Mainly from the First Half of the Twentieth Century

I was born at Felin Fach, or Little Mill, which is shown on one of the maps on this Web site, and lived there until 1944.  The old house was demolished following my Mother's death in 1973, and a splendid new house now stands on the same site.  It may be of some interest for you to know that my Great-Grandfather, Abraham Langdon (1851 to 1925) and his wife, Mary, lived at this house before my parents, and my Great-Great-Grandfather, also Abraham Langdon, who was born in 1820 at Silworthy in Somerset, was the last person to reside at the Old Windmill Cottage, which stood about fifty yards to the East of the Windmill.

Great-Grandfather Abraham was a stalwart at St. Brides-super-Ely Church, and I understand that he served as Verger and also taught Sunday School for many years until shortly before his death.  My late Sister could remember him very well, and I have a very good old photograph of him in his vergers robe.  I was Altar Boy at the church from 1938 until I entered the army in 1944 and have many happy memories of those times with the Reverend David Jenkins.

The village set-up was always the same, surrounded by rather imposing homes.  The Plymouth Estates, owned by the Earl of Plymouth, extended to the Eastern boundary of the village, which was the Dowlais Brook, although Tregurnog Farm which was to the West of the Brook was also part of the Plymouth Estates.  The large houses around St. Brides were generally owned and occupied by families who were involved in the shipping and coal business and had often migrated to Glamorgan from the West of England (Somerset and Devonshire).

Written by John Tonkin, January, 2001

The village of St Brides was made up of small cottages, mostly thatched, the church and the chapel.  At one time there had been an inn and a brewery – hence the present day names of two properties, The Old Brewhouse and Hefn Defern.  Most of these cottages were owned either by the Earl of Plymouth or the Traherne family, but some of them were later occupied by workers at The Grange.  Strangely some were owned by a Durnell family of Pontcanna, and one by a Mr Jenkins of Swansea, and it is thanks to this Mr Jenkins for leaving us most of the photographs of St Brides.

Although these cottages were small, some quite large families were very happily brought up in them.  One notable family was the Murleys.  John Murley was born and brought up in a cottage on Cnepin corner.  He married a young lady from Pembroke who was 'in service' at the Rectory.  They lived in the Post Office, which also housed a sweet and cigarette shop.  They had, I believe, nine or ten children, although the older ones would have left home before the youngest (twins) were born.  In the 1930's the Post Office in Peterston was 'held up' by a man thought to have a gun and a bicycle for his getaway.  When he was caught, he stated in court that he had stopped in St Brides but thought it too small to have much money – much to the relief of the then postmistress.

During the Second World War the last of a string of bombs – the first having killed a motorcyclist sheltering under a railway bridge at Rhydlafar – fell just outside the boundary wall of the Post Office.  Most of the roof and all of the windows were blown out.  Mr and Mrs Murley, by now very elderly were in bed at the time.  My parents seeing the lights ran to their aid and to extinguish the lights only to find them disorientated and treading bare foot in glass.  Mr Murley was the John Murley who planted the magnificent willow trees just outside the church wall, but sadly they were taken down in the 1960's.

Another cottage, Pentwyn, overlooking the church, had its own tragedy.  A little girl recovering from measles, ran out of the house to see her mother and grandmother dealing with a swarm of bees.  They told her to go indoors to keep warm.  She had masses of hair, and it is believed that she went too close to the open fire so that her hair caught alight and she was burned to death.

This girl's sister Mrs Gardiner told how hard the villagers worked to build the Parish Room.  Although the building had nothing to do with the church, the rector gave them the use of his drawing room in the rectory to raise money by staging concerts (popular in those days), jumble sales and fairs, etc.  Mrs Traherne (Sir Cenydd's mother) gave the villagers the land for the Parish Room at a peppercorn rent.  It was always known as the Parish Room and it is only in recent years that it has been known as the Church Hall.

Sunday School Christmas parties used to beheld in the hall.  Mothers worked very hard together to provide a magnificent tea.  There was also an annual outing to the seaside in August.  Here again parents provided a banquet though large restaurants would allow visitors to use their facilities on condition that tea and other drinks were bought on the premises.  They displayed large advertisements "Tea with your own food."

Visitors to the church yard would have admired the beautifully kept rows of graves, particularly at Easter, and all in their family lines – one row of Murleys, one row of Gardiners, and so on.  There was also a row of Wattses.  These were the Watts of St-y-Nyll who lived there before a fire necessitating the rebuilding of the house.  Similarly families had their own rows of pews in church.

The church was crowded both for matins and Evensong, and people came from a long distance – for example from the farms at Stockland and at Llanfair where Crocketts lived.  One lady who cycled quite a long distance was very daring for those times – she smoked!  She was always late for church and, on one occasion, in her haste failed to completely extinguish her cigarette before putting it in her pocket.  A little way through the service the verger tapped her on the shoulder and said, "Mrs Wills, do you know you are on fire?"

Another notable character was a lady who had had in her younger days a very good voice and was an accomplished organist, although there was little call for her to play as the rector had two daughters who could play the organ.  Sadly her mind became enfeebled and she would sit in the front pew turn round and conduct the psalm and hymn singing, much to the amusement of the younger element.

During the Second World War the then rector, David Jenkins held a short service in the church at 7 p.m. every night and read aloud the names of all the servicemen from the parish.  They all returned safely.  The rector was the only person in the village to own a car, and this he put at the villagers' disposal for visits to hospital and to relatives of elderly people.  One of his daughters was always ready and willing to drive the car, making herself available to everyone at all times.  The rectory door was never locked so that anyone could use the telephone, again the only one in the village.

