Before the Railway

Before the railways came the valleys were laced with canals. To feed the canals the side-valleys had horse-drawn tramways. If the mines were the black heart of industrial Wales, the canals and tramways were its veins and arteries – the coal-stained water was its blood.

The Monmouthshire canal ran through Abercarn on its way from Crumlin Wharf down to Malpas Junction and Newport Old Town Wharf. The canal opened in about 1799, carrying coal to the sea, and so to the world.

The Nant Carn springs to life on the mystical slopes of Twmbarlam, east of the Ebbw. At Cwmcarn there was a fine aqueduct on an embankment carrying the canal across the Nant Carn valley. Under it a culvert allowed the Nant Carn to flow into the Ebbw. In the late 18^th century the embankment would have been the most impressive structure in the valley, standing like the walls of Troy over the meadows by the Ebbw.

To give the thirsty canal extra water, a reservoir was made by building a large earth dam across the lower Nant Carn valley just south east of St John’s church at Abercarn Fach. However, there are tales that the dam was poorly maintained, and there were planted the grim seeds of tragedy.

In the 19^th century a flannel factory was built south west of the aqueduct and another was higher up the valley.

On the night of 14 July 1875 torrential rain fell on South Wales. The Nant Carn overflowed and the dam broke. A great flood raced south-westwards down the valley washing away the upper flannel factory and several cottages.

At the bottom of the valley a haystack jammed in the culvert under the canal embankment. The water could not escape, the level rose and then the embankment gave way, taking with it the road and part of the canal. The water from the canal added to the flood, which washed away the lower flannel factory. Beside Twyncarn Road a metal bench on the embankment is a memorial to the twelve people who lost their lives.

When I was a lad the canal still carved a derelict scar on the valley: still, black, lifeless.

The Brook

The Nant y Crochan, locally called ‘the brook’, bubbled and splashed down the valley beside the terrace. It was fed by the hill, Craig y Crochan, but also by the adits of long-forgotten mines in the valley: old, black, toothless mouths hidden among young trees, pouting amazingly clear water, in which grew the sweetest watercress. We would scramble up the dripping slopes to pick and eat, caring nothing for the rebuke for soaking socks. We would peer into the black, wet darkness of the adits, never daring to venture into their perilous underworld.

A little way up the valley, hidden among the trees, lay a small, derelict Powder Magazine: roofless, windowless, but still double-walled, a remnant of times long past. I searched it a dozen times in the hope of finding a forgotten stick of dynamite. I’m not certain what I would have done if I had found one!

In my imagination the old Powder House was still used by ghostly brigands and pirates who, every dream-filled night, would creep up the stony track past Beech Terrace, always leading ponies laden with panniers full of treasure or stories.

Beyond the Powder House the stony track zigzagged back up the opposite side of the valley to Cylfynydd Farm, clinging to the steep hillside opposite Beech Terrace. Sometimes we would go there for eggs.

At night I could see the hurricane lamp outside the farm bravely shining down on the valley below. No electric for them! And the moon would reflect on the endless rails and dance in the water of the brook. Above all the stars were bright, for the terrace had no street lights.

So was the world transformed.

Two Worlds

The world was divided. 

Below the terrace were two railway lines: the top line and the main line. Then across the River Ebbw, black as night with coal dust, lay tinplate works, iron works, chemical works, the Prince of Wales colliery- scene of one of the nation’s worst mine disasters in 1878. Then came the derelict canal and yet another railway. The language of the valley was English. There Welsh natives mingled with English, Irish and Scots immigrants, working in mines or heavy industry. Little grew and shadows were long. 

Yet above the top line, once an old tramway, the grass was green, the hillside was swathed in trees and sheep grazed on the tops.  The language was Welsh, and the land was fiercely its own. I was sure that there lived the Tylwyth Teg, the ‘fair family’ of small, beautiful, fairy folk, blessing those that left them gifts of milk or food, and tricking those who were not kind or not generous.

To visit the shops we would cross the railways and river and venture into a hobbled, cobbled landscape, painted with coal dust and chapel frowns, and speaking English. But behind the terrace was ‘the mountain’: Mynyddislwyn. Once a year we would take our picnic and the whole family would climb up to Sychpant Farm for the sheep dog trials. There, in the clean air and the bright fields the language was Welsh.

Even the sheep only understood Welsh sheep dogs.

Pont y Mynachlawg

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.

