ABERPERGWM HOUSE

I have the idea that I will follow the route of the Neath Valley Railway and a description of it on the Internet makes mention of the ruined Aberpergwm House at Glynneath.

This house, in various transformations, had been in existence since the early 1500’s. It has been long owned by the Williams family. During WWII it was occupied by a school of evacuated deaf children from East Anglia, who, lacking amenities in the house, had to shower in the nearby pithead baths. It was then leased as offices to the NCB, destroyed by fire, but not rebuilt. A house with an interesting history.

I drive up to Glynneath, leaving early in the morning and planning to have a latish breakfast somewhere. I had to work out from Google where this ruined building was - through Glynneath and to the right, going North. A public road was clearly once the entrance to a large estate, as on either side were large pillars which would have held a large gate. A little way up the road is a church called St Cadoc’s, it has a small cemetery and attached to it is a walled plot with several graves with the name Williams. The cemetery of the landowners, in the church of the estate.

To get to what looks like the building I seek, I have to carry on past some council houses probably now in private ownership.  Just beyond the houses are big wrought iron gates with a new lock, which certainly prevents entry by anyone other than the owner of the key.

I can make out the ruins of Aberpergwm House, mostly only bit and pieces of old wall, breeze blocks in what would have been windows and a piece of graffiti referencing a ‘Martin’. In front of the remains are a few corrugated iron shelters for pigs, but I can only see one, a black body with a wide pink stripe across the shoulder - a  saddleback. This is the antithesis of a visit to a National Trust great house. There is no entrance fee indeed no way to enter. No Capability Brown landscaped garden only the muddy ground and tall evergreens hiding the opencast works beyond the house. 

The ruins no longer even constitute a ‘shell’, certainly no tea rooms or ‘exit via the gift shop’. Only the boundaries, the fence, the gate and the drive define what would have been a substantial and historic house. Everything else is gone or almost gone. Even the ghosts of the English deaf boys walking silently in line for their morning wash have long since departed.

I drive back to Glynneath. I greet a man standing outside of his house. “Nice day for it,” he says. “Sure is”, I reply as I turn toward the Java Bean Cyber Café. I order a full breakfast (coffee included) and as it is served, I wonder if local saddlebacks pigs provided the bacon rashers.

RECLAIMING A PHOTOGRAPH

Here is a photograph of my grandmother's family. I found it in my mother’s possessions after she died. Like all old photographs it represents a chronicle of a family; being just the ‘leftovers’ of those who have since departed. At the time of it being taken, 1935, it was obviously meant to be a visual recording of an event with those present obediently looking at the camera to present themselves. As Susan Sontag says, it “bears witness” to their connectedness.  The photo shows my Nana Sleeman with her sisters-in-law, my great-grandmother and her sister. They are obviously on a day out at the seaside, sitting on deckchairs on sand in front of the big wall. Although names are mentioned on the back of the photo, the location is not. The family lived in Dowlais so what trip did they make to get to where this photograph was taken?

It seemed that the most likely places were at Barry Island or along Swansea beachfront, as it is in these locations that there are old Victorian beach walls and both were reachable from Merthyr by train.  The first place I go is Barry Island, but immediately I can see that the stone wall is more uniform in construction than the jigsawed backdrop in the photograph.

So to Swansea beach to find this spot. As soon as I start walking I realise that such is the unique nature of every foot of the wall’s construction that what I need to do is to find the long stone that is above the heads of the people in the middle of the photograph. It’s a stone on the third course down from the top of the wall.

I walk a long way constantly looking at the wall and not seeing anything like the placement of stones in the photo. I begin to think that I am on a fool's errand. Then, near what is known as the Slip Bridge pillars, I find that configuration of stones. The very spot. 

The actual position was behind a high bar of sand, now 3 feet lower than the level of where my female relatives were sitting. It is not a spot that we would sit at. There was some detritus from a high tide, broken and complete shells, dry bits of seaweed, small bits of wood, some bits of plastic bags and a very distressed empty bottle of Ribena.

I took my photographs of the wall to confirm its stone built configurations in my own records. Now I can say I have stood on this spot. Perhaps I would return at some time to have my photograph taken and then I would have a continuing record of my family at the same spot. Perhaps a future generation will return to this spot just too also record a connectedness.

Later wandering through the internet, I find some old images of the same spot.

TREORCHY

Llandaff to Treorchy, £2.90 with a seniors railcard. It's a clear fine day but the hills still have the browns of winter on them. The grass not yet believing it early enough to come through on the mountainside. The sky is streaked with aeroplane vapour trails -  all US bound. It must be mid-morning as early in the morning they all follow each other the opposite way bringing red eyed travellers from the states. Along the main road and into the Cardiff Arms Cafe. They have a modern coffee machine but their coffee 'menu' is a careful negotiation between the old and the fashionable.  I order a mug of what used to be called milky but is now identified as cappuccino, so the man asked me “Should I put chocolate on it?”  “Na, that's OK.”

I check my phone to see if I have a Wi-Fi signal. It tells me there is a locked account called SanSiro. There must be an Inter Milan supporter here.

As I walk back I see in a shop window a poster advertising a play called ‘Tonto Evans’, an “ex-miner, country and western fanatic, given to dressing up as a Native American … he dreams of visiting the Wild West”. Another poster informs us about a talk to be given by a Professor of History called “My Rhondda.” I ponder on the juxtaposition, whilst thinking about cowboys.

Waiting for a bus to Ponty I stand opposite a funeral directors in a wool shop. I could really fancy a knitted coffin but it would have to have a fairisle pattern that my mother used to put on short sleeved jumpers.