West Glamorgan Archive Service: Annual Report of the County Archivist, 2019-2020

Adroddiad Blynyddol Archifydd y Sir

Annual Report of the County Archivist

2019-2020 A joint service for Swansea and Neath Port Talbot Councils Gwasanaeth ar y cyd ar gyfer Cynghorau Abertawe a Castell-Nedd Port Talbot

West Glamorgan Archive Service West Glamorgan Archive Service collects documents, maps, photographs, film and sound recordings relating to all aspects of the history of West Glamorgan. It is a joint service for the Councils of the City and County of Swansea and Neath Port Talbot County Borough.

Our mission is the preservation and development of our archive collections, to safeguard our documentary heritage and to enable research in order to further our collective knowledge. We are committed to providing information and the opportunity to engage with archives to everybody.

West Glamorgan Archive Service Civic Centre Oystermouth Road Swansea SA1 3SN

Front cover: Design for a new Regal Theatre off the Dillwyn roundabout at the western end of Kingsway, Swansea, c.1950

 01792 636589

westglam.archives@swansea.gov.uk www.swansea.gov.uk/westglamorganarchives

@westglamarchive

Connecting People and History

Their Royal Highnesses the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall viewing the Archive Service’s exhibition in the Patti Pavilion on the fiftieth anniversary of Swansea gaining the title of city, July.

West Glamorgan Archive Service is run jointly by Swansea and Neath Port Talbot Councils in order to preserve access to their archives and to other archive collections which we have received and collected on their behalf. Residents of the two local authority areas and researchers from across the UK and overseas access our archive collections, both online and in person, in order to carry out a wide variety of research.

As I write this, the archives has been closed to the public since March 18th due to the coronavirus pandemic. We have, since then, seen unprecedented changes in the way we have had to live, work and communicate, and undeniably it has been a challenge for us as it has been for everyone else. The enforced closure has presented some opportunities for reviewing and improving our online offer, though not (as might have been hoped) the opportunity to catch up on cataloguing uncatalogued archive material. The staff are all currently working from home and we are providing content online, whether that is in the form of digitised records on Ancestry and Findmypast, our online catalogue and website, or our increased use of social media. Please see our Facebook page and our website to find out what we have been posting, particularly with regard to the 75th anniversary of VE Day. Like colleagues in archives, museums and galleries across the UK, Archive Service staff are regularly and routinely checking that the collections they care for are secure and that the storage environment is stable and remains within the prescribed limits of temperature and humidity.

There is as yet however no timeline for re-opening to the public, which will be guided by UK and Welsh Government advice and that of our parent authorities. Re-opening will be a phased process to allow for effective management of risk, and our plans should anticipate the possibility of having to adapt or withdraw access again, should public health and government guidance require it. In whatever form we return to some degree of operation, we can expect that the need for social distancing will remain for the foreseeable future, until an effective vaccine is widely available. I am sure that as a result there will, sadly, be less group activity to report on in next year’s annual report.

It is to be hoped that we as a society will come out of this lockdown with a renewed appreciation of the cultural heritage to which we have been denied access for so many weeks. “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone” is not only a lament for things lost but also a warning that we often fail to appreciate what is immediately around us through its very familiarity. When we do rediscover the pleasure of engaging with our written and visual heritage without having to resort to a screen, I hope we may better appreciate its value not financially but in its contribution to our own sense of identity. The human mind has adapted over millennia to structure and organise the way we see the world around us, and a rich appreciation of our heritage, an understanding of our often complex family and community roots, all contribute ultimately to our own sense of well-being and to more cohesive communities. This will be an even more important activity for children and young people to engage in, for whom the pandemic has come at a formative time in their development.

To return to the past year 2019/20 and the subject of this report, the service has continued to use its collective initiative and imagination to promote the archives and attract as wide a range of people to engage with archives, whether or not they end up using the service as an individual visitor. We have launched books, created exhibitions and online resources, hosted visits from schools and local history groups, worked with the press and of course put ourselves out on social media. All these outreach activities have relied on the energy and enthusiasm of a small group of archive staff who operate as a tightly-knit team. Without their dedication, the service would be a fraction of what is described in the following pages.

Historians will be only too well aware that the present pandemic echoes another one which was even more severe and which spread across the world just over one hundred years ago, as the First World War came to an end. The Spanish flu pandemic of 1918-1919 is the subject of an article by archivist Emma Laycock later on in this report. To provide extra reading during times of lockdown, we have included more local history articles than usual this year, adding articles written specially for us by our guest authors Ioan Richard, Jen Wilson and Bernard Lewis, to whom we owe thanks. The chronological scope of these articles is enormous, from prehistory through the Middle Ages and the Victorian era, past two world wars to the last days of the Cold War. Our publication in September of ‘A New, Even Better, Abertawe: Rebuilding Swansea, 1941–1961’ Facebook banner commemorating the Three Nights Blitz on Swansea, February

by Dinah Evans is featured throughout this report, and the wealth of archive material we hold about the post-war rebuilding of Swansea, including the pictures on the front and back covers showing designs for major Swansea buildings that never saw the light of day. It creates a running theme in this report relating to ‘the city re-imagined’, recognising that archives can help us to understand not only our past but also the alternative futures that might have been.

Regular readers of this report will already know that the archives are facing relocation if Swansea Council decides to dispose of the Civic Centre as part of the plans for the next phase of its city centre regeneration. The proposal would see most services currently located in the Civic Centre transferred to a new accessible hub for public sector services located closer to the city centre.

Although no definite decision on the move has been made at the time of writing, a Council consultation was held at the end of 2019 to gauge public opinion, and the move to a new building is seen as the most likely direction of travel and therefore one that should be factored into our service planning.

Despite the huge disruption that will be engendered by dealing with the coronavirus pandemic and its economic aftermath, it is to be hoped that a new appreciation and a clear vision for the future of our archival heritage will also emerge in the coming months.

Annwyl Andrew a staff yr archif: Diolch yn fawr iawn i chi a'r tim ehangach am y croeso cynnes iawn i'r archif heddiw. Roedd y cyflwyniad yn berffaith ac yn galluogi nhw i ddychmygu beth allai fod yn bosib i neud. Roedd llawer ohonyn nhw yn son am ddychwelyd yn wir, roedd hi'n biti na allen ni aros yn hirach. Diolch am gymryd gymaint o ofal gyda'r casgliadau a ddewisoch chi i ni.

Cofion cynnes, Dr Angharad Closs Stephens Prifysgol Abertawe The launch of ‘A New, Even Better, Abertawe: Rebuilding Swansea, 1941–1961’, September

THE ARCHIVES CARD A new reader’s ticket scheme for England and Wales As mentioned in last year’s annual report, the County Archivist has been heavily involved in the development of a new universal archive reader’s ticket for archives in England and Wales. The small working group has comprised John Chambers from the Archives and Records Association, together with Gary Tuson and Sarah Chubb and myself from the Chief Archivists in Local Government Group Executive.

The Archives Card is a modern digital single card system that will benefit both participating archives and users of archives. It replaces the paper based CARN and the Archives Wales systems which are now closing. In Wales, the cards are bilingual and so is the online registration system.

For the archive, the new Archives Card offers a system which is simpler to administer and will save staff time. Higher standards of identity verification combined with accurate recording of user visits will improve security.

Participating archives will also benefit from anonymised reports giving better insights into who is using their services. This will help them better understand how to support users and grow awareness and interest among them.

For the archive user it provides a single, simple way to access archives of all kinds across England and Wales (with the possibility of later expansion of the network to Scotland and Ireland), as well as an efficient solution enabling them to more rapidly access records and optimise their research time.

The Archives Card is owned and operated by ARA Commercial, a subsidiary of the Archives and Records Association and is available for all archive services to use, whether large, small, local authority, university, other public sector, business, private or third sector.

PLANNING FOR SWANSEA IN 2020 ‘20/20 vision’ is a measure of visual acuity which equates to normal vision. Going back several decades, the phrase was taken up as a strapline by a number of organisations to outline a vision of where they would like to get to by 2020. The long distance forward planning was intended to circumvent the short-term approach which is encouraged by local democracy and the understandable desire of councillors to get re-elected at the end of their term.

Swansea City Council was one of these organisations and in 1992 they undertook an exercise to envision how Swansea would look in 2020. As we reach that year, it seems appropriate to revisit a Council file entitled ‘Swansea 2020’ which has lain unresearched in the archives for the last decade or so.

In 1992, local government was still a two-tier system, although unitary local government in Wales was by then under discussion and expected to be undertaken soon by the then Conservative government. In 1974, Swansea City Council had lost many of the powers and functions it had previously enjoyed as a county borough to West Glamorgan County Council.

These included some of the high-level planning powers that this document is predicated upon.

In May and October 1992, the City Council held seminars for its chief officers (‘2020 Vision: The Way Forward’), out of which a document was written, only parts of which are included in the file. We may assume there was more. Further staff input was encouraged through a series of lunchtime seminars for senior staff in early 1993.

So how different is the Swansea of 2020 from the city as envisioned in 1992? Parts of the document look surprisingly similar to the way the city has developed in the intervening 28 years, although not quite exactly the same. Some intervening developments were completely unforeseen while other ideas appear like distant pipe dreams.

