18 Dec 2022

Fforest Ganol

by | posted in: Archaeology, Heritage (General) | 0

Back to Oliver Rackham’s Ancient Woods of South-east Wales. This rather undistinguished hedge-bank up in the woods on the other side of the little valley from Castell Coch

turns out to be part of the forest boundary bank of Fforest Ganol. This is at about OS Grid Ref: ST 14187 83090. Th field boundary turns south here, but the forest boundary bank continues westward under the trees.

The bank is clearer and more substantial to the east

It virtually disappears once you reach the cleared field

but with the eye of faith you can still see it.

Further down towards the stream, these are the hornbeam stools that Rackham spotted

Hornbeams are unusual west of the Chilterns – Rackham says they were briefly popular as planters’ trees in the C19 but that the size of these stools suggests they are older.

 

 

9 Dec 2022

Seth and Ethan

by | posted in: Family | 0

When Seth first saw Ethan, a morning just before last Christmas, he put his hands on his hips and said ‘Well, I never!’

Ethan adores Seth, perhaps too much – whatever Seth is playing with Ethan wants to play too, and Seth does get very frustrated.

Seth is now in school – with the uniform and everything.

 

He goes to the Meithrin (Welsh nursery) a couple of streets away in the morning, then they walk in a crocodile to the meithrin at the local Welsh school for the afternoon session. The school is brilliant – they do really imaginative activities with the children and at first sight it looks as though they are ‘just’ playing but there is clearly a structured learning programme behind it.

 

 

Like most small boys, Seth is fascinated by trains, diggers, anything BIG that makes a Big Noise. He didn’t mind at all that the playground at the end of their lane was closed – he was quite happy watching the diggers rebuilding it.

He has been in heaven this summer as they are building a new bridge over the railway line at the bottom of our village. Dumper trucks, steamrollers … We took him on the train to Cardiff Bay for his birthday.

We thought we would have a nice afternoon in the Bay, but once we had lunch all he wanted to do was to get back on the train and go up to Cardiff Queen Street station to watch the trains coming in and out! So that’s what we did.

Meanwhile, Rachel is back at work and I look after Ethan three days a week. He relishes having uninterrupted access to the Duplo

here he is actually IN the Duplo box

but of course the toys are just there to try to distract him from what he really wants to do – using Mamgu’s desk as a climbing frame

exploring the sock drawer

and the kitchen cupboard

climbing the stairs

and – the real prize –

the washing machine!

Here’s the family earlier in the year

And here are the 2 lads deep in conversation over lunch.

what are they planning?

4 Dec 2022

Maesaraul and Coedcae

by | posted in: Archaeology, Heritage (General) | 0

Back to Coed Rhiw’r Ceiliog to look for those ruins in the middle of the wood. On the tithe plan they are described as cottages and gardens, belonging to William Booker, Thomas and Elizabeth Matthews and William Gedrick and tenanted by Richard Blackmore and Co. (presumably Richard Blakemore, owner of the Melingruffydd tinplate company?). The first edition 6” OS map at https://maps.nls.uk/view/102342583 , surveyed 1872-5, does not give them a name but plans them out in some detail, with their gardens and a cleared patch to the south. The second edition OS 6” at https://places.library.wales/browse/51.54/-3.27/15?page=1&alt=&alt=&leaflet-base-layers_66=on calls them Maesaraul.

Both are described as cottages but the one to the east is more substantial

with what looks lilke an enclosed yard

 

and some hefty beech trees around it.

The one to the west is smaller.

They might at one time have been farmhouse and labourer’s cottage, but by 1840 I am guessing that they would have been occupied by coal miners or iron workers, employees or subtenants of the Blakemores. As well as the early bell pits, there is plenty of evidence for later coal mining in the wood – including at least one pit big enough to need fencing off.

Time to look at the census.

The biggest mine was of course the Lan mine, down at the bottom of the hill with a good interpretation board. This was the place of the great Lan colliery disaster in 1875. The children of Gwaelod school had added their contributions to a memorial to those who lost their lives.

The tithe map is if anything confusing rather than helpful. The cottages are listed but are surrounded by what are described as fields (one arable, one meadow, a couple of pasture and one of 52 acres described as being ‘wood & pasture) part of a farm called Coedcae, belonging to the same group of owners as the cottages. Coedcae seems to cover the full extent of what is now Coed Rhiw’r Ceiliog, but the only patch of land actually called Coed Rhiw’r Ceiliog (or actually Coed rhiw Cylog) is the wooded area west of Bethlehem Chapel, part of the Dynevor estate. On the first edition OS 6” the whole wooded area seems to be what is called Coed y Rhiw-Ceiliog. The woods on the tithe plan are patchy. On the first 6” OS they are mixed conifer and broadleaf, on the second edition OS 6” they are all broadleaf. On the 1964 revision they are still broadleaf and the name for the cottages has vanished. Later 1” and 1:25,000 maps also show it as broadleaf. This is misleading, as the conifers are old and decaying – possibly planted in the great push for self-sufficiency in wood after WWII?

