'Bwlch' is 'gap' in Welsh. It's also 'pass' as in 'mountain pass' and the Tavern of the Pass seems a more appropriate name for the inn that once stood on the Bwlch Road between Neath, Baglan and Cwmafan and later called The Miners Arms. 

Here's an excerpt from A Leslie Evans' book, The Story of Baglan*:

This old inn formerly stood near the eastern boundary of Baglan Lower, in the gap between the Foel Mountain and Mynydd y Gaer, through which, in remote geological times, the River Avon flowed. The inn lay on the side of the road connecting Cwmavon with Neath, being frequented by Cwmavonites journeying to athletic sports and the centuries-old market fair held at Neath. The Tafarn provided a customary stopping place, children being treated to soft drinks, sweets and cakes, supplied by a cluster of temporary stalls erected nearby. On such occasions, the inn was packed with thirsty fathers seeking good cheer, and the festive atmosphere of the event resulted in its being called, “Ffair Bach y Mynydd” – i.e. the Little Mountain Fair.
 
Following the passing of the Sunday Closing Act of 1881, Tafarn y Bwlch did a roaring trade on the Sabbath because of its remoteness, but when the Rhondda and Swansea Bay Railway was completed in 1895 the Avon Valley people preferred the comfortable train journey to Neath to the long trek past the Tafarn, with the result that its trade steadily dwindled, forcing it to close. It became a small farmstead for a time, but its history concluded when it was gutted by a fire in 1928. With the passing years, it was swiftly torn apart and became a stark ruin, little of which can now be seen amid the engulfing sea of bracken which sweeps the mountain slopes. 

Thanks to my good friend, local family historian, researcher and teller of life-stories, Allen Blethyn, we know that the Tafarn was referred to as The Miners Arms by 1851 and run by Leyson David and his wife, Elizabeth. In the 1861 census, William David was the publican there, with his wife Hannah and their four young children. And perhaps all that fresh mountain air and regular sips of good ale contributed towards their success and longevity. William was still running the inn in 1901 although Hannah had died five years earlier and was buried in Cwmafan.
 
William died in 1905 and the 1911 census shows that the inn’s ‘ale days’ had ended by then, the property occupied by Job and Mary Sargent and their seven young children, aged between 12 and 1. Job worked as a Colliery Repairer and was born in Cymmer; Mary was from Abergwynfi and they both spoke English and Welsh. But, in a sign of the Anglicisation spreading across industrial South Wales all of their children were listed as speaking only English. 
 
You can stand next to the Tafarn’s tumbled ruin and in the adjacent field and imagine the chatter and ebullience of its 19th century visitors. You can also imagine its 21st century visitors in the discarded beer bottles and cans concentrated in one particular spot. 

My usual indignation at unnecessary litter is slightly tempered by the knowledge of the location’s history, a sense of tradition being continued. And haven’t we all sat in a field, on a mountainside, or on a beach at night, at some time in our lives, with a group of friends and our illicitly obtained alcohol imagining ourselves the epitome of cool? (My teenage years’ illicit alcohol was Woodpecker Cider – if you can call that alcohol!) Although, the preservation of nature outranks tolerance: be even cooler and take your party rubbish home!

* The Story of Baglan, privately published by the author 1970, is available to read at the Port Talbot Library.

You may have watched performance poet, Taylor Mali, on YouTube reciting his poem, ‘What Teachers Make’, his inspirational response to an obnoxious dinner guest who wants to know how much he earns a year. ‘You’re a teacher, Taylor. Be honest. What do you make?’

‘What do I make?’ Mali says. ‘I make kids work harder than they ever thought they could … I make parents see their children for who they are and what they can be … I make them question. I make them criticize … I make them write. I make them read, read, read …Teachers make a goddamn difference!’ he says.

