Chapter I: Cymmer
At the age of seventy eight I have decided, rather belatedly, to relate the story of my life. This I must do before creeping senility develops, possibly, into ’senile dementia’. What has already beset my comparatively advanced age is, in the words of a well-known historian, ‘nominal amnesia’. In addition to this, I am plagued by ‘temporal amnesia’. It’s not always easy to remember the ‘when’ and ‘where’ of particular events that come to the mind.
So just sitting at my writing-desk and jotting down memories, without using every means of research, may produce the occasional inaccuracy. At any rate, I hope the memories that I shall reproduce, will prove of interest to my family, if not to others.
I am an only child with the characteristics of an introvert, inclined to live in a world of my own, inclined to be introspective. Communication with my parents was not easy. This, I think, was due to two factors. One, my inclination to withdraw into my own world, and two, the prevailing attitude of parents towards their children - children were not to be pampered; they were to be obedient, and well-behaved.
So my relationship with my parents, although one of parental and filial affection, did not encourage me to converse freely, and ask questions.
Now, I have rather laboriously written the previous paragraph in order to try to explain why it was that I have recently had to turn to my aged aunts to discover my roots and to learn more about my early childhood.
I was born on December the fifteenth, 1906, in No 2, School Road, Cymmer, the son of Gwilym Williams and Ellen (nee Thomas). Those who believe in fate or destiny may think that, as I was born in School Road, I was destined to become a School teacher, and , indeed, my Aunty Annie told me that my mother used to hold me up to the full extent of her arms, and say, ‘You shall see, he will be a School Teacher’. In those days, it was thought to be the pinnacle of achievement to become either a preacher or a school teacher.
My parents were married on April the eleventh 1906. Now notice that I was born on December the fifteenth of the same year. It seems that my mother used to protest very strongly that there was no pre-marital conception, and that I was an eight months baby. She was quite proud of her baby, but he had one blemish that she did her best to hide. Aunty Annie told me that when anyone called in the house, when she had me on her lap, she would turn over one corner of her apron in order to hide it. However this blemish turned out to be a blessing in later life. A hospital specialist called it a bifurcated big toe, which means that I only just missed having six toes. I shall explain later why this became a blessing in my adulthood.
These days it has become fashionable to try to trace one’s roots and to form a kind of genealogical table - a fashion, I suppose that has been recently popularised by the Americans. This exercise can entail quite a lot of work, and a lot or research. Fortunately, this has been done for me by relatives, who have had better opportunities and facilities for this kind of research.
My cousin Eunice has gleaned a lot of the necessary information from her mother, my Aunty Lizzie. This information she passed on to me in her native Welsh, although being married to a monoglot Anglo-Welsh and now living in Oxfordshire. So here is a rough translation of that information.
“My Grandfather and Grandmother (Joseph and Sarah) were married in Llangynwyd Church on December the second, 1876. Frank (Eunice’s husband) and I saw the marriage certificate about twenty years ago. Llangynwyd was at that time a very beautiful place, the parish of the Maid of Cefn Ydfa. Wil Hopcyn, her unfortunate lover, was buried in the graveyard.
“My Grandfather was born as Joseph Rhys in Cwmpedol on the slopes of the Black Mountain, somewhere near Bethel on the Road between Garnant and Carreg Cennen. His mother was Mari Rhys - a young woman living on her own in a small-holding (her father and mother had died when she was very young). She took Joseph, a very young baby, and left him at the door of his father - John Williams - a married man with several children, with whom Joseph Rhys (now) Williams was brought up. John Williams owned a quarry in Brynmelyn and lived in Pantygweuad, Rhiwfawr. Joseph worked in the quarry with his father, and when the quarry was worked out they moved to work in a quarry in Pontrhydyfen. The father lost a leg in an accident and was buried in Ystalyfera. His son John, (half-brother to Joseph) was the father of Evan Williams, Ystalyfera (the father of Gareth Ennyd and Nan).
