and popular with, almost every-body on the three shifts had been killed under a fall in the night. The day shift wanted to take the day off as a mark of respect to the dead man. The upshot was that we all gathered around the manager, who stood on top of a tram of coal. After explaining where his sympathies lay in this shocking tragedy, he quietly pleaded for common sense, pointing out that we would still have to “break the ice” tomorrow whatever happened.

In the end we did go down, albeit a little later than usual, and, at least in my Section, it was a sad, quiet and thoughtful day. But it wasn’t always sad, quiet and thoughtful. We did have a few laughs and among the many miners I worked with, young and old big and little fat and thin there were those species found in all walks of life (and thank God for them!), the inveterate joker, ever-smiling, determined to get a laugh out of life. Their practical jokes and sometimes-bawdy banter were too numerous to mention here.

Most miners carried a lump of chalk, chiefly for marking trams or scribbling a message on a shovel for the on-coming shift, graffiti was quite common. I will mention two only. One is a mixture. A much-disliked collier came back after a spell at home, sick, to find his epitaph on the filling-stage (“Shaft”). Some wags had used small coal and rubble to build a six-foot grave on the staging. Towards the “headstone” had been placed a bunch of very dead dandelions. On the “headstone”, a rude cross, made from old sleepers, was chalked: “R.I.P. you miser-able old bugger”.

Several chaps were quite good at drawing caricatures, chiefly of one of “them”, the bosses but the best one?

The oncoming night shift paused agog at the outer door of 15 West. There, illu-minated by their cap-lamps and candles, was a monster cartoon. It depicted a ram-pant pony, with shafts still attached, fleeing from an upset cart, from which flew in all directions carrots and cauliflowers, apples and pears, bananas and oranges, swedes, turnips and parsnips, and I don’t know what - all while a chap, with open mouth and flying hair, gazed aghast at the wreckage and confusion. We all recog-nised him immediately.

He was a young miner, whom we all liked, who had arranged to work “nights-regular” while he tried to work up a fruit-and-vegetable round during the daytime. Unfortunately, he and his outfit had run into trouble, and our “artist”, as usual, had hugely magnified the unlucky incident on the very big wooden door. Yes, we all were amused.

Many of the men were members of various male-voice choirs and glee-singers and the strains of popular songs, ballads, oratorios and hymns would often compete with the sound of pick and shovel, escaping “blast” and the rattle of trams. These, as

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the saying goes, are “far too many to mention”. A few?

“Sospan Fach”, “Peggy O’Neill”, “Yes, we have no Bananas”, “Jerusalem”, “The Holy City”, “Comrades in Arms”, “Guide me, O Thy Great Redeemer”, “Calun Llan”, etc, etc. Me? I sang (?) some of those but added a few Boy Scout campfire ditties. After all, wasn’t I in the choir at Llansantffraid Church? Even to this day, I remember oodles of hymns. I always enjoy “Songs of Praise” on Sunday on the “telly” - when I often recall those far-off days. Cut it out, boyo! Too senti-mental, mun.

“Holing”, as we called undercutting the seam at the coal-face, was an art as well as a trial of strength. Lying on your side, chipping, chipping at the hard coal (not the rock bottom) was best performed with an easy rhythm - achieved only after long practice with patience and “elbow grease”. Sometimes, it could go on for hours and, with experience, if one was able to roll over and do it left-handed, very rewarding.

Before I graduated to general handyman, I was lucky to be able to do this with mandrill and shovel. The mandrill (looking back 60 years) was a good example of the toolmaker’s art. A smooth, oval-shaped shaft about 3 feet long was capped at the business end with a steel “box” to take the removable blade. The blade was about 15 inches long, slotted in the centre to fit the box, sharpened to needle point at each end and finely tempered. The box held a steel key, burred at one end to retain it when the blade was removed. To use, the blade was slotted into the box and the key tapped in to retain it. How long the blade lasted depended largely on the toughness of the coal. I seem to recall that we generally used two or three blades per shift.

At the end of the stint, it was the boy’s job to pop the blunt blades in the blade-box and deposit them in the blacksmith’s shop on top, where they would be sharp-ened, tempered, and placed in the blade-box for collection by the boy at the begin-ning of the next shift. Each blade was stamped with the miner’s number, which co-incided, of course, with the number on the box. The blade-box was made of strong tin with a small carrying handle. Inside, at the bottom of the box and the lid, wooden discs were fitted to protect the points of the blades. There was a small latch which could take a snap-lock - but I can’t remember this being used all that often.

We also required a scoop-shovel, a sledge and a wedge and, sometimes, a measur-ing-stick. Other necessities, in open-light pits, were a cap-lamp (not for everyone), candles, and a candle-spike. A spike could be bought for a few coppers (old money) in the ironmonger’s shop. We also made our own. Saw a couple of inches off an old mandrill-shaft bore a hole through the middle with a red-hot poker then drive a long nail safely into one end, cut off the nail-head and sharpen the end into a point. Another method, and much the cheaper one, was to use a handy ball of damp clay.

As the tools had to be bought by the miners themselves, Dai often borrowed from Ianto when they were starting to work “a stall of your own”. The most borrowed tools were hatchets (with a warning about cutting stones with it) sledge and wedge

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and the ratchet coal-boring machine, which, looking back again, now seems a very primitive gadget but, with a bit of contortionism, patience, and not a few choice swear words, did the job it was made for.

Specialist workers, driving headings or main returns, and certain repairers, had their own toolbox with a good lock. Miners working stalls in three-shift gangs, did-n’t usually need to lock their tools, these being shared. When a miner worked a stall with his mate on their own (“days regular”), he usually secured his tools very simply. Boring holes with a red-hot poker in the shafts of his mandrill, sledge, shovel and hatchet, he threaded them on to a tool-bar, a slim, steel rod with a ring or crosspiece at one end and ring at the other for his lock. Any tool he could lock on he did.

Besides the kit I have mentioned, there were certainly others I have forgotten (sixty years is a very long time). There were also other aids which we called “Doofers”-do-for-now, maybe an old sleeper, a short piece of rail, a crooked lag, and so on-too many to mention but, in certain circumstances, “just the job”.

The coal-boring ratchet was, of course, used only to bore holes in the coal-face, already holed. Rock-boring was a quite different operation. The coal-borer (then) was a steel, ratcheted frame which, by means of adjustable parts, was fixed firmly top and bottom. The steel drill (about one inch in diameter?) was really auger-shaped-“twisty”-pointed at one end, squared for the handle at the other end. After a period of sweating and swearing and handle turning (all in very low height, usu-ally), you cleared the hole with a useful little raking-rod, pushed home the right amount of black-powder.

Into the outside powder-packet (They looked like half-ounce packets of tobacco), a detonator, attached to the fuse, was fixed and gently pushed home with a ramrod. Next came the “ramming”-balls of clay mostly, rammed one behind the other until the hole was filled. The fuse was cut to a safe length, places of safety sought, fuse lit, “FIRE”, a sizzle from the fuse, a small pause-----, then “BANG!”, a cloud of acrid smoke, and down came a couple of trams of coal-on good days!

It was, like too many things down under, not very nice, but, as always, I soon got used to it. Where the white powder comes in, some more tools do also, solid steel drills for boring rock in driving headings. At the face of a heading (at least a mile from pit bottom in 15 West), if the coal seam is a narrow one, there is much more muck (stone and shale) than coal. The coal was got in the same manner as in a stall, but the “bottom” was a different matter. As much as possible would be re-moved with the mandrill’s big brother, a pick, or sledge and wedge.

When this method was exhausted, the rock would have to be bored and blasted. This was real hard labour. We called it “hammer-and-clink”. I am sure that’s where the term “boring” came from, for if ever there was a monotonous chore this was it. (How the modern miner would laugh at it!). A suitable spot would be chosen and the job would begin.

Turn and turn about, the man and his mate would hold the sharp end of the shortest drill on the chosen spot, while the other swung the heavy sledge and

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banged the blunt end. A half turn of the drill, another bang of the sledge, a pause to scrape out the stone-dust and so on and on. Get your breath back while scraping-out and changing to a longer drill as the hole bites deeper and so on and on.

At long last, when a couple of holes have been driven after umpteen swings of the heavy sledge and I-don’t-know-how-many-slow bites of the crawling drill you are ready for blast -off. (The holes I remember best were about 3ft 6 inches). Certainly you’ve earned a breather and certainly the drills have become another labour of love for the blacksmith.

The whole system of firing is the same as I described before, except that white powder is used-and round about now I remember the shotsman and his battery-blaster. And round about now (it must have been shortly before I left Coytrahen) a new method was born. They were substituting “hammer-and-clink” with a machine I think was called a “Flopman”. This, as I remember, resembled a modern road-drill. Driven by “blast” (compressed air), it was even noisier and, as I never used one and seem to have left the scene forever, that is all I can say about it. One memory will never fade. Trying to sleep by day after a night shift on “narrow work” in the stall nearest the face of the heading, I kept hearing the echoing “clink” and “boom” in my tortured ears. But, as I said before, I got used to it.

A change from the old to the new was being made. A new vein was being opened up way, way down The Deep (the main slant) below where I normally worked. Here it was found necessary to prohibit open lights (candles and oil cap-lamps). Smoking, of course, was banned and electric safety lamps were issued to the men. So a lamp-room was opened where a lamp was issued to each man and the lamp batteries were recharged when the lamps were off duty. Each lamp was numbered and each miner was issued with a metal “check” similar to a coin (about the size of a florin or “two-bob-bit”). Going on duty, I (transferred temporarily to this heading), handed in my check, received a lamp, twisted the bottom to test the battery, did my shift and handed back the lamp for the check in exchange.

One day I was involved in a slight accident and my lamp suffered the worst of it. On top, I handed the lamp to the lamp-man, David Lewis, and muttered something like “Lamp is busted”. After a slight hesitation, he handed my check to me and off home I went. I knew David quite well. He knew I was attending evening classes and encouraged me to “do a bit of scribbling” as I called it. I had eaten my dinner and was getting ready for my bath when David was at the back door of No. 1 Mount Pleasant. “I was on my way home and thought I’d better warn you”, said he. “I felt it my duty to report the lackadaisical manner in which you reported the accident, Stanley”. “Oh!” I said. “So”, he went on, “You are to see the under-manager in his office before you go down tomorrow”. “Ta! David”. He went on his way and I worried a bit. Mam was quite worried. The sack? Anti-climax. In the morning, all went well. “Lucky it was the bloody lamp and not you”, was the Big Man’s verdict. And that was that.

One temporary job I was given I enjoyed a lot. It was a bit offbeat: assistant sur-veyor. Detailed plans of all workings, old and new, were held in the offices up top. These were kept up to date by management with the help of qualified surveyors and played a most important part in running the pit. Anyway, I was to wait each

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day at the fireman’s cabin for this surveyor’s arrival. He turned out to be a very pleasant young man who knew his job well.

It was believed that a couple of the longer holdings were approaching the bound-ary agreed upon by the powers that be. One of these headings, 15 West, I knew “inside out” even though it must have been about a mile long. The surveyor was to prove distance and direction, especially at the heading’s face and the inside working stalls. First, we shared the equipment. He carried his maps and plans, a sighting stick-and his precious theodolite, which I’d never seen before. I carried a couple of sighting sticks and the large, heavy measuring tape.

Not much was said during the sighting and measuring and note taking, but when we stopped briefly at grub-time he could talk. Why didn’t I study for a miner’s certificate and, later, under-manager, manager? What about qualifying for surveying? Did I want to be at the coal-face all my life, etc., etc.! My answer was I did go to evening classes and I was studying, in my own little way. And, these days, I did not see much of the actual coal-face and I was enjoying a variety of jobs I was given. I suppose because of this I later sometimes accompanied the under-manager, as guide and companion, through the main returns and airways while he tested the airflow with a mysterious instrument (an anemometer?). When Morgan and I were working in the main return from 15 West upwards, we savoured a variety of smells borne on the fan-sucked air for over a mile to the heading face and back another mile through the narrow airways.

Though diluted by distance, we could pick out almost each smell and identify it. There was the fowsty, earthy tang of coal-dust and timber after snap time, newspa-per, bread -and-cheese, and onions after shot-firing, the acrid smell of gunpowder almost every breath carried the overriding stink of sweating horses and humans-and their excreta. New brattice-cloth was detected by a sharp, tarry odour cigarette-and tobacco smoke were easy. The cigarettes were usually “Wild Woodbines” and the tobacco “Franklyn’s Shag”. The stink of company oil burning in cap-lamps and can-dle grease and smoke were sometimes mixed with what I considered the sweetest smell of them all-the lovely nostril caressing aroma of a juicy orange.

Maintaining the airways was a most important job because, besides keeping the life-giving air flowing freely through the workings, it was a possible means of es-cape or rescue when serious accidents occurred. (As I have related elsewhere, I was able to drag a nosebag of feed to a trapped horse to keep him going until rescued). Miles from the nearest miners, when it was time to put on our nosebags, the prob-lem for old Morgan and I was to find a safe spot, sheltered from the strong draught, and dry.

How we managed to do so was certainly experience and know-how, and foresight. But one day, a long way from the nearest workings, tired and hungry, we realised that we were too far from one of our known snap-spots. In desperation, we were forced to make a tiny island in a murky pool just off one of the old headings. This we did with large stones, old sleepers and shattered timbers. There we sat, fully clothed, tightly buttoned up, our tommy-boxes in our laps; bottom perched on one support, feet on another.

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One day, we discovered an airway, which, due to all-round pressure, had shrunk below the permitted dimensions. We decided to examine the airway from separate ends. (We rarely separated and, now, I for one felt a wee bit scared. As I crawled around and into my end of the passage, I heard a muffled shout. It was Morgan. Having more belly than I did, girded by a thick, wide leather belt with a brass buckle, he had got stuck, and he wasn’t very happy. Stifling a giggle, which calmed me a bit, I said I’d go round and through the other end, which I did but pull as hard as I could, I didn’t budge him. Knocking the blade from a mandrill, I chipped and scraped at the bottom nearest Morgan’s belly, while he wriggled and squirmed on his elbows. It took a long time, but we did it. We had a bit of a laugh when it was all over-but it was by no means a hearty laugh.

One job I carefully avoided like the plague was that of the haulier, who, peril-ously balanced on the “gun” behind his pony, was a vital link in coal production, driving a “journey” of empty trams into the stalls and face of the heading, some-times a mile away, collecting the full trams, shackling up and driving them out to the parting near the Deep-over and over again. He wore his greasy cap back-to-front like a jockey, his large pot-lamp tied to his cap, flaming, smoking and smell-ing like mad. Inevitably, a tram would jump the rails now and then. Very occasion-ally, an elderly roadman may be working in that area who would help the haulier. More often, he was on his own. A simple derailment was easily put right. His back against the offending tram a good hand-grip underneath feet planted firmly against the nearest sleeper a deep, deep, breath then a mighty heave, accompanied by a tor-rent of super swear-words, usually did the trick.

A nasty jump-off with a full journey was much more difficult, requiring all the haulier’s experience, plus patience-and his ever present “coaxers”. These were sprags (billets of wood used for braking the tram wheels), short lengths of old sleepers and a couple of guide rails. Arranged cunningly under the offending wheels, a click of the tongue to the horse, “Whoa there, Tiger!” usually managed to perform a minor miracle.

His pony was his pal and this affection was mutual. (As always, there were ex-ceptions, few enough to be ignored here). I have often seen a haulier, while he waited for the boys to fill the trams, swabbing his horse’s legs and belly with water from the gutter running at the bottom-side of the heading. A thankful whinny, an affectionate pat and stroke on the nose and neck, the presentation of a sweet -smelling apple-and both were happy deep down in the dark pit. Sentimental? Well, why not?

If ever anything took a real battering at Coytrahen Park Colliery, it was the trams. Built of steel plating, on solid steel chassis, with flanged wheels, they were designed to hold a ton of coal. But, undergoing a fantastic battering until they could no longer be repaired, they sometimes leaked like a colander, generally in the cor-ners, where the plating had sprung. It was up to a miner to teach his new boy how to plug these holes with suitable lumps before the filling began. If this were not done, the tram would leak like a sieve all the way out of the heading, up the Deep, over the bank to the weighing machine-and the miner would scratch his dusty head in dismay, wondering what had happened to his tonnage bonus.

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Also, good boys soon learned to add weight by cunningly “racing” the top of the loaded tram with large lumps of coal. These boys got tips on paydays. The staging at the bottom of a stall, we called it a shaft, was most important-to the boy, which I found out early on to my advantage. Ideally, it should have a smooth bottom, for easy shovelling, at standing tram-top level as near as possible to the edge of the tram. It should be big enough to stock enough coal to quickly fill a couple of trams (a “doubler”) and have plenty of elbowroom for the boy, even though he should be ambidextrous.

A strong, stout stop should be placed correctly at the back of the staging, to take the wheels of the loaded cart from the face of the stall, so that the door can be knocked up and the coal slide easily on to the shaft with a minimum of shovelling. (Ignore this and you have the full cart dumped on to the shaft-and a lot of unneces-sary trouble). Most of my mates, with a little prompting from me, took time and trouble to make a good job of it, Consequently, I could stick my spike into a handy post, my sheltered candle giving me enough light to plug and fill a tram in jolly quick time. Production, production bonus for my mate, and my tip benefited considerably.

Benefiting from my experience, my mate and I one memorable day managed to salvage the whole side of a shattered tram, which we flattened out with the sledge-hammer and fitted to the shaft. It made filling fast and easy. Solid, flat rock and a few old sleepers also made a good filling surface. (By the way, even today I get a belly laugh watching some hapless individual making hard labour of moving a heap of coal, coke, earth or what-have-you by digging into it with a shovel or spade!).

In my mind’s eye, I can see and smell a well-stocked shaft, lumps at the front for hole-plugging a thin candle shining in the right-hand corner the haulier squatting and puffing at a Woodbine and a patient pit-pony, jingling his harness and occasionally scraping a mud-spattered hoof. Sentiment? Again? Ah, well.

The parting at 15 West is where we all congregated briefly at the end of the shift, usually squatting, miner-fashion, on our haunches at the topside in the bigger height. The big rope and the clattering of the journey of carriages going down to the lower levels. Hearing this, we would proceed to our positions east and West of the Deep, ready to climb aboard the “journey” on our way to the brow. One day, we were all strangely silent and studious. Each of us was studying the first slim copy of the “Daily Herald”, handed out to us on top by the Union that morning, free.

After a while, one wag on the end of the row of squatters touched his paper to his candle and tossed it to his neighbour, who did likewise-and so on. In a mo-ment, the whole area seemed to be ablaze. An old roadman, scared, tried to get to his feet, bumped his head on the unyielding top, and sat down quickly, rubbing his aching spot.

Flames, smoke and the acrid stink of burning paper were almost overwhelming and panic was beginning to bloom. Fortunately, this early copy was only a skeleton of what the journal was to become later and, a combination of that fact and some smart smothering work on the part of the wiser men and boys restored order. Many

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smarting hands and singed eyebrows led to a determined move towards the fright-ened perpetrator of this stupid prank-but the carriages were on there way up and we had to “catch the journey”.

In “The Land of Song”, when only a few homes boasted a crude “wireless-set”, and before television was heard of, it was only natural for the miners to sing at work and play. Now and again, memorably, one sweet melodic voice is heard above all the others, and due homage is paid. On the same 15 West parting, it is again the end of the shift and the miners have again assembled to wait for the journey up.

But this time, instead of squatting, they are all on their feet, gathered around a full tram of coal, upon which stands the small figure of a young lad who hasn’t been “down” very long. He is singing, and his pure, sweet treble voice is rising, caressing the rocky roof and the gnarled old timbers with lovely, almost angelic, music. The work-weary miners are enthralled, hardly moving a limb. When at last the boy sang his final lovely note, there was such an outburst of cheering and clap-ping which made the roof tremble. The nearest miner lifted him down from the tram, hugged him and gave him a friendly pat on the bottom-as the sound of rush-ing wheels came from the Deep, and we all scampered to catch the journey up. I cannot tell you the name of the song or the singer, but, at the time, it was the only song there was, sung so beautifully in such unlikely surroundings. A memory to treasure.

Once, when I was working as a roving repairer in Coytrahen Park Colliery, my old mate and I arrived, after a long walk, at the scene of our next job. Taking off our coats and waistcoats, we were about to hang them up as high as we could on the timbers (to keep the rats away from our candles and “tommy-boxes”), when I spotted a woollen scarf hanging nearby. I asked a passing miner, “whose scarf is that?” “Bryn’s”, he whispered, and, hot as I was after our long walk, I shivered. Bryn was the lad who had been crushed to death the day before under the very fall of rock Morgan and I had come to clear.

Another time, as that same Morgan and I were hiding our tools and preparing to catch the “journey” to the surface, John Williams, a foreman, hurried up, all sweat and lather, with a request for me to do a good turn for a pit pony. “Collier”, the pony was trapped behind a fall in the heading below and could not be released until the afternoon and night shifts cleared the fall. He was quite safe the other side of the fall, there was plenty of running water in the gutter of the heading - but he must be hungry. “Stanley”, said John, “you know the airways and returns. I want you to take the old ‘orse a bag of feed. Yes?”