There is plenty else of interest in and around the wood. Once you start looking for house sites, you see them everywhere – is this, for example

at about ST 11509 83359 some sort of structure, or just the upcast from a pit?

The Lan history group have been working on the housing north of the road – several cottages, and a pub, the Colliers’ Arms. There are the remains of houses below the road as well, along the track that leads to the woods. This one, at ST 11407 83558,

is quite substantial, with a separate little annex to the north

with its own chimney, and accessible only from outside. A wash house, maybe? The other, at ST 11415 83588

is completely inaccessible but seems from the OS map to have been roughly the same size. Neither is on the tithe map so they can’t have been farm houses.

Trying to get at the second house from below, I walked past this

 

 

just below the house, at ST 11421 83600 – another of the many adits.

This is outside the boundary of the ancient woodland, but ironically in the patch of wood that is called Coed rhiw Cylog on the tithe plan. Luckily, that is part of the Dynevor estate, whose estate papers presumably survive … somewhere …

27 Nov 2022

Coed Rhiw’r Ceiliog

by | posted in: Archaeology, Heritage (General) | 6

More discoveries in Oliver Rackham’s Ancient Woods of South-east Wales. Coed Rhiw’r Ceiliog is on the southern slope of the Garth mountain, just north of Cardiff. Looking from the Pentyrch road,

it is now a rather decayed conifer plantation, though with a few large beech trees

peeking over the edge. Rackham has however identified it as an ancient woodland, complete with boundary bank. There are more large beech trees

down the slope from the northern entrance. (There is a splendid detailed map in the book.) And yes, the bank is there – and along the northern edge it looks like a bank and ditch.

Yes, the ditch has turned into a stream in the recent rain. And yes, I did fall into the stream. But by this stage I was so excited by Rackham’s findings that I plodded on regardless, dripping mud and grateful that my phone is waterproof.

The bank going westward is quite clear, once you know what you are looking at

and here is the beech tree which Rackham noted at the north-west corner.

He describes it as a stub – a tree which has been cut off and allowed to regrow. A stub has been cut rather higher than a coppice but not as high as a pollard, and it’s typical of woodland boundary banks.

From here the bank turns south,

and what may once have been a ditch is now quite definitely a stream. There are a number of bell pits in the wood, early forms of coal mining. The Garth is near the southern edge of the South Wales coal field and the coal seams are fairly near the surface. Bell pits were one of the earliest forms of mining: you dug down to the coal then widened out the hole into a bell shape, got out as much coal as you could and (ideally) got out before the sides collapsed. They were an inefficient method of mining, and by the eighteenth century they had largely been replaced by drift mines and adits. The bell pits in Coed Rhiw’r Ceiliog could be medieval or early modern. This one

cuts into the boundary bank at OS ref ST 11125 83227 so is clearly later than the bank. Another a little further down

at about ST 11226 83077 would also have encroached on the bank.

There is a lot more to find out – back to the wonderful Places of Wales web site. The 1900 OS map marks buildings in the middle of the forest and gives the area the name Maesaraul, though the 1840 tithe plan says it’s part of a farm called coedcae (a place name about which Rackham has quite a bit to say). There was also a cottage down at the south-east corner, called Maes-gwyn on the OS map but on the tithe plan described as part of Coedcae.

Rackham was only concerned with the ancient woodland, though he does mention later features like mining and tramways when they affect things like woodland banks.

The bank turns north and runs up to the road at ST 11321 83507.

Early maps show settlement at this north-east corner of the wood, now ruined or lost. This

must have been a cottage, but it can now only be identified  by the shrubs which would once have been the garden hedge, lonicera nitida and privet.

There were once houses all along the road, a pub (the Collier’s Arms), and a bigger house (or possibly a farm) below the road – but it’s difficult to tie these up with the tithe plan. More work needed.

23 Nov 2022

Forest boundaries

by | posted in: Archaeology, Heritage (General) | 0

Another discovery in the late great Oliver Rackham’s Ancient Woods of South-east Wales (edited from his manuscript by Paula Keen with David Morfitt, George Peterken and Simon Leatherdale). It seems that this

which I thought (if I thought about it at all) was just a hedge bank, is actually the boundary bank of Fforest Fawr, one of the medieval forests just north of Cardiff, above Tongwynlais. Here it is as the boundary between the woods and the golf course. You can follow it along – here the trees have spread over it

and here

it is visible again under the trees. Here

it turns to the north and is visible under an outgrown hedge. It’s more worn down but still there when you know what it is, bordering the farmland to the north

and running up to the viewing point

 

ItI must have stood here literally hundreds of times without realising what it was

it’s a bit eroded at the viewing point but still …

and it continues westward

 

and eventually turns north and runs down to Ty Rhiw.

