Souvenirs: the matter that matters

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. 

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. 

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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

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