Stripping to my singlet, I made my way back through the double air doors, down the main “return”, through several connecting “airways”, until I reached the “stall” John had told me was nearest to the trapped horse, all the time dragging the large, heavy feed-bag behind me. My knees and elbows got very sore and I sweat buckets but when I finally gave “Collier” his feed, the hungry way he tucked into it was a rich reward, and it was a lot easier crawling back to my clothes! No feedbag.

Another time, when I was a “butty” filling coal, I filled the first tram of my

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“doubler” and stood in front of the pony to draw the next tram forward in front of the “shaft” I was filling from. He lurched forward. I shouted “Whoa!” and he promptly brought his near front hoof down on my right foot, trapped between the sleepers. Panic! Just as I felt the bones of my foot were bound to be crushed, I clung to his halter, swung up and kicked him with my free foot, sweating with fright - and in a moment I was free. But I carried the bruises for some time.

Another time, I was kneeling near the entrance to our “airway” back to the next “stall”, filling a “cart”. Shovel poised, I heard a “crack!” from a nearby post “pit-prop). In a split second, I dropped my shovel and somehow or other managed to leapfrog into the airway out of harm’s way. With a nasty roar, down came a darn great boulder on the place where I had been kneeling.

In the awful silence which followed, and when the dust had cleared, I found all that I’d lost was the heel of my right boot. But my heart was beating nineteen to the dozen. I remember (I’ll never forget) one night shift. We were nearly a mile from the fireman’s cabin. My mate was “holing” at the coal-face with his mandrill, and I was turning coal back with my scooped shovel. Running feet, and a light ap-pearing at the bottom of our stall. A screaming voice “Quick! Come quick! Tommy’s cut ‘is finger off!” My mate still clutched his “mandrill”, petrified.

Grabbing my candle, I scurried crab-wise towards the other light and the fright-ened voice. When I reached “Tommy”, I found a gory mess - coal-dust mixed with blood and wood-chips. He’d been fashioning a wedge to fix a pit prop to the roof. In the confined space, his hatchet had slipped and taken the top off one of his fin-gers. Tearing chunks of his singlet, I bound the bloodied finger and tied his wrist and forearm to his upper arm and told him and his boy to get out as quickly as possible to the fireman’s cabin - and the ambulance box.

Later, the fireman told me I had “Done a damn good job, Stan, bach”. It was in the same pit but in a different seam that my mate and I were trapped behind a thirty-yard fall. It was a “wet” seam called The Malthouse. We were both at the coal-face, Bill Lear and I, 30 yards up the slope from the heading. He was cutting coal; I was filling it into a low, wide-winged, four-wheeled cart. The cart was at-tached to a strong chain, which went through a “sheave” and all the way down to an empty cart at our filling “shaft”.

The sheave was attached to a sheave-post, the main, middle pit-prop supporting the roof, which was the last of a line of similar props - until we moved upwards through the seam. The carts ran on a light railway, nailed to sleepers, which Bill and I laid as we moved further and further upwards. So, thirty yards of light rail-way, 30 yards of sleepers, and 30 yards of middle or sheave posts. When the face cart was full, I would remove the sheave-brake (an old mandrill shaft or, some-times, a piece of sleeper). Bill’s candle was in a ball of clay at his elbow; mine was in a “spike” stuck into the sheave-post.

When I removed the brake (or eased it a little, depending), I gave the full cart a push and down it went, pulling the empty cart up to the face to be filled - and so on, and on. The tailboard of the cart would be knocked off, the coal emptied on to our filling shaft, and I would fill it into trams for its journey out of the heading

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and up to the “top”. This particular shift was “measuring day” and the firemen had already visited our stall and done his stuff to fix the “section” payment per ton we produced according to the confined height we worked in. Gingerly, I eased the brake on the sheave and gave the cart an encouraging shove, crouched on my hands and knees, of course. There was an almighty crack of timber, a swoosh of air darkness an ominous roar of falling, grinding, rock. I was flat on my face, my eyes and nose filled with dust - speechless, winded.

Bill’s voice, squeaky with dust and fright: “Stanley! Stanley! Jesus!” I recovered my voice and said something. I don’t know what I said. “Th-hank God”, from Bill, and then “Matches? Candles?” “Waistcoat matches, candles coat” I said breathlessly. But somehow I had crawled to the face and found both - and Bill had crawled and found me. I’ll never forget somehow lighting a candle and, shielding the flame with our hands, gaping at the tumbled mass of rock and timber cutting us off from the heading below.

Looking back, well over 50 years, it now seems incredible that Bill and I put on our waistcoats, jackets, scarves and caps and, dragging shovels, hatchet and picks, managed to worm our way through the settling boulders and mangled timber to reach the safety of the heading. Just as incredible was that Bill sat on our filling-shaft (the only dry spot) dangling his feet and smoking a Woodbine.

A very bright light and clumping feet and stick came towards us. “Manager”, I said, knowing that carbide lamp. And indeed, it was the manager himself. He stared at Bill and me - dressed and sitting down! “What the -“, he began holding up his lamp and shielding his eyes with a hand. Bill removed his half-smoked Woodbine, spat, and gestured behind him. “Stall’s in”. “Good God!” Where were you and the boy?”

Bill told him. I don’t remember saying anything. Sequel? I left the pits and went to Oxford in October 1930. Came “home” for Christmas. Among other things, I asked how was Bill Lear, who lived on Sarn. Dead, I was told. Killed in the pit? No, died of ‘flu - in bed.

For a time, I can’t remember how long, I became the “Brattice-man”, my duties being to persuade fresh air to chase foul air from the coal faces through the various narrow airways and returns to the upcast shaft, sucked up by the big fans “on top”, which is what we always called the surface. For this, I used “brattice-cloth” (a sort of tarred sacking), a hammer (a broad head on one side, a claw on the other) and stout, broad-headed brattice nails. The rolls of brattice were heavy and cumbersome, and a bag of brattice-nails was also heavy.

The trick of the trade was getting the equipment to where it was required quickly and with the least effort. Sometimes, this was easier said than done, especially in an emergency - one of which I well remember. An experiment with a “conveyor-face”, as opposed to a “stall and pillar”, coal getting was well under way. This meant a very long “face” of coal was being undercut by a machine powered by compressed air shot-holes bored into the seam and charged with powder the face cleared of miners while the shotsman fired the charges and the coal blown down for a team of men to shovel on to moving conveyors, which emptied into the trunk conveyor.

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This particular shift, the fireman’s early morning inspection had found the face to-tally fouled. So, while the men were held back from the face, I had to crawl slowly forward with my brattice, hammer and nails and persuade the good, fresh air to follow my brattice channel and chase the foul air away. It took quite a lot of brattice and nails and effort (and know-how!), and it took a lot out of me too! The delighted fireman said I could take a breather. Believe me, I couldn’t do anything else - for some time.

In certain cases, I would use portable air-pipes to help out. These, I remember, were about two feet in diameter and six feet long - made of what I thought was tin (?). They slotted into each other. Number one would be at an air source, the others slotted and secured. Then, I would continue the flow with brattice nailed to pit props already in position.

In the old “stall and pillar” method, airways were always driven back to the next stall about ten yards up from the heading, and a wall of brattice would be fixed be-low each airway in such a manner that the carts (empty up and full down) could travel through without tearing the cloth. Thus, the fresh air was drawn in through the heading, circulating up each stall as far as the brattice wall, on and on until it reached the face of the heading, up the innermost stall and back through each air-way, to the face of each stall and so on until it reached the “return” to the upcast shaft.

So, it will be obvious that brattice was a most important part of the whole venti-lation system.

Keeping supplies of brattice and nails up-to-date meant know-how between the offi-cials on each shift down below and the storekeepers “up top” but sometimes, not too often, a sudden demand would call for quick action on somebody’s part.

Once, I remember vividly, it fell to me to make a quick move. I badly needed a bag of nails to finish an important stretch of bratticing - and it meant me going up top and fetching it. Sounds easy, but not so. Coytrahen was not a straight up-and-down pit, but a slant with a railroad all the way from top to bottom. Lines of trams, shackled together (empties down and full ones up) were wound by the big rope which was controlled from the engine room. These were called “journies”.

A tough guy called the “rider”, with a smelly, smoky cap-lamp blazing, controlled these journies by means of double signal wires stretched from the engine-room to the lowest “parting” (like a miniature railway-siding). This he did by making contact with a small piece of cake, bringing the two wires together the necessary number of times. I had to cling like a limpet (a very scared limpet!) between two full trams, riding the shackles, (child’s play to the rider) and was I glad to see the daylight and put my naily boots on firm ground. I got my bag of nails as quickly as I could, jumped into an empty tram on the down journey and suffered another fright-ening ride into the darkness.

Curiously, this reminds me of a similar, but slightly less bumpy ride in the same slant. I was to be confirmed by the Bishop, among others, we being so hard up, could just not afford to lose a shift. (I was on days that week) So arrangements

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were made for me to go “up” on the “Fireman’s journey”. This train of trams was laid on to take the fireman to the surface, about an hour before the miners’ knock-ing-off time.

I supposed the management considered it a waste to use the transport carriages, so a journey of empty trams was used in which the firemen (and me) crouched down to keep our heads below the level of the roof. For this trip, of course, the rider would signal “men on”, which meant that we reached the “bank” up top not too knocked about, just a little breathless and bruised.

In case I have not fully described elsewhere how we got “down” and then back “up”, here goes. When we reached Coytrahen Park Colliery, the first call was to the checkweigher’s office, where we were given a scrap of paper with a number on it, say 17E/1 or 22W/2, indicating a seat on the “journey” of carriages. These car-riages were very low bogeys made of wood and metal. A wooden rail divided each carriage fore and aft, with seats each side, seven each side. Seven or eight carriages made up the “journey”. There was of necessity very little room between each seat. Space, up, down, and all around was very limited.

Your scrap of numbered paper was your ticket to your seat. 17E/1 meant your seat was the third seat on the third carriage on the East side on the first journey to go down, and, of course, the same seat on the same journey to come up. 22W/2 meant that your seat was the first seat on the fourth carriage on the West Side and the same seat to come up. I said these carriages were low, and we passengers had to sit low too, which meant we had to more or less lay down on the seats, squat-ting between each other’s legs - at all a comfortable ride. Heads had to be crouched down and elbows tucked in to avoid contact with the roof or sides, timbered or bare rock. And every miner (we all wore caps and scarves) had a tommy-box and drinking jack or bottle. In addition, one sometimes had a new shovel, hatchet or mandrill-shaft.

Almost every day we boys would carry down a box of sharpened mandrill blades, collected from the blacksmith’s shop and, quite often, a full powder-tin (LOCKED), collected from the powder magazine (an extra walk on top). I almost forgot to men-tion candles, matches and a pot-bellied oil-lamp. Hard to believe, but true neverthe-less, those who could afford them also carried cigarettes or a pipe and tobacco.

Sad to mention, but part of the business of mining, the other form of transport was the “dead-cart”, once seen always remembered. When I became redundant at Coytrahen, I suffered a period of unemployment (there was no such thing as redun-dancy pay then!). Then I managed to get a job at Powell Duffryn (PDs), Llanhar-ran - 9 long miles away.

At first, a chap took us there and brought us back for four shillings (“old” money) a week but when this failed to pay him, we had to find alternative trans-port. I went to Dunlop’s in Bridgend and got a Hercules bike on the “glad and sorry”, paying them the four bob each week until I had paid off £3-19-9 (again “old” money).

The worst ride was coming home, especially after leaving Pencoed behind and

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heading for Heol-y-cyw across Pant Common. Head down and bum up, with the smoke from Brynwyth’s chimney always coming towards you tired and filthy hungry and thirsty often wet and cold it was a huge relief at last to free-wheel down Sarn hill, whizz past Llansantffraid church, over Pandy bridge, into Aberkenfig, up Rock hill - and home sweet home at last.

And I now find it most remarkable how quickly I recovered after a hot cup of tea, a hot dinner, and a hot bath in Mam’s old washtub in front of a hot fire. Some Vaseline around my eyes and on my hair, changed into my “second-best” clothes - and I was a new man. PDs was a real pit. We, and the coal, went up and down in cages. There were no pit ponies. The coal was worked with “blast”-driven coal-cutters and carried to pit-bottom on “conveyors”, driven by “blast” en-gines. (“Blast” was our name for compressed air). It was all so very different to Coytrahen, but I quickly got used to it and was soon, as before, doing a variety of jobs.

Once, because I was, at the time, assistant to the conveyor maintenance man, I was invited to work a Sunday shift. I gladly accepted - extra money for Mam and me. It was a long and lonely ride to work. There were only a few of us down be-low, all on some kind of maintenance work. Gilbert was testing the crosscut con-veyor and needed another spanner. As the conveyor was running slowly, and empty, I decided that the easiest and quickest way to get the spanner to Gilbert was to squat low on the conveyor trays and be “jigged” along the cross-cut.

Head bent very low, shoulder hunched, resting my electric safety lamp in my lap, I rode along, the spanner in my left hand. Losing caution for only a moment, my hand became trapped between the edge of the tray and the rocky side. Squelch! Quickly, yelling with pain as I did so, I transferred the spanner to my other hand and clutched a fold of my sweaty vest with my gory left hand. The pain was a bit much and I felt sick. I gave the spanner to my mate, who said I would find an ambulance-box with the main-and-tail engine driver. Pulling my vest loose from my trousers, and wrapping some more around my bloody hand, I managed to get to the little engine-house.

That was the day, the only day ever, said he, when the driver hadn’t brought the box in. Where next? I was getting a bit shaky. Pit bottom I was told. Bound to be a box there, mun.

It was a long walk and, in my vest, my bloodied vest, I was getting cold. The couple of chaps at pit-bottom “tut-tutted” at the sight of my wound, but told me there was no ambulance box there either. Cold, shaky and getting rather fed up in general, I demanded they ring up top to send down an ambulance box. And they did - right away. A cold and anxious wait for the cage - but the ambulance box contained only a dirty ball of cotton wool! My God! Furious, I jumped into the cage and demanded that they ring “Men on” and send me up. They did and, livid with rage, almost crying with the cold and the pain, I found the ambulance shed.

It was much better there, warmer too. After a lot of sympathy, a clean-up, lint and bandage on my poor finger, a mug of hot tea and a friendly pat on the back, I felt more like Stan Parkhouse. Eventually, repeating the journey in reverse, Gilbert

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wanted to know where the hell I had been all this time. In the dimness I stuck my bandaged hand in front of his face, took a deep breath - and what I told him he would never forget. And neither shall I!

In the same pit (PDs), another incident occurred which I have just remembered - but there was no blood spilled this time. It was the end of a day shift and, as usual, we were congregated at pit-bottom, waiting our turn to be taken to the sur-face in the cage. Through the buzz of conversation, I became aware of bells ring-ing, a sudden hush among the miners nearest the cage, then an angry outburst in top-grade Welsh miners’ swear words.

There was some trouble in the winding-shed up top, with the engine or the ropes; we couldn’t discover the exact cause. Anyway, one thing was very plain - we couldn’t go up top until something or other was repaired. Although there was still life in our battery lamps and pit-bottom was reasonably well-lit with roof-lamps, it wasn’t the warmest of places to hang about when one was tired, dirty, disappointed and, suddenly, very thirsty and hungry. And for those of us who came from the Aberkenfig area, about a dozen of us, there was a new worry. What would my Mam, and for the others, Mams and Dads, be thinking when we didn’t arrive home at the usual time. We knew the answer. As always, with mining families, they would imagine the worst had happened.

It was all right for the locals. Surface workers, going home at the usual time, would be able to pass the news of the delay to the families of those waiting below. Telephones? Never heard of ‘em. “Won’t be long now, boys bach, some of the older miners tried to console us - and we cheered up a bit. But not much. It was a miserable, anxious, hungry wait, and some of us found odd spots out of the draught and huddled together for warmth, saying very little, but wondering what those at home were thinking.

As well as I can remember, it was about two long, long, hours before we at last were lifted to the top. I soon warmed up on my bike and pedalled like hell on the nine miles home. And - surprise! Surprise! There was no panic with Mam and the others when I finally walked in to No. 1 Mount Pleasant. Cyril Drake, one of our area boys, had overslept that morning - but, as it was Friday and pay-day he’d biked over to collect his wage-packet, heard the news, biked back as quickly as he could and told all our families. Good old Cyril! There followed, in quick succes-sion, the best cup of tea I have ever tasted, the best dinner our Mam ever cooked and the most luxurious bath in the old tub that I have ever enjoyed.

A change of job at Powell Duffryn: I was “looking after” the trunk-conveyor which led to the loading-bay below. All the coal from the conveyors in the cross-cuts (“headings” in Coytrahen) was fed into the trunk. It was my job to keep an eye on the lad who controlled the compressed-air engine and, on no account allow a blockage to occur. It was a noisy, windy, lonely job-but there was a consolation. After “snap time”, when the men had eaten their lunches, some of the newspaper wrapping came floating down in the coal on the conveyor. I became adept at rescu-ing a good percentage of these and later became quite good at reading with one eye, keeping one eye on the conveyor and reading an interesting tit-bit with the other.

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Some of these tit-bits were very interesting and taught me a lot. When I tell you that the biggest danger on this job was the extra large lumps of coal going berserk when they entered the trunk from the cross-cuts, you will realise that it would have been an advantage to possess three eyes - one in the back of my head.

However, it had to happen. One day, (and from what you will gather shortly, it must have been in 1926), it did happen. While taking avoiding action against a monster lump of flying coal, I ducked into his mate. I was nearly stunned. A large lump formed on my head - a sticky, bloody, lump but, as it was almost knocking-off time, I decided that getting home was more important than finding the ambu-lance-box. I paid special attention to washing the bump, but for a few days it was hell.

Then it was Christmas, and Charlie was on his first visit home from Oxford. (That’s how I know it was 1926). I couldn’t hide it from him. He took charge. Sit-ting on the “big kitchen” sofa, he got me to kneel on the cokernut mat while he examined my bump. “Good God!” said Charlie. Quickly, a bowl of hot water, a flannel, a towel and Mam’s scissors. As gently as he could, he gave the lump a haircut and swamped the place with very hot water. “Now”, he said, “Hang on.” He squeezed. “Ouch! Oh, hell!”

From Mam: “Stanley!” “Sorry, Mam, but it hurts.” More hot water. More squeezing. And then, mercifully, the pain lifted and almost went away, and I sighed with relief. Charlie said “Dammo, mun, you ought to see the muck I got out!” I said “No thanks!” Then I thanked him, and I was about to light a Woodbine when he offered me one of his, Ardath, from Oxford. No expense spared. Good old Charlie!

Biking to and from PDs could, curiously enough, be almost a pleasure in the sum-mer, but it was pretty grim in the winter. Rain and wind was bad enough hail and wind and icy roads were worse but snow was worst of all. The snow was bad one morning and we had had a hard job to collect our lamp-checks on time. It contin-ued to snow all day, and when we collected our bikes from some local back-garden sheds (bob a week), we knew we had to face a rough ride home. After a short conference, we decided (6 or 7 mates) to ride follow-my-leader in the deepest ruts made by the wheels of the heaviest transport. Terry led the way. I was third from last, but the lead changed hands several times as first one, and the other, tumbled into the snow and scrambled back into the saddle.

For a few miles, we shared a few breathless laughs at each other’s antics, but soon we had to save our breath. We reached the crest of a well-known down-slope near Pencoed. Normally, it would have been an enjoyable free-wheel scamper, but not today. In the distance, I saw one of the lads picking himself out of the snow and carrying on. Halfway down. So far, so good. I heard a big bus grinding along behind me. Almost too late, I realised that the nearside wheels of the bus were travelling in the same rut as my bike, and I heaved like made to the left, going head-over-heels. As the bus surged by, I caught the sight of frightened faces through the iced-up windows, mouths wide open with words I never heard. Some of the lads were taking a breather at the bottom of the hill - and all agreed that I’d just had a lucky escape, but when I got home, Mam’s welcome was very special.

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And the tea was hot, the dinner lovely, the water hot, beside a fire half way up the chimney.

One time, near Christmas, I was mate to Charlie Kendrick, driving a “cross-cut”, which we called a heading in Coytrahen (He eventually emigrated to Australia). He lived at Pencoed. Charlie was selling Christmas raffle tickets for a local charity. As usual, Mam and the rest of us bought a book of tickets between us. Cyril’s name was on one of the winning tickets - for a duck. Lovely! A duck for Christmas din-ner! We were all excited and smacking our greedy lips. The snag was, Charlie pointed out, the duck had not been killed yet! Arrangements had to be made to col-lect the prize from Charlie’s house in Pencoed on Sunday, the day before Christ-mas. Well, the only choice was obvious, wasn’t it? “Our Stanley’s got a bike. Our Stanley knows the way. Our Stanley knows this Mr Kendrick”. So I went.

