Newsletter

NEWSLETTER AUTUMN 2014 What do we do?

1 Arrange about 150 walks and talks each year 2 Publish the annual journal Gower, and other texts 3 Support a programme of schools and youth activities 4 Monitor planning applications that may affect Gower 5 Lobby/campaign against inappropriate development 6 Give annual awards to promote good practice 7 Provide grants to Gower causes - £300,000 given in the last ten years. (from The Gower Society: Five Year Plan 2014-2018 – download from www.thegowersociety.org.uk, or send s.a.e to the Secretary: postage is £1.17) The Gower Show 2014 This year the Society, as in previous years, was pleased to have been a major sponsor of the Gower Show. In 2014 this annual event was held on Sunday 3rd August at Penrice Park. This year no-one got soaked with rain, although the previous days had some heavy showers. Car parks filled early and soon the showground was a hive of activity.

It was a pleasure to have so many people visiting our marquee, looking at the displays and talking to us. We welcome all the new members who joined us on the day, including one visitor from New Zealand! Two lapsed members took the opportunity to re-join and a handful upped their payments so that their 2014 subscription amount became correct.

We always welcome member volunteers to help the committee with prior planning, displays, porterage to and from the Show, and attendance in the marquee on the day.

The Gower Society was pleased to offer space in their marquee this year to the Gower Bird Hospital. Their display and literature attracted much attention from the visitors. Dan Forman was kept busy explaining about the valuable work they do, both for birds and other fauna and answering questions.

Finally, a date for your 2015 diaries - next year’s Gower Show will be on Sunday 2nd August!

Hidden Histories of Swansea and Gower With the possible exception of the late Bernard Morris, no Gower Society committee member has given as many talks on Swansea and Gower history to local societies as Gary Gregor. He has contributed numerous articles to Gower as well as books on Edgar Evans and contributions to other Society publications. Many Gower Society members who live in the Swansea/Gower area will be familiar with his very popular series of ‘Hidden History’ articles published in the South Wales Evening Post. They have been described as ‘bite-size bits of history’ and describe quirky bits of our past. Some throw a new light on history we already knew, others uncover aspects of Swansea and Gower that we knew nothing about. Forty-five of these articles have now been brought together, with almost 100 photographs, in the Gower Society’s latest publication: Hidden Histories of Swansea and Gower. Subjects covered are as varied as Lady Barham, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, The Llanelli railway strike, the Oxwich brooch and Alfred Sisley. It is a beautifully produced soft-back book at the very reasonable price of £5.95 and will make a charming addition to the library of anyone with an interest

in Swansea and Gower; and a modest and delightful Christmas gift that will give more pleasure and last a lot longer than a box of chocolates! It is available from local shops and direct from the Society.

Two ongoing projects: The Rhossili Lookout Restoration is due to start in September - our Special Projects sub-committee has approved a grant of £15,000, half the estimated cost. The Society’s contribution will be recognised by a plaque on site.

The initial work on the Parkmill Walls has been completed. We are enquiring when work will recommence after the holiday season, what stretches of wall are to be tackled, and about the sourcing of stones Bethel chapel, Penclawdd One grant given during the last year was to Bethel chapel in Penclawdd. This large Welsh Independent chapel, which was rebuilt in 1910 with an imposing neo-classical façade, overlooks the village, but it had become uneconomical and unsuitable for modern use. With financial assistance from the Society, work was carried out (much by the members themselves) to transform the adjoining Sunday School into a suitable place for worship and meetings. This was officially opened on Friday 5th September, with a plaque being unveiled the following day. The pastor Mr Christian Williams, along with some chapel members, was present at our last AGM to receive a Design Award for the fine work.

The original building had dated back to 1818, being the third chapel erected by Diana Middleton, Lady Barham, in the peninsula.

Blue Plaques for Vernon Watkins and Edgar Evans Following a meeting at the Waterfront Museum on 16 November 2012, the Council’s Blue Plaque scheme has swung into operation. The initial plaques were placed at the Railway Station for rock musician Pete Ham, outside Ebenezer Baptist Church for missionary to China Dr Griffith John, by Orchard Street Clinic for women’s rights campaigner Emily Phipps, on the seafront side of the Civic Centre for ‘Ann of Swansea’, and (in July) at Cwmdonkin Park.