Who knew? Well, Oliver Rackham, obviously – but I used to call myself a landscape historian and I had no idea.

There’s lots more to discover from the book as well. Given a few dry days …

18 Nov 2022

John Gwin’s Commonplace Book

by | posted in: Heritage (General) | 0

John Gwin lived at Llangwm near Usk in the middle years of the seventeenth century. One of the county’s lesser gentry, he worked for the high-profile Catholic Marquess of Worcester: but he had friends and relatives among the county’s leading Puritans. He was insatiably curious, a keen fruit farmer, interested in scientific and medical developments, a devoted family man, an energetic churchwarden. All this is reflected in his commonplace book, the notebook in which he jotted down things he wanted to remember.

The book has now been edited by three local academics and is being published by the South Wales Record Society. An introduction describes Gwin’s life and background and provides more information on some of his interests. The commonplace book is a treasure trove of medical remedies, snippets of local and family history, notes on the management of the Worcester estates, poetry by the leading Puritan William Wroth, advice on the choice of marriage partners, records of his experiments in grafting fruit trees, tips on good husbandry, and details on the ownership of church pews and the repair of the churchyard wall. It offers us an unparalleled insight into the cultural and intellectual world of south-east Wales in a period of civil war and continuing religious and political upheaval.

The South Wales Record Society will be launching its edition of the book in the Llangwm Village Hall from 2.30 on Saturday 10 December. There will be introductory talks by two of the editors and a chance to buy copies of the book at a special reduced price of £12 for the paperback (cash or cheques only). Members of the Society can also pick their own copies up. The Village Hall is on the B4235 Usk-Chepstow road and there is a car park a little further along the road to Chepstow, at postcode NP15 1HQ.

Hardback copies are all now spoken for but the book is available in paperback, xii + 212 pages, illustrated. Copies can also be ordered through the Society’s web site at http://www.southwalesrecordsociety.co.uk/ or by post: £18 for the paperback,  for addresses in the UK.

Click here gwin_flyer_revised  to download a flyer with order form

28 Aug 2022

Back to the deserted farms …

by | posted in: Heritage (General) | 2

I hadn’t been up the Lesser Garth for some time. Nelly the spaniel and I seemed to spend more time on the Cefn Onn side of the valley. Nelly has now gone to the happy hunting grounds and I’m getting back to walking on my own – and finding things have changed. Trees have fallen across paths, and three summers of staycationing have worn new routes. So it was that I found myself quite by accident here

 

at grid ref. ST 11377 82418, just off the access road to the Garth quarry. Back to the National Library’s wonderful Places of Wales web site and I find it was once a farm called Ton-mawr. On the 1840 tithe plan it was a substantial farm of over 51 acres, owned by Lord Dynevor and tenanted by a Mary Thomas. It was a mixed farm, mainly pasture but with several arable fields and some meadow. Most of the land was to the west of the farmhouse but there were a few fields between the farmhouse and Garth Wood. The fields were still there on the 2nd edition OS map (c 1900) but the wood has now spread to envelop the farm house. Presumably the land is now part of Cefn Colstyn farm. Most of the wood has of course been quarried away. I still need to find the two wells marked on the modern OS map, Ffynnon Gruffydd and Ffynnon Wen.

There are more deserted farmsteads on the other side of the Pentyrch road, in Coed Rhiw’r Ceiliog and the slopes of Garth Hill. Something for the winter, maybe, when the brambles and nettles have died down?

2 Aug 2022

Rees John of Cefn Llwyd

by | posted in: Family | 0

Some more of our family history has turned up in the papers of my late cousin David Morris. My mother’s reminiscences (downloadable at https://www.heritagetortoise.co.uk/2017/11/betty-john-cefn-llwyd/ ) described how her family moved from Michaelston-le-Pit to Cefn Llwyd in Michaelston-y-Fedw in 1908, and I noted that I had found her father’s tenancy agreement for the farm in the Kemeys-Tynte estate papers. Well, Rhys John’s copy of the agreement has now surfaced in David’s papers, so here it is.

As a tenant by year, my grandfather had to promise in detail how he would manage the land. One thing that wasn’t specified but that my mother remembered was that he was not allowed to use barbed wire in his fences. After the war, the farm came into the hands of the Morgans of Tredegar Park. They retained the right to humt over my grandfather’s fields and they did not want their horses being injured if they jumped the fences.