There followed one of my blackest, wettest, windiest, coldest rides on a bike. It rained all the way there and all the way back. Had I been built in the same manner as that confounded duck, it wouldn’t have mattered! Water not only ran off me in cold rivers, but through me. And when the old joke was cracked, “a ducking as well as a duck---!” But when it appeared in all its glory at our Christmas dinner with all and plenty of the trimmings, I concentrated on the duck and forgot about my ducking.

Roof and side support at Coytrahen was timber, pit props (“posts”) and wooden “lids” and wedges. These were used chiefly in “stalls”. Where there was necessarily more height and width, the Deep, headings and returns, longer and stouter timber was used as “pairs of timber”(arms and collars) with small lagging timber laid be-hind and, where necessary, above. Where “muck”, waste, was available, this would be filled in behind the lagging, and, most important, firmly fixed.

Suitable space being cleared each side, allowing for an angle on each arm, arms and collars would be “offered up”, the measuring stick, plus “hands” and “fingers” would be used. This was in conjunction with a simple system of sighting. Mate holds a candle (or lamp) on each new arm in turn boss goes back several pairs of timber and “sights” new arm’s light. Here’s where the hatchet (and know-how) came into its own. A point, not too sharp would be cut at the bottom of each arm to slot into the hole pecked into the rock bottom at the spot decided upon. The top end of each collar (measured to a “finger”) would have two “breasts” shaped upon it, short one in front, and longer one behind.

The arm, similarly measured, would have slots cut at each end to exactly fit the “breasts” on the collars at the agreed angle. Here’s where you needed more pairs of hands than were usually available. The line is right, the length and angle of each arm and the collar are right, but you just can’t stand there, Tin holding one arm and Tom the other to fix the “pair” upright. “Collier’s aids” are used. Some legs extending from behind the last pair of timbers and fixed temporarily, some old sleepers, a nice big lump of rock (“stone”) - but don’t use your measuring stick. You’ll need that for the next pair of timbers, and the next, and so on. And keep that hatchet sharp, boyo!

Pit props were much simpler. These were usually peeled spruce from abroad, the

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most popular length being six feet six inches long, “six-and-a-halves”, of various circumferences; we called them “Norways”. Being used chiefly in stalls, as sheave-posts mainly, and the height nowhere near their length, the off-cuts yielded “lids” and “wedges” - and “blocks”. Every man was entitled to a block a day. (At No 1 Mount Pleasant, we split our block into kindling and placed enough in the oven to start a fire to boil the kettle quickly in the morning).

PDs was quite different. Here, steel “rings” were used. Two “arms” and no “collar”, for, joined together in the centre with nuts and bolts and fishplates. They made a half-circle. But “logs” were used above and behind and securely fastened as at Coytrahen. They needed a good solid slot in the bottom. Here also you needed more hands than were available for fixing. Favourite method was one man holding each ring against his back, one arm to steady, and one over his shoulder to ma-noeuvre it into position - and God help the learner who let the upper hand grasp the metal with his fingers outside the ring! The smallest stone falling out of a hole in the roof could cut off your finger against the metal. So, you soon learned.

But the job I hated most was perching on top of a tram, bolting the fishplates to-gether. “Left a bit. Right a bit. Down a bit. Up a bit”. With a shadowy, gaping hole in the roof and the occasional dribble of loose stuff, I wasn’t very keen on it. And all done by lamplight. The rings I remember best were grooved and about eleven feet long. There were other methods of roof support, but I don’t want to be too boring. No doubt these will emerge later when I talk about “gobbing” and “pulling the stumps” - the latter being working on the retreat in the stall and pillar system.

On the last day of March 1921, Charlie and I were both on the night shift, he in 9 West, I in 15 West. As we turned into the long drive leading to the pit-head, we, and our colleagues, noticed how still the air had become but, no matter, our business was way, way, down below. I was on “narrow-work” with Joe Coles, which meant that, while I was busy filling a tram on the heading, he was in sight about 9 yards up, holing the face by the light of his candle. I blinked my eyes when the next journey of empty trams were pulled in. “Ay, mun”, grinned the hau-lier, “it’s snow alright. Wondered what was coming with that funny air on top.”

And it was - snow clinging to the sides and bottom of the trams - and snow means - This was a God-sent chance. He looked at the snow, then at me, then at Joe, sweating away at the face of the stall. He rolled a snowball, and I followed suit. We crawled to the lip of the shaft and took aim. “Now!” said the haulier, and we threw our snowballs! We should never have done it.

Joe Coles was not a bad-language man, but at that moment, he taught us a few new words we had never heard before. He rolled away from the face as fast as the limited space allowed him, terrorised. Quickly, we crawled up to him, tried to ex-plain, tried to apologise. Then we dragged him down and showed him the snow in the trams. He took a long time to calm down. Then I spotted a bright carbide lamp, and heard the clump of a pair of heavy boots and a walking stick coming through the darkness. It was John “Goch”, the fireman. “All out, boys bach. Snowed up on top it is”. “Pull the other one John Goch. April Fool is it?”

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(For, after midnight, it was indeed April 1st - and tomorrow was my 15th birth-day).

There was little further delay, for the snow in the trams was evidence enough. So, tools put away, caps, scarves and coats on, we walked the long uphill drag to the brow. The sight was incredible. There was snow everywhere - in the “wee small hours” of April the First. Duw! Duw! Trudging homeward, we tended to bunch to-gether. Somehow Big Brother Charlie was at Stanley’s side, with a word of encour-agement. By the time we made it up the gully to No. 1 Mount Pleasant, we were exhausted. At a sign from Charlie, I popped into our outside “dub” to shelter from the whirling snow.

When Charlie finally succeeded in rousing our Mam, she threw up the back bed-room window, spotted Charlie at the back door and screamed, “Stanley! Where’s Stanley? Oh my God!” Quickly, I showed myself, and Mam let us in. I remember the lovely big fire we soon got going, the hot cups of tea, and the bath in the old tub. And I’ll never forget April 1st 1921. (Much later, I found out that John “Goch” was Blanche’s mother’s brother.)

Even today (1983) I don’t suppose a 15-year-old would know, or care, much about Trade Unions. Anyway, my mate at the time took enough interest in me to try to improve my political education and when a “special” Miners Union meeting was announced, he persuaded me to attend. Trade Union subscriptions then were only 2 or 3 pence. Now (1983) I am told they are around 30p or 40p, more than I was paid for one shift!

(Here I have decided not to use “real” names in case the incident arouses the wrong kind of reaction in any possible survivors). We were in a large room, which was crowded with miners and tobacco-smoke - and very noisy. Behind the speaker’s dais, high on the wall, was a stuffed buffalo’s head, which I understood was one of the signs of a “royal and ancient order”, which held their “lodge” there, whose natty suitings, I later discovered were supplied made-to-measure by Tom Lewis, the draper.

Today, cloth caps and scarves were everywhere, even one or two up front among the speakers. As the speeches progressed, even I could gather that there was an (alleged) traitor in our midst. The chairman spoke the miners’ agent spoke some of the committee spoke - and there certainly was some heckling. Hector (the “accused”) was undoubtedly squirming uncomfortably in his chair, sweating a bit. Then he got to his feet and he spoke. Even to a tyro like me it was obvious that he was trying to bluster his way out of the “trial”. So young, I was getting fed-up and my chair was hard on my bony bottom. Mam had taught me good manners, so I stifled a yawn. Where and when would it end?

Then, as quick as a flash, it was all over - for me anyway. Ianto “Pigeon” was in the aisle about 10 yards from the speaker. Big bloke he was. Pointing a finger dramatically, he said: “Aw, Hector, mun, what did old Judas do?”

Shortly afterwards, I joined (from compulsion) my first strike (or was it a lock-out?). I can’t remember what it was all about and I don’t think it lasted very long.

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I have vague memories of enjoying myself. The weather was good. We swam in our favourite places, played cricket on the common, and went for long walks up Mynydd Bach and over Court Coleman. But it did not leave any lasting scars on me or the family, as did the one to come - in 1926.

I believe my “penny-notebook period” had started by now and I would wander off on my own and try to write poems “on the sky”. Advice to the boys came, some-times in a torrent of words, from their older mates on any subject, such as court-ing, mending a puncture in a bicycle tyre, billiards, snooker, singing, and so on and on, but seldom on the job in hand. You were expected to pick that up as you went along - which is one reason, I think, why I accepted so many different jobs below ground. (I wonder, now, why I never set my eyes on a job “on top” for a change. Must have been because surface jobs, unless skilled, were less well paid).

During snap-time at the stall-face one day, Bill went all-serious. First he de-scribed, sketchily, how he had done his courting - on horseback.

For the life of me I can’t remember whether his sweetheart also had a horse - but anyway it was my courting he wanted to talk about. It went deeper than that in fact. He wanted to give me some sound advice, from the store of his experience. We were taking a longer break than usual and (being an open mine) Bill had a Woodbine going. “It’s like this, Stan,” he was telling me “you may know the girl well enough to take her for a day out, say to Porthcawl, isn’t it?” “Ay”, I an-swered, trying to be as serious as Bill, whom I knew was doing this for his butty’s own good.

The shadowy light of our candles helped me to keep a straight face while he went on: “Well, um, a day’s a long time, like, and you couldn’t expect the young lady not to want to go, um, you know, go somewhere. Right?” I agreed. He stubbed his fag and went on, “Well, now, this is the way of it see. You walk her towards the shops. Main street, like. And you’re bound to see one of them, you know, public conveniences for ladies and gents.” “Ay. That’s right. I get you, Bill: where we could both—“

He stopped me so suddenly that he almost blew my candle out. “Now listen, lis-ten a minute, this is the way you do it, Stan bach, the gentleman’s way”. “As you know”, (and now he seemed to relax a little) “there’s always a shop where you can buy fags near these, um, places, yes?” “Ay, I agreed”. “Well then” (completely re-laxed now) “there you are, boyo. And—take—your—time, see. The little girl will be pleased and, if she’s a proper lady, you’ll have bags of time to—you know, go yourself.”

He grabbed his mandrill and began to attack the coal-face furiously, and I scurried down the stall, picked up my shovel and began filling the tram the haulier had just left at my shaft. Good, sensible, shy old Bill! If it’s any comfort to you wherever you are (without a shovel, I hope!) that hesitant, well-meant advice did a power of good to me.

In another “Bill yarn” I can reveal that “Go slow” in work began long before the Second World War. Bill’s stall was booming. “Free dig” and bags of trams filled.

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In the phrase of the day, both he and I “sweat our guts out”. He got a good wage packet and I got a nice tip, which pleased our Mam and me, for we always shared my tips. Then it happened. One payday, Bill handed me my wages, paid my stop-pages, but NO TIP! I was rampant, mad with temper. Mam just as disappointed as I was - for we had come to expect the extra money - tried to calm me down. “P’raps he forgot, Stanley. Maybe he’ll give to you Monday”. Monday came. No tip. No explanation from William.

“My God!” I swore, “What the heck. I’ve sweated and slaved, begged extra trams - and that bugger gets all the benefit. And what do I get? Hell’s bells.” Furi-ously, I filled the first tram in record time. But my temper had a stranglehold on me. I came to my senses, slung my shovel down and squatted at ease on the shaft. It was my brain that got busy then. Now if --. Leisurely, I crawled up to the face where, as usual, Bill was as busy as a beaver - and sweating like a pig, a nice pile of coal waiting to be shovelled into the empty cart. I decided it could wait a bit longer.

As I fixed the hooked door of the cart, the darned thing “jumped the rails”. I swore something awful as I heaved the wheels back on to the rails - which made it take longer and longer. Eventually, I sent the full cart down and got the empty up. No word from Bill. Twice I had to disappear to an old stall down wind to empty my bowels. Bill only grunted. Tuesday. I found a lot of things wrong on the shaft - and one full cart ended up where it shouldn’t have. Wednesday. “Blimey! My knees are sore!” Bill gave more of a squeak than a grunt. Thursday. Bill said he wanted to tell me something. “It’s a free country”, I told him.

It was a sound story and I believed every word of it, only - well, from my point of view, he had handled the situation rather crudely, like a ruptured duck or a camel on stilts. Bill, puffing the inevitable Woodbine, explained how he had bought new false teeth (No, we didn’t call ‘em dentures!) for which he was paying by in-stalments. Doing so well of late, a rush of blood had gone to his head and he’d finished the payments right off. So, no tip for Stanley last Friday. So, fair enough, William. What next?”

He swore on everything most precious that he would “Make it up” to me - soon. Did he? He did. Again, good old Bill! I forgive you (Wish I could figure out how many trams of coal we missed that week). Anyway, I filled a “doubler” next jour-ney.

Home - We lived in Aberkenfig, once described as the “most human of villages” by one of the Tondu Pugh brothers. (Glamorgan Gazette) - and it was just that. Home was No. 1 Mount Pleasant, up a gully off the Bridgend Road by Chappel, the bakers. As its name suggests, it was on a hillside. Numbers 1,2,3 and 4 were on a ledge overlooking the main road below. The rest of the houses stretched in a row upward to a small plateau, where, in a rather larger house, dwelt “Fitzgerald’s, the Orchard”. Next came a stony outcrop we called “The Rocks”, surrounded by a few scraggy trees and bushes.

Then came “Randall’s Wood”, leading up to Penylan Farm, which crowned the hillside. Here, I later learnt, was unearthed a valuable hoard of Roman coins, last

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seen in The National Museum of Wales, in Cardiff. (Visiting the National Museum of Wales, in Cardiff, I saw those very coins, so I carefully copied the particulars from the card in the showcase, and told my T&H (Gazette) readers all about it. A couple of weeks later, the Gazette printed a reader’s letter from - I think Brecon? - from a man who was a relative of the farmer who was the occupant of Penylan Farm at the time of the discovery of the coins).

To the right of “The Rocks”, was a mound we called “The Tump”, and a bit of wasteland called “The Moulders”, from which a small path led off to meet the road at Mynydd Bach. Closer home, just below the little plateau, was “The Spout” from which pure, icy spring-water flowed on forever. This formed a streamlet, which was supposed to find a drain as an outlet to the Ogmore River down below. But it did-n’t always behave itself, and took great pleasure in meandering merrily down our gully!

Below the Tump, stretching down to the back of Chappel’s house, was “The Bog”, a squelchy, messy, delightful haunt of my younger days. The pine end of No. 1 (blank then, but not now) stared disconsolately at Chappel’s cart-shed and sta-ble. Its centre was always warm, from our fire. To get to Nos. 2,3 and 4, you had to duck under our Mam’s clothesline, which was hardly ever clear of “washing”. We had a front door, which faced the road below, but we seldom used it. This led to a tiled passage as far as the foot of the stairs, which had worn lino on the treads. Halfway along the passage, on the right, was our “front-room”, the family’s pride and joy - but more later.

We always used the back door, which led directly into a lean-to back kitchen. Our water supply came from a single tap fitted into the back-kitchen wall (outside) be-low the lean-to’s chimney. The back-kitchen contained a plain table, a bench with bucket and bowl, and a copper in the corner under the chimney, a small window and, in the far corner, under the stairs, a “pantry”, which I often called “The Black Hole of Calcutta”. (The younger members of the family will remember with horror being imprisoned there by the Chief Wardress - Mam - for bad behaviour).

Around the corner from the tap, just past the little back-kitchen window was the WC, which we called “the dub”. You flushed it with a bucket of water - and we’d never been told about toilet paper. When it went wrong, it was very nasty. But, as Mam often pointed out, we were lucky. Many, many, people had to take a walk down the bottom of the garden to a much more primitive privy. (Seeing that we didn’t have a garden, I used to try to puzzle out how this affected us). We washed in a bucket or a bowl on a bench in the back-kitchen with a bar of carbolic soap and a piece of pumice stone, but we had a bath in Mam’s wash-tub in front of the fire in the front kitchen.

This front kitchen was larger and had a higher ceiling than the lean-to in fact compared to some homes I knew, it was warm and snug and cosy. The fireplace was wide with a large metal guard in front and a square of cokernut-matting on the tiled floor in front of that. The grate was large with ovens on both sides, an iron kettle and other pots and pans on the hobs (and no Welsh kitchen would be com-plete without the iron bakestone - Welsh cakes - yum!). Two or three trivets com-pleted the fixtures - and there were always half-a-dozen flatirons, smooth and shiny,

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big and small, winking in the firelight.

All the ironwork was regularly “black-leaded”, hearthstone was liberally applied and this was enclosed by a monster shiny steel fender. Each night, as the fire was dying down, “sticks” (kindling wood) were popped into the oven, ready to start a quick fire for tea, porridge and toast first thing next morning. A couple of toasting forks hung from hooks in the fireplace, one a lovely brass, the other an ordinary wire one. I can’t remember ever needing a bellows.

The high, wide mantelpiece was edged with some pretty fringe material. Among other things I remember was a china dog, some ornaments, and a big tea caddy. We had several pictures on the wall. Four, I specially remember. In bamboo frames, they recalled the Boer War - General Redvers-Buller, Baden-Powell, The Relief of Mafeking, and The Relief of Ladysmith.

I nearly forgot the old-fashioned clock, bought by Dad at a sale. Fair-sized, its dark frame had brass inlays. It was wound and powered by long brass chains and weights, 1 large, 1 small, which were lead covered with brass. When one weight went up, the other came down. It held the place of honour in the middle of the Boer War pictures. It “warned” at 10 to the hour and chimed the hours.

In one corner, rested a massive chest-of-drawers. The centrepiece, as in every home in those far-off days was the table. Ours was a large, strong, plain deal one with knife drawers in the end. I can assure you that there was ample sitting- and elbowroom for Mam, Charlie, Stanley, Cyril, Bertha, Doris and Jimmy. While Ber-tha, Doris and Jimmy were small, the tiled floor was sanded daily - sand being sold at a penny a bucket. Until the electric light came, we used two large oil table-lamps, one for everyday (kept in the front-kitchen) and one for best (kept in the front room). We took a candlestick with a lighted candle “Up the Wooden Lane” when we went to bed.

No, we never used newspaper for a tablecloth! Mam’s linen cloths may have been a wee bit threadbare, but they were always “whiter than white”. We had no telly, “wireless”, or gramophone - not even a mouth organ or tin-whistle. In the dark winter evenings, we would drop the paper blinds over the window, pull the lacy curtains across, put the best cloth on the table; the lamp dead centre with the wick turned up, and pull up our chairs.

Another bit of coal on the fire, a shovel-full of small coal, damped with tea-leaves, patted down at the back and—a hectic game of snakes-and-ladders, ludo, or draughts a game of cards all the time each of us nattering away about our favourite topic, Mam keeping order and making sure that she got a word in and so on and so on --.

And so to bed. But before that, I forgot to mention our sofa. Stuffed horsehair, placed near enough to the fire to be comfortable without cooking - almost the shab-bier twin to the one in the front room (later!). The stairs were steep and draughty, being opposite the front door. We shielded our candles with one hand and went into one of the three bedrooms. One bedroom was at the back, looking out over the lean-to kitchen two were in the front, looking out over the roofs and the river to

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Llansantffraid church, the railway and Sarn Hill.

All the windows were straight up-and-down sash windows. Many a blackened fin-gernail or badly bruised hand has resulted from a broken sash-cord. The beds were getting on a bit, iron bedsteads, with brass knobs, sagging wire mattresses - and squeaky. To supplement the meagre supply of blankets, we used jackets, overcoats, shawls or what have you. Being a mining family, they would be used both by night and day - which saved a certain amount of sharing. Under each bed, was a “po”, a china chamber pot.

The front room, rarely used, was something special - to us anyway. It was only a little smaller than the kitchen. Opposite the door, it had a small open fireplace, with a brass fender in front, and a set of fire irons. There was a lovely overmantel above the mantelpiece, with lots of mirrors and cunning little shelves with tiny orna-ments. The window had roll-up paper blinds and lace curtains, with a pot-geranium on the window-ledge. The centrepiece was a glossy little round table on which was our bestest tablecloth, with “bobbles” hanging around the fringe, and the best oil-lamp in the middle.

There was a suite of matching furniture, all stuffed with horsehair and covered with oilcloth (?). There were pictures on the wall, which I believe were chiefly family portraits. I remember Mam telling us proudly when we were smaller that Jim (our Dad) had saved up no end and spent a lot of money on that room. Somehow, even though we rarely used it then, I am sure it was worth every moment and each penny.

I suppose the reason why we never kept our coal in the bath is because we didn’t have one. Instead, we built a shed which used the wall of the garden of the next house up for the back wall and that of Chappel’s stable for one of the side walls (economy plus!). Chappel’s stable also supported our rabbit hutch. Our immediate neighbours were all friendly and kindly people. There had been a settling-in period when Mam, essentially a shy lady, felt that her Somerset accent made her a stranger, her being a widow and all with so many boys and girls. But even the miner husbands and older boys made her feel at home in the end.

At No. 2, was the large Jones family, who later moved in to Rose Cottage, Back Road, when it was left to them in a legacy. Then the Mainey’s, another large fam-ily took over and were no less friendly. No. 3 housed the Riley’s and No. 4 the Maloney’s, with whom we were especially friendly. (When poor Barty Maloney was badly crushed in a fall and spent a long time in the Cardiff Royal Infirmary, our front-room sofa was borrowed by them so he could come home to convalescence without going upstairs).

