BOWLS TERRACE TO SENGHENYDD

So there she stands, my Mam, holding me up for inspection like a trophy. A two-year-oldish me, in summer dungarees, white socks and sandals. We stand on the pavement with me looking directly at the camera and my mum looking at me. She is obviously showing me off and, for the photographer,  I obligingly smile in my infantile omnipotence. It's probably late afternoon as there are long shadows on the road and it is possible to make out the shadow of the person taking the photograph. To our right is a row of terraced houses and to our left its open with a white house up the road. In the distance is a hill.

This is a photograph that I am familiar with, it was in the first pages of the scrapbook in which my mother kept the family snaps. But, I always wondered where this photograph of the young me was taken as it was not a familiar place. It was not even familiar in that it was a location that featured in other family photographs.

My mother’s brother Leslie - Uncle Les - lived in Caerphilly with his wife, Aunty Bet, and it was not until he passed away that I found out the location of the photograph. As my brother and I went through his belongings, we came across an old photographic album bound in leather and there in the album were some photographs of the occasion when my mother had held me up as a trophy. There was a picture of Les and Bet holding me at the same spot. The same row of terraced houses, the same pavement, the same white house in the distance.  I asked Bet’s sister if she knew the location of the photograph.

 “That's where we lived, Bowls Terrace, Penyrheol. When they were first married, Les and Bet lived with us, me and my mum and dad. You and your mother must've come up for tea one afternoon.”

The photograph’s occasion is therefore a visit of a woman to her brother taking her son with her. As my father is not in any of the photographs, I imagine that this was a trip to Caerphilly that she made on her own, perhaps on a Saturday afternoon when my Dad was watching football. The location is Bowls Terrace, Penyrheol.

I knew the general location but not really this particular row of houses. It is near a very familiar pub known as the Bowls Inn and obviously it is from this juxtaposition that the terrace got its name. A brief look at the history books tells you that The Bowls Inn probably started serving in 1825 and was certainly included in the census of 1841. I have been unable to find out how it got its name. When I drove past it, I had always thought it must have been associated with a bowling green, but given its age it could have been the place where kitchen utensils, bowls, were sold. It could even have been an English pronunciation of a Welsh word such as ‘bwls’ or ‘pwls’ which is Welsh for ‘pulse’. That would be a good name for an old pub; somewhere where the pulse of the community could be felt with its health being measured in the way the local inhabitants interacted or perhaps even the quantity of beer that they drank. However, the Bowls Inn doesn't exist anymore, the building is now a convenience store owned by the biggest grocer in Britain, Tesco; the only measurement of health being indicated by the amount of non-fat milk and muesli that is bought.

I park in Tesco car park (free parking for half an hour) and stand in Bowls Terrace trying to put myself in the same position where Les was when he took the photograph of me and my mother. Someone is watching. The curtains are twitching. I am there manipulating the picture and walking up and down trying to relate to ill-defined front garden walls. The twitching leads to a lady coming out one of the houses.

 “Are you looking for somebody love?” she asks.

“No. Not really” I say, “I have this photograph of me as a baby and my mother which was taken by here and I'm trying to find the spot.”  I show her the photograph.

“Good grief. Will you look at that.” She turns and shows the photograph to a young woman who is now leaving the house holding a baby a little younger than I would have been. “It's of by here. When would that have been?”

 “Oh, about 1951.”

“Isn't that amazing. Well well. You carry on, love.” She turns to her daughter, “We’d better hurry or we’re going to be late.”

They moved down the road and put a pushchair, their bags, the baby then themselves into a nearby car. I'm aware of the busyness of Bowls Terrace now and I relook at the photograph of my mother and myself. There is something in that photograph which is containing of what is taking place there now, the cars and the traffic, the new houses , the man on the mobile phone walking past. But there is not the same element of sanctuary that seemed to be present on the street when the photo was taken. I know it cannot be replicated.

Bowls Terrace is on the natural route line of the River Aber with the road continuing along the valley bottom and turning  right at Abertridw - the point where three small rivers merge to become the Aber. It is also where the now derelict pub 'The Panteg' stands.