“My Mamgu’s (Sarah’s) father was born in Llandybie. He too went to work in Pontrhydyfen. There he met Mari - from Maesteg circa 1835-40. They lived in Pontrhydyfen in one of the small cottages near Richard Burton’s house in Danybont, and it was there that Sarah, the tenth child, was born.” That ends the information given by Eunice.
Evan Williams, Ystalyfera, (mentioned above) was a keen antiquarian, and claimed a family connection with William Williams, Pantycelyn, the famous Revivalist and Hymn-writer. He claimed that Joseph, my grandfather, was a grandson of a certain William (first cousin to William Williams) who lived at Ystalyfera Ucha farm in 1770. The genealogical table passed on to me by Aunty Annie seems to have several flaws in it, and so my family can hardly make positive claims to relationship with William Williams.
But the genealogical tree of my mother’s forebears, does contain a famous person, indeed two famous persons. This has been proved, with complete certainty, by Richard Huws, the son of my cousin Megan (Tycanol). Richard works in the National Library of Wales, where he can consult the relevant documents. The relevant details from this genealogical tree are follows:-
In this family tree there are two famous names - Gwilym Marles and Dylan Thomas.
Gwilym Marles, namely William Thomas, was born April 7th, 1834. His grandfather, as shown in the Table, was William Thomas, Gelli Grin, Brechfa, also my grandfather’s grandfather. (Sounds complicated!) As a young boy, he was adopted by his father’s sister, who lived near Gwernogle and near the River Marles. He became a well-known preacher, poet, and litterateur, and kept a school in Llandysul. He was, above all, a stubborn and unyielding fighter against the oppression of the so-called nobility, especially the family of Alltyrodyn, near Llandysul. This family of landlords persecuted and drove out of their small-holdings those families who refused to vote for them in Parliamentary elections. Gwilym Marles was the minister of the Unitarian Chapel, Llwynrhydowen, a chapel on the estate of Alltyrodyn, and as a result of his stand for the liberty of the individual and for the secret ballot, the chapel was closed by this cruel and merciless family.
After the election of 1868 it is estimated that over two hundred families were evicted from their farms throughout Wales. At least eight of these families lost their farms on Alltyrodyn Estate, many of them emigrating to America, and in the process suffering deaths and severe hardships.
In spite of this Gwilym Marles and his chapel members stood firm, and eventually won the fight. There is no doubt that such fights as these helped to force the Tories to introduce the Secret Ballot.
You will also notice in the Table that D. J. Thomas, an English Master in Swansea Grammar School, was the son of Gwilym Marles’ brother, and that the son of D.J. Thomas was the notable, and indeed, notorious, Dylan Thomas. My mother’s family are proud of this connection, even though the majority of them, with their rather puritanical upbringing, deplored is way of living.
Dylan Thomas’ literary output is, of course, well known to all, but it is of interest too that a poem composed by Gwilym Marles is to be found in the Oxford Book of Welsh Verse. Its title is ‘Cwmwrdu’. There used to be a small Unitarian Chapel in Cwmwrdu, about half way between Brechfa and Gwernogle. Until the outbreak of the 1939-45 War, a service used to be held there once a year in the summer. After the war it became a kind of Youth Hostel, but I am not sure under whose auspices. And indeed, I am not sure whether it continues to be a hostel.
Back to Cymmer. Where is it? When you approach Neath from the West, you turn left up a fairly steep winding road, and after you reach the summit you descend an equally steep road down to the Afan Valley and to Pontrhydyfen, where you come to a tall viaduct. You proceed under the viaduct through a cluster of houses, called Danybont, where Richard Burton was born, and then along a road on the side of a hill for about three miles in order to reach Cymmer.
Cymmer is a village, built on the slopes of a fairly deep valley, which ends in a kind of cul-de-sac in Glyncorrwg. H. T. Jacob, a preacher renowned for his eloquence and for his wit, used to describe Cymmer in some such terms as these - ‘If you want to have an idea of the geography of Cymmer, imagine yourself standing inside a big teapot and you can see out only through the spout’.
I have myself no clear impression of the village, having left it when I was two years of age and having visited it only once afterwards, and that soon after I got married. You would have expected me to have had vivid and interesting accounts and impressions of the place from my parents. But, as I have explained at the beginning, we didn’t seem to communicate very well.
Nevertheless, I gained quite a lot of information about two years ago, when I had a long conversation with Aunty Annie, then in her ninety fourth year - a conversation that I recorded on tape. These are some of the facts and impressions derived from that conversation.
First of all, I asked my Aunt whether she had any idea what had induced Mother, a young girl in her teens, to take such an adventurous step as to leave her native part of Carmarthenshire and emigrate, as it were, to be a farm servant on the outskirts of an industrial village in Glamorganshire. This question I should have asked my Mother when she was alive. Why I did not was probably, as I have mentioned before, our lack of communication. The answer to the question is still a mystery, as my Aunt had no clue as to what it was.
It’s still a mystery to me why my Mother, one of a family of ten whose lives have mainly remained rooted in and around Carmarthen and who became prosperous farmers, should have left the remote countryside of Panteg, to become a servant in Nantyfedw Farm, near Cymmer, and then to marry a collier, who also was a member of a large family - the eldest of thirteen.
My mother was born in a small cottage, called Clyncethin - a cottage that had only two small rooms, a bedroom and a living-room. The living-room had a wall-bed, a bed that was stood on its end against the wall in the daytime and then lowered to the floor at night. It’s amazing that my grandparents managed to raise a family of ten children in such a limited space. Even more amazing was the fact that my grandfather earned only one shilling a day, working as a farm labourer in the nearby farm, Wenallt. Clyncethin was, of course, a small-holding of about six or seven acres, and so two cows, a sow with an annual litter, and some poultry would provide minimum subsistence. Another source of food was two or three long rows of potatoes planted along with the potatoes planted in a field belonging to Wenallt.
In spite of such conditions in their childhood, all ten children lived, in good health, to a fairly good old age. One reason for that was that as soon as they were old enough to go into service, they became servants in the local farms, even before they finished school, and that could be at eleven or twelve years old. Mother was the ‘forwyn fach’ at Llwyngwyn, Panteg, before she moved to Cymmer.
My father was born in Pontrhydyfen, but his family soon moved to Glyncorrwg and then to Cymmer. He left school when thirteen years old, having acquired basic literacy and having acquired a beautiful hand in writing - copper-plate writing. He went to work with his father in Glanafan Colliery between Cymmer and Caerau, and later they were joined by his brother Thomas.
Aunty Annie has given me a vivid account of a tragic accident in this colliery in which my father and his brother Thomas and my grandfather were involved.
One morning towards the beginning of this century the village was stunned and bewildered by the loud hooting of the colliery hooter soon after the colliers had gone down the mine for the morning shift. This the villagers thought must be a warning of a disaster, and indeed before long it was realised that the disaster was the flooding of the Drift Mine, Glanafan. Torrents of blackened water and coal slurry were cascading down the slopes towards Cymmer itself. Some of the water poured down through the yard of Nantyfedw and since my father was mother’s boyfriend at the time, she was very worried as to his fate.
But Mamgu was worried about the fate of her husband and that of her two sons, Gwilym and Thomas. Aunty Annie, in our taped conversation, gives quite a vivid account of how Mamgu made her way up to the Mine by clinging to the tram-rails, leading down to the Railway Station. This was extremely difficult as a lot of the soil underneath the rails had been washed away. Arriving breathless at the mouth of the Mine she was relieved to find Tadcu safe. But where were Gwilym and Thomas?
After the lapse of a worrying and anxious time they both appeared before the entrance to the mine. But they had found a way of escape not through the entrance, but by walking along the shaft of an adjoining mine. After walking along this shaft for about a mile, they emerged not far from Caerau.
Five colliers were drowned in that mine disaster. It’s difficult for us, in these days of motor ambulance, to envisage the scene in the streets of Cymmer, when all the residents were standing in their doorways, watching the bodies being carried on stretchers by the colliers. It’s quite possible that one of the stretcher-bearers was my father, as he was a St John’s Ambulance man. Two of the drowned men were from Cymmer. The other three were from Pontrhydyfen and were carried on stretchers down to the Railway Station, to be transported to Pontrhydyfen in a train.
I have mentioned that Gwilym was my mother’s boyfriend. How soon after that mine disaster they became husband and wife I don’t know. However they were married on the eleventh of April, 1906.
Courtship and the actual wedding were kept secret as long as possible. Nowadays it’s the fashion for a couple, soon after beginning courtship, to be taken to each other’s home, to be introduced to the parents. Not so in those days. Couples resorted to all sorts of subterfuges to hide the fact that they were courting. They were hardly ever seen in public in each other’s company, and always preferred the long dark nights of winter to the unending light of a summer’s day. It seems that my father and mother were highly successful in maintaining secrecy, and even on their wedding day they made valiant efforts to fool relations and neighbours, with, of course, the connivance of my father’s family. I wonder sometimes whether Mother had let her own far-away family know that she was going to marry and when. An account of the wedding has been given to me not by my parents but by Aunty Annie, as if the topic of marriage was taboo.
On the wedding day it was arranged that my mother should walk from Nantyfedw along the back streets of Cymmer, and should meet my father, with his father, on the platform of the Railway Station. Then they proceeded by train to be married in a chapel in Aberafan - the sole witnesses being my grandfather and the Methodist minister in Cymmer. It was only recently that I realised that on the Marriage Certificate there was no signature made by my Grandfather, but just a cross, proving, of course, that he was illiterate. This certificate is now in Una’s possession and hangs on the wall of the staircase in her house in Kingston Blount.
After the wedding they - the married couple, the father and the minister - had tea together in a age. I should imagine it was not a sumptuous tea, but perhaps just a cup of tea, a bun, and a piece of cheese. And yet, it could hardly have been that, as my mother always kept a good table with food of her own cooking. Did they go anywhere on their honeymoon? No, it was straight back to Cymmer. Straight back to where my Aunty was not sure, but she thought that it was not immediately to what was to be their home - No. 2, School Road. Probably it was to the home of father’s parents.
What kind of social life did young people enjoy in those days? They had very little time for any kind of social life, I should imagine. Father left school when he was thirteen, and went to work in the coal-mine. The hours of work were very long, and in the winter months they had no daylight in which to play games. So almost all the social life was connected with the chapel. My father learned the rudiments of sol-ffa in order to be able to play the organ or harmonium in chapel. His family, all of them, had very good voices. Father, in particular, had a fine tenor voice, and would probably have made quite an impact in the world of singing, if he had had suitable training. Aunty Annie too, had a rich contralto voice. It seems, therefore, the main enjoyment in life was derived from chapel singing, from the Gymanfa Ganu, and from a choir trained by the local M.P., Sir William Jenkins, a man who achieved fame as a Member of Parliament and as a member of the County Council, starting from very humble beginnings.
Two events which high-lighted the social life of the year were the Gymanfa Ganu and the Annual Fair in Neath. In the Gymanfa Ganu the young men were able to see their girl-friends bedecked in their brand-new finery.
On the Saturday, when the Neath Fair was held, almost the whole village would congregate at the Station, in order to be carried down the Valley in a train of coal-trucks. The colliers had been busy on the day before cleaning out these trucks. It was quite a sight to see the train moving out of the Station with just the heads of the standing passengers showing above the trucks. The children had very little to spend, a shilling being the maximum given to them. But then they could bring home an orange, which cost only a penny.