If anyone, young or old or middle-aged, fell ill in our neighbourhood, help was immediately at hand. You often saw a steaming cooked dinner between two plates being taken into a house where someone lay ill. As for our Mam - how she man-aged it I will never understand - she was “Parkhouse Bread and Jam”. Almost every child in Mount Pleasant at that time stood at the back door of No. 1 and said “Fank-ew, Parkhouse” with jammy lips. Good old Mam. God bless!

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The miners in and around Aberkenfig had plenty of pubs wherein to “whet their whistles” and their wives had a fair few shops to choose from. The scarcest item was money. There was also no shortage of churches and chapels - and, in those days, no shortage of faithful worshippers. The nearest town was a few miles down the road: Bridgend, then no more than a pleasant old market town. Further on was the sea, Ogmore-by-Sea, less than ten miles away. A little farther on was Porth-cawl, which, it must be said, did not encourage “those rough old miners” - but they are more than welcome now - in “Miners’ Fortnight”.

Further on still was the big city, Cardiff, home of Ninian Park and Cardiff Arms Park. If you had the money, you would have a bus ride to Bridgend. If not, there were two options open to you: “shanks’ pony” or a bicycle. Not many colliers had bikes. Did anyone have a motorcar? So it’s “shanks’ pony” then. The main road, past Agelton Asylum and under Cwm Bridge. Even a couple of street lamps near the brewery.

But it’s a nice, sunny day and I’ve decided to stroll along the old tram-road and come into Bridgend the other side of the river. In those days, you could go to Car-diff on the luxury coach for half-a-crown return and buy 5 Woodbines for twopence. Back in Aberkenfig. Bridgend Road led to Bridgend, and we called it Front Road. Penyfai Road led where it should, but we called it Back Road.

The middle of Aberkenfig lies in a bowl formed by the Rock Hill and the Catho-lic Hill. From what we used to call the Square, you can turn left up Dunraven Terrace and reach Park Slip Colliery, where hundreds of men and boys were killed in a tragic explosion long ago. (So many, many of their graves can be seen in St John’s Churchyard at the foot of the Catholic Hill.)

Back at the Square. There used to be a chapel on the opposite corner and, almost leaning against its wall, was the tiny shop of Charlie Jenkins, barber, where I was a lather-boy during the First World War. Duw! I must have lathered thousands of colliers’ bristly chins - and put a few of their pennies in my pocket to share with Mam. But where’s the chapel now? Gone. And who wants a lather-boy now? No-body.

Anyway, carry on past where the chapel used to be, the Police Station on the left, Workmen’s’ Institute on the right, turn the corner past the school and come to Pandy Bridge with my old church, Llansantffraid, just beyond. Dammo! What is this? Road closed. Why. Well, why don’t you open your eyes and see all those lovely new roads and flyovers? No, I’ll go back to the square. I know I should be able to get to Tondu railway station (if its still there!) where I can board a train and another train and another train up to the Valleys to meet all those other col-liers. Up to Blaengarw (“the Garw”), Maesteg and Ogmore Vale and Nantymoel. I wonder what’s happened to them?

Can any of them remember the dreadful depression, the shattering 1926 strike, the long, long, dole queues, the bloody Means Test? I can. Ugh!

And I remember the Cinema in Aberkenfig. Up the top of the Rock Hill and umpteen concrete steps. “Buttons”, the chucker-out flexing his muscles and casting

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his beady eye on the noisy ones. Davies the Cinema, manager, selling the tickets, playing the piano and crossing his fingers. He was crossing his fingers in sympathy with the old engine and the older projector. Why? Well, they always broke down, see, if more than two people coughed at once. Good old Davies the Cinema! We all had a hell of a lot to thank you for in those days.

For instance: the “big picture” was “Moon of Israel”, all about the bible, like. Well afternoon-shift colliers and some of ‘em on nights couldn’t see it unless—Davies the Cinema opened his doors in the morning so they (and I) could see it. Enough to nearly fill the “fivepennies” turned up - and we did have a treat, boyo. Icy cold it was, but we huddled up and soon forgot the cold and the hard wooden forms. We even saw them open up the Red Sea to get to the Promised Land.” There’s clever”, we said.

Colliers in those days, of necessity, did a lot of walking. Men employed at the brickworks, the railway, the wagon-works, the crusher, the washery plant, the coke-ovens, the shops, banks or other offices were at work almost immediately. On the other hand, because of lack of transport, the collier walked to the pit, queued up for the cage or journey down to pit-bottom - the trudged between the sleepers with stooped shoulders to reach his stall. Then he had to do it all over again in reverse at the end of each shift. Of course, not every miner worked as far from pit-bottom as my little lot did - but it makes me wonder sometimes in these days of arguments and strikes about “unsocial hours” and “special conditions” and so on!

In the twenties - my dusty decade - the Gospel of Jesus Christ was booming in the mining valleys. In the Land of Song, psalms, hymns, cantatas and oratorios ech-oed and re-echoed up and over the hills, through the vales and into every town and village, accompanied by the band of the Salvation Army, the fine organs of the ca-thedrals and churches and the little harmoniums of the chapels. Places of worship, of every known denomination, outnumbered the pubs. Great preachers were more fa-mous than footballers and film stars.

Apart from the main Sunday services, there were the everyday offshoots, such as prayer-meetings, bible-study classes, choir practice, Mothers’ Union, Young Peoples’ Guild, YMCA, and many others too numerous to mention, such as “Cwmanfa Ganu”. Boy Scouts, Girl Guides, Wolf Cubs and Brownies all functioned in close liaison with the churches and chapels and their members (such as myself) not only attended the regular services, but were ever ready to do a lot of donkey-work in organising any activity designed both to amuse and entertain and raise funds.

(The troop I belonged to was closely connected with my own parish church, Llansantffraid. The Rector made available the old stables behind the Rectory and the adjoining paddock - a Godsend! Our enthusiastic scrubbing, cleaning, scraping, paint-ing, sweat and elbow-grease was richly rewarded with a lovely room, which was also later used by the Boys’ Club and others in turn. Thank you, Rector!)

Miners and their families formed a large proportion of each congregation, some of which outnumbered the audience at the local cinema, and their humble offerings (largely pennies and halfpennies) were the fuel to keep the Christian kettle boiling. And boil it did. The Christian Herald and the Sunday Companion was devoured and

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shared liberally. Parish magazines thrived also. Many of the miners became staunch pillars of chapel or church. They sat (Nonconformists) in the big seats on the plat-form with the minister. They were lay-preachers, deacons and prayer-leaders.

Our St Johns and St Brides Minor (Llansantffraid) had a prayer book with a set Order of Service as well as a hymnbook and psalm-book. Not so the Wesleyans, Baptists, Seventh Day Adventists and such-like. Apart from a hymnbook (Welsh and English), they made their own prayers and confessions, often to a vociferous chorus of “Praise the Lord!” “Alleluia!” “Thank you, Lord!” - which never happened in our church.

Some of the places of worship around Aberkenfig are easily recalled: St Johns, St Brides Minor, St Roberts (Roman Catholic), Ebenezer, Jerusalem, Beulah, Carey and the Pentecostal Hall. I forget the name of the one, which used to stand on one cor-ner of the Square but is no longer there.

One of the biggest struggles of every Mam in a miner’s family, second only to paying the rent and providing meals, was obtaining and maintaining “Sunday best” clothes for her (often many) girls and boys. Traditionally, extra efforts would be made by her to have new clothes for them on Psalm Sunday and Easter Sunday. Here and now I can assure you that each little boy and girl looked a picture: hair brushed and combed (and often “Vaselined”) until it shone hands and faces scrubbed and also shining dresses or suits immaculate socks or stockings straight and unwrin-kled boots - or shoes, which were becoming more popular - also shining. There would be coloured ribbons in the girls’ hair, and the boys’ hair was parted, either in the middle or the side, cut short.

On Monday (“wash-day”), the clothes would be vigorously brushed, washed and ironed where necessary, folded carefully, and put away in the chest-of-drawers with a handful of mothballs. I also did my share of church work. I was a choirboy, or-gan-blower, assistant bell-ringer and lamplighter among other things.

I was a Sunday-school teacher and a secretary of the Young Peoples’ Guild. I was a Rover Scout, Assistant Cub-master, Troop Scribe and Court of Honour Scribe. Was I busy! (The latter reminds me of an occasion when I found it necessary to cheat a little). One of our Scouts was “tried” by the Troop Court of Honour. His punishment was to write an essay on bad temper. As the result of a secret “confab” of two, I did a short essay for him to copy, concluding with the words “Bad tem-per is to be avoided, like a leaky tent or crumbs in camp). God, forgive me! I of-ten get “het-up” even now.

Neighbours and friends, miners, railwaymen, and what have you were therefore a mixed bunch of Baptists, Roman Catholics, Methodists, Church of England (Wales?) and so on, but when there was a need, we all pulled together on the same rope. So I never blinked an eyelid when I saw our Mam take a hot dinner between two plates into the home of a Catholic or a Methodist - and vice-versa.

Our Nonconformist community never stopped beating the Gospel drum. Revival meetings were held frequently, one of which, I remember, went on for two or three weeks. There would be an early evening session to cater for the children coming

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home from school, at which one of the songs would be “Be Careful, Little Hands What You Do”. Substituting “eyes, ears, and lips” for “hands”; it would be sung heartily, accompanied by suitable actions. At the evening session, always crowded, hymns would be sung, prayers said, a trenchant sermon preached - and “confessions” called for.

I well remember one revivalist, a biggish chap with plenty of hair, flinging off his jacket and prancing about Jack Peterson style. “Let me get at the devil with my coat off”, he cried. For me, he blotted his copybook when I went to see him after one service for my T and AP. “Put a column in about me. Put my picture in”. BIGHEAD. This mission continues to fill the so-and-so chapel with enthusiastic wor-shippers, both young and old”.

At this time, the congregation would be implored to “testify” why they were giv-ing their heart to the Lord.

Partly to keep my T and A column readers in touch, and because I loved to sing the lively hymns anyhow, I would go along whenever possible. Once, I sat next to Dai Thomas in the gallery. When a lot of “converts” had settled down on their knees before the minister, Dai shot out of his seat, leaned over the parapet, dra-matically tossed his cigarette-case into the well below, and cried with a loud voice: “I give my heart to the Lord!” Yes, you might have guessed. Outside, Dai said, “Give us a fag, Stan”.

Of course, he was in the minority. For every two-timer like Dai there were hun-dreds whose testimony was a sacred oath. Of all yes, these people were the stiff backbone of their chapels, and worked like beavers to me just a little more than Good Samaritans. (When the 1926 strike came, it was their staunch Christians who did so much to “keep the wolf from the door”.)

Another mission. A different chapel, with a lot of Welsh hymns. Several young men, at least one of whom later became a parson, were sharing with me a long pew, so near to the minister’s pulpit that we had to look up when seated. Confes-sion time came. No. 1 young man stood up, testified, and said: “And I call upon my cousin to do the same.” No. 2 young man stood up, testified, and said “And I call upon my cousin to do the same”. This went on until the only worshipper left in that pew was me, yours truly, almost piddling myself with anxiety. The minister looked - no, glared - down at me. I looked up and tried to “stare him out”. In the unusual hush, it went on and on. “Any more cousins to give their heart to the Lord?” An awful pause. I was sweating worse than down the bloody pit.

The voice went on: “Any more cousins? Any more? Now, before the gates of Heaven are closed”. You’ve read in books about “merciful relief”? Well that’s how it was with me. Outside, I can’t remember saying a word to a soul - but I must have coughed and puffed my way through three Woodbines on the trot.

The last one I recall was in a Methodist chapel I forgot to mention before, up Back Road it was. At the end of a Mission service here, so very determined was one of the deacons to hook me into his flock, that I was forced to beat a hasty and undignified retreat over a low stone wall topped by iron railings and dash down the

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road like a longdog.

We were much more decorous (and boring I now realise) in our church, although we sang just as lustily at times and listened enthralled to words of wisdom from mighty men of God - a few of whom sported medals gained in World War 1.

One of the highlights of the Christian year was the Harvest Festival evensong, celebrated in autumn. With my close friends, brothers Bill Cole (a railwayman), Fred Cole (a bootmaker) and Bill Reeks (a butcher), I contrived to attend at least half-a-dozen, church and chapels in turn. At these services, the clergy could bank on a full house and a bumper collection. Indeed, at times, all pews were taken long before the “second bell” had ceased ringing and it was a case of standing room only. A “guest preacher” would always give us a good sermon (discussed at length afterwards in those days).

The hymn-writers of old have done the Harvest Festival proud. Bill, Fred, Reg, and I would know from a quick glance at the hymn-board, hanging on a stone pil-lar near the pulpit, that all of our favourites were to be sung: “Come Ye Thankful People, Come”, “We Plough the Fields and Scatter”, “The Sower Went Forth Sow-ing”, “All Things Bright and Beautiful” - and so on. My pen pauses a while as I sing those lovely old words over again in my mind:

“The sower went forth sowing, The seed in secret slept through weeks of faith and patience, Till out the green blade crept. Then, warmed by golden sunshine and fed by silver rain, at last the fields were whitened

To harvest once again.”

Harvest Festivals in the chapels seemed much more boisterous. We sang some of the favourite “church” hymns, but one song I remember above all was “Bringing in the Sheaves”. Each verse was sung with gusto, melodious gusto. But when it came to the refrain: “Bringing in the sheaves, bringing in the sheaves, Welcome home, rejoicing, bringing in sheaves” this seems to have been repeated ad lib time and time over again until the walls and roof of Penyfai Chapel re-echoed triumphantly and the choir and congregation just had to take a breath. Is that the “hwyl”?

No wonder, is it, that when I heard a tune hummed or whistled, it was a Welsh hymn tune? I am sure, (for I have done just that) that in the dusty darkness of the colliery, these ancient airs do much to comfort one and “soothe the savage breast”. Neither was I the only miner to send up a silent “Please God, help me”. Sentimen-tal? Try it and see.

Many a miner did his best to carry his Christian principles down with him on the journey and into his working place - and what a struggle it was. Some never gave up the fight against the Devil. Some gave up and tried again, regularly. Like this one. He was in the Salvation Army, whose leading enemy at the time was called “Demon Drink”, a subject I knew little about then because the only time I went near a pub was to fetch Mam’s jug of “supper stout” from the Swan - where Mr Sweet was the landlord in those days.

Well, this middle-aged miner-cum-Salvation Army man, complete with collecting-

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box, stood at the ready every Friday evening (Payday!) near the cinema ticket of-fice. Interested, I had a friendly chat. While he rattled his box, he told me the story of how he was rescued from “Demon Drink” by the Army. Just before I bought my ninepenny ticket to romance and adventure, he confided: “Mind you, boyo, if I wander off the straight and narrow into the “Rock” or the “Lion” to wash the coal-dust down my throat, not to worry. No, no. Not to worry. Every time it happens, every time, “the Army” will find me and put me back on the road to Jesus. Alleluia! Amen! He meant every word - and I was well on the way to understanding a great truth: it takes all sorts to make a world, miners, millionaires, and murderers in Wales, Warsaw or Waikiki.

Good old Salvation Army, especially your silver- and brass bands with their stir-ring martial-like music. And bless you, General Booth, and all your mates. (A di-gression, for which I apologise. A short while ago, I sat on the stone steps of the Martyrs’ Memorial in Oxford and listened with joy to the Junior Salvation Army band. So, at least 50 years on, the Salvation Army is still marching on to glory.)

Many of the older men in the mines, roadmen, labourers, repairers, and such, were the most devout, though they never carried God on their coat-sleeves. They were many, but two will serve for now: John “Cwmbychan”, and Morgan “Gwaengwaddod”, nearing their seventieth year. When I was Morgan’s mate, I often joined them for a bit of food and a drink from my tea-jack. They would chatter away “nineteen to the dozen” in Welsh, of which I knew only the odd word or two, like “bara caws”, “ceffyl”, and “mochyn” - bread and cheese, horse, and pig, I hope!

They both smoked pipes, John a clay with a long stem, Morgan an old briar with a stem almost too short for comfort. John liked to spit, and put a lot of tongue into the action. Morgan, when he puffed, made a pleasant “coooo” sound. Perhaps the saying “Pipe dreams” came from such dear old miners as these. At times like these, the dim, flickering light of our candles would hide my embarrassment until it was “Well, boyo, let’s be up and at it, then”.

One interesting item, which also applied when I worked at an Oxford motor-car factory from 1930 on, was a sort of workers’ bush-telegraph, which operated in this way: “Who scored the winning goal for Cardiff City in the Cup Final?” or “What is this telepathy they’re talking about?” or some other problem. I didn’t know my Mate didn’t know the haulier had forgotten the haulier asked the boy in the next stall, who also didn’t know the answer.

When he went up to the face to fill the next cart, the boy asked his mate, who thought it was so-and-so, but wasn’t sure. Every miner and his butty that could be reached were asked. Failing all these, the haulier would keep the question going, asking the roadman and repairers on the way out. Next to be asked might be the shunters out on the parting, or the rider coming in from the Deep. Often it got as far as the fireman’s cabin, but the answer always came back. Often, when the hau-lier has brought in the answer with a journey of empty trams, I have heard a cheeky lad boasting, waggishly, “Dammo! I knew that all the time, mun, but I just wanted to find out if anybody else knew”, which caused him to duck a shower of small coal and a broken sleeper. (Later, in the car factory, the question travelled up

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and down the lines until the problem, invariably, was satisfactorily solved). A sort of workers’ “Enquire Within”.

Actually, I heard telepathy explained so that even I began to understand what it meant. I was a busy “butty” to two colliers: Joe Coles and Dai “Cymfa”. Joe was a Band of Hope man but Dai liked a pint of Hancock’s ale on Friday (payday) eve-ning. Occasionally, Dai would consume “one over the eight” and not turn up on Saturday morning. Joe said: “Now listen, Dai, our following shift must have the next tram number, so we chalk it on a shovel, see that’s passing a message on. Af-ter your booze-up Friday night, you decide to stop home Saturday, so you pass me a message, right?”

I laid my shovel down and wiped the sweat off my brow with my shirtsleeve. Dai’s candle was flickering. He lit a fresh one and stuck it in his spike. “How, mun?” Dai was polite. He respected Joe. Joe was “a good scholar”. He wasn’t the only one who was confused. So was I, and production suffered a hiccup, for the three of us had laid down our tools. Joe continued, speaking slowly. “My mind is the shovel ad your mind is the piece of chalk, so—“ “Good God!” said Dai. “Oh, Ay”, I mumbled, “whatever next, Joe?” Joe explained, deliberately, patiently, as if he was telling the story of “Joseph and his coat of many colours” to his Sunday school class.

“You THINK - hard. Joe, Joe, Joe, this is Dai, your mate. I am not coming to work tomorrow. You repeat the message over and over again and, this is telepathy, the message will come into my mind and I know Stan and I will be on our own on Saturday morning. There was a pause. I could hear the three of us breathing. Three candles flickered, casting shadows on the coal-face and ribs. Then, two man-drills and one shovel got back to doing what they were paid for. But at least two people, Dai and I, had something fresh to THINK about.

One of the jobs I enjoyed, because it took place within a space of two or three yards and therefore involved less scrambling and crawling up and down and down and up, was “shifting up”. Inevitable, unprofitable in the short term, it “paid in the long run”. We had ordered in advance, through the fireman, the necessary sleepers; rails and road nails and these had been delivered by the haulier and placed handy for use near the face. The new sheave-post was firmly fixed as near to the coal-face as practicable.

If the height from top to bottom was ample - 3 feet or more in this instance - the little rails could be measured-up and laid right away. But if, as now, there is not enough room for our carts to move, we must “cut bottom”. My mate and I take careful measurements: the right distance between the two sets of rails clearance for the wings of the carts on right and left sides (“ribs”) the depth of “cut” needed in the bottom to achieve enough height for the carts to travel freely.

Our aim is to make a minimum of spoil “muck” - for “muck” doesn’t mean money in a colliery. Using mandrills fitted with blunted blades, we carefully follow our marks and get to work, testing as necessary. Sometimes, the bottom is as hard as the rock top this time we are lucky, for digging is reasonably good. If we can, we lose the spoil whenever it is possible, in the ribs and between the sleepers, but

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when this can’t be done, we have to fill it into carts, send it below to the filling-shaft, into a tram and up and away.

When enough space is cut and cleared, we lay our sleepers, and fix the new length of light railway with road-nails. The carts (empty of course) will have one end off-railed and anchored against the old sleepers. The sheave is transferred from the old to the new sheave-post and secured. The overlap of chain, resting in the bed of one of the carts is unravelled, taken up and passed through the sheave. The cart is on-railed, pushed up to the end of the new length of railway, chained on with any overlap in the bed - and we have “shifted up”.