The overall concept of the city centre has not changed, primarily because the targets are noncontroversial – ‘A place to work, play and live’, ‘A place for people not cars’ and ‘A place which is attractive with a wide range of facilities’. The new stand-out landmark buildings were to be: 

  

An arena This was seen as a crucial means of attracting conventions and conferences to the city. Interestingly, it was suggested that it should be placed at the northern end of Parc Tawe, an area later developed for retail use by Homebase and subsequently Lidl and others An ice rink This was envisaged for the site of the former gasworks, a site which is today occupied by Tesco’s supermarket.

An aquarium the site of which is not identified in the file, and more water leisure activities, so presumably somewhere along the seafront An industrial theme park on the Yorkshire Imperial Metals (Hafod Copperworks) site

What the planners failed to envision were the relocation of the football stadium away from the cramped Vetch site (they saw the Morfa athletics stadium being further developed as a leisure destination); the SA1 development (they saw the port being expanded to create better links across the European Union) and they failed to incorporate mention of the then one university in the city, let alone anticipate the two we have now.

There are some interesting ideas that never happened (or who knows might one day?): a tourist railway up the Lower Swansea Valley; Wind Street to become the ‘Latin Quarter’ of Swansea for students and artists; a Swansea East motorway services off the Ynysforgan roundabout; and water taxis plying up and down the river Tawe.

Building and preserving our collections

Conservation work underway at Glamorgan Archives on a Briton Ferry Estate map (D/D BF/E 157a) The primary role of the Archive Service is to preserve our documentary heritage for the benefit of future generations, receiving additional gifts and deposits of archive material while maintaining and developing the greatest degree of access to the collections in our care. The pictures in this section show how conservation work on our collections brings our documents back to a useable condition.

The service has continued to collect a variety of records relating to the West Glamorgan area during the year. One of the highlights has been an estate collection, a relatively rare thing to receive these days. It comes from descendants of Evan Morgan (1794-1877) who lived at St Helen’s House, Swansea. The house itself stood on the site of a small monastic foundation associated with a mineral spring, but was demolished in the 1880s to make way for the westwards expansion of Swansea. The records, however, relate not to St Helen’s itself, but to two burgage plots that stood back-to-back, one fronting onto Wind Street and the other onto Fisher Street.

Given all the changes of ownership and alterations in the built environment of Swansea, it is quite rare to have a set of deeds that enable us to trace the history of a pair of adjoining properties back to the sixteenth century. They are clearly identifiable today – the one on Wind Street is the No Sign Wine Bar, while the one that used to be on Fisher Street is the imposing façade that used to house the firm of Strick and Bellingham solicitors on Princess Way. As institutions cease to operate, there is always a danger that their records will be lost in the process. Over the years, rural schools in particular have been closed or merged as their local authorities seek to respond to changing demographics and the need for new provision. The position of a school at the heart of its community makes its records particularly important for community history. In Swansea this year, Ysgol Gynradd Gymraeg Felindre and Craigcefnparc Primary School closed their doors, both having served their respective communities for around a century and a half. In Neath Port Talbot, Cymer Afan Comprehensive School suffered a similar fate. This year we received records from these schools as part of their closing down procedures, as well as records of Pontarddulais, Pentrepoeth and Tregŵyr Schools.

In a similar vein, chapels and churches are an integral part of their community and their records reflect this importance. During the year, records were received from Ebeneser Newydd and Carmarthen Road URC in Swansea and from Seion chapel, Glais, all of which had recently closed. We already held significant collections for Ebeneser Newydd, but for Seion and Carmarthen Road, we received the entire archive telling their history and that of the area where they were situated. A collection of burial registers received from Bethel, Sketty, is the subject of an article in Welsh by Andrew Dulley in the sections below.

Gwynedd Archives Conservation Unit carries out most of our conservation work.

Here are before-and-after pictures showing the repair of Kilvey Copper Works Boys’ School admission register, 1882-1898

By no means all accessions came from institutions that have closed down. Newton Women’s Institute is still flourishing, and its records were received during the year, including minutes and annual reports right back to the beginning of the branch in 1946. In a slightly different vein, several of our local community councils, Llangennith, Llanmadoc and Cheriton, Llanrhidian Higher and Coedffranc Community Councils all placed their minutes and reports into our care. These small councils are also institutions that sit in the heart of the community they serve and whose records sometimes reflect a local reaction to national affairs as well as the impact of purely local events.

More recently, a collection of old deeds came in that date back to Tudor times. They come from the Ynyscedwyn Estate, which owned a large tract of land on both sides of the upper Swansea Valley, around today’s Ystalyfera and Ystradgynlais. The phrase ‘old deeds’ can sound unappealing, but these are anything but: written on parchment and with beeswax seals that sometimes show the fingerprints of the people who concluded the deal, they give a unique early snapshot of life in the area. Many of the farms named in the deeds have names that are unfamiliar today, but their boundaries are fully described, enabling us, with a bit of careful map work, to identify them and reveal a wealth of topographical detail in the process.

Just as important are the names of people: husbands and wives, with lengthy patronymic names, along with their little cottages, substantial farmhouses, arable and meadow lands. These deeds predate the earliest parish registers by a long way, so this may be the only place where some of the names are recorded. This collection is the subject of an article, also by Andrew Dulley, in the sections below.

A roll of honour from Tabor, a chapel in Abergwynfi in the Afan Valley, arrived in a state badly damaged by damp. It needed a considerable amount of conservation work to save for posterity the list of fifty-one names of chapel members who served in the First World War. Original documents from the two world wars such as these were enriched by the deposit in the archives of the fruits of research on Swansea’s wartime servicemen by Charles Wilson-Watkins, known to many readers from his regular contribution to Swansea’s Bay Magazine.

A feature of our work in recent years has been the collection of film and sound material alongside the development of a facility for viewing and listening to it in the archive searchroom. Additions to this collection have continued throughout the year. One ongoing project has been conducted over several years by Peter Hall, a camera enthusiast with a particular interest in the wartime history of Swansea and Gower. His films, received over the course of a decade or more, include interviews with former service personnel, civic events, re-enactments and the results of his research into RAF Fairwood Common and the people who served there. Other films received this year focus, amongst other things, on Private John Connolly, a veteran of Rorke’s Drift, who was buried in Swansea’s Danygraig Cemetery.

Clive Reed, an enthusiastic and engaging author, local historian and archive supporter, has continued during the year to donate even more archive material relating to Pontardawe and the Swansea Valley. We are grateful to him and to all the depositors and donors mentioned in the appendices to this report.

It is always sad when a longtime friend and supporter of the archives passes away, however it is a measure of recompense for that loss to discover that they have bequeathed their papers to the archives, thus preserving their life’s work and perpetuating their memory. So it was with great gratitude that we received the papers of Dr Tom Davies, whose death was mentioned in last year’s report, from his widow Rosina. We are also enormously grateful to the family of Roy Kneath, who have deposited material from Roy’s extensive local history collection built up over his lifetime.

Remedial and preventive conservation work carried out in 2019/20 27 volumes 1 roll of honour 3 Ordnance Survey maps 1 large estate map 1,006 volumes individually boxed 40 searchroom resources bound (including facsimile parish registers) The Briton Ferry map on the light wall in the conservation studio at Glamorgan Archives

Engaging new audiences.

Education session for St Thomas’ Primary School on Swansea’s city status, June The Archive Service has continued to maintain a broad range of outreach work and marketing activity during the year, which is one of its enduring strengths. As our mission statement proclaims, we are committed to providing information and the opportunity to engage with archives to everybody and that includes those who might find an onsite visit to the archives somewhat intimidating.

In 2019, we produced a new exhibition marking fifty years since Swansea was declared a city.

The same panels displayed during the reception held in the Patti Pavilion for the Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall on 3rd July were displayed in primary and secondary schools in Swansea as well as in local libraries.

The panels form a further addition to our range of exhibitions which are available for schools and local organisations to borrow, details of which can be found on our website.

Our much-viewed exhibition ‘Jewish Refugees in South Wales 1933-1945’ was used at the Neath Port Talbot Holocaust Memorial Day commemoration ceremony in January this year.

City status education session for Plasmarl School, May

Our exhibition on display at the Princess Royal Theatre, Port Talbot, January The Service’s long series of local history publications sadly came to an end during the year, as funds ran out. Our penultimate publication is described on the following pages. Our final publication, timed to coincide with the anniversary of the Three Nights’ Blitz in February 2020, was a reprint of a popular study of that subject by Dr John Alban, a book which has been out of print for a number of years. We were delighted to have Dr Alban attend to speak at the book launch.

A new, even better, Abertawe: Rebuilding Swansea 1941-1961

Author Dinah Evans speaking at the book launch in Swansea Museum, September With a long and respectable list of publications on local history over the last two and a half decades, the publication programme of the Archive Service is nevertheless in a winding-up phase as it draws on the last funds available in its dedicated reserve fund. In 2019, we published our last new title and our penultimate publication.

Drawing on rich archival resources split between The National Archives and West Glamorgan Archives, ‘A new, even better, Abertawe: Rebuilding Swansea 1941-1961’ tells the story of the post-war rebuilding of the town from the earliest architect’s concepts to the first criticisms and rumblings of discontent at the quality of the reconstruction. The worst wartime damage to Swansea was caused on the three nights of 19, 20 and 21 February 1941, a sustained series of air raids which became known as the Three Nights’ Blitz. For some years after the end of hostilities, the heart of Swansea was a bleak townscape of ruins where once thriving shops and stores had stood. As the Council struggled with deciding how its devastated shopping and commercial centre should be rebuilt, the issue became both contentious and complex.

