It was only while researching Real Port Talbot that I began to fully appreciate the town's connections to modern and contemporary poetry: Sally Roberts Jones, Gwyn Williams and Ruth Bidgood, who grew up and went to school in Port Talbot while her father was vicar at St Mary’s in Aberafan between 1929 and 1945. I omitted to mention the poet and accomplished wood sculptor, John Davies, who was also brought up in Port Talbot and now lives in Prestatyn, North Wales. 

But it seems Port Talbot can even boast links to Wales's most famous poetic son, Dylan Thomas, whose aunty, Sarah Jones, married a Port Talbot boy, Daniel Thomas Evans in 1926. He was the son of a draper, David Charles Evans, originally from Whitchurch but who was living in Bryn in 1901 and in Taibach in 1911, having married a Margam girl, Jennet Thomas in 1898. 

And there's more. Dylan Thomas's paternal uncle, Arthur Thomas, moved to Port Talbot to work on the railways, lodging at Llewellyn Street and later living in Beverley Street until his death in 1947. 

(If anyone would like to help the writer and researcher, David Thomas, solve a little Dylan Thomas family mystery related to the people his Uncle Arthur was living with in Beverley Street, Port Talbot - Ken and Hettie Owen nee Phillips - then please click this link.)

One of Dylan Thomas's most memorable poems is his villanelle, 'Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night', written for his dying father. The line, 'Rage, rage against the dying of the light' somehow manages to encapsulate the fire of grief. 

And 'dying' is on my mind at the moment as I'm researching my own family history, my great grandmothers, from the 18th and 19th centuries who lived and worked on farms in West Wales. 

I've always been a supporter of cremations, or at least I believed I was until I started this research project. Standing in front of their weathered, mossy graves, reading their names, cut into stone, and sometimes the names of their children who died before them, feels like holding onto a rope that connects me to the past. All I have to do is pull to get closer to the women who made me.

What connects you to your past? Gravestones? Letters? Artefacts handed down through the family? Perhaps even a poem? Here's Dylan Thomas's villanelle.

The above title does have a bit of a '10 green bottles' ring to it and one by one the Lords that ruled in the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries did 'fall', though not necessarily as accidentally as those bottles. 

After their invasion of the old kingdom of Morgannwg (Glamorgan) and the defeat of its last native ruler, Iestyn ap Gwrgant, the Normans held power over most of the county with the exception of Afan Wallia, the area between the rivers Afan and Nedd, more or less our present day Aberafan and Baglan Moors. 

Iestyn's eldest son, Caradoc (1), was the first lord and the likely builder of the areas's first castle in the first half of the 12th century: a motte and bailey type of affair at the foot of Mynydd Dinas, around which rose the town of Afan. 

Despite his local contributions to death and destruction (murder and some church vandalism) he still managed to get a chapel named after himself. Caradoc's Chapel would have been above Llewellyn Street but below Pentyla and was known as Capel Evan Sion Dafydd in the 18th century. 

The chapel was probably built by Caradoc's son, the second Lord, Morgan (2), who also rebuilt his father's castle in stone if this relic still preserved in Margam Abbey is to be believed. 

The following 150 years produced the 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th Lords of Afan, the line moving from father to son, or in the case of no heirs to a brother:
3. Leisan ap Morgan
4. his brother, Morgan Gam
5. Leisan ap Morgan Gam
6. his brother, Morgan Fychan

These were years of revolt and destruction, repentance and retaliation, forgiveness and slaughter, imprisonment and release. The Lords' granted land to the monks at Margam Abbey then seized it back. Granges were destroyed, livestock butchered. Neighbouring land in Norman custody was invaded and grabbed. 

Although at the time of Morgan Fychan's death in 1288 he was referred to as Morgan, Lord of Avene, it was his son, another Leisan (7), the 7th Lord, who we generally remember (or blame) for the anglicisation of Afan. Historical records refer to him as Sir Leisan d'Avene, indicating that he was knighted, and there was no doubting his English affiliation when he named his sons, John and Thomas. But let's not be too unkind: if this is what it took to gain a measure of peace and tranquillity then who can blame him?