The Panteg, Abertridw

Not only does the road closely follow the rivers’ path but also that of the railway line, from Caerphilly, Aber, Penyrheol, Abertridwr, Windsor Colliery Halt and finally Senghenydd. Obviously, the buildings and rails of this permanent way ceased in their permanency sometime ago but the route of the line is still present as the Aber Valley Cycle Pathway. I am on my way to Senghenydd to visit the Welsh National Memorial to all mine disasters in Wales. Specifically this memorial commemorates the men that died in the mining disasters of 1901 when 81 died and 1913 when 439 were killed, the latter being the worst mining disaster ever in the UK. My father had told me about the disaster as he had worked with a man whose young uncle died in the event. The uncle was only 16 years old and got up late that day, and ran down the road to catch the last cage going down the pit. When they found his body, his shoelaces were still undone as he had put his boots on in haste.

War Memorial Senghenydd

 In the middle of Senghenydd village you pass the War Memorial erected shortly after WWI by the authorities. A different scenario to the mining memorial for the men killed at work as it was left primarily to the voluntary efforts of the local community and not being raised until 2013, a hundred years after the first event. The values and ethics of our profit orientated society is further demonstrated by the fact that  the inquiry that followed the disaster found that numerous faults could be laid on the managers and the owners of the pit and they were fined, with the total being the grand sum of £24.00. As one newspaper at the time commented, that meant that a miner’s life was worth just ‘£0 1s 1¼d’. 

When I arrived at the monument the day had become overcast and the components of the valley landscape, the sky, the rows of terraced houses and hills above the houses and below the sky had that monotonous look that grey light brings. At the end of the valley, the site of the Universal Colliery is bound by a fence of grey metal bars and within its keeping is now an industrial estate with some empty prefabricated buildings. To one side of this area of waste ground there is laid out a garden with a couple of spaces for parking cars. This is the site of the Memorial and on the three sides where it would have touched the grounds of the colliery there is the fence as if it is saying this is separate from where it should be. The central feature of the Memorial is a statue of a rescue worker helping an injured miner. 

National Mining Memorial Senghenydd

the statue is enclosed is by a small garden boundaried by a wall on top of which the names are recorded of all the men, some only boys, who died in the Senghenydd disasters. Underneath each name is their address, the house number, the street name and the repeated locations of Senghenydd, Abertridwr , Caerphilly with a smattering of other places. The names and the addresses conjure up the spirits of the men who lost their lives and as you read each name, each in turn begins the walk to his home;  a walk of  doomed non-arrival, apparent from its first step.  From one side of the garden  is a snaking path and as you walk along it recorded on slabs set into the ground are all the disasters in which more than five men died in the coal mines of Wales. What is not recorded are all the men who died in pits singularly or in numbers up to 4, nor recorded are all the men who died slow deaths from injuries suffered underground, neither are the men who were permanently disabled. Also what is not recorded is the efforts of all the women who suffered grief, hardship and the caring burden through injuries and deaths that occurred in the pits. Behind the main memorial and tucked into a corner is a wood carving of a woman holding a baby waiting for news from the pit. An allusion to an iconic image from the time of the 1913 disaster which unfortunately neglects to mention the role of women in the grieving community.

Waiting for News. The young girl nursing her baby sister form the iconic photograph by W. Benton

The memorial is very moving and very poignant, but it is a disgrace. Places in which significant events have happened hold onto emotions that are linked to that event, indeed the emotion becomes rooted in that particular location ready to be felt by anyone that allows its arising. At Senghenydd what arises is the need for recognition, the need to have a presence and for it to mean something. There it is at the end of the valley and you have to make a special effort to go there. Such a memorial should recall everybody whose lives were blighted or cut short in the desire for coal. Such a memorial should be placed in a position where it is easily seen by the largest number of people about their daily chores. The mining communities of Wales deserve nothing less than this and it is a disgrace to call this very poignant, moving and appropriate memorial to Senghenydd miners the “National Memorial”. What pervades the location is a feeling of  'This is not enough. It is so important it deserves much more than this'. The emotional atmosphere of the desire to be fully recognised surrounds the place. 

I walk around the wall of names of the dead; two ghosts arise and set off on their never ending journey to their homes in Bowls Terrace.

