PORT TALBOT HISTORICAL SOCIETY
  • Home
  • About us
  • Timeline
  • Blogging Port Talbot
  • Documents
  • Bibliography
  • Gallery
  • 3D models of buildings past
  • Videos
  • People of the town
  • Membership application
  • Links
  • Committee Members and Officers
  • Port Talbot Roll of Honour
  • Members login
  • Contact us

Souvenirs: the matter that matters

9/2/2013

6 Comments

 
Local photographer, Sean Pursey, posted on Port Talbot Old and New's Facebook page this week, asking if anyone had souvenirs from buildings and places in Port Talbot that have been consigned to the history books. Yes, and some! Glass from The Vivian Park Hotel, street signs, a brass curtain rod from the Grand Cinema, a bar stool from The Viv, a piece of rail from Port Talbot Steelworks, the letter S from one of the last films advertised at Plaza, a fragment of stonework. I have sheep bones from Mynydd Margam. Not that Mynydd Margam has disappeared but that sheep has. I wanted the skull but it hadn't yet been picked clean and I was a bit squeamish about carrying it home in my rucksack. I wish I had now. And stones. I'm forever dropping stones into my pocket when I'm out walking. 
Picture
Bones and Stones
Why do we collect things? Treasure these  physical traces of our past or keep a record of where we have been? They tie us to a place or to an event, or to someone who was important to us. Or to a part of our own life that we remember fondly. They're like talismans: we touch them and we remember where we were, who we were with, what we were feeling. A song. A scent. A voice. Or even perhaps a place or event that existed beyond our experience, something that belongs to a community's collective memory. 

Picture
Marker stone for Capel Trisant
There's a stone on Mynydd Margam that a local farmer has  carved with the name: Capel Trisant - Three Saints Chapel. This is the site of a chapel used by the monks living and working at Hafod Heulog Grange, one of the monastic farms attached to Margam Abbey. There's only this memorial and a clatter of stones on the slope to mark its existence and the identity of the saints has been lost to the the mists of time. But as Saint Anthony is the saint of lost things I'm going to nominate him as one of the trio. Any suggestions for the remaining two? They don't have to be saints in the traditional religious sense. They can be creatures or mythical gods. A presence that will protect the mountain, protect our town.

For more information on the granges attached to Margam Abbey see Margam Abbey, A. Leslie Evans, 1958 & 1996

6 Comments

    Lynne Rees

    Picture
    Lynne Rees was born and grew up in Port Talbot and blogs as 'the hungry writer' at www.lynnerees.com. Her book, Real Port Talbot, an upbeat and offbeat account of the town and surrounding area, from Bryn to Sandfields, from Margam to Baglan Bay, and everything in between, is published by Seren Books.

    Archives

    April 2016
    February 2016
    December 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012

    RSS Feed