Including hitherto unpublished plans, drawings and paintings that epitomise the dream that many of the Council’s officers had for the new Swansea, as well as contemporary photographs from the period of reconstruction, this book casts light on the key issues and the struggles that had to be overcome if Swansea’s civic pride was to be restored through building a shopping centre that was worthy of the town.

The book retails for £20 and is for sale in our online shop (plus postage) www.swanseashop.co.uk

Initial Borough Architect’s impressions for the Kingsway, early 1940s, showing a second major civic building at the eastern end of the new road which was intended to complement the Guildhall

From the top: Katie Millien with pupils from St Joseph’s School Swansea; volunteer Liza Osborne at the Swansea Local History Bookfair; Norma Glass giving a talk on Jewish history; Andrew Dulley with Swansea University students; at the Glamorgan Family History Fair, Merthyr Tydfil

Our work with schools, colleges and universities

Archivist Katie Millien with Plasmarl Primary School pupils learning about the Three Nights’ Blitz The Archive Service provides an education service to schools in both Swansea and Neath Port Talbot, mainly for primary schools but also for secondary schools at KS3 level. During the year, various primary and secondary schools have come into the archives to learn about what local history resources we hold and how we look after and conserve them. We also continued to provide sessions on the school site, a service which helps schools get over the barrier of not being able to afford transport (especially those at some distance away in Neath Port Talbot). All these activites are much appreciated by those schools who use the service, witnessed by the number of appreciative messages we receive from both teachers and pupils, such as the example below.

As part of Swansea’s celebrations of the fiftieth anniversary of its city status, the Archive Service put together an on-site education session which proved very popular with local schools. Visiting pupils had the opportunity to see behind the scenes in the archives, to study original sources relating to the ceremony in 1969, to make their own reproduction seals and then take them home attached to a scanned copy of the charter. Tailor-made locality studies were also in high demand again with requested topics including the Elba Colliery Disaster, 1905; River Tawe, Docks and SA1; Greenhill in Victorian times; the Vivians and Hafod Copperworks; and the history of Terrace Road School in Swansea. We also engaged for the first time with the four federated primary schools of the Upper Afan Valley.

Thank you for all your help and input yesterday. The activity was perfect and there is no way we would have access to such documents to replicate it back here at school. Seeing the archives themselves was an excellent learning experience for them too.

I will definitely be using the facility again next year if that's OK with you and will be suggesting other year groups do the same.

(Email from St Joseph’s School Swansea to Katie Millien)

Visit by Plasmarl Primary School, May

2019/20 ARCHIVE EDUCATION STATISTICS Total numbers attending archive education sessions: Teachers and school pupils University students Sessions held in the Archives Sessions held in schools and universities

1,172 224 30 22

The total number of individuals and groups recorded by West Glamorgan Archive Service at its Swansea, Neath and Port Talbot service points in 2019/20 was 4,957, which was a decrease of 16% from the previous year’s figure of 5,750.

Total members of the public visiting the Archive Service during 2019-2020: 4,957

2019/20 IN NUMBERS 121 reader’s tickets issued to new users 190 visited our stalls at external events 2,308 total attendees at our learning events 4,013 followers on social media (Twitter and Facebook) 4,175 individual visits to the archives 6,483 Individuals and members of groups reached on or off-site 9,217 documents issued in our Swansea and Neath searchrooms 13,293 hits on the Archive Service website 78,494 hits to our catalogues on the Archives Hub 234,834 records on our online catalogue 623,363 record views of our archives on the Ancestry website

Including: Swansea Neath Port Talbot Group visits

2,999 1,101 75 782

Figures for usage of the service are submitted annually to CIPFA, the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy. Because of a delay in the publication of the statistics, the most recent published figures relate to 2018/19.

In that year, only nine of of the thirteen Welsh local authority archive services submitted a return. From this data, it appears West Glamorgan Archive Service was, as in previous years, the busiest archive service in Wales when measured by the performance indicator of individual visits to the archives, its 5,232 individual visits being just over 28% of the 18,462 visits recorded by the nine respondents.

Benchmarking with other offices using the CIPFA statistics is becoming increasingly difficult, however, because fewer offices are sending their returns to CIPFA and because austerity has forced Swansea Council to discontinue its CIPFA subscription and hence our ability to access the full set of statistics.

It is to be hoped that the Archives Card reporting function will in future provide some substitute for the benchmarking provided by the CIPFA tables. .

The West Glamorgan Archive Trainee programme The Archive Trainee for 2018/19 was John Moffat, an MA graduate in history from Glasgow University now pursuing a postgraduate archive course at Liverpool University. John was the 34th and sadly the last trainee for the foreseeable future.

Many of our previous archive trainees are now firmly established in their own careers in the profession, having received a helping step up onto the first rung through their trainee year spent with us. Three of our current staff are in fact former trainees of ours.

I am delighted here to welcome the new Glamorgan Archivist, Laura Cotton, former 1998/9 trainee Laura Robertson, while wishing my erstwhile colleague in that role, Susan Edwards, a long and happy retirement and thanking her for her significant contribution over the years to the archives domain in Wales.

By way of a conclusion to the programme, here is a roll call of all our trainees over the years, many of whom will no doubt be fondly recalled by those of our loyal readers with long memories. In the early years of the scheme we had two trainees but latterly just the one.

Matthew Zawadski Nicholas White Mark Pomeroy Ed Rogers Sarah Davis Craig Ferguson Laura Robertson Joanne Evans Joanne Jones Elizabeth Grant Joanne Robson Katie Millien William Owen Stephen Clarke Owen Stanhope Louisa Mann Marie-Claire Wyatt Anthony Hughes Graham Tratt Anne-Marie Gay Patricia Dark Emma Berry Louise Cordery Hannah Thomas Andrew Westerman Rhiannon Phillips Rhodri Lewis Catrin James Catherine Stewart Rachel Brown Robert Hillman Thomas Anderson Aoife Cremin John Moffat

1994-1995 1995-1996 1996-1997 1997-1998 1998-1999 1999-2000 2000-2001 2001-2002 2002-2003 2003-2004 2004-2005 2005-2006 2006-2007 2007-2008 2008-2009 2009-2010 2010-2011 2011-2012 2012-2013 2013-2014 2014-2015 2015-2016 2016-2017 2017-2018 2018-2019

Staff We welcomed Emma Laycock as a new archivist to job-share with David Morris, who then went part-time. Emma was our 2006/7 trainee under her maiden surname of Berry, so was no stranger to many of the longer-serving Archive Service staff.

Volunteers during the year have included Jane Atzori, Alan Gardiner and Stuart Martinson. We are all very grateful to them for the unstinting work they have done. Stuart, in particular, has catalogued the Neath Borough building plans which are the subject of Katie Millien’s article below.

A former member of archive staff, Liza Osborne, has helped out in a voluntary capacity at several of our special events over the year, help which has been invaluable.

The Archive Service could not provide the level of service outlined here without the enthusiasm and dedication of our staff in Swansea and Neath. I would also like to thank the Neath Antiquarian Society volunteers, with whose regular contribution we are able to continue to provide a service in Neath: Christine Davies, Jonathan Davies, Robert Davies, Josie Henrywood, Phillip John, David Michael, David Newton, Paul Richards, Gloria Rowles and Janet Watkins.

Acknowledgements The chair and members of the West Glamorgan Archives Committee have continued to show their interest and support for the work of the Service during the year, for which I am grateful. In particular, I would like to thank retiring Committee chair Byron Lewis for chairing meetings with such efficiency and good grace over a number of years and to welcome his successor to the role, the new Lord Lieutenant, Louise Fleet. …………………………………………..

Kim Collis West Glamorgan County Archivist May 2020 …………………………………………..