           

Prowling memories

mute in their demand for

acknowledgement

CLYDACH VALE

A trip to Clydach Vale. Going on the motorway and then on the Llantrisant bypass, it seems as if I'm forever on roads designed to avoid places and consequently they have numerous roundabouts with smaller roads off to somewhere else. The last of these thoroughfares follows the line of the Ely Valley Railway from Tonyrefail to Penygraig - a train journey long since ceased. Quickly it seems that I arrive on the valley road of Clydach Vale without any preparation for the change of mode required for travelling on the long narrow residential streets. The road is steep, the terraces tight and the shops are infrequent unlike one area where there seems to be a plethora of chapels, for opposite St Thomas’ church there are three in a row. Only Noddfa, the Welsh Baptist Church appears to be meeting the purpose for which it was built, for the English Baptist Chapel, Bethany, is for sale and the Calvinist Chapel, Libanus, is now a centre for parents and children. However, to ensure that the spiritual needs of the area are not entirely bereft, the Bethel Bush Free Mission is only a few yards down the valley. But then, further up the road the Zoar Welsh Independent Chapel has long given up its initial sacred function and now serves as a home for the elderly. 

Clydach Vale - Three Chapels

At least some chapels seemed to be surviving institutions and this in line with the pubs; ‘The Central’ is now a convenience store; ‘The Bush’ has boards over some windows and looks run down but is reputed to be open, but thankfully ‘The Clydach Vale’ appears functioning.

I drive past the school, where, in 1910, 3 children were killed when all the pupils were trapped by water which had suddenly broken out of old mine workings. In flooding the village, the deluge also killed a woman and two babies. A portent of the Aberfan disaster.

I’ve come to Clydach Vale to look at a place where Tommy Farr boxed and which is now the ruin of Clydach Vale Workingmen’s Club. On the 25th January 1930 aged 16 years, Farr fought his 66th fight against another boxer originating from Clydach Vale, Llew Hadyn. In those days there were not the same rules about weights and ages for professional fights - any kind of matches were made to make up programmes in local venues. Haydn was older and he fought mainly at bantamweight; Farr although younger was probably heavier - but he still had some growing to do as later he fought Joe Louis for the Heavyweight Championship of the world! Farr lost on points to Haydn over 10 rounds on that Saturday afternoon. He had fought 8 days earlier and he would leave the venue, then named the New Inn Hotel, to travel the 16 miles to Blaengarw for an evening contest where he beat Rees Owen of Treherbert also over 10 rounds. Llew Haydn’s victory means that there are likely to be descendants of his, perhaps still living locally, who can says that their grandfather beat Tommy Farr! I hope this private memory is held and cherished by someone.

I arrive near the end of the valley road and the burnt out building. As I take photographs, a woman comes to chat. 

Clydach Vale Workingmens' Club - 'Top Club'

We talk about what was and what now is in the village. She asks why I am taking a photo of the old “Top Club”. I explain to her that I am interested because it was a location of a Tommy Farr fight. “I didn’t think there was boxing there.” she says. She even seemed uncertain as to who Tommy Farr was. “My Dad never told me about that happening in the club,” she said in a confident manner making me wonder about local memory and supposed heroes. She can see that I am disappointed and seemingly to make recompense she points to a building across the road and says, “That was where we had our dances. We called it the Assembly Rooms. Like a lot of things it’s all boarded up now.” But the thought of her dancing as a young woman seems to buoy both of us up and jauntily she confides that she is now going to visit her friend to see if she wants to go to a 60’s night in Tonypandy.

After our chat by the old club, I park at the end of the valley road and amble the short distance along the path and over the little river bridge to the Cambrian Colliery Memorial. Walking up to slope I noticed the ground is made up of the detritus of demolition, bits of broken brick, concrete chippings and lots of shaley stones all embedded in the black of the slag dust - every now and then glinting in the sun a  few shining coal pebbles.

Cambrian Colliery Memorial

I sit on the bench in the Memorial looking at the usual features of the winding gear wheel and the tram with coal concreted onto the top. Just outside the stone wall is a lift cage which would have been used to carrying the trams up and down the pit shaft. Weeds are establishing themselves in the stones around the memorial objects together with Coke cans, Lucozade bottles and packaging from KFC.