But tranquillity was always a short lived state in Medieval England and Wales. Leisan's allegiance switched from King Edward II to his enemies and back again in the early 14th century although his son, John d'Avene (8), the eighth Lord, was probably knighted for his military service to Edward III c.1337. John also made amends, around 1330, to the monks at Margam Abbey and relinquished his fishing rights in the River Neath, rights that his ancestors had stolen from them, despite charters to the contrary.

John d'Avene may have succumbed to the Black Death that was raging through the country at the time, ignorant of status, wealth or standing, peaking in Europe between 1348 and 1350 with an estimated 75 to 200 million deaths. The 9th Lord, his son Thomas d'Avene (9), made his first charter in 1349, also in favour of the monks at Margam. In 1350 he repeated and confirmed the first ever borough charter granted by the the 3rd Lord, Leisen d'Avene in 1304. But for all his local good works he ended up  imprisoned in Swansea Castle in 1355 after a ruckus with the powerful Earl of Warwick over land connected to his Gower estates. 

Thomas's death is unrecorded and although his son, another Leisan (10), was the last of the Lords of Afan it seems that he surrendered his Afan lands to Edward Despenser, Lord of Glamorgan in return for rents from a Warwickshire manor, and perhaps others too. He spent the rest of his life away from South Wales and the small parcel of land that his ancestors had bled and argued over for more than 200 years. 

The Norman conquest of Glamorgan was complete. 

Source: 'The Lords of Afan', A.Leslie Evans

The library  was completed in 1916, one of 660 Carnegie libraries built in Britain and Ireland between 1883 and 1929 with funds donated by the Scottish-American philanthropist, Andrew Carnegie. If it looks remarkably similar to a building on the opposite side of the road it’s because they had the same architect, John Cox, the latter being built for the old Margam Urban District Council in 1906/7 where Cox worked as Surveyor.  (from Real Port Talbot)

It looks like a solid enough building, doesn't it? But planned council cuts mean that Taibach library might not see its 100th birthday. The good thing is the building is listed so it can't, in theory, disappear in a cloud of demolition dust. The bad thing is that despite a library covenant placed on the building by Emily Talbot and the Margam Estate, the local authority have plans to close it and rent out the space unless enough local people come forward to run it as a Volunteer Library.

if you're not already involved with the campaign to save the library and can add light to its future by offering a few hours of your time then please let the Friends of Taibach library know at this link. 

I came across this at the bottom of the big steps at the western end of Aberafan Beach when I was home last year:

Okay, I can see that the '4' might irritate the traditionally romantic and chivalrous amongst us but the two little kisses more than make up for the deviation from tradition. 

I'm drawn to words cut into stone. Perhaps we all are. (God knew what he was doing when he conjured up the Ten Commandments for Moses!)

I doubt that Mark (or Tara) had eternity in mind when they cut their names into the concrete. Perhaps the people who carved these other words weren't thinking about it either: stonemasons completing a job of work for the money their customers were offering. 

But they feel personal to me when I look up or down at them. It would have taken time to make them. Perhaps there would have been the brushing away of dust and small chips. There might have been chatter, tears, a kiss. 

It's good to wonder about what we see, imagine the people who once lived, worked, played and died in the same place as we live now. We might be separated by time but we're connected by the land and our common humanity. And after all, it's people that bring history alive. 

(And if you want to do more than wonder then you can read. Check out the Bibliography page on this website: such a wealth of local history resources. Many of the books can be found in local Libraries or may be available to borrow from friendly PTHS members.)

That's right. Walk. Or ride. After all, it is January. We're expected to make some kind of effort after the excesses of the holiday season! 

But there's more than just exercise involved in this suggestion. It's about making contact with our environment which just doesn't happen in the same way when we're enclosed in glass and steel. Our eyes are fixed on the road ahead. Speed and attitude discourage us against unscheduled stops, from unexpected forays into lanes glimpsed from the corners of our eyes. And it's about absorption too: the sounds, sights and textures of a river bank, or looking up at buildings we normally only glance at from street level. 