Retiring Lord Lieutenant D. Byron Lewis was presented with a signed copy of the Archive Service’s publication ‘Rebuilding Swansea 1941-1961’ on chairing his last Archives Committee meeting in December

West Glamorgan Archives Committee As at 31 March 2020 Chairman HM Lord Lieutenant of West Glamorgan R. Louise Fleet JP Vice-Chairmen City and County of Swansea Councillor R.V. Smith County Borough of Neath Port Talbot Councillor P.A. Rees Representing the City and County of Swansea Councillor P.M. Black CBE Councillor M. Durke Councillor L.S. Gibbard Councillor L.R. Jones MBE Representing the County Borough of Neath Port Talbot Councillor A. Aubrey Councillor W.F. Griffiths Councillor H.N. James Councillor R. Mizen Representing the Diocese of Swansea and Brecon A. Dulley MA, MSc Representing the Diocese of Llandaff S. Perons Representing Swansea University Prof. L. Miskell FRHistS Representing the Neath Antiquarian Society Mrs J.L. Watkins City and County of Swansea Head of Cultural Services Ms T. McNulty MA Neath Port Talbot County Borough Head of Legal Services M.C. Griffiths LLB County Librarian W. John MCLIP

West Glamorgan Archive Service STAFF As at 31 March 2020 West Glamorgan Archives Civic Centre, Oystermouth Road, Swansea SA1 3SN Tel. (01792) 636589

Neath Antiquarian Society Archives Neath Mechanics Institute, 4 Church Place, Neath SA11 3LL Tel. (01639) 620139

Email: westglam.archives@swansea.gov.uk Website: www.swansea.gov.uk/westglamorganarchives

County Archivist ...........................................................................................Kim Collis MA, DAS Assistant County Archivist ....................................................... Andrew Dulley MA, MSc (Econ) Archivist.......................................................................................... Katie Millien BA, MSc (Econ) Archivist (job-share) ....................................................................David Morris PhD, MSc (Econ) Archivist (job-share) ..................................................................................... Emma Laycock MA Production Assistant .............................................................. Anne-Marie Gay MA, MSc (Econ) Family History Centre Supervisor .......................................................................... Lorna Crook Archives Reception Assistant ....................................................................Rebecca Shields BA Office Manager ...................................................................................... Don Rodgers MA, PGCE

A global and local epidemic: Spanish flu in Swansea, 1918-1920

American soldiers at Fort Riley Kansas receiving treatment for Spanish flu, 1918 (Otis Historical Archives, US National Museum of Health and Medicine, public domain) Lockdowns, travel restrictions and the closure of schools and other public services across the world during the current COVID-19 pandemic are unprecedented events for all of us who are alive today. However, just over one hundred years ago in 1918, an even more virulent strain of influenza known as Spanish flu swept across the world. The disease was so-called not because it originated in that country but because the Spanish press first reported on it, Spain being free from the censorship affecting many other European nations during the First World War. It is estimated that one third of the world’s population caught the disease, while at least 20 million people across the globe are thought to have died from it (other estimates put the figure higher, some even as high as 100 million). According to a UK Ministry of Health report on the pandemic which was published in 1920, while ordinary influenza attacked mostly the very old and the very young, ‘the outbreak was remarkable…for its complete change of age incidence. It attacked youth.’ Primarily, this was the age range 15-40. Spanish flu, the report continued, was ‘a pestilence which affected the well-being of millions of men and women and destroyed more human lives in a few months than did the European war in five years, carrying off upwards of 150,000 persons in England and Wales alone.’1

After an initial mild outbreak in the spring of 1918, in the autumn of that year a second wave appeared, a far more deadly strain which coincided with the end of the First World War and the repatriation of large numbers of troops across continents. Many of the returning soldiers who had survived sometimes years of trench warfare both lost their own lives and unwittingly helped to spread the disease throughout the world.

Victims of the second outbreak who succumbed usually died within days of contracting the disease, on occasions within hours, their skin turning blue from a lack of oxygen in the blood and their lungs filling with fluid which caused them to die in an agonising manner.

Spanish flu was highly contagious, especially in industrial towns and cities where people lived in overcrowded housing in close proximity to each other. Parts of urban south Wales saw the highest mortality rate from the disease in the United Kingdom and the death toll for the whole of Wales reached 10,000.

(Above) Article in the Cambria Daily Leader, 25 October 1918 (Below) Article in The Cambrian, 28 June 1918

Given the limited scientific and medical knowledge at the time, the campaign to eradicate the disease was mostly based on tried and tested public health measures limiting human social interaction and hence the possibilities of transmission. In Swansea, some factories were at times closed, impacting on industrial production. The Mayor of Swansea, Alderman Ben Jones, opened a fund for ‘deserving cases of distress due to the epidemic.’2 Schools were ordered to close for various periods in 1918 and again in 1919 when the second, and then a third, wave of the pandemic reached the town.

School Medical Officer Dr Thomas Evans reported the first Swansea school cases in the autumn of 1918 as evidenced in ‘the Weekly Sickness Return from Danygraig School in Port Tennant’. He made the decision to close that school for five weeks to limit the spread of the illness. As the illness spread throughout the town, ‘the closure of all schools, with the exception of Cwm and Pentrechwyth, was decided upon and they were kept closed for a period of 21 days.’3 In October 1918, Dr Evans reported to the Cambria Daily Leader that the disease continued to spread in schools.

A typical pattern for the spread of influenza in south Wales was that the disease arrived first in the ports and then spread inland up the valleys. The annual report of the Medical Officer of Health of Swansea’s Port Sanitary Authority published in February 1919 shows a spike in the number of vessels arriving in Swansea with cases of influenza on board. The usual treatment seemed to be that the individual concerned was ‘removed to Union Infirmary, vessel fumigated.’4. Ten miles away to the east, the 1919 annual report of the Margam Urban District Council Medical Officer noted that there was an increase in ‘Zymotic Diseases’ and the number attributed to ‘Epidemic Influenza’ was 26. By 1920, this figure was down to nine.5 Figures taken from the 1920 annual report of the Chief Medical Officer show how steep was the increase and subsequent decline in the number of deaths from influenza in the United Kingdom.

Whereas in 1917 only 7,289 people died of the flu, in 1918, these figures rose to 112,329.

Numbers were still high in 1919, when influenza accounted for 44,801 deaths, but by 1920, the number of deaths had fallen back to pre-pandemic levels. 6 These figures also have to be set against a background of deaths from other infectious diseases which have nowadays more or less disappeared from the general population – typhus, diphtheria, scarlet fever and measles. In a third and final wave, ‘The first half of 1920 was marked by a considerable rise in the number of deaths from influenza – a rise which reached its culminating point in the week ending March 27th.’7 Further on it states, ‘during the first three months of 1920 most countries experienced an epidemic wave of a minor kind, but after April they were almost free from the disease.’ 8 Gradually, life returned to normal, schools reopened and people returned to their jobs and daily lives.

What of the long term effects of the pandemic on the people of Swansea? Spanish flu had shown that high density of population had been a factor in the transmission of the disease. Improved public health, access to fresh air and open space, was reinvigorated in the years that followed and was a contributing factor in the burgeoning of the garden city movement exemplified by the new suburbs of Townhill and Mayhill, and the creation of the open-air classrooms of Mayhill Primary School. At a personal level, few in Swansea would have been untouched by the loss of a family member or friend. We cannot know the toll on those who survived the flu. The Cambria Daily Leader of 30 October 1918 prophesied,‘…the price will be exacted either in the form of a diminished capacity for life – not to say work – or in the form of some chronic disease, the actual onset of which may be years ahead, or in the form of greater susceptibility to other infections.’ …………………………………………..

Emma Laycock Archivist …………………………………………..

Archives West Glamorgan Archive Service collections held in the Civic Centre, Swansea: Swansea Corporation Medical Officer of Health’s Department (HE 3/1); collection of Arthur Rees of Port Talbot (D/D Xlm), Ministry of Health report (D/D PRO/MOH); Swansea Port Health Authority annual reports (PH 1/18) Footnotes 1.

Reports on Public Health and Medical Subjects No.4: Report on the Pandemic of Influenza 1918–1919 REF/GEN 24 2.

Cambria Daily Leader, 30 October 1918 3.

HE 3/1 p126 4.

PH 1/18 Table III 5.

D/D Xlm 15/14 6.

D/D PRO/MOH 1 p16 7. ibid p57 8. ibid p59

Farms, fields and families: some early deeds relating to the Swansea Valley

Think of the history of the South Wales Valleys and the chances are you will be thinking principally about industry. The growth of mining, the establishment of smelting works and the laying out of the related infrastructure was matched by an influx of people and resulted in the towns and villages we know today. Take the Swansea Valley for example: there were ironworks at Ystradgynlais and Ystalyfera, steel and tinplate works at Pontardawe and Clydach, not to mention the Mond Works which still operates today. The canal and railway ran the length of the valley, while a network of tramways snaked off into the hills towards the collieries in the hinterland.

Meanwhile the names of the influential industrialists Parsons, Budd, Gilbertson, Player and Mond can be seen on the foundation stones of many of the prominent public buildings.

All of this is comparatively recent history. If you could look back two centuries, in place of the towns and villages you would see scattered farmsteads in a patchwork of fields, woods and moors. The people who shaped this timeless landscape are easily overlooked in history, partly because their impact on their environment was long-term, incremental and small, but partly too because their records do not usually survive. I say not usually, but this year one of the prominent accessions received by the Archive Service was a consignment of deeds from the Ynyscedwyn Estate. Originating apparently in a solicitors’ office in Brecon, they were being offered for sale by a dealer at an antiques fair. Thanks to the sharp eyes of a member of our staff, they were purchased and subsequently sorted and listed, and so we are able to make available a series of records that shed an important light on the farms in the upper Swansea Valley and the people who lived there. With three eighteenth century exceptions, they range in date from 1546 to 1671.

Ynyscedwyn House stood midway between Ystalyfera and Ystradgynlais, but just on the Breconshire side of the county boundary, and its lands consisted of a compact area on either side of the border. There was a large section in the parish of Ystradgynlais and other parts facing each other on either side of the River Tawe in the parishes of Llangiwg and Cilybebyll. Today it would include Ystradgynlais, Lower Cwmtwrch, Ystalyfera and the farms opposite on and around Farteg Hill and the west-facing slopes of Mynydd March Hywel.

