Good Times

A Memory of Abercarn.

I lived at 14 oak street Chapel of Ease. I can remember the two estates being built and the bridge in the photo is also the way I went to school at the west end primary school. The red phone box is still there I believe, in the photo the high meadow estate is where my butty lionel Haywood lived with his brother David who was a welsh international rugby player. Sometimes we couldn't get to school as the river used to flood right up to the swimming pool, there was no concrete bridge at first it was a swing bridge and not very safe to cross when the river was high. I can still smell the bacon frying in the workmen's hut at the corner where the road bent, these were the shunters who drove the trains from the pit Celynon South. When we got to the bridge at the top very often they stop the engine and let off the steam from the boiler covering the bridge and the kids used to love that for a while because you couldn't see your hand in front of your face. Once a month welsh water would send men up on flat barges to cut the reeds from the canal they would go all the way to the lock at Newbridge, I once wore my father's greatcoat to school we were very poor at the time and it was too long for me; I climbed on the bridge rail and put my foot on the end of the greatcoat and flipped over the edge into the canal. One of the men pulled me out with a boat hook and we all sat in the barge laughing, that was a good day because I didn't have to go to school thanks to that. Next to the bridge bus stop there was a bench; I haven't been back for a long time. On a Sunday morning, my father [George Henry] used to sit on that bench with his mates who were in WW1 with him and talk for a while and then head down to the conservative club in Abercarn for a pint and a nice walk down the canal bank, but sadly now and again I noticed his friends were fading one by one until they were all gone. We had another international rugby player in the village called John Dawes; a great player and he was also a friend. Three of us would go to the park/field and train. I left Gwyddon secondary modern in 1959, my first job was at Foxens hardware shop; then down the pit and then finally the army. I left the village in 1960 and the picture of the bridge has brought back some good memories for me and some not so good but that bridge twigged my memories and it will be there long after I am not.