Writing Real Port Talbot changed me. Not just through the knowledge I gratefully gained from research and talking to people. But through walking along pavements, muddy tracks, shorelines, flyovers, steep mountainsides, lanes, through old brownfield sites, churchyards and high streets. Walking connected me, physically and emotionally, to the town and surrounding villages and landscapes in a way that books and words alone could never have. 

So my resolution this year is to continue deepening that connection on my visits home to Port Talbot: walking, seeing and learning. 

And our town holds secrets that are often best appreciated on foot. Some are there in plain sight:

Others take more time and effort to uncover:

Is it just me. Or can you smell the fresh rain in those curled ferns too? Feel the rough texture of the concrete wall under your fingertips? History is more than turning the page in a book. It lives and continues to expand under our feet. 

It's the winter solstice in a couple of weeks' time, then Christmas, two events that have merged into one, for most people, since the advent of Christianity. 

What will you be doing to celebrate the solstice, or the Roman Festival of Saturnalia, or the birth of Christ? A pagan sacrifice (please restrict yourself to vegetables and inanimate objects), engaging in unbridled revelry, or attending a candlelit carol service? Or just enjoying the company of family and friends? 

In his book, The History of Taibach and District, Les Evans lists the Christmas traditions associated with South Wales: the church Plygain service on Christmas morning, Christmas football matches that survived from an older game of Y Bel Ddu, the burning of furze on the hills, the Mari Lwyd (with its enjoyable attributes of booze, rhyme and revelry!), and the Cutty Wren which apparently became extinct in Port Talbot at the end of the nineteenth century. Although even at some historical distance the practice of catching a wren, and attaching it to some holly branches, and parading it between Baglan and Aberafan is likely to make contemporary consciences wince:

As I went out to Baglan Hall,
I saw a wren upon a wall;
I up with my stick and knocked him down,
And brought him home to 'Bravon town.

One custom local to Margam that I came across while researching for Real Port Talbot was the following from the National Museum of Wales' website:

Loaf cake: Loaf cake was synonymous with Christmas celebrations in the industrial valleys of south Wales. The dough, prepared in large quantities, would be carried to the local bakehouse where the baker would be responsible for baking the cakes for a penny or two per loaf.

Neighbours were invited to taste each other's cake, and tradition has it (in the district of Margam near Port Talbot) that if a young maid was given the opportunity to taste thirteen different cakes in one season, she would marry before the following Christmas.

I didn't include it in the book because I couldn't find confirmation or verification of it anywhere else. But if you know of a young maid who tasted thirteen cakes and got lucky then please let me know! 

I don't have loaf cake for you but here's the next best thing, a slice of home-made (by me) Bara Brith (after all you're going to have enough of all that rich stuff soon), to wish you and yours a Happy Solstice/Festival/Christmas/Holiday and a good and joyful end to 2013.

I've recently come back from a 10 day stay in Port Talbot, a busy and eclectic trip that saw me walking footpaths, beaches and streets, attending a Public Inquiry, the official launch of Real Port Talbot, a book-signing (with cupcakes!) and the annual Remembrance Parade. 

It was the first time I'd walked the mile or so route from the Civic Centre to the Talbot Memorial Park alongside the bands and regiments, members of the Royal British Legion, councillors, scouts, a Welsh Assembly Member and an MP, in some places squeezing past the crowds lining Station Road, Talbot Road and Commercial Road. And hundreds of other people chose to do the same in the sharp November sunlight, the air crisp, the ground underfoot dry and safe. And then we stood still. In silence.

Remembrance has nothing to do with religion or war, being a soldier or a pacifist. A minute's silence is a minute gifted to the memory and respect of people we have known and lost, and to people who we didn't know but whose hearts and minds fought for something that made a difference to our lives no matter how long ago. 

The park is an ideal place to remember, to reflect. Walk around on your own or in company. Try and be silent for a while too. It's a commodity that's becoming increasingly rare in our lives.