We’d not be black-dirty, but grey-dirty. Most likely, in that particular stall, my mate was Bill, who would say “Time for a whiff”, and he’d light a Woodbine from his candle. Don’t ask me how many times this process was repeated to fill ‘x’ many trams of coal!

Mention “Cwm Rhondda” and the whole wide world knows what you mean. Men-tion the Rhondda Valley and everybody knows it once meant coal with a capital ‘C’. My only recollection of being in the Rhondda is of, being in my “try-anything-once mood, I joined a team of “salesmen” in one of my “off-work” periods. We were driven into the Valley in an ancient bus, dumped somewhere in the middle, each with a small “Park Drive” coupons case stuffed with small packets of “chimney-cleaning” powder and told to get on with selling them door-to-door.

We were to tell the miners’ wives that, here in a tiny packet, for three copper coins, was a miracle of science. “Place it on the fire, Madam, and - hey presto! - In a matter of minutes, the soot up the chimney will dissolve and vanish into thin air”. None of us had any experience of salesmanship. I was given a long, long ter-race of miners’ cottages climbing up the steep hillside.

My knock at the door was gentle and tentative. Time after time, at door after door, I was told “Not today, thank you”. While the door was slammed in my face by many a Mrs Miner. Those were the polite ones. At door after door, I was told where to go and what to do with my magic chimney-cleaner, in language which I never dreamed was known by ladies (?). It took only a few hours for the penny to drop (and not in my pocket). With one or two fellow “salesmen”, I found a cheap place to eat. By the time the dilapidated chariot picked us up, I sold (almost given away more like!) just three packets. As we were on commission only, I was actu-ally out of pocket. On the credit side, I’d had a free ride, and I’d visited “The Rhondda”.

Persuaded, much against my better judgement, next day I tried Cadoxton, near Barry. Few colliers living here. Mostly dockers and such like. But some of their womenfolk knew harsher language than the Rhondda miners’ wives. Around midday, proud and independent, I emptied my “Park Drive” coupon case into the Supervi-sor’s van, adding the advice I’d learned at one of the doorsteps. Then I trudged, weary and hungry, back to Cardiff - which was a long way.

Next, crazy for punishment, I tried to flog toothpaste to the miners and their sur-prised families in Ogmore Vale. Again, a DEAD LOSS. Still with a lot to learn, I

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tried to sell vacuum cleaners. Before I went for a demonstration lesson, like many other people, I didn’t even know what a vacuum cleaner was! But one remark our instructor made still sticks in my mind: “Never tell the good lady of the house to push it backwards and forwards over the carpet. The word we use is G-L-I-D-E”. I drew another blank.

Later, during another slack period, I told myself this would definitely be the last. Cardiff it was. Ninian Park Road to be exact. In my faithful little case, a collection of ornamental geisha girls and lucky elephants - cheap and nasty stuff really. I’d managed to sell almost enough to pay for my stock and I was, for this once, an optimistic salesman. I sauntered up the long, tiled path to the front door of this BIG house and knocked loudly. Nothing happened for a while, so again I knocked, less confidently this time. After what seemed an age, but wasn’t really, I heard a “shuffle, shuffle” come slowly down what must have been a long passage. Slowly, the door opened - and a dear old lady smiled at me. I opened my case and showed her my lucky elephants and geisha girls. With another smile, “Just a minute”, she said, and shuffled off down the passage.

While I waited on the doorstep, I wondered how many she would buy. Another shuffle, shuffle, and she was back - with money in her hand! Again that beaming smile. “I don’t want any lucky elephants or - er - other things”, she said, “but here’s threepence for you”. With a scarlet face, I slunk back down the long, tiled path. “Bloody hell!” I told myself, “Never again!” I felt like a tramp, a flipping beggar, and I longed to get back down the pit, where I could be myself again.

But rumours were rife all through the Welsh coalfield. Bad blood was rising, tem-pers flared, and I felt that soon the battle would commence - between THEM and US.

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A passage in a book (large print!) I am reading: “Within the house there was much mellow opulence on view”. From May (1926) onwards, opulence within the miners’ homes was, to use a graphic cliché, “conspicuous by its absence”, yet, a mellow fellow-feeling between him and his family and his neighbours and friends was to remain (another cliché) a sheet anchor, which kept their ship from founder-ing on the rocks of that ghastly, miserable, demeaning, stoppage.

In the beginning, the oppressed, suppressed, depressed miner was the chosen hero of the day. A national strike was declared in sympathy. He was buoyant with HOPE. But, in a matter of a few short days, to his everlasting amazement, his “friends” turned traitor. Tom, Dick and Harry Tilly, Doris and Helen Lords and Ladies young and old all of whom ought to have known better (in my opinion), spat in the collier’s face, and with gay abandon, came to the “rescue” of the coun-try.

They drove the trains and buses, got their lily-white hands dirty and calloused in all the hundreds of key jobs for the sake of their new-found “Cause”, “free, gratis and for nothing”, while the bewildered, bemused, and much-bothered miner - he who had downed tools in sheer desperation to secure a living-wage, and less dark, dirty, dangerous hours in the depths below, stood on the sidelines and wondered: “What the hell is going wrong?”

He soon found out - the betrayal of the century. The Workers who had almost canonised the poor subjects of King Coal (scared for their jobs and their daily bread, no doubt) told the frivolous amateurs to get back to their shooting, fishing, hunting, tea-dances, touring, eternal idling and what have you in double-quick time. The miners’ medals were stripped. The National Strike was over. The “sympathetic” flags were lowered to half-mast.

The miner was on his own, naked in the face of the enemy. (I have purposely done no research, consulted no documents, named no names, because this is my own “computer write-out”, right or wrong. A young miner, scared, naive, worried sick about how our Mam was going to feed, clothe and pay Mr Thomas his rent for No. 1 Mount Pleasant).

My humble, if often bitter and impassioned account of what followed, the hunger and heart-aches, shattered hopes and disillusions were at least endured and shared

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equally by our Mam, Charlie, Cyril, Bertha, Doris, and Jimmy, though the younger ones, mercifully, hardly knew what was happening. Whether my fellow-miners and their families felt the same, I cannot tell and will not presume to guess. But I somehow feel that my story, my thoughts and reactions, were shared by many.

The immediate future was bleak. Beyond that, we dared not try to imagine. We were a fatherless family.

If Charlie and I were privates in the Force to keep “the wolf from the door”, Mam won immediate promotion to GENERAL. She was to win many medals in the months to come, and she wore them with pride.

Days dragged drearily by, followed by restless nights. Food was stretched to the barest limits. Being used to little, we now had less. The Co-op gave us credit, which Mam, swallowing her pride, detested, but was duly grateful for. We can-vassed for more washing, but more and more people were being forced to do their own (DIY?).

Mr Thomas, grudgingly, agreed to take a bob or two and put the rest “in the book”, under Mam’s eagle eye.

All the ministers of all the churches and chapels recruited volunteers (readily avail-able) to form relief committees to devise methods of collecting funds to provide a midday meal for miners’ school-children, who flocked to church and chapel halls to enjoy the nourishing meals cooked and served by an army of willing helpers.

Boys and girls can be unwittingly spiteful, and the sensitive ones resented being reminded, as the days went on, by those whose dads were not miners: “We don’t go to the canteen, so there. Our Mama cooks our dinner”. I know some little boys and girls who cried when their Mama told them she did not have enough food for them at home. Like a bad accident or death at work, the whole family were di-rectly involved besides the bereaved mother, the grandparents, uncles and aunts, nieces, and nephews, and close friends and neighbours, and certainly the faithful church and chapel ministers and members of the congregation.

Concerts were held where a surprising number of “local talent” sang, danced, played pianos and violins, told stories, recited monologues, and even helped to take up the meagre collection of pennies and halfpennies so desperately needed.

Sometimes, led by a mouth organ or a concertina played with great gusto, we would have community singing. As I remember, we hungry members of the audi-ence were a little diffident at first. Then the ministers took “the bull by the horns”. Craftily arranging some known “voices” to mingle amongst us, male and female, young and old, soprano, contralto, treble, tenor, baritone and bass and introducing some well-known hymns here and there, they proudly reminded us we were living in “the Land of Song”, we began to enjoy it. And, of course, it passed the time pleasantly. We demanded more and got more.

We had carnivals in the street, moving on to community sports on the football fields. A new kind of band was formed called a “jazz band”. Dressed in striking homemade uniforms and playing a “Kazoo” or “musical submarine”, they were

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drilled to march with military precision. The “Kazoo”, costing only a few coppers to buy was made of tin. Shaped like a submarine, the “conning-tower” was screwed down onto a small circle of thin material, which vibrated when the player hummed into the mouthpiece.

To match the uniforms, the little instrument was housed in a long cardboard cone, which was cleverly coloured in vivid designs. Perhaps up to 50 miners in a band, it was an exciting spectacle to watch, say, a dozen outfits perform in competition. Some, if not all, included drums, bravely beating time in traditional Army fashion. Again DIY

Togged up in our “every-day” clothes, wearing shoes instead of “naily-boots”, braces holding up our trousers and natty suspenders supporting our fancy socks, we hid ourselves each morning for maybe an hour in the Workmen’s’ Institute, draughty and uninviting, taking our turn to read the two newspapers, one daily, one weekly. We were allowed ten minutes each.

On Fridays, I waited impatiently to read my column in the “G.G.” - “T & A Paragraphs”. Next in line to me one Friday were two young lads who almost de-voured the paper when I passed it into their eager hands. Being nosy for once, I saw that their centre of attraction was “Police Court News”. Yes, their names were there for all to see. A minor offence had got them on the wrong side of the law - “fined five shillings”. I immediately scribbled a little piece called “Pride of Print”, which may be among Carol’s scraps at Barton Cottage.

INSERT POEM

There were a couple of funny tables with seats attached, where you could cheat at a game of draughts and - the “apple of my eye” - two billiards tables. If I had threepence, a rare, exciting experience, I played a game of billiards for exactly thirty minutes, under the eagle eye, formerly, of stout Mr Smart or, later, thin Mr Evan Old, who, on special occasions, played the violin at the cinema. Good old Evan! At one of the worst times of my life, a meaningful chat with you was uplift-ing. Ta, boyo!

The old “’stute” is no more and they tell me the “new” one (now getting on a bit) is “more like it”. I have sat in a row, on a form that got harder by the min-ute, with my mates, passing a Woodbine from hand to hand, taking a precious puff in turn - like Red Indians passing the Pipe of Peace in the pictures. Fags were hard to come by, which is why I remember this incident.

He was there, but he wasn’t one of us regulars. Charlie (how the hell did he do it?) had passed me a tanner. I bought a twopenny packet of Woodbines. No matches. You could always cadge a light. Fourpence left. Threepence for a game of billiards. While I was waiting (I had all day anyway) This non-regular somehow aroused my sympathy, and I gave him one of my fags, chattily explaining when we were working (when?) we’d play “loser-pay” but now, friendly like, half each. Be-cause, as I told you, he wasn’t really one of us - a regular.

During the game which followed, I couldn’t help noticing this chap cadging a fag and moving away down the room. Game over and I’m outside chattering. I noticed

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that, as always, 3 or 4 of “ours” were squatting against the wall near “The Lion” - and it dawned on me that those poor dabs, unlike me (till much later in life) liked their glass of beer and were suffering, tongues hanging out “a mile long and a foot thick”. I began to feel sorry for them - a new kind of being sorry as far as I was concerned. Then this non-regular came out of the “’Stute”, paused to take 2 Wood-bines out of his coat-pocket and put them under the elastic in a cigarette case, to join a few more. “Snap!” went the case. He grinned and went on his way. I swore something awful. He wasn’t one of us. He was an OUTSIDER, the sod.

The strike (“lock-out”?) went on and on. The children, thanks to a miracle by the Relief Committee, were now given their tea after school. Soup kitchens were open for us men. After a day or two, Mam had to tell Charlie and me that she couldn’t manage a dinner for us any longer. Next morning, grim-faced and angry, Charlie and I trudged up the road with basins under our arms to join the long, hungry queue outside the hall at the back of Carey chapel.

We didn’t know what to talk about. I was still blushing. The meals, chiefly stews, were cooked, army-fashion, in huge boilers outside by sweating volunteers. We got in with a rush, because we had to move with the crowd or be trampled on. We sat on wooden forms alongside long wooden trestle tables. There was no tablecloth (silly boy!), but the food, and the chunk of bread and mug of tea to go with it, was very good. Yum!

With the meal, there were other mixed vegetables including one I had never eaten before but took a liking to, butter beans. As I told our Mam later, the one thing wrong was our tablemates. We were unlucky that first day. Goodness me! Do you know what she told me? “You’ll get used to it, our Stanley. You’ll see. You and Charlie will get to know some nice men and sit in the same place every day. Mark my words”. I can’t imagine how she knew, but she was right, as usual.

So many extra miners got hungry that three sittings had to be organised. Houses One, Two and Three knew their places well and queued more or less in order and got to know each other well. While waiting their turn outside, playing cards became the favourite pastime - and the game of Canteen Whist was christened - I think it was formerly known as “Sevens” - and even now, more than 50 years on, it is still “Canteen Whist” to me.

We played football and cricket on the common, often in home-made “bathing-drawers”, in which we also went swimming in the Ogmore river or “Shop Pond”, a small reservoir. Our teams sometimes were as many as 20 a side - and a sudden switch from soccer to rugby was the order of the day. Variety being the spice of sport, we had fun playing rugby with a soccer ball and soccer with a rugby ball.

(Over 50 years on, coincidentally, I am watching England playing New Zealand in a Test Match on “the telly” - something we then never imagined in our wildest dreams. The players are clad all in white, with chunky pads, enormous gloves, and helmets with visors. The boundaries are clearly defined - and they even have a white-coated umpire standing alertly at each end of the rolled and well-mown level pitch. In comfort in my flat, I can follow all the action in colour. My word! How times have changed!)

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One day, along with 4 or 5 of my Rover Scout friends, we broke one of the golden rules of swimming. Tummies full of Canteen dinners, we decided to go swimming in Shop Pond. As we had already discarded the coverall bathing suits of the time with home-made trunks which covered only our middles, and which we carried in our pockets, we were ready for a quick immersion. Who needed a towel in this hot sunshine?

Terry Duggan, Dick Call and one of the Feeleys were strong swimmers, quite at home here, the river or the sea. These experts vied with each other in swimming lengths. Each time Terry approached the shallow end, he persuaded me to venture a little further out of my depth. At last, encouraged by Terry and the others, I fol-lowed them to the far end. Terry was nearest to me. It began to seem a long way across - and my Canteen dinner was restless in my tummy, and I started to puff and splutter. About two thirds of the length, my foot caught in the waterweeds. I told myself not to panic.

Treading water with my free leg and my arms, I shouted “Terry! Terry! I’m caught in the weeds”. But Terry’s powerful, sun-tanned, shoulders kept going up and down, with his easy breaststroke. Damno! He must be deaf, I told myself. I kicked and struggled for my life - and discovered the truth of the old saying that a drowning man sees his whole life gallop through his mind. It did - and my funeral was just about to begin when at last I was free.

The rest of the swim was frantic and fast. Flopping triumphantly on the bank, spouting water from my mouth, nose and ears - and thanking God - I finally got my breath back. “What the hell were you thinking of, Terry? Didn’t you hear me shouting?” Terry, nearly dry in the sun, gave a wide Irish grin and told me: “If I came back to help you out, Stan, do you know what?” “What?” “You’d never go swimming again”. My answer was quick and a bit too obvious: “Hells bells! I nearly didn’t”

The strike went on and on. The younger children, bless ‘em, went merrily on with their games, not indoors watching the telly or playing video games. They played hopscotch, skipping, rounders, whip and top, marbles along the almost traf-fic-free roads, they trundled their wooden or steel hoops ring-a-ring-o-roses were still enjoyed.

The men and boys of the idle mines, summoned by a real live bell-ringer, at-tended meeting after meeting, listened to speech after speech and sang the “Red Flag” at the end. I can remember such meetings when at least half-a-dozen ministers of mixed denominations, on the stage with the committee, bolstered the singing, sometimes conducting the cloth-capped audience with both hands.

As the weary days went by, coal supplies became ever lower. One day, Mam told us that the coal-shed held only a few shovelfuls. As all our cooking, baking and hot water depended on the big kitchen fire, there was no time to waste. Next morning, clad in our “dirty” clothes and hobnailed boots, Charlie and I joined the human moles on the huge washery tip. As there were no new trucks of waste from the washery plant, we burrowed into the heaving mass, mainly shale, and soon became adept at spotting and bucketing the small lumps of precious coal into a sack. We

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became regulars and managed to keep the home fire burning.

Alternatively, Charlie and I ran our own private “wooding” scheme. At crack of dawn, we’d sneak into a nearby fir plantation which, we decided, badly needed thinning out. Armed with a well-greased hacksaw blade and some rope, we would select a tall, dying sapling. One holding the tree, the other using the hacksaw blade with an old rag for a grip, in a matter of moments it was severed and lowered gently to the ground. Four or five were roped into a bundle and we’d be back at our coal-shed as it was getting light. Next, with a cross cut saw, the young trees would quickly be sawn into a nice pile of logs and stacked behind our locked coal-house door.

Next, came the dramatic discovery of outcropping coal in the Top Wood. In dou-ble-quick time, gangs of miners grabbed their picks and shovels and sank well-like mini-pits. The “pithead gear” was an old tyreless bicycle wheel fixed on a crude wooden frame, by which means we lowered filled and pulled up first the “muck” and in due course, the coal.

I was shanghaied into Tom Grant’s and Charlie’s team. We sold our coal for a bob a bag and kept each member’s fire going at home besides. (Where did we get all those bags from?) For a happy while, some bills were lowered, groceries were bought, a packet of fags and a pint enjoyed by those who had gone without for so long.

To prevent claim jumping, one member of each gang guarded the hole in the ground, a campfire blazing away for company. One night, I was on duty. Wood had become scarcer. More and more was required for pit props, so less was avail-able for the campfire. As it got really cold, my brickyard days came to the rescue. Following the overhead trolley cable silhouetted against the night sky, I made my way to a nice warm “wicket” in the kiln and settled down as cosy as our cat on the mat.

On and on went the stoppage. Top Wood was raided by the police, so, with many others, we transferred to the Park Slip tip, where we dug in for trifling gains. The bush telegraph warned of imminent police raids. One morning, Charlie and I were pushing a path through the little wicket gate at the Fountain railway crossing. He was in front with our one bag of hard-won coal I was behind, carrying the tools. Suddenly we were confronted by a bobby.

“Now then, now then. What have you got there?”

“Nothing”, my big brother gasped. I can still see the amazement on that police-man’s face. We retrieved the old bike from its hiding place, squeezed the sack of coal on to the bottom bracket and went home. I had to promise “Not a bloody word to our Mam, mind”. Later, we found out that more than a dozen men had been caught and booked on Park Slip tip, and many more took hours to escape by roundabout routes. Who were the lucky ones then?

A little later, I was foraging on my own. Fed-up miners drifted off in search of a job. London, Slough and Oxford were some of their Meccas. Joe Coles had got married and set up his own business as a chimney sweep in Oxford, his transport a

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motorbike and a black box sidecar. One of his biggest customers was Cuddesdon College. He wrote to Charlie to tell him about the new Pressed Steel nearing com-pletion at Cowley. A kind lady of the church lent Charlie the train fare and away he went. We all missed him very much, Mam most of all. I tried to fill the gap and comfort her. Within a few weeks, precious postal orders came from Oxford to help pay those hated bills.

Then, wonder of wonders, it was all over. Back to work? Some did and some were unlucky. The pits were in a mess. A large amount of maintenance and repair work was necessary to re-open the coal-faces and get back to normal. Yes, I was one of the unlucky ones.

The deal between men and management was far from satisfactory and if you care to read the official records, you can check what it meant to me and mine and my mates who endured that fruitless, pointless Battle with the Bosses. Too, you can find out who was to blame, if you try hard enough. I can’t. For myself, it remains a bad taste in my mouth and a nasty scar on my mind, which will never go away.

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Because Charlie was no longer with us, when I got back to work, after the Union and management had considered my “special circumstances” plea, I became “head of the house” - and a ton of best house coal was delivered monthly at No. 1 Mount Pleasant.

With regular postal orders from Charlie in Oxford and a few bob from grocer Cyril, we managed to pay some of the bills accumulated in the strike. Shoes and clothing, especially for the younger ones, were gleefully bought and I had to buy a second penny notebook from Woolworth’s. Red this time. No. 1 was blue.

Pubs, lately kept in business by the local shopkeepers, two barbers, and a couple of postmen, some Council roadmen, farmers, railwaymen in good numbers because Tondu station was a junction for the valleys, one or two policemen, schoolteachers and such, now were glad to entertain thirsty miners as well.

The breweries were not slow to deliver extra wooden barrels of “best Welsh ale”, stout and “pop” for Dada to take home to Mam and the kids.

The “Italianos”, Sidolis, Franchis, Mariannis, and Moris, sold extra soft drinks, penny bags of chips, one or two more fried fish, and, in warm weather extra, an extra penny ice-cream wafer or cone.