The Ynyscedwyn Estate was an ancient one: once the patrimony of Griffith GĹľyr, it descended through the female line to the Franklen family of Gower, before passing in the same way to the Awbrey family, who held it by the time of Henry VIII. When we look at the estate collections we hold, it is sometimes possible to identify a particular change in fortunes or personnel that results in a marked increase in the number of records. For example, in 1813 the Briton Ferry Estate was inherited by the Earl of Jersey, who spent the next two decades modernising it. New leases were drawn up, large parts of the estate and its timber were sold and as a result, this period is

particularly well-represented in the documents. For the Penrice Estate, it was the appointment of Hopkin Llewellyn Pritchard as estate agent in 1899 and his subsequent tenure of office for half a century that resulted in the most thorough survival of records. His letter books, correspondence files and financial records are a full and wide-ranging source for studying the profound changes in Gower in the first half of the twentieth century. For the Ynyscedwyn Estate, it was its acquisition by the Awbreys. The family seems to have been at pains to confirm its title to all the houses and lands that it held, and as a result we have a strength in depth of records that are earlier than those held for most estates and which constitute a unique and extremely valuable source of information about the farms and families of the Upper Swansea Valley. The estate did not hold the lordship of any of the manors in which its land was situated. The Cilybebyll portion lay within the manor of Neath Ultra and Cilybebyll and as such the owners of the estate were either customary or freehold tenants of that manor. The Llangiwg part was more complex: it lay within the Lordship of Gower, in an area called Uwchcoed, or Supraboscus. This was part of what was known as the Welshry, as land tenures there followed Welsh law and the tenants were effectively freeholders, holding their lands directly from the Lord of Gower for a small quit-rent.

The documents do not give up their secrets easily. They are written on small pieces of parchment and vellum, many with their seals still attached, some of which bear the unmistakable imprints of the fingers that put them there some four centuries ago. The language of most of them is Latin and the script, called secretary hand, contains enough unfamiliar letter forms to make them look rather forbidding. Nonetheless, their format is commonplace: they record the sales and mortgages of farms and fields. In cataloguing the collection we took care to include all the salient points. In each case we set out who is selling and who is buying, and for how much. We give a translation of the description of the land as fully as is needed for identification, with (where possible) standardised spellings of the names of farms, hills and rivers as well as the original spellings used in the document. If the names of the people who occupy the farms and cottages are included, we have given those as well, to ensure that all the incidental information is there too.

They are title deeds, but in form quite different from what we are used to today. In the 16th and 17th centuries each property sale generally required at least two documents, whose intention was to secure the title and ensure there would be no repercussions against either the vendor or the purchaser. The first of these is the deed of gift: this is phrased as a declaration that the vendor has ‘given, granted and by this my present charter confirmed’ the premises to the purchaser. On the back of the document there may be a note of a ceremony called livery of seizin (meaning delivery of possession) where the vendor, before witnesses, would ceremonially hand a piece of earth to the purchaser to symbolise the transfer of title. A few days later, a second document called a quitclaim was usually drawn up to strengthen the transaction. Here the vendor declares once again that he has transferred the land to the purchaser, but this time adds that he has ‘quitclaimed’ it, in other words that he renounces any claim he might have over it. These documents might be further secured by means of the evocatively-named ‘bond for quiet enjoyment’. This document commits the vendor to paying a hefty penal sum if he should disturb the new owner’s peaceful possession of the property. Finally, for significant or sizeable transactions, there might be what is known as a fine or final concord. This is a collusive action at law and its purpose is to have the name of the new owner enrolled in the records of the court of Quarter Sessions. To achieve this, the new owner comes to court and claims that the vendor is trying to eject him. The vendor then acknowledges the right of the new owner, and a transcript of the court judgement in duplicate is handed to the two parties. It is of course entirely fictitious, as the court knows well, but it adds another layer to the documentary sources. It is rare for all four types of document to be present; sometimes one or more will be missing, but the information is still retrievable from the others.

One such pair of documents tells us about Coelbren. Now it is a village up in the mountains near the head of the Dulais Valley, with its stone-built school, little church and terraces of houses, perhaps best known to walkers for its position near Henrhyd Falls. Four centuries back, in 1610,

Morgan Awbrey of Ynyscedwyn was preparing to buy it. The land belonged to William Harbert and Ambrosa his wife. They agreed a purchase sum of £260 and so a gift and a quitclaim were drawn up, sealed and sewn together. The deeds describe what was sold: there were eight farms called Tir Pen y Graig Dduy, Tir Ton Spyddaden, Tir y Cwm, Tir Ton yr Henrhyd, Tir y Coelbren, Tir y Waen, Tir Rhyd y Ffos Duy and Tir Nant y Coelbren, some of which have gone, but others are still there. Then there was the mill and the bakehouse, and what are described as three mansion houses, where lived John Herbert, Jenkin William Lhewelin and Llewelyn The Coelbren deed, 1610, ref. D/D TDW 4/3 William alias Bach. The precise usage of the term mansion at this date can be rather hazy; it does not necessarily mean a mansion in today’s usage, but it is reserved for something larger than the average farmhouse. The impression given is that amongst the farms are some substantial houses. Also forming part of the sale is a chapel: this is not Moriah Baptist Church, but Capel Coelbren, one of those quiet, obscure little churches that defies all attempts to trace its history, but whose roots go back many centuries. The parish page on the Church in Wales website notes ‘There is no certainty as to the age of the building. The eastern half of the nave is judged to be Elizabethan’. By the 19th century it was in disrepair and was restored and extended, almost doubling its capacity. This document confirms that it was there in the time of James I and helps to describe its community and name at least some of its congregation.

The names in the deeds are of considerable interest, principally because they anchor people to places and predate the parish registers by some years. Ystradgynlais parish registers begin in 1721, Cilybebyll’s in 1773 and Llangiwg’s in 1703. In these deeds we have plenty of genealogical information, both contextually and in the names themselves, typically dating to around a century and a half before the parish registers begin. For example, in 1613 David Hopkin married Elizabeth ferch John, a relative of Morgan Awbrey of Ynyscedwyn, and a marriage settlement was drawn up.

It tells us a good deal: David Hopkin is a yeoman, in other words a farmer, and from his fiancée’s name we know that his future father-in-law must be called John. Two farms are settled in trust, Cefn-Gwrhyd and Tir-y-bieting, both situated up on the top of Gwrhyd Mountain. One of them is home to David Hopkin, and presumably here he and his wife raised their family. The other one is home to his mother, Margaret ferch David, who is a widow. The names here are patronymic: Margaret ferch David means Margaret daughter of David and David Hopkin is almost certainly David son of Hopkin. This enables us to build a rudimentary family tree, complete with addresses, from this one deed.

There is a hierarchy of houses of different sizes within these deeds. We have briefly looked at the mansion houses of Coelbren; meanwhile properties such as Cefn-Gwrhyd are described as messuages. This is the term most commonly used to mean a farmhouse in a rural setting or a medium-sized terraced house in a town. The lowliest buildings in the countryside appear in these records as well. These were the cottages: in the seventeenth century they were simple structures, typically consisting of just the one room with perhaps a croglofft or sleeping gallery at one end, and several examples can be seen among the exhibits at the Museum of Welsh Life at St Fagans.

Farms often had cottages attached which could be sublet to labourers or members of the

extended family. This is where we encounter the widow Jane Thomas. In 1640 Richard Thomas and Katherine his wife mortgaged their house, cottage and lands to Walter Thomas. Two years later the worst has happened: they are unable to pay back the debt and sell the remainder of their interest in the farm, which is called Maes-cwnrig, to their creditor. Meanwhile Walter Thomas owed a hefty marriage portion of 1,000 marks (a mark was two thirds of a pound) to Morgan Awbrey who had married Mayzod Thomas, and this farm, which was worth £182, was handed over in settlement of part of that sum. The farm was called Tir-maes-cwnrig, and we know that it was later renamed Allt-y-grug Farm, on the hillside up above Ystalyfera. Both names appear on the tithe apportionment. The premises included the farmhouse, fields, barn and garden, and also a cottage and garden, which was in the occupation of the widow Jane Thomas. Four deeds suffice to show how the property came into the ownership of the Ynyscedwyn Estate, and they contain a series of very human stories, involving rich and poor alike.

Estate records are too little used, yet even the most intimidating-looking documents can, with a little imagination and some careful study, reveal a host of stories about the locality and the people who lived there. This particular collection does not stand alone; it complements the bulk of the Ynyscedwyn Estate collection, which has been at West Glamorgan Archives for decades and contains a wealth of similar material. In these collections the story of the Upper Swansea Valley is waiting to be uncovered: the fall and rise of its gentry, the tenants of the farms and cottages, the family stories of people of all levels of society and the way they shaped the geography of their valley. …………………………………………..

Andrew Dulley Assistant County Archivist …………………………………………..

Archives Ynyscedwyn Estate Records, reference D/D TDW

The changing face of Green Street shop fronts: Neath Borough building plans

Corner of Green Street with Queen Street, 1903, now site of Marks and Spencer (B/N Pl 1/1591) This year saw the completion of a cataloguing project by archivists and volunteers working on a collection of Neath Borough Building Plans (B/N Pl). The plans cover the period 1890-1974 and when we re-open will be available to view in the searchroom. The collection consists of around 3,000 plans and includes alterations and additions to a number of prominent buildings in Neath and area, including the grandstand at Neath Rugby Football Club; St Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church; the vicarage at St Clement’s, Briton Ferry and various factories, pubs and private houses.