Clydach Vale from Cambrian Colliery Memorial

I recall the history. 1905, an explosion with the loss of 33 lives and serious injury to 14 others. 1941, at the 'Gorky' drift mine 7 men killed and 53 injured when a trolley transporting  miners ran out of control. 1965, an explosion in Cambrian Colliery killed 31 miners. I read the memorial stone to those of 1965 which also makes mention of the “many who have died and continue to die as a result of industrial disease”. I try to read the words on the fading messages on the now rotting flowers brought as tribute. “In memory of William Richards (1860 - 1915) A fatal accident victim in No 1 Pit of this colliery, December 17th 1915 and his son Thomas Richards (1904 - 1969) a workman in No1 and No 2 Pits.” A private grief and treasured remembrance of fathers which escapes the public history with its focus on multiple deaths. Another card honouring the three disasters pays tribute to “the women… whose contribution caring for men and families was immense….many of these also found early graves.” Some memories are held and the 'heroes' all live in families.

I sit quietly and hear the sounds composing the quietness of the place. The wind in the trees, a crow cawing, dogs barking. I see some dog walkers, no doubt following their own routine, synchronised with nobody except those at home. There are domestic noises in the distance, somebody is hammering wood and friends are calling to each other. For a few moments the sound of an aeroplane way up high, hidden by the clouds and then a return to the silence of nature. A wood pigeon flies past and I hear the flap of its wings. The sun moves slowly across the sky, casting changing highlights on the spokes of the pit head wheel. As I sit, occasionally, the wind stirs up the industrial ghosts, the clunky bangs of heavy machinery, the falling thuds of stone and coal, the shouts of working men, all echo in the still background. 

above the ghosts 

a buzzard circles 

indifferent to my leaving

BLAEN Y CWM, TYNEWYDD AND THE RHIGOS

So why go to Blaen y Cwm? It's the top end of one of the Rhondda valleys where the road stops, a point now being a turning circle for the bus. Once you get there, there is nowhere further to go, unless you want to walk along the path that takes you to the actual head of the valley. I am going because some years ago, following my uncle’s death, I was left a little bit of money which I decided I should spend on buying a painting in remembrance of him. I always associated him with the South Wales valleys and I had been looking for a painting that somehow represented this for me. One day in an art gallery in Swansea, I unexpectedly came across a painting that fitted the bill; - it held all my expectations about a representation of the Valleys - rows of terraced houses, cloudy skies and the hillside beyond the roofs. It was by Ceri Barclay, an artist originally from Tonypandy and it now looks good hung up at home.

Blaen y Cwm by Ceri Barclay

As I look at this painting daily there has always been a desire in me to stand at the same spot as the artist and see if my own looking at the scene has some link to artistic visualisation. Therefore, up to Blaen y Cwm or as it is on some signposts and on some maps Blaencwm.

From Cardiff the journey is quick to Pontypridd and then seems to slow down the further up the valley you go. After Treorchy the road was closed with a diversion through an industrial estate reducing the progress to a crawl. I drive on, followed by a bus whose destination board declares ‘130 Blaencwm’. I pass a road sign that informs me I am now in Blaen y Cwm still reassuringly followed by the Blaencwm Stagecoach bus. I reach the end of the road and park on the tarmac that is the bus terminal.

Camera in hand I walk around looking for the scene that is on my living room wall. I don't find it. There is something about the way the houses are depicted in the painting which is difficult to find on the ground. My painting has the backs of the houses facing each other with their short gardens in between, then as you look at the row of gardens in the painting there is the mountain, the valley side. This orientation is different to what I am looking at. I don't find the spot the artist stood on. I wonder at all the reasons encompassed by artistic license that explain why it is not possible for me to locate the site on this day. But then, perhaps the reason I don't find it is nothing to do with the artist but everything to do with me looking in the wrong place. I walk through the few streets and houses that make up this little, now ex-mining, village. 