Excerpt from Real Port Talbot  pp.191-193

Talbot Memorial Park

A window on the south side of the church [St Theodore's] commemorates Lieutenant Rupert Price Hallowes MC VC who was killed in Flanders in 1915, Port Talbot’s only Victoria Cross. Hallowes, who was an assistant manager at the Mansel Tinplate Works in Aberafan, is remembered again in the gateway[i] to the Talbot Memorial Park next door. The gateway was built, along with its brace of lodges, in 1925 and the park, an open space of over 12 acres donated by Emily Talbot in 1902[ii] and dedicated as a memorial to those who died in WWI in 1919[iii], was formally laid out and officially opened to the public in June 1926.

The theme of remembering is reinforced by another war memorial[iv] as you walk into the park; the  bronze work is by Louis Frederick Roslyn[v], a British sculptor noted for his WWI memorials. Roslyn was born Roselieb in London in 1878 although by 1914 he had, understandably, changed his name to something less Germanic.

There’s more remembrance in the park’s right-hand corner: a drinking fountain[vi] in honour of Dr John Hopkin Davies who came to Taibach at the request of Theodore Talbot in 1872 and practised there for 48 years. It was moved to the park in 1926 but had been erected in 1910, a decade before his death: a heartfelt tribute from the people of Taibach, paid for by public subscriptions. The mood of genuine veneration might have been somewhat marred at the original unveiling ceremony by an unscripted announcement from Sir A.P. Vivian, manager of the Taibach Copper Mill, that he would close the mill if men on strike at the time didn’t return to work the following Monday. I don’t know whether that event soured Dr Davies’ appreciation of the fountain but there’s a story in Outline of a Welsh Town[vii] which records how he drew down the blind on his coach every time he rode past. Although the fountain’s similarity to a tombstone couldn’t have helped either. 

There’s a cracking octagonal bandstand[viii] in the centre of the park that Cadw have, fortunately, listed as, ‘an increasingly scarce building type.’ It wouldn’t be that scarce if two other bandstands in Port Talbot hadn’t already disappeared in puffs of demolition dust.[ix]

The latest addition to the theme of remembrance drapes itself over the grass nearby. The Richard Burton Memorial Flower Bed was unveiled on 9th November 2012, the day before what would have been Burton’s 87th birthday, by Dr Hywel Francis, MP for Aberafan. A flower bed might not be most people’s idea of a permanent memorial, given the vagaries and moods of weather and delinquents, but it’s a relief to see a cheery, organic memorial rather than another hunk of sculpted stone and brass. Kids from local schools helped in its design and planting and the production of a leaflet for a new section of the Richard Burton Trail[x], the Childhood Trail, which circles Taibach and some of Burton’s homes and haunts.

[i] Cadw record 23255
[ii] Minutes of the Margam District Urban Council 9.2.1902/3?
[iii] Ibid 16.7.1919
[iv] Cadw record 23256
[v] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Frederick_Roslyn
[vi] Cadw record 23257
[vii] Hanson, Outline p.91
[viii] Cadw record 23258
[ix] A bandstand on Aberafan Beach was removed for the construction of the first promenade c.1900. The bandstand in Vivian Park, Sandfields Estate, was dismantled in the late 1960s.
[x] NPTCBC - http://tiny.cc/gh8dqw

I never got round to climbing Mynydd Foel while I was writing Real Port Talbot. It gets a mention in the Cwmafan section of the book of course: the mountain forms the village's northerly backdrop and was crowned with a significant industrial feature until the early 1940s. In the photo above I'm standing on the summit in front of the spot where Stac y Foel used to be. 

Cwmafan was a smoking industrial cauldron in the first half of the 19th century: rolling mills, foundries and the notorious copper works, built between 1835 and 1838, that pumped out noxious fumes from its smelting furnaces. Eventually something was done to try and alleviate the pollution. 

The manager of the copper works, William Brunton, constructed a stone culvert from the works up the side of Mynydd Foel. It was 15 foot wide, 11 foot high and a mile long. At its mouth, on the summit, he built a 30 foot buttressed stack to direct the fumes upwards.

