A visit into the past: Day 6 - Ponty, Merthyr and Tredegar

For the last morning of our trip - a blustery morning with torrential showers falling as 'Storm Debi' blew across Wales - we travelled up the Rhondda valley to Pontypridd, a town that ties together the various threads of my paternal family tree.

The famous old bridge in Pontypridd

William Rees from Llansaint and Margaret Williams from Llansawel

A marriage certificate that I have just tracked down shows that William and Margaret (already a widow) were married in Merthyr Tydfil in 1843. Whether they had first met in Carmarthenshire, or after they had migrated over to the Valleys, isn't clear.

By 1851, William the 'Cabinet Maker' and his family had moved down the Rhondda valley to live in Pontypridd, and this is where my great-grandmother Sarah Jane Rees was born in 1852.  The town was still fairly small in the 1850s but was starting to grow rapidly. In the town museum, at the end of the old bridge, we found a model of the area of the town where William, Margaret and Sarah Jane and her siblings first lived. This was around Mill Street and the railway bridges at the bottom of Rhondda Road.

A model in the town museum

The same area today - through the multi-storey car park window!

The museum is in an old Baptist chapel and includes lots of fascinating displays and archives - which I'll need to revisit for some further research. Some old trade union banners were also on display from the NUM and NUR:

In the town museum

Thomas Thomas from Carmarthen  ... and Margaret Rees nee Williams

Thomas had become an apprentice cooper in Carmarthen in 1853. However, by 1861 he had also now moved to Pontypridd, and was living in the 'Tumble' area of the town, to its south, near the railway station. On the old maps, there are a couple of breweries in the area and a later census confirms that he worked in one of them.

I still have Thomas' indenture as a cooper from 1853

By 1862, Walter Rees had died. So Margaret married for the third time - this time to Thomas Thomas. In the 1871 census, Margaret and her new husband, along with children from both marriages, were still living near the town centre, somewhere near St. Catherine's Church. There was a good view of that from the car park where we had parked the car!

Saint Catherine's, Pontypridd

Thomas Thomas ... and Sarah Jane Rees

Soon after that 1871 census, Margaret from Llansawel dies. Thomas Thomas remarries ... to Sarah Jane Rees, his step-daughter and my great grandmother! The new couple move to 19, Tram Road - now the Broadway. This is also the address where my grandmother, Maria Isabella Thomas, was born in 1880: 

However, that house no longer exists. Instead, we drove up to Wood Road, higher up the hillside towards Trefforest, where their old family homes still stand. The census records show they lived on Wood Road from the 1891 census, right the way up to the 1911 census:

140 Wood Road today

'140 Wood Road, Trefforest' is also the address where the letter notifying Sarah-Jane Rees - now Mrs. Thomas - about the death of Martha Williams of Llansawel Post Office - had been sent in 1904:

A letter that helped tie together the family tree

Visiting the area meant that, for the first time, I realised that Isabella could look out across the valley to the streets where her future husband, my grandfather Thomas Powell Davies, was living - on the other side of the valley, in Glyntaff, above the Brown and Lenox chainworks:

The distinctive white houses are on Graig yr Helfa Road

Thomas Powell Davies and his adopted parents, the Davies family

At Pontypridd, the final thread of the paternal family tree, the one from Saint Donat's, is also tied together with the rest. The 1881 census records "Thomas D Powell, nursing child", born in Llantwit Major, as now living with Thomas and Barbara Davies at Graigalfa Road. This is a road in Glyntaff, close to the Brown and Lenox chainworks where Thomas Davies worked as the foreman of the Testing House for the next twenty years or so. Its site is now occupied by a large Sainsbury's store.

We found Graig-yr-Helfa road, but some of the terraced housing that used to be there has been replaced by newer homes.

In the 1891 census "Thomas Powell" is now an "adopted son" and then, in the 1901 census, "Tom Davies, son", living right above the chainworks at 16 Pentrebach Road. This house can still be found:

16 Pentrebach Road

Today's view over the town from Pentrebach Road - looking out over Sainsbury's - was a similar viewpoint as that of an old photo in the town museum taken over the canal and the chainworks:

Looking out over the town from Pentrebach Road

In 1902, "Tom Powell Davies", now a schoolmaster, and Isabella are married, in the parish church just below Graig yr Helfa Road:

Glyntaff Parish Church in the sunshine between the showers

The newly married couple then went to live back on the Trefforest side of the valley, at 'Poplar Villa' on the Llantwit Road. This is also where my father was born in 1910. It's also where an infant, who would have been my 'Uncle Illtyd' died of whooping cough:

As the house names were then being used in the records, rather than the street number, it was impossible to tell which house was his exact birthplace. However, by working back from the names of the side streets on the 1911 census record, I think I successfully narrowed it down to one of these:

Llantwit Road, Trefforest

From here the Powell Davies family move on to Newport and Griffithstown, where we had visited the day before. However, both my grandparents were buried in Glyntaff cemetery, near the bottom of Graig yr Helfa Road, in a plot originally purchased in 1910 for the burial of their infant son Illtyd.