The focus of this article will be the changing shop fronts of Green Street, Neath.

Historically, shopping streets largely contained an attractive mix of shops which would have had their own identity and signage. Old photographs clearly show this variety. However, since the Second World War, there has been a shift in shop front design and all of the shops along Green Street nowadays display a typically modern style of large brightly-coloured signs with use of synthetic materials and a fairly bland design which pays little regard to the original character of the building.

Figure 1: Third edition OS Map, 1919 (Sheet 16.9) Green Street runs between Windsor Road and Orchard Street. It is one of the main shopping streets in Neath and home to Neath Market.

The street has seen a number of changes over the years, including the rebuilding of the northeastern end of the street (Burtons, now Holland & Barrett), as well as the rebuilding of other sections and the renumbering of the entire street.

Figure 2: Green Street looking east, c. 1900 (P/PR 124/3/89)

Figure 3: Typical features of a shop front

A shopfront normally incorporates certain key elements within its design (see Figure 3), but it is the style of these elements that changes with time and fashions. Using these design principles, we can broadly divide the plans into the following periods: Edwardian/Art Nouveau (1901-1918); Inter War/Art Deco (1920s-1930s); Post-war (1940s1950s); Brutalist/Modern (1960s).

1901-1918 Edwardian/Art Nouveau Art Nouveau was the first 20th century style to stop looking backwards into history, taking its inspiration instead from the natural world. There are two distinct variations of Art Nouveau, one characterised by its long, sinuous lines and the other by a more austere, linear look.

Masters & Co. Ltd. was a drapery business. It was located on the north side of Green Street next door to the Mackworth Hotel. Today H. Samuel stands roughly on the same site. The plan dates from 1907 and shows a fairly intricate design. The door to the left would have led upstairs, probably to accommodation above the shop.

The 1911 census shows a Hopkin Jones living there.

The central front door is flanked by two large windows to display all the wares. The design has all the classic elements of a shop front, including the pilaster, capital and corbel, which often lacks in later designs. Many elements in this design hark back to the Victorian era, but there are hints of an art nouveau style: the geometric lines, large panes of glass and the fretwork around the window. Times were changing and Green Street was Figure 4: Masters & Co, 1907 moving with the fashions.

(B/N Pl 1/1789b) 1920s-1930s Inter War/Art Deco Art Deco began in Europe, in the early years of the 20th century, but did not really take hold until after the First World War. It remained popular until the outbreak of the Second World War. The focus was on geometric and angular shapes, highly polished wood and glossy black lacquer.

A good example of Art Deco styling is Dunns Footwear Ltd. Located at 6a Green Street (now number 8), it is now home to EE. It was built as part of a larger Burton building (more about this later) and shows the typical geometric lettering and signage on the fascia.

The windows themselves are angular and the fascia is made from black granite.

Figure 5: Dunns Footwear Ltd, 1937 and 2020 (B/N Pl 1/3675)

The modern photograph still shows quite clearly the scarring on the polished black granite of the original Dunns sign.

1940s-1950s Post-war Post-war architecture was based on new and innovative methods of construction, particularly the use of glass, steel and reinforced concrete. The idea was that form should follow function and to embrace minimalism and reject ornament.

The Fifty Shilling Tailors located at 8-9 Green Street incorporates a number of the typical post-war elements. The fascia in this instance is made from a mix of white and black vitrolite (a thick, opaque structural glass). The lettering is stainless steel, illuminated with a red neon tube and the cornice of lead flashing. Elements link back to the Art Deco era, but the materials are very much a post war addition.

Figure 6: Fifty Shilling Tailors, 1949 (B/N Pl 1/4225) 1960s Brutalist/Modern Brutalism is a style characterized by simple, block-like structures that often feature bare building materials. Exposed concrete is favoured in construction; however, some examples are primarily made of brick. Brutalism's stark, geometric designs contrast with the more ornate features of some architecture of the earlier half of the century.

There are two plans that fit this style period.

Firstly, Olivers originally numbered 18-19 Green Street (now numbered 17).

Clintons now occupies the building. The plan shows a mix of white aluminium fascia, dark green slate between the windows, black facing brickwork, and a black marble sign. The Marks & Spencer building also Figure 7: Olivers, 1962 (B/N Pl 1/6053) and Marks & Spencer shows geometric design Ltd, 1951 (B/N Pl 1/4356) elements, with the tiles and symmetrical windows.

The exception is the rather stylised clock, which hangs on the corner with Queen Street.

Other plans worthy of note A couple of other plans worthy of note include Somerset House Hotel. It was situated at 7 Green Street (now numbered 31). Domino’s Pizza now occupies the building. This plan dates from 1924, and again the design is fairly ornate, showing the transition from typical Victorian design to a more linear look. According to the 1911 census, the building had 6 rooms (including the kitchen). If you look at the building today, the three windows on the second floor have been replaced by a single bay window. The upper two floors remain the same.

Figure 8: Somerset House Hotel (B/N Pl The Maypole Dairy located at 26 Green Street (now 1/2368), 1924 and the Maypole Dairy (B/N Pl numbered 3). It now forms part of Principality 1/3252), 1933 Building Society. Once again, the cornice is extremely ornate, reminiscent of the Victorian era. The plan dates from 1933 and in this instance the neighbouring property is being converted to match the existing shop front. Mahogany is the

material of choice, with a tiled stall riser. Again, a large shop window is used to display all the products.

Figure 9: Lennards, 1954 (B/N Pl 1/4718) and Burton’s, 1957 (B/N Pl1/4979) The plans in Figure 9 show Lennards with The Maypole Dairy (originally numbered 27 Green Street) and Burton’s (originally numbered 1-2 Green Street). The buildings are located opposite each other on the corners of Orchard Street and New Street (The Square, Neath). The Lennards site is now home to Principality (now numbered 1-3 Green Street) and Burton’s is now home to Holland & Barrett (now numbered 2 Green Street).

The two buildings are shown in the photograph in Figure 10 from the 1940s before the plans were submitted. The Burton’s building showing clear Art Deco design features. In the 1930s, Montague Burton sought out corner locations across the country to build grand stores for his bespoke tailoring business.

Burton developed a house style for the design of many if his buildings. Many have standard elements such as a wide polished black granite band above the shop windows for signage and billiard halls on the upper levels, some had Figure 10: The Square showing Lennards and Burton’s, mosaic titles including the company logo in the doorways. A quick look through a c.1940s (PIC 4/3/150) rate book and minute book for 1939 shows us that this was the case here too. The whole block was owned by Burton’s and sub-let, including to Lucania Billiard Co on the upper floor. This block was built between 1937 and 1939.

In a modern photograph of Holland & Barrett, you can clearly see the scarring in the black granite stone of two previous signs advertising Burton’s. The more prominent scar is that of the 1957 design, modern block capital lettering, whereas if you look closely and further to the left you can make out the original more curly BUR of the 1930s design (see figures 10 and 11).

The materials used in the 1957 design of Burton’s included aluminium, oak, granite and a Figure 11: Old Burton’s signage, 2020 neon sign.

Lennards was a major boot and shoe retailer operating in the southern part of the UK. Lennards had gone through a couple of transformations before 1954. The company was occupying the corner site by 1920. Prior to that, the site had been occupied by the Old Anchor Hotel. Plans dated 1 July 1920 show the alterations (B/N Pl 1/2184). The 1954 design incorporates large tiles on the fascia, with bold block lettering signage, fairly typical of the 1950s.

Conclusion Green Street in Neath is a typical example of changing patterns of shopping in the UK and these plans show how much of the individuality and architectural charm of yesteryear has been lost in the process. Perhaps we will see in time the removal of the oversized, brightly coloured but bland signs and their replacement by sympathetic shop designs more suited to the original structures. Recent fashions in retail design have been influenced by ‘hipster’ sub-culture, a new generation looking to the past for inspiration, recycling and up-cycling materials - reclaimed wood, filament lightbulbs, casement windows, tilework and refurbished industrial lighting adorn pared-back and rustic interiors.

While the plans in the collection are there as a record of what things were like in the past, they can also be used to inspire the next generation of architects and designers.

Other records The Archives also hold similar records relating to: Neath Rural District, 1882-1974 (RD/N Pl 13-16) Llwchwr Urban District Council, 1905-1973 (UD/LW Pl 5/1-688) Glyncorrwg Urban District Council, 1882-1947 (PTL UD/Gl 1-384) Pontardawe Rural District Council 1958-1974 (RD/Pd Pl 1547-10092) Briton Ferry Urban District Council, 1869-1900 (NL UD/BF 16/1-204) Port Talbot Borough, 1923-1948 (B/PT Pl 1-108) and 1950-1956 (PTL B/PT Pl 123/2100-4175) Swansea Borough, 1921-1973 (BE 30/9528-50144) …………………………………………..

Katie Millien Archivist …………………………………………..

Figure 12: Burton Tailoring, Green Street, 1970s (P/PR 81iii/7/1)

The experience of Basque refugee children in Swansea in the 1930s

An example from the collection of glass slides of unidentified Basque child refugees, presumed to be taken in Sketty Park House, 1937.