And that’s how I felt after reading Angela V John’s The Actors’ Crucible, a biography of the town of Port Talbot and its ever expanding tribe of renowned actors, that have emerged over more than a century, but also of its enablers – those unsung heroes who helped to nurture talent in schools, youth centres and youth theatre.[i]
 
Drama didn’t play a role in my life growing up in Port Talbot. Not unless you include my mother’s recollection of me hanging out of her bedroom window at the age of five begging the neighbours to rescue me because, ‘My mother is beating me!’ ‘Melodramatic’, I remember her saying about me. Often. 

​I do have a memory of one of my first Drama classes, around 1971, at Sandfields Comprehensive School when the teacher dropped the record arm onto Edwin Starr’s ‘War’ circling on the turntable of his Dansette or Decca and told us to move around the hall and ‘improvise’ to the music. I had absolutely no idea what he meant – I was very literal at that age – or any idea that in the room with me were two of Port Talbot’s future actors of theatre, film, radio and television: Francine Morgan and Derek Hutchinson.[ii]
 
There is much already published about Port Talbot’s most famous film and theatre stars – Richard Burton, Anthony Hopkins, and more recently, Michael Sheen – but John’s coverage of them in Part One - Before They Were Famous[iii] takes a more intimate and investigative approach than any celebrity biography. She explores their lives in relationship to their ancestry, their education and the social history of the years they lived in the town, as well as drawing on her own memories of growing up in Port Talbot, of family connections and shared experiences. They become inextricably linked to place, to the grit and grandeur of a steel-producing town and its institutions that shaped their futures. 

Those institutions were both educational and cultural, the ‘crucibles’ fired by inspirational educators and guides for almost a century. Some of those people are known to the world: amateur actor, playwright and schoolmaster, Philip Burton who provided his ward, Richard Jenkins, with the name that would make him famous. Others may only be remembered by a few: Leo Lloyd, a traffic yardmaster at the steelworks whose passion was producing plays at the Taibach Youth Centre and who Richard Burton acknowledged as the person who convinced him that acting was ‘infinitely fascinating’.[iv]

Anthony Hopkins’ dramatic interest was ignited in 1955 by a visit to the town’s YMCA where he met Cyril Jenkins, the producer for the YMCA Players. Jenkins gave him his first part which he thanked him for in a letter 20 years later: If you hadn’t I probably would never have gone into the Theatre profession.[v]

Michael Sheen’s Port Talbot born parents moved their family back to their hometown in the late 1970s and his commitment to the stage was encouraged and shaped by his secondary school Drama teacher, Ken Tucker, and through his involvement with the West Glamorgan Youth Theatre Company under the guidance of Godfrey Evans, who himself had been encouraged in the mid-1950s by Leo Lloyd to join his Taibach Youth Centre Drama Group.
 
These are just a few of the many people behind the scenes, names that do not appear in the Appendix of Fifty Port Talbot Actors at the back of the book. But having read the preceding pages I am sure I can hear them, between the biographical lines, their influence and cheer, their advice and enthusiasm.
 
The Actors’ Crucible may well be written around a specific town and the astonishing extent of its dramatic success but John’s book is also a study of the power of education to change lives. Its theme transcends the worlds of film and theatre and propels us to remember the people in our own lives who urged us to grow into ourselves.

When I first started to write, at the late age of 30, I enrolled on an Adult Education course, anxious for direction on a path that felt so intimidatingly wide. The man who gave me both those things, and so much more, was Tony Weeks-Pearson. He was the man who showed me I could.
 
‘What do teachers make?’ They make us believe in ourselves. They make the fertile ground for us to flourish. They make possibilities become realities.  

The Actors' Crucible is published by Parthian Books (2015)

[i] See front flyleaf
[ii] See Appendix pp159-164
[iii] pp9-81
[iv] p33
[v] p53

I'm sure there was one, a November that is. My diary shows one. But the absence of a November blogpost here suggests otherwise!

