141 Caerau Road...

A Memory of Caerau.

My Grandad Jones purchased 141 Caerau Rd from 2 ladies following WWII - it cost him a grand total of 450pounds. The ladies stayed on and rented a back room for a while before Grandad had his father Oliver, his father's mistress Martha and his brother Glyndwr move in.

It was a reasonably large house compared to that which he'd grown up in. The Jones family initially lived at Albert St, known as a slum area in those times, then they moved to Wesley St. The grandparents lived 3 houses down the street. There was a small bakehouse opposite their home that the boys would sell collected wild berries to. Blueberries and blackberries that would stain the tips of their fingers red.

Harold Clifford JONES was born in October 1920 to Oliver Charles JONES and Sarah Catherine EVANS. He was one of 6 children - 4 of which grew to adulthood.

Sarah died from TB, aged 33, in 1933. Oliver died after a car collided with him just steps away from his front door, aged 58, in 1954. He'd survived 44yrs in the mine.

Harold went to Blaenllynfi School until the age of 14, this was when he started work as a haulage driver at the Duffryn Rhondda Pit. Coal mining was dirty work and to get out of it, Harold enlisted in the Navy in 1938. He returned to Caerau in 1946. His brother Glyndwr died that same year due to a mining accident.Harold was back working at Duffryn by this time - he was an off-sider with a coal cutter.

Harold married Barbara from Lowestoft, Suffolk, and she came to Caerau with her son from her previous marriage (widowed WWII).


Added 31 January 2016

#338955

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