On Wednesday October 29th, two days after the centenary of Dylan Thomas’s birth, a blue plaque will be unveiled for Pennard poet Vernon Watkins. This will be outside his place of work, the former branch of Lloyds Bank, at the corner of St Helen’s Road and Beach Street. The unveiling starts at 10am.

Then on Thursday 27th November another blue plaque will be unveiled in Middleton, Rhossili, at the birthplace of P.O. Edgar Evans, who died returning from the South Pole on Captain Scott’s 1910 Antarctic expedition. The house is on the right after you cross the cattle grid, on the way to Fernhill Top. Countryfile You may have seen that BBC1’s Countryfile has again featured Gower. In mid-July the Sunday evening programme concerned explosives at Whiteford, and an interview with the 90-year-old widow of Pennard poet Vernon Watkins, showing some good 1960s footage of him at Pwll Du bay and in the garden of his home overlooking Heatherslade bay on Pennard cliffs.

above: Redcliffe, where Vernon Watkins lived 1919-31 Incidentally, with the Gower Society’s help, work to complete a biography of Vernon Watkins by Richard Ramsbotham is under way; the original research was done several years ago but without finding a suitable publisher. With the approval of his widow Mrs Gwen Watkins, the book should come out on the 50th anniversary of the poet’s 1967 death in Seattle. Gower 64 has a fine article on his poetry, and the Gower Festival lecture in July was on Swansea’s Other Poet.

Out soon - Gower 65 Put the date of Saturday 18th November 7.00pm into your diaries now, as that will see the launch at Sketty Parish Centre of Gower 65. Come to pick up your copy and to buy others as an ideal Christmas gift. In it you will find articles covering such subjects as a forgotten tin-works, Gower poultry and pigs, how to pick the ideal Christmas tree, who wrote under the nom-de-plume of Weobley, a poetic bank clerk, the building of an 18th century Swansea market, as well as learn of the salient features of oyster women and mussel gatherers, the arrival of Roy Barker IV, and how Swansea Welsh in Paris were mistaken for Germans! All this, and the new index for Gower volumes 61-65 - as you can see, an eclectic and fascinating glimpse into the heritage of Gower.

Subscriptions Many thanks to all members who updated their Banker’s Order to take account of the raised subscription decided at the 2013 AGM. This new rate of subscription took effect from 1st January 2014 and was highlighted in two Newsletters.

Not all our members have paid at the correct rate, and these were sent a personal reminder letter in May. But we still have over a hundred who are paying at the old rate.

If you are one of these you will find a letter enclosed with this mailing plus a Banker’s Order to complete. Prompt return of your payment and form will put you back on our membership list. If we do not hear from you before the end of September, this will be your last mailing from the Society and you will not receive the new volume of Gower in November.

The Society is currently exploring software which will enable us to put our membership records onto computer, though finding a compatible package is not easy. Before this is done, our membership list needs to be as complete and accurate as we can make it.

Please do not let your membership lapse through an oversight – we value our members.

Mrs Elisabeth Hill We are sorry to report the death of one of our long-standing members, Mrs Elisabeth Hill of Hendrefoilan. She met her husband Clem on a Gower Society walk – they would have celebrated their Golden Anniversary in 2015. A keen walker in her younger days, Mrs Hill was present at one of our afternoon talks, along with her sister Miss Eunice Conibear, last February.

We send our condolences to her family.

Membership Secretary retiring Margaret Gillett relinquished her post as Membership Secretary due to ill health earlier this year. She has been the voice of the Society on the end of the phone responding to enquiries from our members – a task she has much enjoyed.

The Society is much indebted to her for her patience and the care with which she kept members’ record cards updated for 17 years – she will be much missed.

In a temporary capacity Ruth Ridge has taken over until our membership list has been finalised. If you have any queries, she can be contacted through our website, http://www.thegowersociety.org.uk. Raising subscriptions always brings problems, not least from the tardy updaters and the sometimes inefficient banks!

The Society must thank Steve Davies who (among other roles he fulfils) maintains our membership list and prints mailing labels, and also Catherine Jones who has the daunting task of trying to make an accurate claim for gift aid tax repayment.

