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Book Spotlight: Glimpses of Margam Life 1830-1918

7/4/2015

5 Comments

 
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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. 
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Margam Castle in 2012 with the visitors' train in the foreground.
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. 
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Almshouses outside the gate of Margam Abbey, one of a few buildings that survived the demolition of old Margam village.
5 Comments
Peter Ross
8/6/2015 04:57:17 pm

I have this somewhere. :D

Reply
Lynne link
9/6/2015 01:56:30 am

Not that many copies about!

Reply
Michael Cowie link
8/12/2017 09:07:44 pm

I was born on the Talbot Estate soon after World War II. I remember it so well. I would love to have sight of this book before I die. I must be one of the last of those that remember village life in 'old' Margam. Please help :)

Reply
Lynne Rees link
14/12/2017 12:43:53 pm

Hello Michael - occasionally a copy comes up on Amazon although there doesn't seem to be one available right now. Port Talbot's libraries have copies for loan though and if you're not local to the town perhaps you'd be able to get one through an inter-library loan. Hope this is of some help.

Reply
Caitlin Daniels link
24/11/2023 05:07:24 pm

Goood reading this post

Reply



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    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.

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