The grave at Glyntaff cemetery

We visited the grave to pay our respects to the grave of the three Powell Davies' buried there, although I noticed the lettering on its inscription was beginning to erode compared to my previous visit a few years ago.

The Davies family

This story wouldn't be complete without saying more about the family that adopted my grandfather, Thomas Davies and Barbara, nee Morley. They had originally both been brought up in the farming country around Llantwit Fardre, to the west of where tiny Pontypridd was suddenly going to explode into a big industrial town. 

That sudden transformation could be seen as we drove down a country lane under the railway close to where Barbara Morley had been brought up on Ynys Farm, near Maes Mawr colliery. Once down the narrow lane and under the railway, we were immediately in a modern industrial estate - where the farm had once stood.

The lane leading down to where Ynys farm once stood

Thomas Davies seems to have been a fascinating character. The marriage certificate above lists him as "foreman". The census records show that this was, as stated above, at the Brown and Lenox chainworks, one of the key factories in the boom years of Pontypridd. There were displays on the chainworks in the museum - and plenty more in the archives that I need to visit.

The Brown and Lenox display at the town museum

However, he was also a well known Baptist Minister, writing dozens of articles under the pseudonym "Cyfaill John" in the Welsh language newspapers of the area. In Pontypridd, his chapel had been the Libanus on Fothergill St in Trefforest. We found this still in use today, now by a Pentecostal church:

Libanus Chapel, Trefforest

On our way back north, we also stopped to find a chapel where he later worked as a Minister, the Calfaria chapel in Heolgerrig outside Merthyr Tydfil. There was even a memorial stone in his honour on its front wall:

Calfaria Chapel, Heolgerrig, Merthyr Tydfil

Finally, to Tredegar

As we still had a long journey home on this last day of our trip, we didn't stay longer in Merthyr Tydfil to find the streets where William Rees and Margaret Williams had first lived before moving to Pontypridd. Instead, we drove on to the final town in our itinerary, Tredegar. Like many of the towns at the top of the valleys, it was clear that Tredegar had seen better days - although Tredegar has also seen more than its fair share of not-so-good years too. It was nice to see therefore that the distinctive town clock had recently been nicely restored:

Tredegar Town Clock

... as photographed by my father

The reason for our visit is that Tredegar was where my father had worked from the late 1930s and right through World War Two at the "Hostel of the Good Shepherd". Its old charity commission record explains it had been set up for "the relief of the unemployed poor residing in the neighbourhood of Tredegar", part of early social service provision in South Wales. 

My Dad's picture of the front of the Hostel (a project for the unemployed had been to build a boat)

"The unbilletables" - evacuees taken in by the Hostel in WW2

I even have a reference from Nye Bevan himself praising the work that my father did there:

As its most famous son, pictures of Nye Bevan were much in evidence in the town.

The actual site of the Hostel of the Good Shepherd was in nearby Shop Row. We found what I believe, comparing with old pictures, is that site. However, what's left of it was only kept up by scaffolding:

What I think must be the ruins of the Hostel of the Good Shepherd

An internet search shows that the site is a listed building as "one of the few remaining examples of the truck shops that were operated by industrial concerns in the late 18th / early 19th century". However, it is in such a dangerous condition that the road in front of its crumbling walls has had to be closed for safety reasons. It appears that the Welsh Government are looking at an application from the local council for the building's demolition - so I may have been lucky even to find the remains that are still there now. 

Shop Row closed for safety reasons

For one final search into the family past, we drove up to the hillside above Tredegar towards the Cefn Golau cemetery. My Dad's old photo album contains pictures of where he used to organise cricket matches for the boys somewhere in the area. It wasn't immediately obvious exactly where the cricket must have been played and, as it was now literally blowing a gale, we didn't stay to try and work it out.

The signboard for the Cefn Golau cholera cemetery

From my Dad's old photo album

From Tredegar, it was a blustery ride home but at the end of a 'birthday trip' where so many connections with my family history had been successfully made.