I see the house where the novelist Ron Berry lived. A recorder of the lives of working men and women as the coal industry declined but with people breaking out of the economic shackles of the 1930’s and 40’s. The writers of Wales are not recorded with blue plaques which I now associate with England; no, the Rhys Davies Trust commemorate Welsh writers by having their names placed on associated houses carved on grey slate plaques. There are important ways in which we express our difference.

I sit on a seat by the bus terminal. Soon an older woman joins me and we begin to talk about the place. I ask about the correct spelling. Is it Blaen y Cwm or Blaencwm?

“Well here we all think it is Blaen y Cwm. That's the way in which we were taught and we keep on using it.” The lady tells me she has lived here all her life. “In the old days there was more Welsh spoken everywhere and the name is really the Welsh way. We were told in school that it got called Blaencwm because there wasn't enough room to put to ‘y’ on front of the bus.” We laugh at it being the bus’s fault.

“It used to be so dirty here, a small place with two collieries and all them trains going all the time. Everything was black; you couldn't get anything clean. Now it's so different. Everything changes.”

Somehow or other we get onto the theme of politics and she tells me she does not understand how people could vote to leave Europe. “They've given us so much here - I got my grants to do at my house from the EU. But I don't think we'll get much now because nobody is bothered about this place.” We part, she getting on the bus now labelled ‘Pontypridd’ and me getting into my car.

I go back down the Valley to the next village of Tynewydd. It is a hot day and I need a drink so I look for a shop. There a poor selection of what are now known as ‘retail outlets’ and most of them appear closed. 

There is one shop on the road with nighties in the window and fruit on the outside. It is a small shop that has obviously been put together on the superstore model - everything is included, fruit and veg, bakery, dry goods, a few medicines, wool for knitting, needles and threads, some clothes, school uniforms, nappies, it is an agency for dry-cleaning and oh yes some second hand books. 

I buy my drink and in a way continue my previous conversation.

“I suppose you’ve seen many changes?”

“Lots. Everything looks brighter now, but there are no jobs and no railway.”

I remember there was a tunnel just up the valley that ran through hill. A tunnel that went from Blaen y Cym through to Blaengwyfi in the Afan Valley and the railway line would have taken the train onto Port Talbot, Neath and Swansea. It is now the longest disused tunnel in Wales at 3,443 yards opened in 1890 and closed in 1968.

“Yes they want to make it into a cycle path now. It's a pity they can't make it into a road because it gets blocked up here sometimes in the winter and it would be a way out for us.”

I wondered if she ever took the train to Swansea.

“Yes it did go to Swansea but we always got off at Aberavon beach. It was a long walk to the sea but when you are a kid, you don't mind. There were no houses there then, just sand and the sea and kids enjoying themselves.”

I thanked her for her memory.

I drive on up to the Rhigos overlooking the Neath Valley with, in the distance, the rolling hills of Mid Wales lined up as waves approaching the shore of Offa’s Dyke. 

I walk down to the fence where people leave memorials to those who have passed away; dogs and grandmothers, brothers, grandfathers and sisters, mums and dads. An expansive place to come to hold memories of people and the sand and sea and just kids enjoying themselves. 

Behind me the wind turbine slowly rotates like the hands on a child’s clock marking the passage of its own time.

At this resting place
the wind turbines moves
with the monotony of languid time

PARC TAF BARGOED

A feature in South Wales is the landscaping of the old sites of the coal industry. Throughout the area there are now a number of what are termed ‘country parks’, where there has been an attempt to return the Valley floor to nature. This usually involves the creation of walks and cycle paths so that the area is accessible. On some football and rugby pitches are laid out in an almost overly flat manner providing recreation of a different sort but belying the contours of the true countryside. Parc Taf Bargoed is one such place where the two aspects of the aim to offer facilities to the local population have being combined. In these reshaped areas a convention appears to be that there is a nod to the presence of past industry as well as sculpture conjuring up a symbolic statement about what was and what now is.  

At Parc Taf Bargoed the planner certainly has adopted the orthodoxy for monuments and art placement, as here, there are all the stereotypical offerings. A place worthy of a visit for this cornucopia alone.

