Cwmcarn had a handful
of small shops that we would visit twice a week. We would walk down the lane almost
as far as the station, then turn left over the River Ebbw at Chapel Bridge. The
bridge was once called Pont y Mynachlawg (Monastery Bridge) and it was thought
that a monastery lay to the north, on the site of Chapel Farm. There could once
be seen the remains of a chapel: an echo of the quiet days before the
revolutions of church, state and industry tore the old world apart.
The paper shop was
near the top of Chapel Farm Terrace, a long, cobbled street. When it was
raining the cobbled gleamed, the street seemed endless and you were always
soaked before you got to the end. Then it was up over the black, unmoving canal
and another short terrace to the corner shop on the main street. There I could
get a copy of ‘The Eagle’ which met with parental approval, or ‘The Beano’
which did not.
The main road stretched down towards Risca and Newport one way,
and up towards Newbridge and Crumlin the other. It was flanked by seemingly endless rows of
identical terrace houses, only occasionally breached by the dark, secret doors
of a billiard hall or a public house. The most common sound was the wild shriek
of a steam engine’s whistle on one of the three lines up the valley, just occasionally
challenged by the irreverent hooting of a Western Welsh bus. Somehow it felt
safer on the other side of the valley, protected by the coal-black river and
the ghosts of the monks.
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