Railway Terrace

A Memory of Blaenclydach.

I will always have happy memories of spending most of my school holidays with my grandparents, Tom and Emma Howley, in Railway Terrace. I can still remember the smell of the bakery at the end of the road. I know we also had relatives over 'bush' named Howley. Travelling from Oxfordshire by train to Tonypandy was an adventure in itself in the early to late 1940s. As the school holiday times didn't match I often spent a week or a few days at the big school near Maddox Street. The days were then spent mostly up the mountain, at mealtimes my gran would tie a teatowel to a broom handle so we would know it was time to go back. My main friends then were the Adams, and the Morgan children. Trips to the cinema in Clydach and Pandy and the Empire theatre were further treats. I remember there was a shop that sold fantastic ice-cream in Pandy Square. There was also  the swings and round-a-bouts set partly under Monkey Bridge. Now when I think back to the state we got into by playing around the slag heaps, in today's hygienic world our mothers would collapse with a fit of the vapours.