When I visit I park my car in the designated area noting the large carved tree trunk informing me on its side where I am, (there is a more obvious sign up the road). This post has a rough-hewn outline of birds indicating that if I watch the sky I will see kites. I watched for a while - but none appeared.  Similar carving are doted everywhere these days and if you are interested there is a man that sells them when its fine weekend weather in a lay-by near Storey Arms in the Beacons.

From the car park, I wander over to the Visitors Centre which has a permanent closed look. “Not many visitors, see.”  In front of the centre is its mining memorial - a coal tub. I imagine the discussion when the planner thought about this. “Shall we have a coal tub or a pithead winding wheel? Well there's lots of both about. Let's go for the tub.” 

There it stands now rusting with coal pieces placed to make it look as if it's full. A plaque on its side lists the collieries that were on this site. Deep Navigation, Taff Merthyr and Trelewis.  And, yes, as always they have placed the cart on some rails - coming from nowhere and going to nowhere - just like all the other mining cart memorials.

I then notice a rather unusual means of recalling the pit. Someone had the bright idea of laying out along a path the points in the pit shaft where the seams of coal cut through and where the bottom of the shaft lay. A translation of the vertical to the horizontal. Each coal seam is identified by its name and depth with its approximate width laid out in rough stones across the path. 

I decide not to walk along its full length as it is quite a steep path but I notice that this path is curved. I didn't think there were any curved mining shafts in this area. The planner’s voice in my head says, “It doesn't matter. It just gives an impression. It’s a representation.”

Clearly, our planner is on a roll with the common symbols of Wales. So he decides that by the side of the centre at the crossroads of two paths to erect a carved stone column. Limestone with leaves on one side and a rough outline of the river’s course on the other. A poor man's version of a Celtic cross. No country park worthy of the name is without its carved stone column.

I imagine my planner rubbing his hands with glee, “and while we are on big slabs of stone and in Wales, Celts, Druids and all that …. let's have a stone circle.”

Now, to have a stone circle requires big stones and a circle of a 360° construction. If you are a bit short of cash or just trying to be clever, what you do is half  the circle (perhaps a bit less) with the other half seemingly being bounded by a visitor centre type building. The large stone pieces are slatey shale; the type of rock discarded in the mining of coal.

In this higgledy-piggledy arrangements of memorials and monuments our planner looks at what has being landscape in the area and sees that a blank wall has been left in front of the Ancient Briton inspired almost half stone circle. “Let's put some pretty graffiti on the wall. The kids will love it.” Of course, it also stops the more serious unofficial graffiti artists who may have added something original.

Standing back, I view the modernity of the visitor centre with its curved roof, the Celtic stone circle and the pretty graffiti. I wonder what else the planner can do. Then on the side of the building away from the road, I can see the results of inspiration.  “I would like to commission an imaginative piece that speaks to the growth of the new out of the old.” When I first look at the work, I didn't think that it was an innovative piece of art, I thought it was some concrete shapes that children could play on next to the playground. I walk up and I see its true intended artistic nature. There are five concrete pieces representing a discarded outer casing of a large nut looking object that now sits in the middle. Two of rough exterior covering stand upright providing an image of a heart  - the place from which the veined nut emerged. I walk around taking in its imagery.  

It suggests a cracking open; an emergence from a shell, an opening up of potential growth arising out of the stone; all symbolic of the park and its history.

But wait. I look closely at the back of the nut. It is an arsehole!

“Mr Planner, Mr Planner have you seen your artistic piece from the back. It’s an arsehole.” 

Arseholes are only good for one thing. 

“Symbolic, see.”

Yes and we received it …from a great height.

The point is that we can do better than this. We deserve better than the trite staging of ‘art for the community’ and memorials. We deserve large original pieces that express the individuality of place and persons. We need commemorative pieces that we can identify with and be proud of. We do deserve better than this.

NELSON HANDBALL COURT

I have visited places in South Wales that L. S. Lowry painted. In Nelson he sketched a drawing of the handball court on a paper napkin, which sold for a considerable sum of money some years ago. 

And so a wandering to see this court.