24 Jul 2022

The Story of the Fox Inn, Juniper

by | posted in: Family | 0

(photo (c) Snidge, from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/75/Juniper_Hill_-_geograph.org.uk_-_344120.jpg)

Here are two inventories of the contents of a little public house on the Oxfordshire-Northamptonshire border. The first, dated 1882, is a probate inventory, a very detailed valuation of the contents of the pub and dwelling, made after the death of Thomas Harris, who first established the pub. (This is a scan from a photocopy so not perfect.)

The pub was then taken on by a Mr. K. Wood, and this is a less detailed inventory of the contents which he sold in 1907 to E. Hewlett.

These documents are interesting in themselves as an insight into life in a small farming village. Most of the trade would have been beer for farm workers. However, the 1882 inventory includes, in the tap room, champagne glasses, a tea service and plates for meals. Mr. Harris was also running a shop, but the shop stock seems to have been run down, possibly during his last illness or after his death. There was no shop by 1907; instead, the pub now boasted a parlour as well as the tap room. The list of utensils included nip glasses and port glasses, presumably for the parlour customers, as well as ginger beer glasses – were these for children, or for ladies on a hot day?

But the other interesting thing about these documents is that the Fox Inn has a place in one of the best-loved accounts of village life in late Victorian and Edwardian England. Juniper Hill is the real-life original of Lark Rise, of the ‘Lark Rise to Candleford’ series of autobiographical novels by Flora Thompson. In those novels, the Fox is renamed the Waggon and Horses, and has a whole chapter in the book. ‘There the adult male population gathered every evening, to sip its half-pints, drop by drop, to make them last, and to discuss local events, wrangle over politics or farming methods, or to sing a few songs “to oblige” ‘. Flora Thompson also mentions the shop, selling candles, treacle and cheese.

These documents were among the papers of my oldest cousin David, who died last winter. He was much older than me, really of the same generation as my mother. David’s mother was born in 1900, the oldest of the family. My mother was the youngest, born in 1915, and David was born in 1926. Times were hard then, and David and his mother spent a lot of their time at my grandparents’ farm, where there was at least enough food to eat.

After military service, David took a degree in Agriculture. He thought for a while of moving overseas, and his papers included a letter offering him a post as a tea planting assistant with the Darjeeling Company.

David Morris Tea

In spite of the tempting offer they made him – a bungalow with three servants and the possibility of promoton to the dizzy heights of Assistant Manager with six servants – he was eventually persuaded to stay in England. He became a Rural Science teacher. He married Jean, grand-daughter of the Mr. Hewlett who took over the Fox in 1907. It had been run by her family ever since, and she and David ran it together while he taught and they brought up their five children. Eventually, though, they had to retire. No-one was prepared to take the pub over as a going concern and it is now a private house.

 

22 Jul 2022

St Michael’s, Lower Machen

by | posted in: Church Tourism | 0

INVITATION

The church of St Michael and All Angels, Lower Machen, is the old parish church for the whole of the Machen area. Among its treasures are the monuments and funeral hatchments of several generations of the great Morgan family of Tredegar Park. This summer, the Church is open to visitors every Sunday until the 24th of September from 2.00 until 5.00. The author of the church guide book will be there on the 31st of July & 28th of August and will happily do personalised guided tours. If you prefer, bring a smartphone to access our digital experience. The church also has children’s packs so they can find interesting things in the church.

For more information visit

https://lowermachen.church/heritage/

 

REQUEST FOR HELP

The Parish Trust https://theparishtrust.org.uk/  needs your help.

In these difficult times, the services of the Parish Trust are in demand more than ever as people wrestle with ever-increasing prices. Charities too are facing increasing costs and at the same time, their income from public funds and private donations is diminishing. This is certainly our recent experience at the Parish Trust and in time will affect our ability to support the vulnerable in our society.

During the lockdown, Wayne Barnett wrote two booklets about the church, The ‘Remarkable’ Morgan Chapel at Lower Machen Church and The Morgan Family Hatchments at Lower Machen Church (Parish of Machen, 2021). Pbk, 43 and and 27 pp., fully illustrated in colour. Available from the parish, https://lowermachen.church/books/, in return for donations to the Parish Trust CARE project, which provides social support and parcels of essential goods. The parish suggests a minimum of £5 for the Hatchments book and £6 for the Morgan Chapel or £10 for the set, plus £3 for p&p.

If you would like copies or already have copies and would like to make a donation please visit

https://lowermachen.church/books/

If you are able please use the HMRC Gift Aid scheme to make your donation worth 25% more to the charity.

To whet your appetite for a visit, here’s a sample of the monuments and a hatchment: