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.