Some of the miners, having their weekly open-razor shave at the barber’s striped-pole shop, even had a haircut. So many extra customers demanded special arrange-ments - so my old boss, tiny Charlie Jenkins, posted a sign: “Shaving only on Sat-urdays” and, so I could hardly believe my eyes one day, John Powell Deputy and Tom Henson Free-dig indulged themselves in the full treatment - haircut, shave and shampoo, leaving the little shop at the back of Trinity Chapel sporting glowing cheeks, scented-sprayed hair and a satisfied smile. And the current lather boy beamed as he dropped a hot penny into his apron pocket.

Another day I noticed that Charlie J. had re-arranged the narrow shelves in his small showcase to accommodate extra cigarettes: Woodbines, fourpence a “doubler” (ten in a cardboard packet) and twopence for five (in a slim paper packet) Players and Gold Flake in cardboard packets at sixpence for ten - and no silver paper. But, almost inevitably, I suppose, not for much longer.

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Something called “the world market for coal” was “in decline” - and all us min-ers in Wales declined with it. How glad our Mam and I were that our Charlie had got out in time. Many miners were put on short time and many were laid-off. Some picked up their traps and took their skills and songs to join their countrymen in foreign parts.

I was one of them who joined the growing queue for a weekly dole pittance at our local Labour Exchange, in a chapel in Dunraven Terrace. We “signed” on a couple of times a week (as proof we were not in work) and drew a bit of money on the Friday.

A sign of the bad times was that one of the clerks (I’ll keep his name to myself) was reputed to be a Bachelor of Arts. Now came an incident, which could have changed my life. (Well maybe it did?).

Desperate, I read every word of a leaflet I picked up at the Exchange. The gist of it was that men were badly needed to help with the harvest in Canada. It prom-ised volunteers an “assisted passage” to Canada (for about £10, I believe), good pay and opportunities after the harvest.

I wandered off on my own and had a good, hard think: “The harvest, bringing in the sheaves. Charlie’s gone. Why can’t I?”

To cut a long story short, I signed the forms and went home to talk about the £10 fare with our Mam. At first, (no wonder!) she was speechless, but when she got her voice back, she had it all worked out to a ‘T’. Quietly and logically, she explained that my bit of dole, a little money from Cyril and Bertha and maybe a bob or so from the washing would keep the family together - but if I went all them thousands of miles across the sea to Canada, well --?!

Tears in her eyes, she said: “Don’t you go, Stanley. Stay and look after us. In his last letter our Charlie said he was keeping his eyes open, and when they took on more men in that motor-car place he’ll put a word in and send for you”.

We sat close together forever-such a long time, but much closer in our hearts - and there came a moment or two when it was hard to stem a tear or two. But Mam knew and I knew that there would be no voyage to Canada, that I would wait with patience for a call from Charlie in Oxford - and sometimes pray a little to the Big Boss Up There.

Now, I told myself, for the bloody hard bit.

“Won’t be long, Mam”.

“Don’t be late for tea. Jam roly-poly”

Slowly, I went down the gulley, down the old Rock Hill, shut off from everybody and everything, making up my speech: “Well, Mr Evans, you see-er—“ Damno! I almost crawled, cap in hand, in to face the chap in charge, who happened to be Henry, the son of Evans the Boot. Before I finished my story and excuses, he in-terrupted me and grinned.

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“Stanley”, he said, “I never thought you’d leave your Mam and brothers and sis-ters. Heard from Charlie in, where is it, Oxford?” As a torn-up form fluttered into the wastepaper basket, I assured Henry that Charlie was doing fine, thank you. He’s going to send for me first chance he gets.

(I tried to tell that tale calmly and in cold blood - but I couldn’t. Those few hours of decision were supercharged with emotion, which I could not subdue on pa-per even 50 or more years after Henry tore up the form. So it stays that way).

I wonder if Mam and Henry Evans Boots could see into the future? Lots of young men, and at least one family sailed to Canada from Aberkenfig and district - and from all over Wales, I suppose. In the vast Canadian wheatfields

“All was safely gathered in

Ere the winter storms begin” (well-known hymn)

Our young miner emigrants did their stuff in (hearsay) unsavoury conditions. Then the bitter aftermath (I saw some and was told about others). They tried to get fur-ther employment. Some succeeded; others were thrown back on the labour market, broke. Appeals for help came flooding home to Wales.

As usual, practical aid was immediately forthcoming from the chapels and churches all over the land (hearsay). Money for their return passage (I never knew how much) was despatched to the stranded emigrants, and in twos and threes they trick-led back home, shamefaced and sorry, but nevertheless grateful, to a heroes wel-come (sentimental bit) in the “Land of Their Fathers”.

One I saw, and spoke to, was a well-known and popular Scoutmaster with a fa-mous namesake, Baden-Powell. I saw and spoke to the family I mentioned before (They could not have sailed on the “harvest” fare, so what it cost them for the two-way voyage I don’t know. I seem to remember a national outcry, but that I cannot, under my terms, check up and confirm.

Then, at last, fortune favoured the needy. I got a job at the Powell Duffryn pit in Llanharan. The long bike ride to and from work and some notes on my varied jobs below ground and so on were recorded earlier on.

I did not include one of the first of these jobs: in this modern no-pony pit, I was rather surprised to join a gang of about five or six blokes whose job it was to chain-gang timber to the long conveyor faces.

Later, eating my “snap” with the young lad in charge of the engine which drove the Trunk (main) conveyor, we discussed a plan to adjust the stroke of the drivage conveyor (running on flat ground) into reverse to send the timber into the faces.

We agreed that manhandling these posts one by one, hour after hour in these modern days (1928) was rather primitive. (I wonder if anything was done about it. I may check that one up - but not for these notes).

I can’t remember explaining where we put our bikes. We certainly couldn’t take

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them down in the cage. No cycle racks, no car parks, for which there was no need anyway.

A friend (or relation?) of one of the lads in our little group had a fair-sized shed “out the back” of his house a short walk away. For a tanner a week we were al-lowed the use of the shed. On Friday, payday, one of the younger children, a little girl, was there to take our sixpences, no doubt a welcome contribution to the family kitty. We’d say “Tell Mama thank you very much” and be on our long way home.

In 1928, “the talkies” came to Bridgend with “All talking, all singing, The Sing-ing Fool”. The necessary projectors and equipment were very costly. Cinemas had to be specially wired and fitted with sufficient “loud-speakers” so that all could hear. Which, as always, the customer paid for. The film world began the huge step forward with fears about getting their money back. They needn’t have worried. It came flooding back - and to spare.

The special system devised was 3 or 4 separate showings (“houses”) at an in-creased price of admission, with a fresh audience each time. I am not quite sure, but I seem to remember the prices were one shilling and twopence and two shillings and fourpence and the film lasted almost two hours. Separate showings began at 2 p.m., 4 p.m., 6 p.m., 8 p.m., and 10 p.m. Later, as the craze for “talkies” caught hold and ran riot, the larger towns began the shows in the morning and carried on until midnight.

It was arranged that Bertha and I would be the first of the family to go. We de-cided on the 4-o-clock house. It’s always good to have a treat to look forward to, and when it is an historical FIRST, it is that much better. So I was naturally ea-gerly waiting for this shift to end.

Dead keen, I was among the first to reach the surface. Half running with a clatter of my hob-nailed boots, I grabbed and mounted my bike, pedalled like mad, and timed myself at 29 minutes at home - a record!

Mam and Bertha had everything ready. I washed my hands, ate my dinner, bathed, changed into my best clothes, and Bertha and I were at the bus stop oppo-site the “Swan”, excited, in good time.

The bus, crowded for once, dropped us in town, and we joined a long queue out-side the Cinema, which was emblazoned with large posters featuring Al Jolson with Sonny Boy on his knee.

At last, we crowded inside. We had a quite good seat in the cheaper half - no big heads or ladies hats in front of us.

Briefly, the “Singing Fool” was a smasher. The talking, singing, and the music enthralled the whole audience. Yet, of the actors, I can only remember the black-faced Al Jolson, telling us that he would walk a million miles for one of “Mammy’s” smiles and “Sonny Boy”.

I don’t know this should be so, but I shall always remember one very short se-quence: “Sonny Boy”, hearing Al Jolson (Dad) going at it hammer-and-tongs with

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Mum in their bedroom, wanders in. As he opens the door, wearing his pyjamas, he sneezes. My word! What an historic sneeze!

In work next day, my fellow miners were singing “Mammy” and “Sonny Boy”.

I had to join in and help “Sonny Boy” climb up on Al’s knee. Two incidents which occurred early on in the theatres which I consider worth consider worth men-tioning, one glad, one sad. Mr Cox our church treasurer, informed me that I had been elected to represent St Brides Minor at the Diocesan Conference to be held at an assembly hall in St Andrews Crescent in Cardiff. To say that it was a big sur-prise is putting it mildly.

After some discussion, he assured me that I was the man for the job and that he and the other members had faith in me. An old hand at such church conferences, he briefly explained the hows and whys and I began to believe I could do it. I was to bring back a written report!

Surprise, surprise! He then handed me a crisp ten-shilling note: “Expenses, Stan-ley. Train fare and a meal, see, because its an all-day affair almost”. I must have been on short time at the colliery, because the conference was to be held on a weekday.

First to be told was Mam, who flashed me one of her rosy-cheeked smiles and said she was proud of me. And I was sure then that I wouldn’t make a mess of it. Damno, I daren’t!

Bill Cole, my close railwayman friend, who could recite the exact times of any train out of Tondu junction, North, South, East and West up, down or across the Ogmore, Llynfi, and Maesteg valleys or any chosen point, was already organised.

“Stan”, says Bill, emphasising his words with a Player (6d for 10) while I puffed a Woodbine (2d for 5). “On the very day of the meeting there’s an Ideal Home Exhibition on and - listen - for half-a-crown return on the train the ticket takes you into the Exhibition”.

He went on to tell me that he was arranging to change his shift to nights to come with me. We had been pals for a long time and this gesture showed that Bill was proud of his mate.

He couldn’t come to the Conference with me, so we found St Andrews Crescent, then Bill arranged to “have a look round” and meet me outside the hall when the meeting was over.

Closing my eyes, I vividly recall what followed. It was a big hall and crowded with parsons and representatives from every church in the See. Resplendent in his robes in the centre of the stage, was the Bishop, he who had confirmed me at the altar of Llansantffraid Church when I was allowed up early from the colliery just after I had started being a miner. It was business-like and (good!) each of us was given an agenda (wish I’d kept it).

Speeches, speeches, speeches, first the great man himself, followed by rural deans

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and so on in order. (Good job I didn’t have to wear this flipping hearing aid then! Questions and answers calm and polite. No heckling. And all the time I was busy with my new penny notebook and pencil - bought with the expense money. Oh, yes. We started and finished with prayers.

Bill, Old Faithful, met me outside and we enjoyed our own private session of questions and answers. While we satisfied our hunger with an R.E. Jones “Bob Spe-cial”, my thoughts were active composing the beginning: “In the presence of My - no, presided over by My Lord Bishop - no, My Lord Bishop opened the annual Di-ocesan Conference at -“

Bill interrupted me: “Stan, finish your fag and let’s be off to the exhibition”.

I am sure that the Ideal Home Exhibition was good but dammo! I can’t remem-ber. I was fitting a bit into my report: “The Rev Onllwyn Parry-Jones, vicar of St. so-and-sos, Aberwhatsit, explained that-“.

Good job Bill knew his way to Cardiff General, the time of the next train home, the platform number, and the spot where the carriage-door would be handiest.

We both enjoyed our day very much - and I still had a couple of bob change out of the magic ten-shilling note. Also Bill Cole was jolly good company. In the train on the way home my thoughts started on my report to come. Not so Bill the rail-wayman. He didn’t take his eyes off the window. He showed me the “quarter posts” the “incline boards”; the signal wires that seemed to sway up and down with the movement of the train.

He’d already told me the name of our snorting engine and its “class” (identified by the single and coupled wheels), how many copper tubes in its boiler, how much coal its tender held, and so on. No other train went steaming by without his knowl-edge. That goods-train of full coal trucks was - a peep at his watch - half a minute late. It was the 5.32 from Pontysomewhere “down” to Cardiff docks.

I murmured “Oh, Ay”. We were slowing down. Down went the window and out popped Bill’s head. Another glance at his watch (the £5 gold one his Mam and Dad gave him for his birthday). The signal was against us. We’d be in Bridgend in 4 minutes.

By now my report was deluged in a flood of up-to-the-minute RAILWAY informa-tion. By the way, Bill was only one of very many dedicated workers of the day, bless-em. Why didn’t I tell him about what went on underground? He knew. I’d told him many times. (Good old Bill! I wonder who inherited your library of steam-railway books so beautifully written and illustrated? They didn’t tell me at the fu-neral. Reg was there with me, and he wondered too).

Mam had to hear all about it and her cheeks glowed with pleasure as I made the telling last a bit longer. When she said that she was sure that my report would be a good one, I was pleased with her confidence in me. As usual, Mam knew. It was accepted by Mr Cox and the committee. Success!

[One day, Mr Cox, the same Mr Cox mentioned earlier, gave me what proved to

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be a ticket to an exciting New World. It was a small card headlined “YMCA Lec-tures”, divided into perforated slips with various titles, speaker’s names, etc. Each lecture might be attended separately by payment at the door, but a ticket for the whole series could be purchased at a reduced price.

There were eight lectures, illustrated by lanternslides, to be given in the same chapel, Jerusalem, at fortnightly intervals during the winter months.

Mam, as always, was just as pleased as I was and on the great night of the first lecture, she gave my best suit an extra-special brush and shined my shoes for me.

I walked briskly under the dim light of the gas-lamps, which made a brave effort to fight the darkness.

As I entered the chapel and proudly presented my little ticket at the door, the first thing I noticed was the small white screen set up on the big dais.

The lighting was suitably dimmed, the chairman introduced the speaker and his subject - Astronomy - and for about 90 minutes there was hardly a whisper among the audience. Picture after picture was projected on to the screen while the lecturer told us about the moon, the milky-way, Venus, the Plough (which I can always now find and pinpoint the North Star) and many, many more stars and planets somewhere “up there”.

When the first men landed on the moon, I could not help remembering my first introduction to astrology in that lecture long ago. One or two miners were there that night and many more attended the lectures, which followed. I cannot recall the subjects but I always regard them as part, an important part, of my education. Later I was also quite sure that this whole dusty decade was a lesson in life.]

Railway mad Bill’s Dad was also a railwayman, tall, lean, and strict (but later ad-dicted to a high-slung, long aerial in the back garden connected to one of those new-fangled wireless sets). He had “worked his way up” to engine driver first class. One of Bill’s brothers was the Joe whom we had snowballed in ‘21, he who ex-plained telepathy. Fred, another brother, was a shoemaker and a good one, also me-chanically minded. His bike was a Raleigh, all five quid’s worth. On a day off, un-der the soaring aerial in the back garden, with great care and patience, he disman-tled the Sturmey-Archer 3-speed hub - and discovered that the tiny pawl which had been renewed by the local cycle-repairer for a couple of bob actually cost one half-penny!

Reg Reeks, another member of our friendly foursome, appears later.

Occasionally, for we both liked to keep in touch, I would pop into Charlie’s three-chair shop for a chat, buying four pennyworths of Woodbines - an unnecessary excuse. I knew the slacker evenings like the back of my hand, when I could find his mop of jet-black curly hair bobbing to-and-fro above his tiny work-table, sharp-ening and honing a customer’s German hollow-ground razor (charge, one shilling, sir).

One of these rare evenings, he “waxed eloquent” about his plans to develop “the

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ladies saloon trade” which, he said (quite rightly), was bound to come. He would have a second-storey built to crown his little shop with an up-to-date ladies’saloon. (As one old face-worker used to quote “Where the vision fails, the people perish”).

Later, another visit was a real eye-opener. In the chair, a burly repairer named Ginger Adams. Poised above the carroty mop of cropped curls, Charlie Jenkins, comb in his left hand, waxed taper alight in his right hand, treating Ginger to a singe. It ponged a bit. Charlie, my old boss and friend, God bless! And now we shave with a safety or an electric razor - or grow a beard (which in those days gone by we called a “beaver”.

Now, on my rare visits to the “emporium” of Antonio, “gents hair stylist”, watching his artistic skill with dexterous strokes of his scissors and comb transform a longhaired git’s womanish locks into the style chosen from a glossy pattern-book. I get almost as many laughs as I did watching a silent film of Charlie Chaplin’s, Davis the Cinema at the piano.

Also, I sometimes take a Nosey Parker peep into a fashionable ladies’ saloon. I just can’t resist the sight of a row of space-suited females with a magazine on their laps and a tiny cup of coffee at the ready. Picture our Mam, enthroned like a Queen.

Back to Aberkenfig in the twenties. No supermarkets, just down-to-earth shops. Mrs Habberfield would sell you toffees at fourpence a quarter or one penny an ounce. “Some of ‘em in the middle bottle on the top shelf, please” a stick of liquo-rice for a ‘apenny and I’ve known her find a gobstopper for a farthing for the youngest of Ianto Williams’s, whose “on compensation” and crutches.

If you got to know Chappel’s baker (we did) you can enjoy a stale bun or the crunchy crust off the edge of loaf-tin for nothing. John Pester will slice (by hand) boiled ham or corned beef for a few coppers - or cheese if you prefer it - miners’ favourite for the “tommy-box”.

The Post Office will sell you a postage-stamp from a penny upwards, or a postal-order for half-a-crown, poundage a penny: “That will be two and seven, Stanley. And how’s your mother, God help? The Bank was nearby but, I’m sorry, I don’t know what went on there. Never been inside, see.

Evans Boots will sell you a nice pair of shoes, black or brown, for about 15 bob, and sole and heel them, later, for a few shillings - climb up a wooden staircase to the shed “out the back”. And so on. In all the various shops you will have per-sonal attention from behind a wide counter. Some, like James the Draper, will have items bearing the awkward farthing on the label and will give in change a packet of pins, a hank of white tape, or a piece of hair ribbon, colour optional.

Or you could shop in Bridgend, which had more and bigger shops, and the li-brary. If you could afford fourpence, you could go in style on the bus if you had a bike, you could cycle or you could walk it, main road or old tram road (a piece of history - see plaque near the bus-station).

We did each one in turn many times, according to circumstances - usually finan-

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cial. (Fourpence then over 50p now, which was about a pound then). Woolworth was there: “Nothing over 6d”. Their Reader’s Library series, in hardback were sold for sixpence - and you could even buy a pair of glasses for the same price.

There was the covered market, where you could wander at will, out of the rain or snow, and buy fresh hake for 3d a pound, potatoes for about a penny a pound or seven pounds for sixpence and - to crown my visit anyway, enjoy a plate of fag-gots-and-peas with bread-and-butter and a big cup of tea for about a bob.

Some of the larger stores attracted me simply as a spectator. There I would be fascinated by the overhead trolley line swooping between the cashier’s office and the counter. The shop-assistant popped the bill and money into a small tube, placed the tube into the container attached to the wires, pressed the trigger and, hey presto, away went the container to the cashier - and came swooping back to the counter with the change. Memories!

As I promised, Reg Reeks. He lived in Williams Terrace, Brynmenin, and was, at that time, a butcher. His dad was ganger-platelayer on the railway and cultivated one of those line-side allotments so prevalent at the time. He liked a glass of beer, and why not? I remember him, wearing a cap, a sleeveless waistcoat, corduroy trousers, “Yorked” below the knees - and a pipe, which was a permanent fixture in the area around his shaggy moustache.

Mam Reeks was always busy, yet never too busy to put a cup of tea and a plate of home-made cakes in front of one or all of us. I can’t remember seeing her with-out her pinny on. I shall always think of her as rivalling our Mam in the jam-and-butter handout stakes. They both deserve a medal.

Doris was employed somewhere at something I can’t remember and Tommy was then still at school. The Reeks family, I salute you!

Duw, mun! I almost forgot. By courtesy of the lodger, they too had a “wireless”.

(You will find more about Reg, his faithful Douglas motorbike and Tidenham Chase in “Carol’s bits”). There surely is more to come but this romantic (?) tale belongs at almost the end of the twenties (PDs).

Naturally, I used my bike to pop down to Ogmore-by-Sea or Porthcawl. How that bracing, tangy sea-air blew the colliery cobwebs from my lungs!

Porthcawl. I’d propped my machine against the sea wall and sat looking across Dunraven Bay towards Rivermouth, Ogmore-by-Sea, Southerndown and Dunraven Castle. Out at sea, Tusker Rock showed its fangs above the angry waves. Nearer, the little lighthouse, perched at the very end of the short pier, calmly regarded the turbulent autumn display.

The wind increased, the waves became more and more powerful, tossed whitecaps, foam and spray almost as high as the lighthouse. Noticing a small group of visitors force their way to the lower walkway, I lit up and thanked God that, for once, I was in the right place.