Retiring Chairman & Hon. Secretary The committee organised a lunch on 2nd April at The Coalhouse in Oxwich Bay to mark the long service of Malcolm and Ruth Ridge to the Society. Malcolm and Ruth would like to thank all those who attended – they were so surprised by the number of old friends who were there. Speeches were made, memories rekindled and a picture was presented to the retiring officers – On the Gower Coast by Charles Hannaford. They also received a mounted copy of a mock-up South Wales Evening Post page – which contained part of their recently published interview and some ‘interesting’ photographs of the two from the Post archives.

Malcolm and Ruth would like to thank once again all who made this such a pleasant occasion. As you will gather, they have not as yet moved away……

(Until that happens they both continue to serve the Society and Gower – Ed.).

Planning Applications online The City and County of Swansea (CCS) is going over to a paperless planning system. It means that we can now look up on their planning website most of the planning applications with comparative ease. No trips into the Civic Centre are required, and you can see all the plans, correspondence, objections and decisions from your computer. But there are problems – large, complex applications are difficult to get to grips with, and many applicants do not show any dimensions on the plans. This is a concern to us because we suspect that it is sometimes a deliberate subterfuge by the applicant, although the CCS planners say that there will be a system of measuring online. We cannot see why it is not compulsory to show the key dimensions.

So if you are inclined to look online, first search ‘Environment and Planning’ from the website of the City and County of Swansea - www.swansea.gov.uk. The page that comes up has a list of Related Pages on the right hand side. Click onto the top one of these - Planning Application Search. This produces a page with fives boxes that are self explanatory.

For instance, if you do not know the planning application number of a particular application in Pennard, type in Pennard in the top left box. Click search and all the applications for Pennard will come up as a list in application number/date order. Now click on the one that you wish to look at, and you will see a summary sheet showing what the application is for, when it was listed, who is dealing with it, and what is its current status.

Below this is a list of documents and a column headed View with the details entered in blue. You might start by looking at the location plan (to see exactly where it is), followed by the block plan, and then the detailed drawings.

All is accessible at the click of a button! The Design and Access statement can be interesting because there is often a

lot of ‘waffle’ to justify the application. As a rule, the more contentious the application the more 'waffle' there may be! If you comment on an application online, your response will be listed fairly quickly, usually excluding your name and address.

Do take an interest in your local planning applications, but be warned - it can become addictive!

Gordon Howe

Apology The details of some of our members may be incorrectly recorded. If so, we apologise.

Have you moved and forgotten to tell us? Has your bank not honoured your standing order? Please check your statements. Do we have your correct telephone number and email address?

The task group on membership is working hard to make our list as accurate as is possible. If you wish to send any further information to us, please get in touch with Ruth Ridge via our web site: http://www.thegowersociety.org.uk.

House for Sale You may have seen that Hendrefoilan House, the former home of Lewis Llewellyn Dillwyn MP, where his daughter Amy Dillwyn grew up, is for sale, along with nearly eight acres of land. This large Tudor Gothic mansion was built in 1855 and its former stables housed the South Wales Miners’ Library. The property has belonged to the University since 1964, but for some time it has been unused and fallen into an increasing state of disrepair. We hope that this historic grade II listed mansion can be restored and serve a useful purpose once again.

Visit of BAfM to Swansea The National Conference of the British Association for Friends of Museums takes place at the Marriott Hotel in Swansea from 26th to 28th September. Lyndon Morris of the Royal Institution of South Wales has arranged many talks, tours and visits, in which no doubt several readers living locally will be involved.

Stouthall invigorated Many local people will have noticed that the former Georgian-style mansion of the Lucas family near Reynoldston is covered with scaffolding as exterior work is carried out. Though owned by the Morgan family, Stouthall is leased to the London Borough of Merton, who have sub-leased it to Carreg Adventure. This company is breathing fresh life into an estate that has been disused for too long. Plans are for a residential activity centre with an archery range and obstacle course in the 15-acre grounds, classes to teach English as a foreign language, and even to hold tepee-style weddings there.

Storage space needed We are looking to rent suitable storage premises, mainly for publications, but also for display material and equipment used at the Gower Show. Please contact the secretary via our web site http://www.thegowersociety.org.uk with any offers or suggestions.

