The Good Old Days

A Memory of Hengoed.

I moved to Hengoed when I was 6 years old. I lived in Hawthorn Avenue when the houses were first built. The first winter there was very bad, I have not seen a winter like it since, not in Hengoed anyway. It was a close-knit community there, 24 steel houses and policeman always lived in No 24. Everybody knew everybody and for a small community we had a lot of tragedies, always involving small children. Two children were killed by vehicles and when you consider that there were not a lot of vehicles on the road then two was a lot. Another child disappeared in the evening, I remember a knock on our door asking my father would he join the search, and I believe it was in the early hours of the following morning that they found the child dead in a quarry which contained a lot of water.

I can never remember being bored, there was always something to do. We wree surrounded by fields and were always playing football, cricket, or going to the Stute for a game of snooker. I remember well when we ran short of fuel my father would take one of us down the Graig, he would leave us in the small wood then he would cross the river, then over the railway line then dig in the tip for pieces of coal. He would return after about 30 minutes. I would still be where left me, cold and scared stiff. Then we would climb the Graig back home home. I must have been only about 8 then.

We kept a few chickens, the one day the cockerel attacked my mother. My father went down with a broom handle and sorted him out.

I went to school at Hengoed Infants, then on to the junior school. Our headmaster was Mr Owen. Can anyone remember Knobby Hayes? What a character he was. Then it was down to Ystrad Mynach Secondary Modern until you left school. I did not hear the word 'bully' then.

My first job, like nearly everybody, was down the mines, firstly training in Bargoed then to the local colliery, Penallta. I then went to work in Cardiff General Station as it was known the, then in 1961 I joined the S W B. My parents moved from Hengoed when I was in the Army, my mother in law and three of my sister-in-laws still live there so it cannot be a bad place to live.