Nelson is now one of those places that you only go to if you are going there. It used to be at the crossroads of a busy railway junction going North-South and East-West all transporting coal; of course, the railway lines gave up a long time ago when the coal industry died. The original Welsh name of the place, Ffos-y- Gerddenin, proved difficult to pronounce for the incoming workers who dug the pits and the railway cuttings and so it acquired its name from a local pub ‘The Admiral Nelson Inn’. Not the only site in South Wales to be named after a place to drink beer.

I park next to the library and walk out onto Commercial Street which presumably would have been the centre of business of the town. Just a few shops now - some open, some boarded up. The first Edwardian building has two doors next to each other; over the right hand one, it says “Billiards”, over the left-hand one it has the Welsh word “Ariandy”, signifying a bank.

Doubtless, the early English-
speaking inhabitants, still struggling with the pronunciation of the place gave themselves up to more leisurely endeavours, while the Welsh would appear more abstemious in their pursuits. Entering the ‘Billiards’ portal now you encounter the world of the ‘Nelson Community Council’ with its minutes and agendas recorded on a board outside. Going through the ‘Ariendy’ (bank) door leads you into the financial transactions of purchasing pizzas. The premises that housed the modern bank across the street is now one of the boarded up businesses. Commerce is no longer booming in Nelson.

A few yards up the road, I come to the General Picton Inn and the Dyneavor Arms. The former gave up its military inspired drinking sometime ago, as it is now a greengrocer’s but the Dyneavor continues to serve customers. 

The roundabout in the centre of the village has a monument to its industrial past - on one side a relief of railway engines and men working in a mine and whilst on the other is a scene of terraced houses. Work and home.

Over the junction and up the road a little way is the handball court. If you are passing in a car, you could easily mistake it for the end of a building and miss it. But, the three sided structure facing a tarmaced surface is clearly identified by its sign and is open to the air. As I approach two young women, clad in lycra with big kit bags cross the court chatting loudly. They clearly are going to a gym somewhere; no activity at this location for them.

The court was built about 1860 and is one of a very few surviving in the United Kingdom though in little use. In keeping with Nelson’s public house related history there are two stories about how it came to be built, both involving the publican of the Royal Oak. One version has the rector of St Mabon’s Church several miles away being so fed up with locals playing handball against the north wall of his church that he persuaded the Royal Oak landlord to build the handball court across the road from his pub. The other story has the landlord building it to draw custom away from the Admiral Nelson just up the road. Both could have some truth in them. God and the dictates of business equally have to be appeased.

A local authority sign by the court informs me in English and Welsh “No balls games between Sunset and Sunrise”. I stand alone in the middle of the court and fearful of breaking any bylaws check the position of the sun - daytime - ball games definitely permitted. From my pocket, I take out a tennis ball. I throw it against the wall. Immediately I am reminded of a game I played as a boy, kicking a football against a wall, taking turns with an opponent to put the ball into a position where it stopped or could not be kick against the wall. We called it ‘spot on’. Just like the memory, the ball comes back to me from the wall and I throw it again. I think about all the ends of buildings and walls in back lanes, where children throw balls and make-up rules of games. Places where children’s imagination turn scraggy urban places into arenas and Olympic stadiums. This now unique historical place is also just the end of a building for throwing a ball against. 

I throw the ball again, this time in a way to make myself move to retrieve it.

“Nobody to play with, love”, shouts a woman walking past.

“No. Nobody to play with.”

“At least you know who’s going to win.”

April 2017

BARGOED: COOLING TOWERS AND ANGELS

The link to the ‘Angel of North’ statue in my last journey reminded me that there was in the Valleys an angel statue in Bargoed. My plan was to park the car at Pengam and cycle through ‘Parc Coetir Bargod’, the country park landscaped over the sites of the Gilfach, Bargoed and Britannia collieries and of course the famous record-breaking tip painted by Lowry. I wanted to be certain of the route and so I did some wanderings on the Internet and looking up some history of these collieries. I knew there had been a power station in this place, so I put into Google, ‘Bargoed power station’ and to my surprise I discovered that there is a highly respected black and white photograph of its cooling towers by Bernd and Hilla Becher. These German photographers took pictures of industrial architecture throughout Europe.  Their work has artistic appeal as well as being a record of large structures that were built when industry was more widespread and they point to an age now gone.  Certainly ‘Cooling Towers, "Bargoed" Power Station’ is of a time well past for this area. This photograph is indeed internationally well known and amongst those images of the Bechers’ work that are critically acclaimed. It was taken when they visited South Wales in 1966 and is the chosen image on the front cover of their book ‘Cooling Towers’ (2006); a volume which is of course available from Amazon but rather overpriced for my pocket. 

