Childhood To Marriage

A Memory of Llanhilleth.

MY first memory of"LLan"was driving down the hill from Swffryyd, to my new home at No.6 High Street. My father Thomas Hughes, with my mother Eileen, had purchased Barttlets Grocery Store,a long held wish of my fathers to own his own grocery business..after early years as a grocers 'lad' and enforced war years, ensconed in the centre of birmingham as a tool maker turning out precision parts for the war.
I was 7yrs old, my sister Janice 5. As a lad from "Brum"being accepted into a close welsh society was difficult to say the least, and many an altercation was on the cards in the first few months.
Junior School for both of us was at LLanhilleth Junior, high on the hill behind the main street, good days, but still ruled in the old manner,by cane and slipper, but with no lasting harm. Secondary for me was Brynhyfryd , there only for a year before ,on failing my 11 plus, won a scholarship to AbertilleryTtechnical, which was to give me one of the best inductions into anything and everything in engineering. This was followed in later years, to say the least, disappointing .My father had painted a picture of green fields and a park with a river running alongside. He had omitted to mention the huge colliery working along with its tips disspoiling the mountain view, the multiple track railway despoiling the valley floor,and the river, The Ebbw was so thick with industrial rubbish and coal dust,you could walk across it. But of course, his did not spoil a childhood that did have green mountains to climb, and even pit props and coal dram lines were magic to young boys.Whatever happened to the other three mates that I grew up with? In teens, Tony Jones a slaughter house lad. I was told we lost him a few years back to a stroke, but not before he had owned his own butchers down the bottom af "Llans"famous 1 in 7 hilly road. His cousin, Alan, I last heard was at Swansea Uni, we often played chess when he first came to Swansea, and where I was then working and living. And finally, Keith Purkiss who lived up on top of the slope behind Brynhyfryd School, last seen at his wedding. His mother and father were choirmaster/organist at St Marks Church,where I and Keith were choir boys, under the stern gaze of the rev Madog Williams.
Schooldays finished, I started my working life at British Nylon Spinners Pontypool. A mechanic/setter in weaving shed, which was part of Technical Development Dept, for the then new nylon. A position that with hindsight I should have vacated as soon as possible, but did not, and paid the price of going deaf in the space of 6yrs or so...weaving shed noise plus no ear protection not a good combination.
My parents having built up the business, but seeing the way the coal industry was in decline, sold and moved to Swansea. I, now courting and later engaged, was looking for digs and one of my work mates Trevor Llewellyn offered me a bed in his parents cottage. The cottage was situated at the top of the mountain overlooking the Aberbeeg/Llanhilleth Valley, a good half hour walk each way to the works bus, or anywhere else for that matter! Trevor, his mam, dad, two dogs and I shared a two up, one down cottage for a number of years. Mrs Llewellyn like a second mother.The last time I saw them all was back in my early 20s..........good memories. The Church of St Llltyd was just across the road, one of the oldest in Wales it still stands..just, no longer welcoming worshippers, but a monument to past times.
Married a girl from Cwmtillery. Met at the "Memo" in Newbridge. This dance hall? cinema, was the place in the 60s, live music and acts., have missed the last bus from there many a Saturday night and had to walk home, sometimes catching the milkman and his horse drawn cart for a lift somewhere between Crumlin and the Royal Oak.The "Memo" is now being rebuilt to its former glory, with contributions from local people and the lottery.
And so the final chapter. Got married moved to Swansea, two sons Jonathan and Ian, sadly lost Jonathan to heart problems at 36 ,leaving a widow and twins. Ian his brother is a chef, living and working in the west country, married with two children. Me, I sadly got divorced from their mother....retired....and met and married my lovely wife Jennifer,and living in deepest Pembrokeshire..Happy.
I often think back as older people are want to do, to the somewhat carefree days of
childhood at Llanhilleth.go there now..green mountains, no tips! Railways gone, replaced with dual carriage way road! The "rows" consisted of three rows of miners cottages built into the hillside, housing the miners that worked into the colliery below. The Miners Insitute,still standing, where I learned to play snooker and billiards, and the "fields" row apon row of miners houses built on the valley floor. Does anyone remember the "quoit" matches they played alongside that black river Ebbw which I've now been told holds trout for the first time in maybe a hundred years? Being a fisher of the 'fly', I may just pay a visit and try my luck, that really would be a memory to pass on!

Derek Hughes 72.............Circa2012