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Ochrwyth

Ochrwyth maps

Historic maps of Ochrwyth and the local area, hand-drawn by Ordnance Survey and Samuel Lewis.   View all Ochrwyth maps

Ochrwyth area books

Displaying 1 of 3 books about Ochrwyth and the local area.   View all books for this area

Memories of Ochrwyth

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Gwent memories

Happy Days

General View c1955
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I was born in a house on, and have lived in, Channel View for my entire life. I now live in a house built to the left of the garages in the forground. As a kid I played behind those garages and made dens with my mates and sailed down and sunk in the canal on home-made rafts, which is where the picture is taken from.

Takes me Back

Twm Barlwm From Canal c1955
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In this picture, the post in the middle of the path is an old canon barrel. When I went for walks along this canal as a kid, I can remember running on ahead of my parents a short distance with my brother and sister to the canon barrel to see how much dirt and gravel we could gather up and shove down the end of it before my parents caught up with us. The house in the distance is Fernlea, and the picture is taken from the canal path outside the 'Prince of Wales' public house.

Channel View

General View c1955
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I was born in No 9 Manor Bungalows (The Prefabs), in 1947, Channel View wasn't built then, the area was laid to allotments & then open meadow to Gelli Crescent & Tynycwm Halt Railway platforms. In 1955 the second Phase of Channel View was built & we lived on the road leading to the Garages in the foreground of the Picture, the third Phase of Channel view was built a couple of years later to the left of the Garages & eventually connected to Gelli Crescent. In the middle ground of the Picture are Pontymister Welfare Grounds & the bowling Green, in the far distance is Pontymister Steelworks Just below Ochrwyth & Machen mountain. Before the Power Station was built at Rogerstone we had a clear View of the Bristol Channel !! which was later obscured by the Power Station Cooling Towers, sad, before Phase three we also had clear views of the Cricket Grounds. To the right/opposite the two garages were another two garages, in the Seventies my... Read more

Channel View

I've seen this photo in several places and it's always captioned as being 1965 - it's got to be before that because I lived in Channel View from 1960 to 63 just below those garages on the right of the photo - and in this photo the building hasn't even started.

I can remember playing behind those garages - even creating a little "graveyard" there for my deceased pet white mice. There's a path up to the canal from behind the garages (which is where this photo is taken from) and there was a great tree-swing with a death defying drop if you swung all the way out from the bank - I imagine there were quite a few injuries, if not broken bones as a result of that swing.

Happy days

Telephoning

Tredegar Street c1955
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The public telephone in this picture of Tredegar Street was outside my father's butcher shop. There were only two buttons to press: button A and button B, but people were terrified of pressing the wrong one. My father, Gomer Mumford, used to do the phoning for lots of people. Sometimes coins would jam in the mechanism so he would release them using a butcher's knife and pocket the money!
Next door, to the butcher shop my mother Adelaide opened a flower shop just before the Coronation. Bit by bit we added plants, fruit and vegetables. When sweets came off ration we also sold confectionery. Such was the pent-up craving for sweets that I remember selling fifteen 7 lb jars of Sherbert Lemons in a day. People queuing for the Palace cinema used to buy sweets and cigarettes from us. All the family would be on hand to cope with the tremendous rush of trade. We had a side window devoted to sweets for children. At lunchtime we would be pressed... Read more

Playing on The Canal

The Canal From Darren Bridge c1955
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I spent many happy days here with my brother and sister. Playing in home-made boats made from corrugated tin, catching tadpoles and skating on very thin ice in the winter. I lived in Woodview Road and my grandparents lived in Mount Pleasant.

Memories of Risca

Canal Bridge And Moriah Hill c1955
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This shot brings back a hell of a lot of memories. We used to play on the canal bank here and fish for sticklebacks in the shallow bit under the bridge. I even had had my first real snog in the graveyard (nice!) over the bridge on the left. You can just see the Prince of Wales pub through the arch. The gate in the hedge on the left was the back gate to my garden.

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