Copies of the photo are placed in galleries around the world and can be found, for example, in the J Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, California; the Harvard Museum, Cambridge Massachusetts; the Moderna Museet, Stockholm; the Museum of New Zealand in Wellington and of course in the V&A London. Bargoed gets around a bit. For all its fame, surprisingly, the existence of the particular image is not well recorded on local sites. 

As I peer at old photographs, it looks to me as if the towers were located near the railway line between Gilfach Fargoed  and Bargoed but I know that there are no remnants or recollections to be found on the ground. I returned to my route making exercise leaving the power station memories scattered through the Internet and the images on walls a long way from Bargoed.

Despite my planning, my cycle ride begins all too quickly with a wrong turn. I end up pedalling hard up a steep hill almost going back on myself. Then establishing the route to Bargoed from a by-passer I have to carry my bike up a long flight of steps. Eventually, hot and bothered, I arrived on the valley floor following the river upstream. The man-made terraces, built in an effort to put something right with nature start from the valley bottom, then there is a cycling/walking path, then the railway line to Rhymney, a road bridge and then on top of the valley side is the dominant sight of the Morrison’s supermarket - green and yellow sign glowing in the sun. No German photographers to record this construction. Cycling up the valley side it's a steep pull to the road. Then a daffodil appears, very large and very yellow metallic looking. 

It is placed in a car park and questioningly overlooks the railway line and the bus station. I take some photographs and cycle the short distance to the end of High Street and to the Angel.

It is a metallic statue made with golden steel staves, standing upright at the end of a road and looking as if it is waiting for a bus. 

It is not in a prominent spot. It does not look up the road or oversee the Valley. It just looks across the road to a chip shop, holding its hands out in succour to the customers. By some creative framing, a photo can be taken in which an ‘Angel of the North’ type image appears widely bestowing its blessing over the surrounding country. 

But, this is not Angel of the North, it is an not an imposing statue. It does not have the dominance that the industrial structures of recent past history held. It is a tall angel, waiting for a bus, in front of a car park, with a chapel and war memorial in the background and the Cosy Fish Bar opposite. Contemplating this, in typical fashion, I find refreshment in Rossi's just up the road and order coffee and a bacon sandwich. 

In the cafe, there are some daffodils in table vases with a more pleasing look than the nearby transport overseeing work of art.

A conversation begins about comings and goings. A man speaks about the visits of his adult children who come, spend time with friends, go shopping in Cardiff only then to the leave. Disappointedly he says, “They may as well not come.” The lady behind the counter smiles at me and then at him. “But it's touching base, even if they are a long way from here. At least it's giving recognition to where they come from and where you are.” He shrugs his shoulders.

I leave the café and cross the road. I take some photographs of the ornate iron fence, ‘Emporium Windows’, which is in front of the odd shaped flatiron building, once a department store and now looking for both a purpose and a new owner. At one time, a clock adorned the top of the building but that with its business has long since gone. In remembrance of past functions the fence is supplemented by a cast iron clock face now permanently fixing time. 

The fence was constructed by the same sculptor that created the Angel and the Daffodils; Malcolm Robertson a Scotsman who has lots of statues placed in Florida. Now that's a million miles from here.  Perhaps the placement of the Daffodil and the bus waiting Angel is to point to the means of our leaving. 

I return to the Angel, in a different frame of mind. I can see that it stands grounded with a secure solidity, naturally rooted and nourished just in this spot.  It is firmly and most definitely where it is. It has an openness as if it is saying, “Here we are.” No coming or going. It may be in front of a car park watching people leave the chip shop, but this is an angel that offers us a different way of returning home. 

shunning the prospect of adoration
the angel
here stands

My return bike journey is now thankfully downhill, past the over-large daffodil, past the now gone, tips, pits and cooling towers and onto our home where I hopefully always recognise the presence of the Angel.