In his out of print and difficult to obtain book, The Story of Baglan, Les Evans quotes from Edward Lhwyd's Parochialia (c.1697) that describes a grave in Baglan marked by two huge stones over a distance of 30 feet in length... he must be rather a monster than a man. In other records he finds references to The Grave of Dilic the Giant and later, in the 18th and 19th centuries, field names that carry the same echo: Cae Bedd Dilic, Cae Pentilic.

But it is highly probable that the stones were the remains of prehistoric monuments, similar in nature to Stonehenge and Avebury Circle, rather than proof of a giant's existence. 

But what about the Baglan giantesses? In The Story of Taibach Evans, again, refers to Lhwyd's collection of MSS and the story of three sister giantesses who owned three castles, two in Baglan parish and the other in Margam parish. From east to west, Pen Castell in Margam Park, a Castell near Cwm Clais and Castell y Wiriones (Witch's Castle) on a westerly spur of Mynydd y Gaer. I guess giantesses need more space than most people and one parish just wasn't big enough for them all! 

Dilic's supposed grave stones were located in lower Baglan, near the seaside, not far from the Old Road, an area that was covered by the high tide in centuries past. Today, some of the biggest stones in Baglan can be found in the park, opposite the library, the site of old Baglan Hall, built c.1600 and demolished in 1958.

Not the graves of mythical giants but the Gorsedd stones from the 1931 ceremony that took place in Taibach at the foot of Craig y Constant, the year before the National Eisteddfod was held in the Talbot Memorial Park there. 

Sources
The Story of Baglan (Port Talbot), A. Leslie Evans, privately published 1970
The Story of Taibach & District, A. Leslie Evans, first published privately 1963, reprinted 1982 by Alun Books, Port Talbot

Ever since I handed in the MSS for Real Port Talbot to my publisher in March (Seren Books will publish it in November) I've been hoping that nothing significant would happen in the town, that nothing (else) would be demolished, that no local person would shoot to fame, that the streets and buildings would remain more or less the same so no part of the book would end up out of date or redundant. No such luck!

But the changes and developments don't affect the book too adversely. The new super-school planned for Baglan Bay will still be built... but on the Western Avenue playing fields.

Pre-Skool, the fire-cracker little dancers from TDM stage school who practice at the Mozart Drive Community Centre on Sandfields Estate, are in the final of Britain's Got Talent on 8th June. Dance, kids, dance! 

And there seems to be hope for the old Port Talbot Arts Centre in Taibach, the former vicarage to St Theodore's Church, that was built around 1900/01 and sold with its surrounding acre of land to the local authority in 1959. It operated as an arts centre between 1975 and 2004.  As late as March this year the plot of land was included on the council's potential housing allocation list. There were negotiations taking place for its sale to a developer, a sale which would more than likely have led to the (unlisted) building's demolition. But last month saw the submission of a new planning application to convert it into a veterinary premises without any alteration to the classic late Victorian architecture. Its preservation is wonderful news for a town that has lost so much of its architectural heritage. 

But there is one scrap of information that I really wish I had discovered in time even though it wouldn't have amounted to more than a sentence or two in the South section of the book.

The above cartoon and commentary are taken from Faces of Humph, a book of caricatures and memories by Humphrey Lyttleton, who worked at the Port Talbot steelworks  in 1940, after he left Eton and before he was called up to serve in the Grenadier Guards.  Lyttelton (1921 - 2008), jazz musician and the inimitable presenter of BBC Radio's Comedy, 'I'm sorry I haven't a clue', was a prolific diarist and there are a half dozen or so Port Talbot entries from a 1940 diary in this book. 

There's no clue in this book, or in his bio on Wikipedia, as to how or why he ended up in Port Talbot but maybe one of the several autobiographical volumes he published will reveal  the answer.

That's what so great about history. There's always something else to discover, another story to expand the picture you already thought you knew. 

References:
http://www.tdmstageschool.co.uk/
Evening Post 30.5.2013
Humphrey Lyttleton on Wikipedia

Iron, copper, coal and steel. These are the industries that shaped Port Talbot. Steel remains but traces of the others are still held by the land. A remembrance of times past. 

Cwmgwineu Colliery in Cwm Dyffryn, above Goytre, opened at the end of the 19th century. Two seams of coal, Rock Fach and Rock Fawr, were mined over the years and the economic path of the mine is captured in the number of men who worked there: seven in 1899, four in 1901. In 1923 there were 120 men working underground and 89 men on the surface. There were 500 working there in 1926. It closed in 1927.

You can still see the ruins today: two capped mine shafts, the rubble of engineering bricks, and some broken walls just above the footpath that leads to Cwmwernderi Reservoir, opened in 1902 to supply water to Port Talbot. You can't miss it: a brick wall on the left invites you to scamper up the slope and poke around. 

The only creatures digging here today are much smaller but also accustomed to the hard seeping dampness that still broods in our mountains.  

Source: The Collieries of the Afan Valley and the Port Talbot Areas, Ray Lawrence BSc., privately published 2008. 