To be fair to myself I was rather preoccupied with my new book, The Hungry Writer, a 'best of' compilation of posts over the last five years from my blog of the same name. While it's not entirely Port Talbot/Wales based - it covers the years I spent in France as well as stories from my home in Kent - the balance does swing towards 'the home country'. Stories about a tipsy insurance man at Christmas, a St David's Day concert at Tirmorfa School and the iconic 'Sandfields Estate Mousse', a mainstay of my childhood parties. You'll recognise it I'm sure: evaporated milk whisked with jelly to create a squeaky multi-bubbled dessert. 

And now I've mentioned 'parties' other memories are ebbing and flowing. A 1960's Christmas party at the Steelworks,  a row of tables in one of the hangar-like (to 8 year old me) cafeterias piled high with wrapped presents. Another one at the Seaside Social & Labour Club in Dalton Road where I tipped my plastic cup of orange squash over my paper plate of sandwiches but wouldn't accept another plate from a man who was obviously concerned that I had something to eat. There was something about the way he kept repeating the words 'your food' that triggered one of those irrational childlike reactions to just say 'No'. 

In his book, Profile of a Welsh Town,  Ivor Hanson talks about the annual Christmas tea-party given by Miss Emily Talbot (1840 - 1918) in the Servants' Hall of Margam Castle for the children of Margam Sunday School and Groes Day School:

... and during such occasions she would address the children, in her quiet way, and then present them with lengths of cloth sufficient to make dresses for the girls and suits for the boys.

I am sure the cloth would have been very welcomed by their mothers but equally convinced that the childrens' hearts would have been hoping for something less 'useful': a spinning top, a cup and ball, lead soldiers, a penny doll.

I wonder if they sang Christmas Carols? And I wonder if any of them - who, like me, would have learned the words by rote, repeating lines aloud after a teacher until they were committed to memory - wondered who exactly was that little boy and why was he faithful in 'Oh Come 'Ollie' Faithful'!

It's the end of another year soon. And that marks three years' worth of blogposts that have dipped in and out of our town's history and my memories so I'll be taking a break from regular monthly posts. But the blog archive will remain here and I'll be back from time to time when Port Talbot's rich history and evolving identity surprises me into sharing my thoughts with you. 

Happy New Year. Blwyddyn Newydd Dda. 

The Hungry Writer and Real Port Talbot are available to purchase at Taibach Community Library and at Port Talbot Library in the Aberafan Shopping Centre.

'Ducking Apples' we called it: the washing up bowl filled with cold water and placed on sheets of newspaper on the living room floor. And then we lowered our heads and bared our teeth around the shiny skin of green apples that bobbed away from our bites. I don't think I ever ate an apple I caught. But that wasn't the point!

Twco afalau, historian Les Evans calls it: 

'Fruit, particularly nuts and apples, have long been associated with Halloween [31st October], and apple-ducking or baiting is still observed locally, although it is not as popular as it used to be.'

The book was first published in 1963 and the game was pretty popular in our Port Talbot home through the mid sixties at least. Does anyone still do it these days though? I hope so.

Calan Gaeaf, 1st November, and traditionally the first day of winter, was an important Welsh festival. Celebrations began on the previous evening, on Nos Calan Gaeaf or Hallowe-en: a contraction of All Hallows Evening, a 'hallow' being a saint or holy person.

The fires lit on these evenings were known as Beltane fires, and it's thanks, again, to Les Evans that I now realise the name not only derives from 'Baal, or Bel, the ancient Sun or Fire God' but also from the Welsh, tân, for fire. 

Another local Halloween custom that Les Evans recounts isn't one I'm familiar with:

'We also blackened our faces and dressed in clothes of the opposite sexes - as did the ancient Romans during the same festival - and made our round of neighbours' houses chanting a jingle and ever expectant of a small gift.'

These days skeletons and witches, and probably zombies now as well, tend to be the costumes of choice.

​But given the propensity for some of the lads at Taibach RFC to dress up in women's clothing, at least once a year*, then I'm sure it wouldn't take too much effort to reignite this particular tradition!

A Leslie Evans, The History of Taibach & District, published by the author 1963, 2nd edition 1982 by Alun Books, Port Talbot. 