In 2010, Swansea was officially designated a City of Sanctuary, a testament to Swansea’s long tradition of providing shelter and a safe space for persons fleeing war, famine and persecution. A neglected collection in the archives throws new light on one episode in this continuing narrative.

Reproduced in countless exhibitions, books and television documentaries, photographs of men such as Harry Dobson of Blaenclydach and Alun Menai Williams of Gilfach Goch have come to personify Welsh involvement in the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War.1 Much less well-known, however, is a collection held by West Glamorgan Archive Service relating to another aspect of our part in that conflict. Equally moving, and of exceptional quality, these images have remained largely unknown since they were taken in the summer of 1937.

1

See Hywel Francis, Miners Against Fascism: Wales and the Spanish Civil War (London, 1984), between pages 198 and 199; Alun Menai Williams, From the Rhondda to the Ebro: the story of a young life and its survival in the first half of the 20th century (Abersychan, 2004), p 170; Harry Dobson memorial photograph, South Wales Coalfield Collection, Richard Burton Archives https://www.swansea.ac.uk/library/richard-burton-archives/subject-guides/spanish-civil-war/ (viewed 15/04/2020)

The Spanish Civil War began in July 1936 when rebel generals launched a military coup against the Spanish Republican Government. Their attempted military takeover was only partially successful. After receiving logistical support from Nazi Germany, the rebel generals were able to establish control over much of the south and west of the country, however in the east the country remained loyal to the democratically-elected government in Madrid. In the north, there was also a Republican enclave in the regions of Asturias, Cantabria and the Basque country.

Despite being outgunned and outnumbered, the Basques had initially halted the advance of Nationalist forces from the south. By the spring of 1937, however, fighting had reached a critical stage. Surrounded on all sides by infantry and artillery, Basque towns were also being bombed from the air by units of the German air force known as the Condor Legion.

As conditions in the Basque Country worsened, the National Joint Committee for Spanish Relief (NJCSR) pleaded with the British Government to provide sanctuary to the tens of thousands of refugees who had flooded into the city of Bilbao. Initially, the British Government had refused to open its doors to these refugees, but in May 1937 it bowed to public pressure. A limited number of children would be allowed to enter Britain, but only on condition that no public funds would be made available for their maintenance. Responsibility for caring for the refugees would lie solely with the NJCSR.2 Rising to the challenge, the NJCSR sent out a general appeal across Britain for aid and assistance to the refugees.

Among those who answered the call for help was the Mayor of Swansea, Richard Henry. Although public bodies were barred from providing direct support to Spanish refugees, the Council took the decision to place Sketty Park House at their disposal. The property in question was far from ideal.

The house had been vacant for some time, and the interior was in a general state of disrepair. In normal circumstances it would have taken several months to bring the property up to an acceptable standard. However, on 30th June 1937, news was received that a party of 80 children was already en route to Swansea. With no time to spare, an army of volunteers set about preparing the house for the imminent arrival of the new occupants, all aged between five and fifteen years of age.

While the new refugee hostel at Sketty Park House was far from ready when the children arrived, at least they now had a solid roof over their heads after their brief sojourn in Southampton, where they had been living under canvas. One newspaper reported how one small boy bounced up and down in delight on his new bed at Sketty Park House before shouting to the reporter, “OK mister!�

The Swansea group of Basque child refugees (P/PR/42iii/4/1)

2

Adrian Bell, Only For Three Months: the Basque Children in Exile (Norwich, 1996), pp. 4-7

The same report also noted that the children were excited to be living so close to the seaside.3 However, it was also clear that this was a group of young people who had been deeply traumatised by their recent experiences. On the night of their arrival at Swansea, a liaison officer came across a small child in tears. The young girl had witnessed the death of her mother as they had been rushing for cover during an air raid.

Another small boy, referred to as the “problem child”, had lost both his mother and father.

The Basque refugee children at Swansea had been rescued from the conflict in Spain, but they now needed food and clothing. Indeed, if the refugees were even to begin to adjust to their new surroundings, they would need more than just the bare essentials. Once again the Swansea Mayor, Richard Henry, was at the forefront of efforts to provide material assistance to the refugees. In July 1937, he sent out 600 appeals asking for donations to the newly established Swansea refugee relief fund. Over the following months the fund raised hundreds of pounds and collected countless gifts and items of equipment from trades unions, religious congregations, local businesses and private individuals.4 Shortly after their arrival, each child was photographed with a card hanging round his or her neck bearing an identification number and the Herald of Wales article below confirms this was part of the registration process. The photographs have survived but a list of names for them is seemingly long since lost. The project to provide sanctuary to the Basque children, and the public appeal that was established to fund it, must have created other records locally (accounts, invoices, correspondence etc.), but whether any still exist after this gap in time is unlikely. The majority of the surviving records of the National Joint Committee for Spanish Relief are in the Modern Records Centre at Warwick University, to be found in a series of personal papers of key figures from the Committee.

Basque Children Need Clothes and Books TO ERADICATE TRAGIC MEMORIES FROM MINDS OF CHILDREN Appeal For Assistance

By FREDA STRAWBOURNE Last Friday was registration day at Sketty Park House, the temporary home of the Basque refugee children, and when I arrived in the middle of the afternoon it was to find the Borough Estate Agent, Mr. D. Ivor Saunders, assisted by Miss Aleman, filling in long questionnaires about each child, ranging from names (the spelling of some of these was a problem that only Miss Aleman could clarify!) to finger-prints. In the hall a Corporation photographer was taking a picture of each child to correspond with the details supplied. In this connection a funny incident arose, illustrating that a popular superstition is world-wide. Before each picture was taken, a numbered card was placed around the kiddy’s neck but when the number 13 was reached, there were loud cries which sounded to me like “Nombre malo! Nombre malo!”

(Taken from the Herald of Wales, 10th July 1937) 3 4

South Wales Evening Post 1st July 1937 South Wales Evening Post 3rd July 1937, 26th July 1937

These photographs were captured on glass plate, a common method for high quality imaging at the time, and they manifest the work of an accomplished photographer. Whether or not it was intentional, the plaintive demeanour of the children and the sometimes dramatic use of interior light (as seen in the first picture) gives these images a brooding, melancholy quality. The children’s faces reflect the complex set of emotions which they were experiencing on arrival at Sketty Park House - grief, loss, homesickness and no doubt too a sense of adventure. They still speak to us across the intervening decades.

While this collection represents, we believe, one of the finest sets of images of Basque child refugees in this country, as yet no one has been able to identify any of the children featured in these photographs. One can only hope that, with the advent of the internet and widespread use of social media, their descendants, relatives or other researchers will be able to recognise them with reference to other family photographs. …………………………………………..

David Morris Archivist …………………………………………..

Archives Glass slides of Basque refugee children taken at Sketty Park House, [1937], reference P/ES1/NBR

Cofnodion, capeli a chladdedigaethau: hanes mynwent Bethel, Sgeti

Un diwrnod ym mis Ionawr derbyniais alwad ffôn gan aelod o Gapel Bethel, Sgeti: roedd ganddo gofrestri mynwent y capel, ac roedd yr eglwys yn fodlon eu benthyca i ni i’w copïo: eu copïo yn hytrach na’u cadw gan fod y capel a’i fynwent yn fyw ac yn iach, ac mae angen eu cofnodion arnynt o hyd. Dyma hanes y capel, ei fynwent a’i bwysigrwydd i bentref Sgeti ac Abertawe yn gyffredinol.

Dros y blynyddoedd diwethaf, mae’r Gwasanaeth Archifau wedi derbyn nifer o gasgliadau diddorol o gofnodion capeli. Yn anffodus, y rheswm am hyn yn aml yw bod y capel wedi cau wedi cyfnod hir â’r aelodaeth yn lleihau. Mae capeli eraill sy’n gryf o hyd yn cadw’u harchifau gyda ni. Fodd bynnag, mae’n hollbwysig cadw’r cofnodion hyn, sy’n dangos pwysigrwydd y capel yn ei gymuned leol a sut y bu’n fodd i’r aelodau fynegi eu hunain drwy gerddoriaeth, drama, arweinyddiaeth a gweinyddiaeth, yn ogystal ag addoli a gweddïo.

Mae gan rai o’r capeli fynwentydd, yn arbennig y rheini yng nghefn gwlad. Wrth i’r trefi dyfu, adeiladwyd mwy o gapeli i wasanaethu’r boblogaeth a oedd wedi symud i’r ardal, ond yn gyffredinol adeiladwyd y rhain yng nghanol y rhesi o dai, ar ddarnau bach o dir, heb le am ddim byd mwy na’r capel ac efallai ysgoldy. Mae Eglwysi’r Bedyddwyr Pantygwydr a Mount Pleasant yn Abertawe, a Bethania, Castell-nedd, yn enghreifftiau da o hyn.