There's a Rees Street in Aberafan, connected to me only in my dreams! It's probably named after the owner of the land the street was built upon: John David Rees. Blodwen Street, nearby, is likely to have been named after his daughter. 

Land and landmarks named for owners, benefactors and people who lived there are pretty common. The name of Port Talbot itself is a constant reminder of the Talbot family of Margam Castle.

You can see the reverse of that idea, people named for the place where they live, in Margam Abbey Church graveyard. On one small stone pressed into the grass: Thomas Margam, died 1838, aged 27 years. Another headstone, to the left of the entrance gates, commemorates the brief life of Mary-Ann, the daughter of Moses and Elizabeth Margam.  

You come across them at the edges of footpaths, ivy wrapped, tumbled-down, remnants of their former selves, but still they whisper 'home'. And you wonder about the lives begun, shared and ended between the walls that used to stand there, beneath the roofs that kept people safe and warm. 

The ruins above belong to Llan Ton y Groes on Mynydd Brombil, a stone cottage that was occupied until around the late 1940s. To the left, in better condition than the cottage's scrabble of stones, is the sheep dip built by the people who lived and worked here. There couldn't have been a better spot than this, a place of real life stories and events, to launch the first volume of Allen Blethyn's Port Talbot Historical Notes in February 2013.  

You can buy your copy of PTHN at the former Gateway bookshop in Forge Road, soon to be Book Bound, and read Allen's research into a string of cottages and houses that once stretched the length of Cwm Brombil, the homes of farmers, labourers and miners. There was once a mine here, named for the valley, opened c.1780 by the English Copper Company to supply their works at Taibach. It closed in 1880 but you can still see the entrances to the two levels if you know where to look. And Allen does. 

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. 

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. 

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

This is a gravestone in Holy Cross churchyard in Tan y Groes Street. It was the phrase 'Lost at Sea' that made me stop and take the photograph, the power of those words to conjure stories of shipwrecks and bravery, of storms and of a family waiting at home for news. I will try and find the story that belongs to Capt. John Clark.

Holy Cross was built in 1827. CRM Talbot of the Margam Estate donated the land at Tonygroes Farm to build an Anglican chapel of ease that would be more accessible for the people of Taibach. The mother church, the Abbey Church of St Mary's at Margam, was over two miles away. 

It was built on a field called Pedair erw (Four acre) and the services were originally held in Welsh and later in English. 

After the completion of St. Theodore's (1897), on Talbot Road, the new Parish of St Theodore's was created and Holy Cross became its subsidiary and was mainly used as a Sunday school. It underwent renovation at the beginning of the 20th century and again in 1915. Electricity was installed in 1949.

There were services at Holy Cross until 2008 when the condition of the building was judged too dangerous for worship and too expensive to repair. It closed formally on 31st December that year and was declared redundant by the Archbishop of Wales in 2009 but it hasn't yet been sold.

A lot of the graves have yellow stickers on them, warning you that they're likely to topple. So much of the graveyard is overgrown and in disrepair; the names engraved into stone are ivy wrapped and worn. I met a man there on one of my visits, laying flowers on his wife's family's grave in the far left-hand corner, where the land slopes down towards the supporting wall of the motorway. His presence felt as if it was honouring all the other people buried there too, among them some of the victims from the Morfa Colliery disaster in 1890 that killed 87 men. As if only by walking through he was saying, 'You are not forgotten.'

Sources
Evans, A. Leslie, The History of Taibach & District (privately published 1963) 
Roberts, Mike, 'Holy Cross Church', St Theodore's Website

This isn't what most people first think of when they think of Port Talbot. Over centuries our town has become synonymous with industry and I wouldn't be surprised if  the majority of people who by-pass us on the M4 don't even glance at our mountains and wonder, if only for a moment, what other faces the town has.

I've been researching and writing Real Port Talbot (due from Seren Books in November 2013) for over a year now and despite being born and brought up here, on Sandfields Estate, the town has continued to surprise me with each walk I take, each new person I speak to, each insightful book I read written and compiled by local historians and by ordinary people with an extraordinary passion for their home.

Some of the surprises are of an historical nature, some are aesthetic: a rush of deer across my path on Mynydd Margam lifted my heart. New developments and decisions made in the name of progress have made me both happy and  resentful. People, alive and lost to us, have made me smile, have astonished me and have made me feel humble.

Real Port Talbot can't contain everything about our town. So I'm delighted that some of the pieces I reluctantly have to sacrifice, for the sake of the book's established parameters, will find a home in this blog.

I'll be back in January with the first post of 2013 but in the meantime here's another face of the town that surprised me, because I'd never really thought about it before:

Do we have a rugby team factory hidden underground somewhere? An extension of Max Boyce's 'The Outside Half Factory'?! Aberavon, Taibach, The Quinns, The Green Stars, The Saints. And then there's Baglan, Bryn, Cwmafan, Pontrhydyfen... and I bet I've missed somebody out too.

Hell, we're just astonishing! Oggy, oggy, oggy...