* The club's unmissable and iconic annual panto is hilarious, cheeky and wonderfully irreverent. The 2015 show, Jack and the Giant Cactus, opens on 6th December. Tickets from the club.

I've recently been home in Port Talbot and woke up one morning, in my childhood bedroom, feeling disorientated. Not just that confused 'where am I?' feeling that can result from travelling and staying in different places; for a few anxious seconds I didn't even know who I was! I don't want to sound melodramatic but for a moment I knew what it felt like to be someone completely disconnected from the world around them, someone with no sense of self and no sense of purpose.

Later I went out running: east along The Prom at Aberafan Beach, past the pier and Mariner's Quay, along the foot and cycle path that flanks the River Afan, right over Newbridge then, ignoring the 'No Trespassing' signs, through the dock gates towards the Grade II listed Harbour House, built around 1838 for the harbour master at the site of the new dock's original lock gates. 

The expanse of rippling dock water present today greatly exceeds anything you would have seen in 1840. CRM Talbot's new dock, built between 1836 and 1841, was expanded in the 1870s and again in the 1890s as ships shifted from sail to steam and larger berths were required. But if you don't mind hanging over the dock wall, just to the right of Harbour House, and if the water is low enough, you can see the original stone wharf wall belonging to that first small dock just below the surface.

And how do I know this? Because my friend and family historian, Allen Blethyn, was also, serendipitously, at Harbour House, and he led me to the water's edge to show me. 

And how does this all link to where I started, with the idea of 'a sense of purpose?' Because life is richer when we have one, for ourselves and our community. Allen's sense of purpose, his research of local history and families, how he fills in the blanks of history for himself and for others, myself included, has expanded the lives of hundreds, probably thousands of people. And Port Talbot seems particularly gifted with people like him.

Brian Jones' three volumes, Port Talbot, A Gallery of Personalities, published between 1989 and 1992, detail the lives of 34 men and women whose sense of purpose also shaped the town. Doctor, nurse, boxer, gardener, shopkeeper, cafe owner and many more. Perhaps not the kind of people 'big' history books record and remember but they are just as important to history making. The stories of the world are all contained in the stories of the lives of ordinary people.

All three volumes are, unfortunately, out of print, but they're available to read and borrow from our town libraries. Perhaps they'll remind you to acknowledge your own sense of purpose and how your life is better for it. 

It's the summer of 1915. You're standing on the grass in Gallipoli Square, Taibach. 'Newspapers have kept from us the things we ought to know,' says the man addressing the crowd assembled there, his voice carrying between the chapels, the streets around you that are named for another military conflict. And a seed of doubt is planted in your mind. And then you imagine your son sheltering in a trench in France, remember your neighbour's cries of grief as she read the telegram in her hand ... Deeply regret ... died of wounds ... No, you think, this can't be true. Our boys and men are not dying for nothing. 'Call themselves Pacifists,' your husband said last night after his shift, 'more like bloody cowards!' and thumped the table making the sugar bowl jump. 

I am trying to imagine myself in the Taibach crowd listening to Welsh born philosopher, Bertrand Russell, rallying against the war, encouraging conscientious objectors, in July 1915. 100 years later we have a different perspective of the 'war to end all wars', we know of the horror, the ignorance of leaders, the almost inexpressible tragedy of the death of so many young men. I imagine if we could travel back in time we would do our best to bring it to a halt. But it would have been different then. And I also imagine the courage it would have taken to stand apart, to stand up, to stand against what you felt to be so very wrong. And be imprisoned for it. Or on the Front itself, to be killed for it.

Conscientious objectors are on my mind after speaking with Philip Adams, author of A Most Industrious Town, Briton Ferry and its People 1814-2014, whose new book, due to be published at the end of this month, Not In Our Name, War Dissent in a Welsh Town, tells the story of ordinary people resisting military conscription and war, including the involvement of his own grandfather. This is a story of the reality of war. 