You can still make out the circular base of the Stac and find traces of the copper industry in the green stained stones that are scattered across the summit. And I don't think anyone will mind if you pick up a few as souvenirs. If you're into stones, as I am. I also found my very own (miniature) Stac.

Cwmafan is a very different place now. No furnace or foundries, no tips, no tangled network of rail and tram lines criss-crossing the village. The mountain slopes are green. But from the summit of Mynydd Foel you can look down towards the coast and the 21st century industrial plain of Port Talbot's steelworks and docks. We move on. But we keep the past with us. 

Source
Brief Historical Surveys of Taibach and Cwmavon, William and Cyril Rees (1972)

We tend to associate scars with some kind of physical representation. From the scars left on the body after an accident or surgery to the scars on the landscape as a result of natural disaster or human intervention. But some scars are invisible. And just like a human psyche can be hurt - emotionally and psychologically - and the outside world be unaware of the pain by looking at that person's face and demeanour, the landscape and a community can also bear scars that have been hidden by nature or the passage of time. But the hurt remains in people's memories. And sometimes even a map can hint at a scar.

If you look at the OS Explorer Map for the Port Talbot area (165) and cast your eyes below the large blue 39 that marks the motorway junction at Margam you'll see the word 'Groes' stamped on a patch of green. 

And that's what you'll see there if you take a drive. Greenery. And a network of roads. But prior to 1975 the scene would have been completely different. 

Lots of people in Port Talbot remember the tragic and shameful story of the beautiful, Cotswold-like Groes village built in the 1830s, designed by the architect Edward Haycock (1790-1870). They remember the long fight with the Welsh Office to preserve it, and losing that fight, and how it was condemned to rubble in 1974, by the Inspector of the Public Inquiry and the Secretary of State for Wales, Conservative MP, Peter Thomas, in order to build the eastern extension of the M4. Condemned, even though, two years earlier, Port Talbot Council’s deputy engineer, M. Emyr Jones, had suggested an alternative route for the motorway, to the south of the village, on the sea side of the A48, which only added an extra 51 metres to the motorway’s overall length. The only part of the village to be saved was Beulah, the village's 'round' chapel (it's actually octagonal). It was dismantled and rebuilt at Margam's Tollgate Park in 1975.

So next time you pass Junction 39 on the M4, or join it there, or circle the roundabout on your journey along the A48, remember Groes invisible amongst the green. One of our town's invisible scars. 

I'll let another Port Talbot author, the poet Gwyn Williams (1904-1990) who was born in Beverley Street, have the final word on Groes.

Groes: Margam

We have the scarred valleys to thank them for,
where veins of coal and ore were scraped off eastwards;
they have drowned valleys for the thirst of their
factories; we have dark ranked conifers massed
where sheep once grazed the sweet upland grass;
we have caravan outliers of Wolverhampton
on the few flat acres where wheat once ripened;
they have torn our railroad up and only cut
motorways through our land for their conveniences
the throb and stench and staining of their industries
hands out the fivers from fingers of scorn.
And now the Vandals set about to erase
(and slavish Glamorgan seems to accept it)
this lovely village where my mother was born.

From Collected Poems 1936 to 1986
Gomer Press 1987

The original text for this post has been removed as an expanded version of it will appear in Planet, The Welsh Internationalist in Autumn 2015.

For more about wrecks strewn across Baglan Sands and the mouth of the River Nedd see A. Leslie Evans' The Story of Baglan (Port Talbot). 

For more information about the Floating Docks* at Briton Ferry see Philip Adams' A Most Industrious Town, Briton Ferry and its people 1814 - 2014.

*Brunel was appointed to construct the docks in 1853 but he died in 1859, two years before completion. The docks closed in 1959 and fell into disuse but what remains of them is now protected by CADW together with the accumulator tower that powered the lock gates and cranes, not far from the new offices of Neath Port Talbot County Borough Council at The Quays in the Baglan Energy Park.