2014 Design Guide Writing in the second half of 2014, we are already looking out for suitable candidates for the Design Awards. The full list will be assembled by December, and we then consider all that have been put forward, and select possible winners.

Some have suggested we only give awards to traditional houses and restorations: that is not true, but we do find it difficult to select new modern houses and buildings because of a paucity of decent designs on offer. We are not

professional architects and we are not influenced by the 'Emperor’s Clothes'. Our team just look at what is best for Gower and what we think fits into the landscape. See our publication Vernacular Gower.

I think we appreciate good workmanship. If you want us to look at any project in the AONB, or the whole of the Lordship of Gower, let us know during the next few months via our web site http://www.thegowersociety.org.uk.

New Publications Secretary After many years of looking after the distribution of our publications to retail outlets, and keeping them ‘topped up’, Mrs Hildegarde Roberts has decided to hand on these responsibilities to Mrs Margaret ap Gwent.

Thank you, Hildegarde, for your much appreciated contribution to the Society, and for following in the family tradition (see for example Yesterday’s Gower or The Sea beneath My Feet).

Pennard library Members who live locally will know that Pennard library – the only one in peninsular Gower (the nearest libraries otherwise are in Gowerton or Mumbles) – was under threat of closure. But there are ambitious plans for this to be completely rebuilt, to include a café, a community area and offering IT lessons. This would be renamed in honour of local poet Vernon Watkins, who used to live in Westcliff on Pennard cliffs, and whose widow Gwen aged 90 lives in Mumbles. The Friends of Pennard Library have submitted plans to the Council, and funding grants are being investigated.

Folk Dancing The Gower Society’s folk dance section meets in Brynmill Junior School on alternate Thursdays; numbers have remained fairly stable over the last two years. We fund these evenings ourselves, as the charge of £2.50 per person per session covers the cost of hiring the hall.

We were left a wealth of CDs and cassette tapes collected by our former leader, Frances Wood. We are now attempting to convert the old tapes before they deteriorate too much to be stored on computer, ready for burning onto CDs: Steve Davies has given much time and help to date in this task.

Our main music system is a bulky CD/cassette gratefully accepted from the Murton Folk Dancers when they disbanded.

Although the system (over ten years old) is working well at present, we now have most of our music safely on CD, we are working towards having everything stored in digital format to be played on an MP3 player.

Grace Birt Decorative and Fine Arts Societies There are plans to set up a branch of the National Association of the Decorative and Fine Arts Societies (NADFAS) in Swansea, to meet at the YMCA. If you are interested in forming a steering committee, please ring Mrs Lyn Slade telephone 01372-273847, or email william.slade@sky.com.

New book: Law and Postal Order Carol Powell's seventh local history book is set in Mumbles and tells the stories of the lives of the local policemen and post office staff working in the village and parish of Oystermouth during a century of prodigious change from the 1850s to the 1950s.

The section on the Police explores who they were, where they lived and worked, what they wore, their pay, the use of police boxes, the wide variety of their duties from dealing with tragedies, thefts, drunkenness, traffic offences and

attending inquests, their role as firemen between the wars, through to crowd control at Royal visits, regattas and their awards.

The Post Office chapter describes the changing whereabouts of the various post offices, the subpostmasters/mistresses, staff, post boxes, times of collections and deliveries, prices of merchandise, the advent of the old age pension and the introduction of the 'Separation Allowance' payment, plus the commencement of the telegraph and telephone services.

The book costs ÂŁ4.99 from Cover-to-Cover in Mumbles or Blackpill post office.

Nitten Field, Mewslade The Society has been involved in this important conservation project in this 3-acre field in Middleton for the last 12 years. The seed planted this year was a standard Campaign Mix from Frontier Seeds containing a variety of seedproducing species. There was also 1kg of wild flower mix, 5kg dwarf sunflowers and 1kg of red poppies added to give greater seed variety and colour. Along two sides was planted a 6m wide strip of ‘stand and deliver’ (2kg), a perennial chicory that will produce in 18 months time a fine seed that remains on the plant and is attractive to seed-eating species. The field has received 400kg of 20:10:10 fertiliser that is essential in the absence of organic animal manure.