Cream Horns

Nanna’s teas were a major event, whenever her family gathered at the end of the week, all crammed round the dining table. Bread and fish paste were followed by bread and home-made jam. Toast was made at the open fire and was as thick as the walls of Troy and dripping with butter. Home-made sponge cake sandwiched yet more jam.

But the highlight was the home-made cream horns. These huge puff pastry constructions were magnificent! They were of such a size, shape and fragility that consumption could not be achieved without near-immersion in pints of tasteless white filling. Everyone else seemed to love them. I would try to look full and have another jam sandwich.

The cream-horns seemed to be Nanna’s pride and joy, but I suspect the real pleasure was the gathering of her bright family under the grey, slate roof.

Pwll Tra

On the other side of the valley from Number One were the terraced cottages of Cwmcarn.  Behind them the valley of Nant Carn reached into the hills. The mountain rampart stretched from Twmbarlwm in the south to Mynydd Maen – the hill of stone in the north.

Near the head of the Nant Carn valley there is a pool that no stream enters or leaves. It is called Pwll Tra or the Pool of Avarice[1]. Shepherds tell that on stormy nights strange sounds are heard from its reedy waters.

There was once a great house in which a rich family lived in luxury and dined magnificently. But on the far side of the hill they had poor relations. For them every day was a struggle and they lived close to starvation. One stormy night the great house was visited by a poor relative.

In desperation he had crossed the ridge to beg for help. He crawled down towards the house. He knocked on the door. He waited. The clouds grew black above the hill.  He knocked again. Slowly the door opened.

From the door came light, warmth and the aroma of fine foods. The lady of the house looked outside, tall and haughty. Her eyes told that she guessed why her relative had called.

The poor man begged: “Please, just bread. A crust or two from last week’s loaf, my wife and children are starving.”

The lady laughed and called inside “Look what's dragged itself from the sin where it belongs. I know his people. They come, curse me with my just deserts, spit on my head, go back to their world.”

Then she spoke into the night: “Nothing, nothing for the likes of you. Be gone before I loose the dogs!” 

The poor man retreated into the gathering storm. But there was no solace there. Instead there was a flash of lightning, a crash of thunder. Then the ground beneath his feet began to shake. Below him it seemed that the bowels of the earth were split asunder. The hill opened up, crashed down, and buried the house. It completely swallowed the great building and those inside. It left only a bare, hollow place beside a pool which no stream enters or leaves.

Local shepherds tell that on stormy nights strange sounds are heard from the reedy waters. They are the cries of those buried below, forever doomed by their greed. The pool is called Pwll Tra, the Pool of Avarice.

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[1] Tra’ is thought to be short for ‘Trachwant’ which means ‘Avarice’ or ‘greed’.

Incomers

My father’s parent’s families, the Buckleys and O’Connors, came to South Wales from County Cork. In Ireland the men had been quarrymen at Benduff Slate Quarry, North West of Rosscarbery.

The Buckleys emigrated to Wales first, perhaps between 1881 and 1884. John Buckley probably worked as a quarryman on the West side of Mynyddislwyn, living in a quarry cottage half a mile below St Tudur’s church and looking down over the wooded Sirhowy valley. But the quarry closed so he became a coal miner, eventually moving over the hill to Abercarn.

The O’Connor family’s fortunes were drastically changed by the Benduff quarry disaster of 20 July 1892. My great grandfather Daniel O’Connor was buried under a rock fall and his body was never recovered. His brother Jorum (Jeremiah) was buried alive. He was dug out after some hours, had his wounds bound with cobwebs, and had a shard of slate in his leg for the rest of his life. The family was left destitute. The widowed Catherine O’Connor had five children to support including a newborn baby, so the kindly wife of a local landowner gave her a sewing machine with which to earn a living. Catherine later ran a little shop in Connonagh.

Some thirty years later in County Cork Pot and his sister Nora were still running the shop in Connonagh. At the time of the War of Independence and the Civil War, when threatened by one or other faction they abandoned the shop and fled the area. Some said it was because they were still friendly with the lady who had given their mother the sewing machine; others said it was because Pot was friendly with a local constable. Whatever the reason the local priest would not speak to them, bullets were fired at the shop and Pot came to Wales. I think he must have loved the clean air and the West wind. His job above ground, and the position of the cottage above the dark satanic mills, both spoke of a man of the country and perhaps a little apart from others following his exile.

How many miners does it take to move a mountain? One, if his children are hungry. But Pot would rather be on the mountain than beneath it.