Philip is giving an advance presentation at the Briton Ferry Resource Centre on 24th August. The book might even be available to purchase on that day. Otherwise you'll be able to reserve a copy or order it from the website once it is available. 

I do like a bit of numerical serendipity! My Port Talbot secondary school, Sandfields Comprehensive, (I was there between '69 and '76),  opened in 1958 and was a significant development in the provision of state education in Wales, being the first purpose built comprehensive school in the country. The photo below features The Great Hall, between the Lower and Upper Schools, where morning assembly was occasionally blighted by a uniform check by the intimidating Miss Chess as we all traipsed out. 

a Meccano-like steel monster spreading its wings across the site and the rumble and growl of diggers and trucks that ignite the dreams of all small boys. 

But over the next year, if you schedule in a monthly trip to the blue bridge that crosses Seaway Parade from the houses on Baglan Moors, you'll be able to measure its expansion and development. 

And from serendipitous numbers to serendipitous language ... While I was taking these photos at the beginning of July I noticed this concrete mixer truck on the camera's screen.

Hope! Of course, we all have hope for our children's future but I'd like to add a few more words to the picture too: commitment, enthusiasm, purpose. Because they're the words I walked away with after meeting and talking to the new head, Mike Tate, on site. 

I'm now remembering my first day at 'The Comp' in September 1969, how we hovered at the Lower School gate in our brand new red and grey uniforms, stiff leather satchels hanging from our shoulders. And imagining the 1,500 kids who'll be turning up at this school in September 2016. The uniform will be different and there won't be a leather satchel in sight! But they'll be like we were in so many ways: excited, nervous, curious, hesitant. Although different too because it will be the first day for each one of them, regardless of their age. Each one of them stepping into a new future. 

This was the first one I photographed (please forgive the amateur wonkiness!), back in May 2011 when I was pitching Seren Books with a piece about the Prom in the hope they'd commission a Real Port Talbot. 

Locals (of a certain age) will recognise it immediately: the plaque in the old sunken gardens that was unveiled by Princess Margaret on April 26th in 1956 to mark the building of the new sea defence walls.

This is what we humans do. We make plaques to commemorate success, progress, the famous and infamous, the lost and the remembered. 

Unfortunately the plaque no longer exists: destroyed, as far as I can ascertain, when the sunken gardens had their make-over in 2013. I'm not a staunch monarchist but I wish it had been saved, along with the plaque the Queen unveiled when she opened the Afan Lido, one of Wales' first purpose built leisure centres, in 1965. That too met its doom in the building's demolition in 2013. I'm sure a place could have been easily found for both of them. After all, they represented milestones in the town's history. 

Plaques became a bit of an obsession with me after that. Here's one we can still see today.

The Baglan National School, now St Baglan's Church - a sister to the main church of St Catharine's - was built on the Old Road in 1873 to replace an existing National School - the Pant y Swan School - also on the Old Road. It closed in 1951 when a new school was built at Elmwood Road and it was dedicated as a church in 1959.

And here's another plaque that commemorates part of our industrial history.

This is the site of the Argoed Brickworks in the Afan Forest Park. The brick set into the bench is marked 'Hudson Argoed' although the firm was previously known as Hudson & Howell, and before that just Howell, after Llewellyn Howell, from Margam according to the 1901 census when he was living at Brynhyfryd on the Old Baglan/Pentyla Road, who owned both the brickworks and the Argoed Colliery. 

And one final plaque I found while walking around and researching Margam Park that celebrates a birthday and a life that spanned the 20th century, through war and social upheaval, through the terrible and wonderful advances of technology. 

There are many more, of course. And if you live in the town you may have your favourites too. A plaque commemorating a chapel, a bridge, a mine. Why don't you share their stories with us?

Sources:
The Story of Baglan, A Leslie Evans
http://southwalesbricks.weebly.com/argoed.html
http://www.penmorfa.com/bricks/wales2.html

The publisher's word-count restrictions for the manuscript of Real Port Talbot imposed a limit on how much I could write but I chose to include all of the surrounding villages and write a little on each rather than just focus on the central hub of Aberafan and Port Talbot. 