Planting was delayed until 1st June this year, in efforts to rid the field of sow thistles and slugs. Growth at the time of writing is phenomenal.

The red poppy has been added to commemorate and remember William Gibbs, the only soldier (from the 20 or so from the Parish of Rhossili who served in the First World War) to die in that war that began 100 years ago. Will Gibbs was born and lived in Mewslade View Farm and worked this very field with his family prior to the war. Let us hope that the red poppy flourishes in his memory, though planting was a little late.

We hope to eventually see a large number of different insects, butterflies and bees attracted to the variety of plants on offer, and these in turn will attract visiting migrant insect-eating birds such as whitethroats, chiff chaffs, warblers, swallows and house martins during the summer. Hopefully the autumn will see a large gathering of various seed-eating finches, bramblings, reed buntings, yellowhammers, house sparrows and other seed-eating birds, both resident and migrant, over the winter period. Rare migrants have been observed in September and October in previous years when local ringing expert Barry Stewart has caught and ringed many hundreds of birds. He also identified well over 150 different species of moth in night-trapping exercises in the late summer and early autumn.

We have sheets around the field that attract numerous adders, grass snakes and slow worms and occasional common lizards: there are more than you would imagine!

All seeds are obtained from Frontier Seeds of Lincoln. The cultivation/planting is done

by Eirwyn Harry of West Pilton Farm and Tom Roderick of Scurlage Farm.

Grants this year were from The Sustainability Development Fund via the City and County of Swansea and the Gower Society (in equal proportions) who have supported this project from the start 13 years ago, and without which we could not have continued with the project. Conservation of this type is regrettably not cheap. Anyone interested can look into the field, or contact Beryl or Gordon Howe at mewslade@aol.com.

A Long Walk Many readers will have undertaken one or more lengthy walks - perhaps with the Ramblers, or in the Dales or the Peak District, or perhaps on a walking holiday abroad. On Saturday 4th October you may see people on a 50-mile walk

around peninsula Gower! They start at 0730 from St Madoc’s camp near Llanmadoc, where bunkhouse accommodation is available on the Friday and Saturday nights, and proceed anti-clockwise around the coastal path until Blackpill, then go up the Clyne cycle path to Gowerton, and back along the north Gower coast. There will be seven checkpoints on the route, but participants are required to take a torch, whistle, mobile phone, first aid kit, waterproofs, sufficient food and drink, etc. The time limit is 18 hours…

Further details from www.runwalkcrawl.co.uk Action for Verges Bee populations have suffered over the last few years - they and other pollinators need our help, as without them ecosystems will not flourish. We can all do our bit by enriching our gardens with plants that provide food and breeding sites for insects.

There is a groundswell of support slowly growing to encourage this on a wider scale. The broadcaster and TV gardener, Alan Titchmarsh, is spearheading a campaign by Plantlife to enhance roadside verges. It aims to encourage local authorities to leave verges unmowed over summer, so that the flora can flower, set seed and then distribute its seeds.

This would entail mowing only between late August/early September through to March.

Allowing the flora to flourish will benefit our essential pollinators and halt the loss of flower populations – which have too often been mowed down in their prime. In some cases, it could be necessary to mow a narrow strip edging the road for road safety reasons (but leaving the majority of the verge untouched). As Alan Titchmarsh has said ‘We’ve lost 98% of our wild flower meadows, let’s look after the slivers that are left’.

A verge that has been left to flourish borders the marsh road adjacent to the Oxwich National Nature Reserve. There is yellow rattle present, a plant that parasitises grass and by weakening it allows other plants to multiply. There are orchids, clovers, yellow iris – all these would be absent if the owner, the Penrice Estate, had not persuaded the local authority to refrain from mowing. Just imagine what our verges would look like over the county if this practice were to be adopted as council policy. Let us hope that this will be so.

You can read more about Plantlife’s campaign on www.plantlife.org.uk. Buglife has a campaign that embodies seven principles and 27 action points – all to encourage an increase in pollinators.

We should all be persuading our local authority to sign up to this campaign. The City and County of Swansea is moving in the right direction with their wild flower seeding on council land last year. Now is a good time to act. The second week in June was Wales Biodiversity Week – but let us all try to do our part to improve our ecosystems for the future.

See www.biodiversitywales.org.uk