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The leaders in the group suddenly checked as huge waves shot over the upper walkway, drowning everything in their path below. There was a short pow-wow and I knew what they were telling each other. I knew the next move because I had done it many, many times.

They must be saying, a little shakily: “Count the waves. The seventh is always the biggest - then run like hell before the next one comes”. I was fascinated and my prayers were for them. My fag had blown away in the salty wind, unnoticed until afterwards.

Good!

The first half-dozen or so had made successful, well-timed crossings. They were half-drowned but safe as, well out of range, they turned to watch the others.

The waves climbed higher and higher as the stragglers, timing a little awry, made it to safety. Now there was only one person left at the wrong end. It was a young lady, wearing a red mackintosh.

And she was dead scared. A few tentative steps forward, then a few more quickly back. Counting the waves was no good to her now. I tried and lost count - and then I was surging like an International Rugby three-quarter, head down and arms up, through that crashing, smashing wall of water. Hells bells!

I had to shout: “Come on I’ll say when then hang on and run: Quick!” I grabbed her arm, took a determined step forward. Then, “Now!” I yelled right in her face. And we did it. My God, we did it.

I ignored the little cluster of chattering survivors, grabbed my bike and found one of the many sheltered spots I knew so well. Peace and quiet after that lot. Tearful thanks and, more important then than now, introductions followed. Etiquette see.

She was blonde and spoke “nicely”. She was from Cardiff. She was cook-general to a family who had brought her on holiday with them. It was her half-day off.

Her name was Edith Bass. I told her I was Stan Parkhouse from Aberkenfig, a miner. Yes she became your mother, Roy - “Mum”. Melodramatic? But romantic too, don’t you think?

She lived with her Mam and Dad and two sisters (Hilda and Anne - both “in-service”) at 40 Elm Street, Roath, Cardiff, a rambling house with the longest back-garden I’d seen up to then.

Mam was a busy, self-effacing lady whose favourite pastime was to smoke a for-bidden cigarette in secret in the outside toilet - forgetting what a smoky, pongy haze would reveal in such a confined “loo”!

Dad was a middle-aged stalwart with grey-white grizzled hair and ‘tache’. A dis-eased hipbone gave him a big boot and a limp. He ran a one-man haulage business with a “tin-lizzie” lorry (for which he maintained a spare engine) which earned him a living. He liked whist drives, watching Cardiff City and the dogs. When roused,

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his blue eyes blazed like a ray gun. Bill Bass was as tough as two tigers.

That has to be all for now, because they can only reappear somewhere beyond the twenties - but not too far.

Why? Well, changes were on the way for Edith and me, three as a matter of fact: in situation, job, and status.

My career (?) as a miner was coming to a close.

A letter, a postal order and instructions from Charlie.

A tearful “Goodbye and God bless” from Mam.

Then I entrusted my faithful bike to the guard and we were off to parts unknown and new.

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In 1930, Stanley received the tip from his brother, Charlie, who had already left in 1926, that there were jobs going at the Motor Car Factories in Cowley Oxford, at which he left home to stay with a Mrs Shirley at Littleworth, near Wheatley, Oxon, working as a cellulose polisher at Pressed Steel.

Edward Stanley George Parkhouse, bachelor, 27 years old, a cellulose polisher, temporarily living at 40 Elm Street, Roath, Cardiff, married Edith Alice Bass, a spinster, 23 years old, of 40 Elm Street Roath Cardiff, on the sixteenth of August 1933 (presumably Pressed Steel had closed for the holidays?) at the parish church of Roath, Cardiff. The groom's father is recorded as Alfred James Park-house (deceased), the bride's father as William James Bass, light haulier. The witnesses were James Ashley Yates (the bride's elder sister's husband) and Wil-liam James Bass.

On the 25th August 1933, they purchased some furniture from Ward's of Ox-ford, for which they paid a deposit of £2, promising the rest at £1 monthly. The address given was 45 Binswood Avenue, Headington, Oxford.

On the 7th September 1933, as her death certificate records, his mother died in Bridgend. He did not attend, although his brother, Charlie, did. The St Brides Minor parish magazine carried a note: “Another member of our Church has been taken from us to her rest. Mrs Parkhouse, after a long illness, died on Sept. 8th.[sic] We tender to all the children and relatives our deepest sympathy.” and in the list of burials: “Elizabeth Parkhouse, 57”.

On the seventh of November 1933, still living at 45 Binswood Avenue, their first child, Roy Norman, was born at the Radcliffe Infirmary. The father's occu-pation is recorded as labourer in the Pressed Steel Works.

Two more children followed in quick succession: Jean Hilary, in 1934, and Kenneth James, in 1936.

By 1937, they had moved to 79 Campbell Road, Oxford, where their fourth child, Carol Edith, was born. Stan was still a cellulose polisher.

Just prior to the outbreak of WW2 (when Carol was 10 months old?), the fam-

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ily of Stan and Edie Parkhouse moved from privately-rented 79 Campbell Road to a council house at 319 Meadow Lane, a lane running parallel to the river off Don-nington Lane (later Donnington Bridge Road, when Donnington footbridge was re-placed by a road bridge).

The blocks of 6 terraced houses faced the river, each centre pair of houses in the block had a shared alley-way to allow access to the rear; 319 was one of a centre pair, sharing an alley-way with Mrs Wells (later the Knight’s). Directly outside was a cast-iron gas street light. On the north side were Mr & Mrs Evans, and son David and daughter Maureen, next to them, also sharing an alley-way, Mrs Lamb and her daughter, Prudence, and then, at the end of the block, the Coxes, Mr & Mrs and sons Norman, who many years later was to "win the football pools", and Alan. Next to Mrs Wells, at the south end of the block, were the Howkins, Mr & Mrs and sons Bert and Michael, and daughter Ethel. In the end house of the next block, lived the Taylors. In the end house of the block next to the Coxes lived an Oxford 'character', Jimmy Dingle, who for many years walked the streets of Oxford with his advertising boards. The Bakers, with children Billie (later to become a Mayor of Oxford) and Betty, lived a bit further on.

The children of these families were to become acquainted and grow up together in the years that followed. Some families were to be replaced by others, such as the Wells's by the Knight's. Their immediate playgrounds lay in the fields between Meadow Lane and the river: the "Muddie", the "Kidneys" and, over the "Kidney bridge", to the "Dumps". On the corner of the "Muddie", next to the path to Don-nington footbridge, was "Jazzer's" hut. Over Donnington Bridge were the "Weirs", Long Bridges Bathing Place, and the towpath to Oxford, or in the opposite direc-tion, downstream, to the "Isis" public house, and Iffley Lock, and further still, the "Black" Bridge and Sandford Lock.

The main route to town was up Fairacres Road, to Iffley Road, where there was a bus stop, opposite Fred Taylor's Bicycle Shop and the Hills' Post Office. It was also possible to walk along Jackdaw Lane, a continuation of Meadow Lane, until If-fley Road was joined, by the Rugby Ground and the Catholic Church. From there, it was a short walk to The Plain, over Magdalen Bridge, up The High Street, past the heap of bicycles piled outside Queens College, to Carfax.

School was, at first, either Donnington Junior School, at the Iffley Road end of Cornwallis Road, or St Mary & St John Junior School, at the far end of Percy Street, later, Cowley & St John Boys and Girls Schools along the Cowley Road. Any boy lucky enough to "get a scholarship" could choose, and hope to get, Mag-dalen College School, the City of Oxford High School, or Southfield School. Any successful girl would have had a similar choice.

Oxford had six main cinemas: the Ritz, the Super, the Odeon, the Electra in Queen Street, the Scala in Walton Street, and, much closer, the Regal, in Magdalen Road. Queues were quite normal for the lower-priced seats and Sunday afternoon performances at 3 p.m. would turn out to be very popular, being one of the few ways to relieve the tedium of Sundays when the weather was unkind. Being late for the Sunday afternoon performance was a predictable cause of strife in the Parkhouse household. Edie like to get up late on Sundays; Stan expected his Sunday dinner at

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midday; it was always late; Edie, perhaps stubbornly, refused to get it any earlier, perhaps aggravating matters by talking over the gate with the next door neighbour; and as the time for deciding to go or not to "the pictures" approached, voices were raised, until they could be heard over the whole neighbourhood. The children could only try to ignore it. Perhaps the ever-present shortage of money aggravated mat-ters. The money manager was Edie, Stan, thearning it, received only pocket money.

When the weather was kind, entertainment was less of a problem. The river Thames being a matter of yards away, all the children successively learned to swim, and would spend hours splashing about in the river, leaping off home-made diving boards, swinging on ropes suspended from the pollarded willows that leaned over the river banks.

The first occasion to swim across the river would be a personal success for each child, having thought about risking it, perhaps, for some time previously. Apart from the thought of how far it was, there was also the need to keep alert for pass-ing Salter's steamers, racing eights, fours, twos, and even single skiffs, apart from a medley of private pleasure boats: launches, punts, rowing boats, "Canadian" ca-noes, kayaks. Some bolder children would even find the courage to leap off Don-nington foobridge, some even head first, despite horror stories about someone having landed straddling the bow of a rowing boat. Family outings tended to be to the of-ficial bathing places: Long Bridges, a fenced-off part of a backwater of the Thames (closed, now that pollution is given more consideration), and Hinksey Pools, a geo-metric series of rectangular concrete pools of different depth. Both places had large areas of grass where towels could be laid out, picnics taken and, for the exhibition-ists, gymnastics indulged in.

Long Bridges exhibited the water temperature chalked on a board outside. Starting at, perhaps the low fifties in early Spring, when a few brave souls would try the water, the temperature would creep up during the Summer, perhaps even getting up to over 70, when the place would be crowded. The ladies were, at first entirely separated from the men, changing rooms and swimming area, then the men’s swim-ming area became designated "mixed", leaving the ladies' swimming area for those who did not want to "mix".

On rare occasions, there would be a family walk along the towpath to Iffley Lock, to watch the small craft being pulled over the "rollers" and the larger craft negoti-ated through the lock itself. It was possible to walk through the lock area and over some wooden bridges spanning weirs, over which flowed the main stream of the Thames, prevented from flowing through the lock. Sometimes the walk would con-tinue to the toll path into Iffley village, and then back along an unmade lane, beside which ran a shallow brook, to join the southern end of Meadow Lane. Other times, the preference would be to return the same way after a stop for refreshment at "The Isis" public house, situated in the fields beside the towpath. Here it was possi-ble to sit at rough tables in the gardens, and the children could play whilst the par-ents had a drink.

Apart from swimming in the summer, the children would spend hours exploring such places as the "Kidneys". These were, presumably, man-made near-stagnant pools of water connected to the Thames near to "Talboys", a boathouse, little used,

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reached by a straight path from Meadow Lane. Another path, near the Northern end of the Council house row in Meadow Lane, ran into "Talboys" field, then turned right to the "Kidney bridge", and the entrance to the "Dumps". These pools were covered with pondweed, the edges thick with reeds, with here and there, usually just out of reach of covetous children, grew "bulrushes". Moorhens inhabited these verges, usually followed by a cluster of smaller moorhens. They would be busily diving under the pondweed looking for food. Dragonflies, in season, would be perched vertically on the reed stems, or hovering, a sparkling iridescent blue, above the water. We were told they lived for only a day. Sometimes a swan would ven-ture into the area from the main river; one pair even constructnest there one year. We were told to keep away because the male's wings were supposed to be able to break your legs. He would certainly put on a fine aggressive show when ap-proached.

The flowers of "Ragged Robin", "Snakes Heads" (from the "Dumps") were some-thing to be picked. When the cut hay was lying in the fields we would make bur-rows to lie in, or sometimes take it and construct bigger "dens" in the hawthorn hedgerows. There we would listen to the cry of "Peewits" overhead, the mournful hooting of the trains from beyond Weirs Lane, and the terrified squealing of the pigs being slaughtered at the end of Jackdaw Lane.

In the autumn, the children would be after 'conkers'. The best place would be a fenced-off area adjacent to the towpath at Iffley Lock, which could be entered if one knew where and, hidden from disapproving adult eyes, the sought-after 'conkers' could be dislodged from the trees by throwing sticks or shaking branches. There was always a sense of danger although on only one occasion were they chased off. Pears could be obtained if the risk of climbing over the wall and fence of the convent along Jackdaw Lane could be faced. On the one occasion this was attempted, the children successfully entered the orchard at dusk only to frighten themselves into thinking that a "bull" was about to charge them. They were fright-ened even more by running into the local "bobby" as they escaped.

The low-lying fields alongside the river were subjected to flooding in the winter upon which were launched various homemade rafts. One foolish attempt involved a single aircraft fuel drop-tank, which had been opened up to provide a cockpit so that it resembled a sausage-shaped kayak. It, predictably, turned turtle just as soon as anyone tried to ride in it. More successful versions used two drop-tanks.

When these flooded fields froze, as they did sometimes, making slides, sledging, and even ice skating if skates could be found, were all possible. In the winter of 1947, (and later, again in 1963) the Thames froze completely from one bank to the other. Fuel was a problem, coal was rationed, and forays for wood involving hack-ing branches off the local trees were undertaken. Parents would send their children with a sledge up to the coal merchants (in one of the roads crossing Percy Street) hoping they would be able to buy a bag of coal.

During WW2, the "tank track" was constructed across the "Muddie" to test out amphibious craft made at Morris Motors for, as we subsequently learned, the D-Day landings. The track is there to this day. Apart from the arrival of some Cockney evacuees, who stayed only a day or so, and the disappearance of the iron railings

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which decorated the walls of the front gardens in Fairacres Road, little sign of the War was visible to the children of 319 Meadow Lane. Stanley had been called up on 12 Dec 1940, given the Royal Air Force Number 1295971, spent a few weeks in Barrow in Furness, then posted for a short time to somewhere near Oxford1, be-fore being dispatched via Durban, South Africa, to spend the War in India as a Clerk. One day, a broken bag of a floury substance was found in the road outside Jazzer's hut, which we were told was a practice "bomb".

It is interesting to note that whilst we vaguely were aware that Oxford City was said to be safe from bombing, it can be seen from a plan of Enemy Air Attacks (by F.C. Coxon, Chief B.R.O. Oxon, published in 1945), that plenty was happening in the rest of Oxfordshire, mostly in the early war years. The nearest being a high explosive bomb which exploded at Littlemore, a mile or so to the south of Meadow Lane, in the night of the 8/9th April 1941. Visits to our maternal grandparents, who lived in Cardiff, were, however, somewhat more hazardous, and visits to the air-raid shelter in their back garden were common.1 To quote from a letter Edie re-ceived from her parents, dated 10 July 1941: “Mr Hitler come over fairly often but he drops them out side around Rumney, Penarth, Barry, and up our cemetry he drop two Landmines up there he blew the poor sleppers and the stones all over the place but he couldnt hurt them thank god, they have cleared all the rubbish aroung over place so now we got open spaces all aroung us you will lose your way when you come home.”

Stan returned from India in late 1945. He was released from the Dispersal Centre on 24 Oct 1945, with 83 days leave. His last day of service was 15 Jan 1946. By this time Edie would have been pregnant with their fifth child, Shirley Elizabeth Bass Parkhouse, who was born on the 3rd August 1946.

The sum of £65-18-00 was deposited in his Post Office Savings Bank2 on 20 Dec 1945, presumably, his gratuity, his reward for 5 years away from his family, in the service of his country. His savings during that time can be seen in his R.A.F. Sav-ings Book3: a total of £2-18-2d, £1 of which was withdrawn 12 November 1945 and the balance 6 April 1946. The book then lay dormant until 1971.

Whilst he could be thankful that he had not lost his life in the service of his country, together with the consequences that would have had upon his family, there is no doubt he, and they, had “drawn the short straw”. There were some, and his three brothers were ample evidence of this, who had prospered through not being “called-up”. Perhaps he did not resent this.

When Stan started back to work at Cowley is not clear. For the first of perhaps only two times in his life Stan was in possession of a capital sum of money, repre-senting about six month’s wages (the second time would be about 25 years later when he retired with redundancy money). That capital sum was soon spent. Perhaps due to the pregnancy. The saving book entries indicate that between 6 April 1946 (his younger son’s birthday) and 16 November 1946, seventeen withdrawals of £3 were made, together with one of £10 on the 20 July 1946, reducing the capital to £5-16-7d. By the 25 October 1947, only 1s 5d remained. The savings book re-mained unused until after Edie died.

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It is likely that Stan started back to work as soon as possible, if only because a serviceman’s job was surely kept open for only a limited time. Also, money was extremely limited; most of the arguments in the years that followed had shortage of money as their cause. Any R.A.F. Allowances or allotments that Edie might have been receiving would have ceased “at the end of the allowance week in which leave expires”. If indeed he did start work as soon as possible, perhaps in January 1945, then the withdrawals could have been used to supplement his income. This extra money would have run out, effectively 8 February 1947 when the last £3 was with-drawn, during one of the notably severe winters of this century.

From personal memory, we were short of fuel because my brother, Ken, and I were sent, pulling a sledge, to the coal merchants to see if they had any coal or coke. We also cut branches off trees to burn. But I have no memory of being de-prived of food, perhaps because we had free milk at school and free school meals. The other memory I have concerning money at this time was going with Stan to Curry’s in the Cowley Road where he bought, on hire purchase, a “wireless”, a plastic-cased “Ultra”, to replace our wooden-cased “Lissen”.

The main consequence of the money shortage was the shouting matches engaged in by Edie and Stan, which the whole neighbourhood would have overheard. One regu-larly broke out on Sunday when Stan realised that, once again, his dinner was going to be ready so late that he would be too late for the Sunday matinee at the “pictures”. Later, in 1950, another consequence was when my physics master visited to plead for me to be allowed to stay on in the sixth form and then go to univer-sity, he was told that I would be apprenticed (and become one less mouth to feed).

That money was still short as late as the early 1950s is evidenced by a letter he wrote to Edie at the time of her father’s funeral, Easter 1951, which she attended but he could not, in which he expresses regret at not being able to attend: “How I wish I could be there, if only for the funeral! Seems hopeless to think about it though, money being so scarce now.”

Edie's shopping would be done in Magdalen Road, and later on, in Cowley Road. She would use her bicycle, paying little heed to the ever-increasing traffic, but to everyone's surprise, without mishap. Memories of food are most clearly of rabbit in the form of rabbit stew, still with the lead shot in the meat, Bread and milk for breakfast, bread and jam for tea. Rare treats: slice of black pudding, bread and dripping (salty beef dripping came from the Colleges courtesy of Mrs Howkins). We must have had beef sometimes because we used to discuss the possibility of it being horsemeat. For that matter, we could not have been all that badly fed because Edith used to make the proud boast that we might not have that much money, but she did not scrimp on food.

Summer was the time when we could go along to the "Old Lady" in Bedford Street (running down to what used to be called Ferry Lane but we called Meadow Lane or Jackdaw Lane) with a penny and ask for some "fallers". She would take a long time coming to the door and, standing there listening to the sounds from be-hind the coloured glass door, one would think about the taste to come, the porch smelled of apples. When the door had opened, and the "Old Lady" had vanished back down the passage, presumably into the garden to pick up some fallen apples, it

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was noticeable that the smell had changed. We were never invited in; we just stood there until she came back with the apples in a fold of her apron. I hope she real-ised how much we appreciated those apples, because we probably were too shy to say much beyond please and thank you.

Stan's job at Morris Motors was a moderate cycle ride up Donnington Lane to If-fley Road, along Cornwallis Road, either past where his brother, Jim, lived, or past where Charlie lived to the "Works" at Cowley. At the end of the day, when the "Works" were coming out, there was, in those days before widespread car-ownership, a street-wide avalanche of bicycles, with much bell tinkling, and shout-ing.

In the years that followed, Stan and Edie did finally achieve a modicum of pros-perity together with the rest of the population. The end of rationing in the early 1950’s was probably the start. Their children growing up and moving away also helped. The altercations also became less frequent.

Stan took early retirement on the grounds of ill health and finished work on Fri-day the 31st July 1970, taking a lump-sum redundancy payment of £671-3s-4d. Ac-cording to his employer, British Leyland (Austin-Morris) Limited, Service Division, Cowley, Oxford, his employment began on 31-10-1934.