Another feature of the village was the well.  One or two houses had wells in their gardens but for most villagers the well alongside the Church was the main source of water.  The path to this, outside the church wall, was tended by the local road man Tom Elay.  He would tend the whole area around the church on Saturday mornings, winter and summer.  The well would be particularly busy on Sunday evenings with men filling up the wash tubs for their wives to do the Monday wash.  It was hard work.  One lady living in a nearby cottage disliked other people so much that she went to bed by day and did her work at night, including carrying her water from the well which creaked so that one often heard that eerie noise in the middle of the night.

There was little need for shopping expeditions into Cardiff as there were so many tradesmen calling.  There were two bakers calling an alternate days.  Saturday's highlight was a visit from Eddy's baker's van with their speciality of meat pies and there never to be equalled hot cross buns at Easter.  Dick Eddy is still living in Whitchurch.  James Howells (Cardiff) grocery department delivered orders fortnightly.  They were a first class store so everything that kept for longer periods was bought for them.  Fridays brought Howards Van, operated by two brothers who catered from everyone.  I remember most clearly the crates of oranges and tangerines at Christmas time.  Of course fruit was seasonal then.  Their van was on display at the Industrial and Maritime Museum before it closed.  Ladies and gentlemen could be measured and fitted for suits and coats at home, Davies the tailor from Taffs Well making this possible.  Sunday best was the order of the day, particularly for churchgoers.

Mr Bassett collected the rates weekly.  He had a frail on the handlebars of his bicycle, which held his moneybags – a system that would have exposed him to muggers today.  There was also another weekly caller who was nicknamed 'packie' - from the two large suitcases in which he carried his wares.  He sold clothes and domestic items such as tablecloths and towels door to door and he collected his money at the rate of one shilling per week.  His best customers were invited to his warehouse, I believe on a lower ground floor in Park Place.  Here clothes were offered at wholesale prices.

The cottages in St Brides were lit by oil lamps, although in nearby St Fagans they had gas-lights.  For our oil-lamps Mr Manning had a cart from which he sold paraffin from a tank.  This tank formed the base of a triangular fixture which held jugs for everyday usage as well as some pretty pieces of china, all of which would rattle when his cart was on the move, so that the oil man's approach could be heard from a long way off.  Jugs were used for many different purposes as, for example when the farmer called each morning with the milk churn which had a one-pint and half-pint measure hung on the inside of the churn.  The milk would be transferred into a jug and the housewife would have made a net covering with pretty beads to protect the contents from flies, wasps and other insects.  Another weekly caller was the fish man who appeared on Fridays with fresh fish and salt cod.  The last of this busy group that I can remember was the man who recharged our accumulator batteries that ran the wireless.  All in all, as you can understand, it was a busy but sociable week for the housewife.

Just before the outbreak of war it was decided that council houses should be built on the main road immediately in front of St-y-Nyll.  When this plan was revealed, objections were made by the villagers and the new development was sited on the St George’s road, much to the relief of St Brides residents as there was no one in the parish who needed Council accommodation, so that all the tenants would be outsiders.  Before all the more recent modern additions St Brides was a very attractive village of individual character, these qualities enabling it to win the award for the Best Kept Village in the vale of Glamorgan in 1961.

Written by John Cory, March, 2001

Tom and Jack Eley lived at Primrose Cottage on the road to St Fagans and both were road men.

Mrs Able was a strange woman who lived in a house between the Village Hall and the chapel.  She had 2 sons Walter and Billie.  Walter was killed on the railway line at Fairwater.  Billie lived at the rectory and did odd jobs for Rev Jenkins as well as also assisted at services.

Rev Jenkins' daughters were Margaret and Mary.  Mary worked as a sister at Glanely Hospital in Fairwater.

Written by Betty Simpson, January, 2001

"On the ground where this [St Fagans] Castle now stands there used to be a Norman Castle.  St. Fagans Castle was built in 1580, probably by a lawyer.  When seeing it from the air the house looks like the letter "E."  This followed a typical Elizabethan plan.

The different histories of the families who lived in the Castle at different times can be told.  In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, six Earls of Plymouth owned St. Fagans Castle (Wiliam, 1988, p. 32).  At one time the children of St. Fagans used to go to school in the Castle.  In the nineteenth century they made changes to the building (ibid., p. 37).  From 1852 until 1946 it was lived in by the Plymouth family.[footnote 107]  The Castle was used as a residence in the summer from the beginning until the middle of the twentieth century (ibid., p. 46).

Gwyn Rees, who was interviewed by the writer of this dissertation remembers the time when the the Plymouth family came:

I worked for the Earl of Plymouth.  I started working there when I was fourteen years of age.  In the gardens all the boys started at fourteen-year-old.  We were all youngsters then.  And when we started, do you know the house in the gardens, up by the Plymouth Arms?  In there that was the head gardener's job.  The boys had to go in there in the morning and clean the head gardener's boots and all the family boots, a great range we had to clean, black lead, and we had to wash the kitchen and the back kitchen out, then we had to go, after we done that, we had to go all the way down to the home farm, down by the cricket field, what they call the home farm there and get the milk (...)  I lived a mile and a half away.  St. Brides.  I used a pushbike, it's only a mile and a half.  You know where the crossroad is in St.Fagans?  You turn left there and it is the next little village:  St. Brides-super-Ely it's called (personal correspondence, 2.9.1993).

Source: http://europeanethnology.blogspot.com/ - viewed November, 2007