Y Filltir Sgwâr/The Square Mile: Serendipity

In a year long series Tom Maloney, from Abersychan, shows how you can love a place so well it becomes a part of you.

Serendipity

Chance plays so much a part of our lives. A chance conversation, a chance meeting or just seeing something by chance can be such happy moments and there is so much serendipity in this little feature.

I suppose it starts around forty years ago when I was an art student. I was just beginning to get interested in black and white photography and the joy of seeing a new image appear in a developing tray was just magical.

On a break at home from college one day my Dad dropped me off at Abersychan, because he had thought I would find it interesting. I think he knew me better than I knew myself back then!

A chance moment, you might say, and I only took a few photographs.

Little did I know then that I would come to spend so much of life living in the area and to become so engaged by the industrial legacy of the landscape and the stories that lie within it.

Looking back at my old negatives I discovered that one of the images that I took on that day was of the derelict ruins of York Place at The British.

This little terraced row was located very close to Cwmbyrgwm Stack, which was featured last week.

In truth, looking at the image now, I so wish that I had done a better job, but as I think about it today, it was still a lucky moment!

At the time, I did not realise this was just one of a number of terraced rows that formed part of a forgotten village.

The cottages had some very grand names like King’s Parade and Queen’s Parade, but my two favourites are Big Edgehill and Little Edgehill, they seem just perfect to me.

Elisabeth Row is the only remaining terrace that is inhabited today. I began to wonder about the people who had once lived in these cottages on the hillside.

Let’s meet Mike Smith, who is my next-door neighbour and the little boy featured in this set of  charming photos from his family album.

The next little bit of serendipity is a chance conversation with Mike about The British and a whole new story opens.

Mike was brought up at The British and spent his younger years living at John’s Row, leaving when he was about eight years of age. All of the photographs in this little selection were taken at John’s Row in the late 1950s and early 60s.

Mike agreed to show me around the hillside where the cottages were once located and we spent several very pleasant hours walking and together there just this week.

It’s difficult to believe looking at the site today there was ever a row of houses here, but Mike is stood where he used to live in No. 1 John’s Row.

The houses were two up and two down and were known as Collier’s Cottages.

At the time when Mike lived here his father was a miner at Blaenserchan Colliery.

In all there were seven cottages. Each of the houses had water and electricity, but there was no bathroom! Mikes’ recollection is such important social history.

“I remember we used to have long, narrow tin bath and the toilet was at the bottom of the garden. I can’t remember if we shared the toilet with next door. It was a proper Ty Bach with brick walls, a corrugated iron roof and you sat on a plank of wood. Throughout the winter there was an oil lamp and the paper we used was ‘The News of The World’ cut into squares hanging on a nail, on the wall. Although we had running water at No. 1 I think that some of the other rows may not have had a water supply in their houses because I remember people fetching water from our outside water spout.”

Mike’s grandparents lived at No. 6. It was like a second home and sometimes he would stay overnight. He has very fond memories of these times as well.

“My grandparents house had electricity, but not in the upstairs back bedroom. There was a gas lamp here and my grandmother would light the lamp for me at bedtime so that I could read comic books before going to sleep. I always had a hot orange squash or Ribena as well!”

In Welsh, yn Cymraeg, the word ‘hiraeth’ comes to mind, it is such an evocative word that gives expression to a longing for something important that has past.

I felt a keen sense of hiraeth as Mike talked about the good times he had playing with his friends, friendships that have stood the test of time.

“We all used to play on the hillside behind the cottages. It was different then and we called it ‘the bank’. In the summer we would slide down the slippery. grassy slopes on bits of cardboard. We played hide and seek and flew our homemade kites. One time I cut my head badly riding someone else’s bike – he was riding mine! The centre of all our play was the big rock at the top of the bank and this could be anything that we wanted it to be when we were kids. This was our castle, but it looks so small now!”

It was a great walk with Mike and my thoughts turned again to York Place and what it is like now.

York Place
Place of dwellings and memories,
Sheltered island mounds
Wrapped in moss and scattered stones,
In a sea of copper brown bracken,
Fallen and withered by the wear of winter.

Diolch yn fawr iawn Mike, chatting with you as we walked your words was like keys unlocking the stories and memories held with the scattered ruins at The British.

Next time, another story in the landscape, but this one goes back hundreds of years in time.

Read the earlier installments of Y Filltir Sgwâr/The Square Mile by Tom Maloney