In the small section for the village of Bryn I found space for the remains of one of its brickworks, listed with Cadw as rare examples of kilns associated with 19th century brickworks, the collieries and the story of the champion boxing miner Billy Beynon, and for the Beast of Bryn, the challenging annual alpine trail run that attracts runners from all across the world. 

I didn't find the space for the old school whose high stone wall is still intact along Varteg Row and whose school gate stands on a field of rubble like a sentry. 

Graham Rowland, organiser of the Beast of Bryn, remembers attending school here and on rainy days being moved around the class to avoid being soaked by the leaking roof. 

Neither did I have the space for the adjacent St Tydfil's Church, built in 1902 with £5,500 donated by Emily Talbot. The original parsonage, opposite, and the church hall, built in 1915 and now used as a church, have both survived but all that remains of St Tydfil's is the foundation stone laid by Miss Talbot in 1900. The original church was sadly demolished in the 1990s due to a waning congregation. 

Where Varteg Row meets Maesteg Road there's a rough looking rendered building on the right with the St John's Ambulance crest above the door. But this was once the Miners' Rescue Centre and Graham Rowland confirmed there is still a marble slab inside where the bodies of lost miners were laid and washed and, I imagine, prayed over too.

The hillside opposite is now a nature reserve but you can still see a colliery ventilation shaft pushing through the earth as a reminder of the risks and dangers miners faced. One of those tragic events was reported by The Cambrian Daily Leader on 6th April 1918: two young brothers from Cwmafan killed by a roof fall. 
Listen carefully now: can you hear the faint voices of lost men, the sobs of mothers and wives? Turn back on yourself: church bells and the laughter and ruckus of children playing? Sometimes it feels as if we are walking through history. 

Sources:
Bryn Residents' Action Group
And many thanks to Graham Rowland. for his company, memories and stories.

Local historian, D John Adams, first published his Glimpses of Margam Life in 1986. I'd discovered his informative Margam Abbey,The Mansel-Talbots and their Tombs (n.d.) while I was writing Real Port Talbot but I only recently came across Glimpses, a book I love for its diversity: pigs and shipwrecks, butchers and gamekeepers, ships, farms and schools. 

This is a book that does exactly what it says on the cover, each page like a pinhole camera tightly focused on the detail of a particular story. And not just the stories surrounding CRM Talbot who built Margam Castle between 1827 and 1835, or his family who lived there from around 1836 until the death of his eldest daughter, Emily Charlotte, in 1918. 

Here we have stories about the technology of the day: the 'coccle' or 'cockle' stove, 'a central heating system based on hot air' (p.9) installed in the castle. Stories about servants who worked from 5am to 10.30pm, who sold the kitchen's surplus butter, cream and cheese, and who presented hand-made wedding gifts to Bertha Talbot at her marriage in 1866. There was a tomato grown on the estate called 'Baglan Hall' and over three thousand rabbits who met their sudden, but necessary, end between 1880 and 1881. 

One of my favourite stories from the book has the 19th century exposé flavour of a 21st century tabloid newspaper. Groes village was built in the late 1830s to rehouse the inhabitants of old Margam village, a collection of houses that stood outside the gate of Margam Abbey and in the way of CRM Talbot's plans for an extensive kitchen garden. Groes was an architectural beauty but it seems that was less to do with Talbot's magnanimous intentions and possibly more to do with his architects:

The cottage and the Groes has been built to an absurdly expensive manner. The window joints and mullions, if made of wood, would have been just as good as Pyle stone. The superintendent throws the blame on Heycock and Eaton who positively deny the truth of his assertion. I wished the commonest sort of cottage that could be built. (p.42)

Let's hear it for Heycock and Eaton!

Glimpses of Margam Life is out of print but you can borrow copies at Port Talbot and Sandfields libraries or pick up your own second-hand copy from Amazon. I urge you to read it and enjoy many more glimpses into our town's rich past.