The addresses of some of the descendants of Edward Stanley George Parkhouse and Edith Bass are as follows:

MR J. & MRS J.H. TAYLOR 18 The Green Stanton Harcourt Witney, Oxon, OX8 1RZ 01865-882429 MR & MRS K.I. MANSELL 14 Malford Road Barton Estate Oxford OX3 8BS 01865-65257 MR & MRS S. FOX 2 Back Row, Blackditch Stanton Harcourt Witney Oxon 01865-882602 MR & MRS I. WOOLFORD 4 The Green Stanton Harcourt Witney Oxon OX8 1RN MR K. J. & MRS C. I. PARKHOUSE

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"Keswick" Church Road Whinburgh Dereham, Norfolk 01362-697245 NOEL CHARLES & SANDRA BAKER 47 Kings Road Dereham Norfolk NR19 2AG Wendy [not known] KEVIN DAVID & SARA JANE PARKHOUSE 27 St Nicholas Street Dereham Norfolk NR19 2BS 01362-690028 Ian Parkhouse [at home] MR D.G. & C.E. JONES Barton Cottage, High Street, Wheatley Oxon, OX9 1XX 01865-873132 RICHARD PARKHOUSE JONES Barton Cottage High Street Wheatley Oxon OX9 1XX 01865-873132

SIMON ANTHONY & DONNA JONES 4 Westfield Road Wheatley Oxon OX33 1NG 01865-876834 MR D.M. & MRS S.E.B. CHALKE 38 Whitefield Road, New Duston, Northampton, NN5 6SL 01604-754427 MICHELLE CHALKE

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46 Beaconsfield Road Stoke Green Coventry CV2 4AR 01203-450314 ANDREA CHALKE 2 Alexandra Road Wellingborough Northants NN8 1EE KATHLEEN ELIZABETH CHALKE 128 Anchorway Road Green Lane Coventry CV3 6JG 01203-416295 ROY NORMAN PARKHOUSE 83 St Kingsmark Ave Chepstow Monmouthshire NP16 5SN

______________________________

1 HOW CARDIFF BORE THE AIR BLITZ (South Wales Echo & Express Tuesday 8

May 1945 - VE Day)

355 Killed, 502 Injured, 10,000 Houses Damaged

For a few months after the collapse of France Cardiff, like every other seaboard com-munity, lived on the edge of a volcano. Cardiff suffered its first fatal casualty on July 9, 1940, when a lone bomber, suddenly swooping over the docks, scored a direct hit on a ship. The bomb exploded in one of the holds and seven men were killed. This was the occasion when Tim O'Brien, of David street, Cardiff, became known as "the hero of the docks." This burly transport worker, the father of three children and in his youth a prominent Rugby player, used to be called "Tim the Devil."

On this sunny afternoon Tim was working in another hold of the stricken vessel, the San Pillipe, and the explosion brought him hurrying to the deck. In a split second Tim grasped the situation and rushed to the rescue of his colleagues trapped in the smoke-filled hold.

A Near Miss

The next serious incident on August 17 also occurred in the docks area, when prem-ises in Homfray street, Crichton street and North Church street were damaged. One woman was killed and 19 persons injured that night. On September 3 Cardiff had the worst experience so far. Side streets off the shopping centre of Albany road were struck, and one of the houses in Arabella street was cut from adjoining premise as it by a gigantic knife. A whole family named Waters was buried under the debris.

Cardiff's A.R.P. squads toiled all night and the next morning. Angus street, May road,

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Claude place (where an oil bomb set three houses aflame), and Woodville road also suffered. The total casualties were 46, 11 killed and 35 injured, amongst them six chil-dren.

A few nights later the Cardiff Ice House was gutted and the Tresillian Hotel damaged; two bombs also fell in Westgate street between the high buildings of the flats and the Angel Hotel - a providential example of a "near-miss." Streets in the Roath district, particularly Orbit street and Wordsworth avenue, had what the authorities laconically called "an incident" on September 15, when five citizens were killed and 23 injured and five houses were demolished in Constellation street, Splott, on October 10.

January 2, 1941

All this was a grim "rehearsal” for the "blitz," which was to break over Cardiff on that cold starry night on January 2. 1941 when the city was the target of a concentrated attack, vicious and prolonged.

Men and women stood together in a common cause, and in common danger-brave citizens of no mean city.

That night 265 people were killed. Riverside, Roath and Grangetown were badly hit. Llandaff Cathedral and other churches and schools suffered shockingly.

On March 4, 1941, and again on April 29, there were short but sharp raids. Land mines crashed in Cathays and Mark street districts killing seven people and injuring nearly 100.

Last Air Attack

The last attack on the city was on May 18. 1943 when extensive damage was caused to residential property in Birchgrove, Heath, Canton, the dock district and centre.

Casualties were 41 killed, 52 seriously injured, 76 slightly injured.

Cardiff's total casualties through air raids were 355 killed and 502 seriously injured.

It is estimated that over 10,000 houses were damaged in varying degrees.

______________________________ 2 R.A.F. Harberton House, Harberton Mead, Headington, Oxford. ______________________________ 3 Post Office Savings Bank Book No. A.F. HE. 15160 in the name of Edward S. G. Parkhouse, 319 Meadow Lane, Oxford. ______________________________ 4 Post Office Savings Bank Book R.A.F. Savings No. 47738 in the name of Edward Stanley George Park-house, 1295971 R.A.F. “Ardene”, Abbey Road, Barrow-in-Furness, Lancs. Opened, with a deposit of 4s, 31 August 1942. It also bears a temporary address: R.A.F. Harberton House, Harberton Mead, Headington, Ox-ford.

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The picture entitled “31 Afternoon Shift at Coytrahen Colliery in the 1920s” has been copied from a book called “Llynfi, Garw & Ogmore Valleys in old photographs” by Richard G. Keen, published 1981 by Stewart Williams, Barry. In the list of acknowledgements, this picture (31) is attributed to A. Howells, but may be one of those acquired by the Glamorgan Gazette.

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Kimberley Terrace Bridgwater, Somerset (Where Edward Stanley George Parkhouse was born)

1 Mount Pleasant, Aberkenfig, Glamorgan

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Alfred James Parkhouse, Mary Elizabeth Haynes Easton, his wife, with Edward Stanley George on her lap (Stanley) and Alfred Charles Easton (Charlie). Date estimated to be 1907. They are outside Rose Cottage, Puriton, Somerset.

Mary Elizabeth Haynes Parkhouse after the death of her husband in 1914. With her are Charlie, Stanley, Cyril, Doris, and Jimmy on her lap. Blanche was staying with relatives in Ogmore Vale. At the time of Alfred James’s death they were living at 22 Dunraven Street, Aberkenfig, Glamorgan, which may be where this was taken.

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Edith Alice Parkhouse (née Bass) with Roy Norman, Jean Hilary, Kenneth James, and Carol Edith during WW2.

Edith and Stanley Parkhouse in 1970

Shirley Elizabeth Bass Parkhouse arrived later

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The Isis at Oxford during the winter of 1963. The entrance to the “Kidneys” can be seen to the right of the houseboat.

The first furniture bill.

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Alfred James Parkhouse about 1895

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The family of Charles and Sarah Parkhouse of Puriton, Somerset

Charles PARKHOUSE (16 Oct 1838 - 26 Dec 1906)Charles PARKHOUSE (16 Oct 1838 - 26 Dec 1906)& Sarah DOMINEY (5 Jul 1842 - 13 Dec 1916)& Sarah DOMINEY (5 Jul 1842 - 13 Dec 1916)m. 27 Aug 1863, Thurlbear, Somm. 27 Aug 1863, Thurlbear, Som

Emily PARKHOUSE (7 Jul 1864 - 21 Feb 1956)Emily PARKHOUSE (7 Jul 1864 - 21 Feb 1956)& James HUNTER (Circa 1866 - 7 Jun 1944)& James HUNTER (Circa 1866 - 7 Jun 1944)m. Jun 1891m. Jun 1891

William PARKHOUSE (About 1866 - )William PARKHOUSE (About 1866 - )& Emily& Emily

Alice Maria PARKHOUSE (About 1868/1873 - 1 Apr 1890)Alice Maria PARKHOUSE (About 1868/1873 - 1 Apr 1890)& Francis TREMBATH& Francis TREMBATHm. Dec 1889m. Dec 1889

Henry PARKHOUSE (About 1870 - 8 Nov 1958)Henry PARKHOUSE (About 1870 - 8 Nov 1958)& Emily J. ( - 25 Oct 1938)& Emily J. ( - 25 Oct 1938)m. Jun 1888m. Jun 1888

Nelly Beatrice PARKHOUSE (Circa 1873 - 28 Jan 1919)Nelly Beatrice PARKHOUSE (Circa 1873 - 28 Jan 1919)

Alfred James PARKHOUSE (1 Jul 1874 - 20 Jan 1914)Alfred James PARKHOUSE (1 Jul 1874 - 20 Jan 1914)& Mary Elizabeth Haynes EASTON (3 Apr 1876 - 7 Sep 1933)& Mary Elizabeth Haynes EASTON (3 Apr 1876 - 7 Sep 1933)m. 26 Jun 1902, Rowbarton, Somm. 26 Jun 1902, Rowbarton, Som

Rose PARKHOUSE (About 1877 - 17 Apr 1946)Rose PARKHOUSE (About 1877 - 17 Apr 1946)& James HOOPER& James HOOPER

Laura Minnie PARKHOUSE (About 1879 - 19 May 1941)Laura Minnie PARKHOUSE (About 1879 - 19 May 1941)& Frank Sydney WYATT ( - About Jan 1972)& Frank Sydney WYATT ( - About Jan 1972)

Bessie PARKHOUSE (After 1880 - 16 Dec 1956)Bessie PARKHOUSE (After 1880 - 16 Dec 1956)& Frederick COX& Frederick COX

Eva Kate PARKHOUSE (2 Sep 1886 - 13 Feb 1972)Eva Kate PARKHOUSE (2 Sep 1886 - 13 Feb 1972)& William Henry REDDING& William Henry REDDINGm. 2 Sep 1904m. 2 Sep 1904

Eva Kate PARKHOUSE (2 Sep 1886 - 13 Feb 1972)Eva Kate PARKHOUSE (2 Sep 1886 - 13 Feb 1972)& Frank Sydney WYATT ( - About Jan 1972)& Frank Sydney WYATT ( - About Jan 1972)m. 23 Dec 1944m. 23 Dec 1944

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The family of Alfred James and Mary Elizabeth Parkhouse of Aberkenfig, Glamorgan

Alfred James PARKHOUSE (1 Jul 1874 - 20 Jan 1914)Alfred James PARKHOUSE (1 Jul 1874 - 20 Jan 1914)& Mary Elizabeth Haynes EASTON (3 Apr 1876 - 7 Sep 1933)& Mary Elizabeth Haynes EASTON (3 Apr 1876 - 7 Sep 1933)m. 26 Jun 1902, Rowbarton, Somm. 26 Jun 1902, Rowbarton, Som

Alfred Charles Easton PARKHOUSE (11 Mar 1903 - 17 Jun 1966)Alfred Charles Easton PARKHOUSE (11 Mar 1903 - 17 Jun 1966)& Sarah Emily (Auntie Sis) BUTLER (18 Mar 1904 - 18 Mar 1992)& Sarah Emily (Auntie Sis) BUTLER (18 Mar 1904 - 18 Mar 1992)

Edward Stanley George PARKHOUSE (2 Apr 1906 - 27 Feb 1985)Edward Stanley George PARKHOUSE (2 Apr 1906 - 27 Feb 1985)& Edith Alice BASS (20 Feb 1910 - 26 May 1972)& Edith Alice BASS (20 Feb 1910 - 26 May 1972)m. 16 Aug 1933, Roath, Cardiffm. 16 Aug 1933, Roath, Cardiff

Roy Norman PARKHOUSE (7 Nov 1933 - )Roy Norman PARKHOUSE (7 Nov 1933 - )& Edith Marguerite KOSPACH (3 Nov 1930 - )& Edith Marguerite KOSPACH (3 Nov 1930 - )

Jean Hilary PARKHOUSE (12 Dec 1934 - )Jean Hilary PARKHOUSE (12 Dec 1934 - )& James WEBB& James WEBB

Jean Hilary PARKHOUSE (12 Dec 1934 - )Jean Hilary PARKHOUSE (12 Dec 1934 - )& Joss TAYLOR& Joss TAYLOR

Kenneth James PARKHOUSE (6 Apr 1936 - )Kenneth James PARKHOUSE (6 Apr 1936 - )& Christina Isabel READ (14 Apr 1939 - )& Christina Isabel READ (14 Apr 1939 - )m. 26 Sep 1959m. 26 Sep 1959

Carol Edith PARKHOUSE (8 Dec 1937 - )Carol Edith PARKHOUSE (8 Dec 1937 - )& Donald George JONES (31 Oct 1936 - )& Donald George JONES (31 Oct 1936 - )m. 22 Dec 1962m. 22 Dec 1962

Shirley Elizabeth BASS PARKHOUSE (3 Aug 1946 - )Shirley Elizabeth BASS PARKHOUSE (3 Aug 1946 - )& David Michael CHALKE (12 Jul 1939 - )& David Michael CHALKE (12 Jul 1939 - )m. 9 Sep 1967m. 9 Sep 1967

William Cyril James PARKHOUSE (30 Nov 1907 - 27 Mar 1976)William Cyril James PARKHOUSE (30 Nov 1907 - 27 Mar 1976)& Blanche BUTLER& Blanche BUTLER

Hywell James PARKHOUSEHywell James PARKHOUSE& Jean& Jean

Hazel PARKHOUSEHazel PARKHOUSE& Bramwell WARREN& Bramwell WARREN

Ethel Bertha May PARKHOUSE (23 Jun 1910 - 27 Apr 1970)Ethel Bertha May PARKHOUSE (23 Jun 1910 - 27 Apr 1970)& William James (Uncle Billie) BUTLER (Jul 1910 - 4 Oct 1993)& William James (Uncle Billie) BUTLER (Jul 1910 - 4 Oct 1993)

Graham BUTLER (About 1933 - 27 Mar 1990)Graham BUTLER (About 1933 - 27 Mar 1990)& Molly LEYSHON& Molly LEYSHON

Arlene BUTLERArlene BUTLER& William STEPHENSON& William STEPHENSON

Blodwen Doris Mary PARKHOUSE (14 Jun 1912 - )Blodwen Doris Mary PARKHOUSE (14 Jun 1912 - )& Albert BARNETT (2 May 1909 - 5 Oct 1997)& Albert BARNETT (2 May 1909 - 5 Oct 1997)m. 26 Dec 1933m. 26 Dec 1933

Lyn BARNETT (9 Sep 1947 - )Lyn BARNETT (9 Sep 1947 - )& Elaine JEREMY& Elaine JEREMY

Lyn BARNETT (9 Sep 1947 - )Lyn BARNETT (9 Sep 1947 - )& Moira NEWMAN (5 May 1952 - )& Moira NEWMAN (5 May 1952 - )m. 16 Jun 1971m. 16 Jun 1971

Alfred James Frank PARKHOUSE (6 Jan 1914 - 31 Mar 1977)Alfred James Frank PARKHOUSE (6 Jan 1914 - 31 Mar 1977)& Winifred PHILLIPS ( - 3 Jan 1966)& Winifred PHILLIPS ( - 3 Jan 1966)m. About 1935m. About 1935

John PARKHOUSE (Aug 1937 - )John PARKHOUSE (Aug 1937 - )& Ann& Ann

Sheila PARKHOUSE (12 May 1939 - )Sheila PARKHOUSE (12 May 1939 - )& Gordon PARRISH& Gordon PARRISH

Michael PARKHOUSE (25 May 1944 - )Michael PARKHOUSE (25 May 1944 - )& Carol& Carol

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One of Alfred James Parkhouse’s last pay packets (28 August 1913) when he received £1-13-11d for 6½ days work.

Jim Hooper was Mary Elizabeth’s brother-in-law

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Alfred James and Mary Elizabeth Parkhouse’s grave in the churchyard of Llansantfraid, Aberkenfig, Glamorgan

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Rose Cottage from Puriton churchyard

...and from the road

Puriton church with Charles and Sarah Parkhouse’s graves beneath the tree

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Eva Parkhouse and Bill Redding’s wedding, 2 September 1904. Taken outside Rose Cottage, Puriton, Somerset. back row: James Hunter, Emily Hunter (née Parkhouse) with dau, Charles Parkhouse, Fred Cox, Bill Redding’s mother, Alfred James Parkhouse. front row: Emily J. Parkhouse with Eddie, Edith Parkhouse (dau of Henry), Eva Parkhouse, Bill Redding, Bessie Cox, Mary Elizabeth Parkhous e (née Easton) with son Alfred Charles on her lap.

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Outside Rose Cottage Puriton, Somerset. back row: Fred Cox, Bessie Cox with baby, Alfred James and Mary Elizabeth Parkhouse with baby Stanley (8 months?), James Hooper front row: Alfred Charles Parkhouse, Sarah Parkhouse, small child, Rose Hooper with baby Probably taken in December 1906 when Charles Parkhouse died

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PARKHOUSE The ancestors of Alfred James Park-house originate from an area south of Taunton, Somerset. Between about 1805 and 1860 this was the Pitmin-ster/Thurlbear/Corfe area. Before that, the earliest known ancestor, Ja-cob Parkhouse, a mason, lived in Upottery, Devon, on the southern slopes of the Blackdown Hills. The origins of Jacob, born about 1750, are not clear; they may lie back north, in Pitminster, where a Zacheus Park-house married a Mary Drake from Upottery, 16 September 1701. Charles Parkhouse married Sarah Dominey, 27 August 1863, in Thurl-bear parish church. After the birth of their first child, Emily, 7 July 1864, Charles and Sarah moved to Puriton, just north of Bridgwater.

EASTON Mary Elizabeth’s great grandfa-ther, William EASTON, a gar-dener, married Mary Lane, 8 March 1795, at Kingston St Mary, just north of Taunton, Somerset. Her grandfather, John, was one of 10 children, all born in Kingston St Mary. Her father, George Easton, married Harriet Maria Haynes, 31 May 1876, at Taunton Registry Office, about two months after Mary Elizabeth Haynes was born 3 April 1876.

DOMINEY Sarah Dominey’s father was William, her grandfather, Tho-mas, who was baptised the son of William and Mary DOMINEY, 23 April 1858, in Thurlbear, Somerset. In Scotland the word Dominie means “schoolmaster”.

HAYNES Harriet Haynes was born, the youngest of 6 children, 28 June 1835, in Stoke sub Hamdon, Somerset. Her father, Na-thaniel, and her grandfather, William, were also born and married in Stoke sub Hamdon. Her great grandparents, John Haynes and Mary Homlin, were married, 18 October 1753, in the parish church of North Perrott, Somerset. Stoke sub Hamdon is 5-6 miles west of Yeovil. North Perrott is about 5 miles south of Stoke sub Hamdon, on the Dor-set border.

Thurlbear parish church

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Alfred James PARKHOUSE Alfred James PARKHOUSE

b. 1 Jul 1874b. 1 Jul 1874

bp. Puriton, Sombp. Puriton, Som

m. 26 Jun 1902m. 26 Jun 1902

d. 20 Jan 1914d. 20 Jan 1914

dp. Aberkenfig, Glamdp. Aberkenfig, Glam

Charles PARKHOUSE Charles PARKHOUSE

b. 16 Oct 1838b. 16 Oct 1838

bp. Eastbrook, Pitminster, Sombp. Eastbrook, Pitminster, Som

m. 27 Aug 1863m. 27 Aug 1863

d. 26 Dec 1906d. 26 Dec 1906

dp. Puriton, Somdp. Puriton, Som

George PARKHOUSE George PARKHOUSE

b. May 1810b. May 1810

chp. Pitminster, Som chp. Pitminster, Som

m. 12 Aug 1832m. 12 Aug 1832

d. 2 Jan 1880d. 2 Jan 1880

dp. Rowbarton, Som dp. Rowbarton, Som

Maria GARDENER Maria GARDENER

b. 8 Sep 1808b. 8 Sep 1808

bp. Corfe, Sombp. Corfe, Som

d. 2 Jan 1873d. 2 Jan 1873

dp. Rowbarton, Som dp. Rowbarton, Som

Sarah DOMINEY Sarah DOMINEY

b. 5 Jul 1842b. 5 Jul 1842

bp. Thurlbear, Sombp. Thurlbear, Som

d. 13 Dec 1916d. 13 Dec 1916

dp. Puriton, Somdp. Puriton, Som

William DOMINEY William DOMINEY

ch. 29 Oct 1797ch. 29 Oct 1797

chp. Thurlbear, Som chp. Thurlbear, Som

m. 18 Oct 1831m. 18 Oct 1831

d. 19 Mar 1862d. 19 Mar 1862

dp. dp.

Mary Ann GARLAND Mary Ann GARLAND

ch. 4 Jun 1809ch. 4 Jun 1809

chp. Thornfalconchp. Thornfalcon

d. 19 Mar 1862d. 19 Mar 1862

dp. dp.

Some ancestors of Alfred James Parkhouse

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Above: Mary Elizabeth Haynes Easton, in service, before her mar-riage to Alfred James Parkhouse

Right: Mary Elizabeth Parkhouse just be-fore her death in 1933

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Edith Alice Bass c 1930 before her marriage to Edward Stanley George Parkhouse

Edith Alice Parkhouse with Richard Parkhouse Jones not long before her death in 1972

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Personal ancestry chart

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Errors & Omissions Page 86: There was also Iris Howkins and Jean Cox.

Page 87: “thearning” should read “though earning”

Page 88: “constructnest” should read “constructed a nest”

Page 129: Mary Elizabeth Haynes Easton is the person on the right.

Page 85: The family were living at 79 Campbell Road in December 1934 ac-cording to Jean’s birth certificate I’m told (by Ken).

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An assortment of certificates follows this page.

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