Weithiau gallwch ddod ar draws capeli a adeiladwyd mewn lleoliadau gwledig, ond sydd bellach wedi’u hamgylchynu gan dai. Er enghraifft, cafodd capel Brynteg yng Ngorseinon ei adeiladu mewn ardal wledig iawn ym 1815. Mae’r adeilad bellach yng nghanol maestrefi Gorseinon – nid oedd y rhain yn bodoli ym 1815. Mae Bethel, Capel yr Annibynwyr, Sgeti yn debyg iawn. Yr hyn sy’n ddryslyd yw bod dau gapel o’r enw Bethel yn Sgeti: mae un yn amlwg iawn ar y brif ffordd gyferbyn ag Ysgol yr Esgob Gore. Roedd yn Eglwys Gynulleidfaol Saesneg, ac yn Eglwys Ddiwygiedig Unedig yn ddiweddarach, cyn iddo gau yn 2018. Ond nid hyn sydd dan sylw, ond yr hen gapel Cymraeg ar Heol Carnglas, â’i fynwent enfawr.

Mae'r capel hwn i bob pwrpas yn rhagddyddio pentref Sgeti fel rydym ni’n ei adnabod, a hwn oedd yr addoldy cyntaf yn yr ardal. Cafodd ei adeiladu ym 1770 ar y Bryn gan ddau ffermwr lleol, John Harries a Benjamin Davies. Yn y dyddiau cynnar roedd yn fach, ond erbyn y 1840au penderfynwyd ei ailadeiladu ar safle newydd ac ehangach a fyddai’n briodol ar gyfer y gynulleidfa gynyddol. Codwyd Bethel Newydd felly ar ei safle presennol ar Heol Carnglas ym 1842, ar dir a brydleswyd gan y teulu Morris o Clasemont a Pharc Sgeti. Trowyd yr hen gapel wedyn yn gartref i’r achos Saesneg a ddaeth yn Gapel Bethel arall, sef yr un ger Ysgol yr Esgob Gore.

Roedd gan y safle newydd fantais fawr: roedd digon o dir. I ddechrau, roedd gan y capel ddigon o le ar gyfer yr adeilad ei hun, a hefyd sgwâr o dir o’i gwmpas i fod yn fynwent. Roedd hyn yn ddigonol i’w bwrpas am gyfnod, ond erbyn troad y ganrif, roedd yn llenwi. Er bod Sgeti’n bentref gwledig o hyd ar y pryd, roedd strydoedd newydd ar fin cael eu hadeiladu o gwmpas y capel.

Penderfynwyd ehangu’r fynwent tra bod tir ar gael, ac erbyn 1913 roedd estyniad mawr i’r dwyrain a’r gogledd. Roedd y fynwent wedi cyrraedd ei maint presennol erbyn diwedd yr Ail Ryfel Byd. Erbyn hynny roedd yn safle eang o oddeutu pedair erw i gyd, ar y llethr rhwng y capel a Prospect Place.

“Ble cafodd fy nghyndadau eu claddu?” Dyma’r cwestiwn rydyn ni’n ei glywed yn aml iawn yn yr Archifdy. Ond nid yw’r ateb yn un syml: mae’n dibynnu ar ddewis y teulu, os oes digon o le mewn mynwent arbennig a rheolau’r fynwent hefyd. Am y rheswm hwn rydyn ni’n awyddus i gasglu cofrestri claddedigaethau er mwyn ein helpu i ateb y math hwn o gwestiwn. Gwyddom fod nifer mawr o bobl wedi cael eu claddu ym Mynwent Bethel, ond wedi i ni dderbyn y cofrestri roedden ni’n gallu gweld pa mor bwysig y bu’r fynwent hon, nid yn unig yn lleol i aelodau’r capel, ond hefyd i aelodau capeli ac eglwysi o bob enwad ar draws y dref.

Yn anffodus, mae’n debyg bod y gofrestr gynharaf wedi cael ei cholli. Mae’r gofrestr pryniadau beddau’n goroesi, ac mae hon yn dyddio’n ôl i 1847. Ambell waith yr un person oedd wedi prynu’r bedd a gafodd ei gladdu ynddi, ac weithiau mae’n amlwg mai gweddw neu fab sydd wedi prynu llain y bedd. Fodd bynnag, mae’n werthfawr, oherwydd mae’n rhoi lleoliad y bedd yn y fynwent.

Hefyd, mae’n dangos bod 4018 o feddau yn y fynwent, y mae’n debygol bod y mwyafrif ohonynt yn cynnwys mwy nag un gladdedigaeth. Yna mae tair cofrestr claddedigaethau, sy’n cofnodi’r claddedigaethau yn nhrefn y dyddiadau. Mae’r rhain yn cynnwys claddedigaethau o 1899 i 1935, 1936 i 1958 a 1958 i 2018. Mae’r rhain yn llyfrau mawr, trwm, yn enwedig yr un cyntaf. Roedd y broses o’u copio nhw’n her oherwydd eu maint, ac roedd yn rhaid i ni ddefnyddio camera digidol er mwyn gwneud hyn yn gywir heb achosi difrod.

Cyn hir daeth yn amlwg bod hon yn fynwent i bawb. Mae’r cofrestri’n cofnodi enw, cyfeiriad, oedran a dyddiad claddu, a hefyd enw’r person a berfformiodd y seremoni. A’r golofn olaf sy’n dangos sut y defnyddiwyd y fynwent. Roedd yn wasanaeth i’r gymuned ac yn ffynhonnell incwm i’r capel. Er enghraifft, ym 1937, gwelwn enwau gweinidogion capeli Caersalem Newydd, St Helen, Pantygwydr a Chapel Gomer (Bedyddwyr Cymraeg a Saesneg), Stryd Henrietta (Annibynwyr), Hill (Cynulleidfaol Saesneg), ficeri plwyfi St Jude, St Mark, St Barnabas, St Gabriel a St Mary yn Abertawe, a ficer Castell-nedd (Yr Eglwys yng Nghymru), a hyd yn oed Eglwys St Joseph, Abertawe (Catholig). Mae’r rhestr hon yn hollol nodweddiadol. Ym 1912, ar 29 Gorffennaf, claddwyd Dr Griffith John, y cenhadwr enwog i Tsieina, yn y fynwent hon ond nid i Fethel yr ai ef, ond i Gapel Ebeneser, ond doedd gan y capel hwn ddim mynwent, ac roedd mynwent ym Methel.

Felly dyma bwysigrwydd y cofnodion hyn. Roedd y capel yn rhedeg y fynwent ar yr un sail â mynwent ddinesig. Cafodd miloedd o bobl eu claddu yno ar ael y bryn rhwng Tŷ Coch a Sgeti, yr oedd llawer ohonynt erioed wedi mynychu’r capel drws nesaf. Mae’r Gwasanaeth Archifau’n ddiolchgar iawn i Gapel Bethel am y cyfle i gopïo’r cofrestri yma, ac rydyn ni’n disgwyl y byddan nhw o ddiddordeb mawr i’n haneswyr teulu i gyd. …………………………………………..

Andrew Dulley Archifydd Sirol Cynorthwyol …………………………………………..

Archifau Cofrestri claddedigaethau a phryniad beddau, cyfeiriad (D/D Ind 16/2/1-4)

How Ford’s came to Crymlyn Burrows

A view of the Ford’s plant in 1968 (courtesy the owner of the Flickr photostream ‘bloodymonday’ which displays many historic photos from the Ford and Visteon plant’s heyday) In early May 2020, Swansea Council and its contractors handed over to the NHS a new temporary hospital to help combat COVID-19. As the pictures below in the article show, in a space of a little over a month the transformation of Bay Studios is nothing short of miraculous. The new Bay Field Hospital will initially have 420 beds for those requiring a short stay, with a discharge lounge of 80 seats for people ready to go home, expandable to respond to growing need. Work continues and the facility will have the capacity to provide a further 540 beds if required.

The news will remind many people of the building’s former existence as the Visteon automotive plant, manufacturing axles and transmission components for the Ford Motor Company, Visteon going into administration in 2009 with the loss of hundreds of local jobs. Prior to Visteon, the site was owned and managed directly by Ford’s itself. The story of how one of the best known car companies across the world was enticed to set up its works just outside Swansea in the early 1960s is the subject of a volume donated to the archives some years back. The volume was created by Glyn Davies from the papers of his friend and colleague T. Lawrence Jones, manager of the National Bank in Swansea. It is a story illustrative of the value of personal contacts and social networks in promoting business and economic prosperity.

The Crymlyn Burrows site was first developed in 1959 by a manufacturer of refrigerators, Prestcold (brand name taken from the name Pressed Steel Company), as a complement to their main factory near Reading. Prestcold refrigerators were known for their good design and durability. The factory Prestcold built in Crymlyn Burrows was one of the largest in Wales and was expected to employ around 4,000 workers (it only ever employed around 1,500). However, in a

shock move, the company closed the factory in early 1964 after only a few short years of production.

Faced with the contraction of many of its heavy industries, unemployment in the Swansea district was in 1964 at a rate of 3.2% of the workforce, againgst a UK average of 1.8% and a figure for Wales of 2.6%. A deputation from the Swansea and District Employment Committee met with the Minister of Labour in April 1964 to ask that an area of Swansea, including the factory site, be designated a Development District with government incentives to encourage private investment.

The Conservative government of the time led by Alec Douglas-Home appears not to have been favourably disposed towards the idea.

It is here that social connections came into play. Lawrence Jones, manager of the National Bank in Swansea, wrote a letter to a friend identified only in the correspondence as Stanley, with an address in Christchurch Hampshire but referred to in the letter as if he were a former native of Swansea. Stanley in turn was a friend of Sir Patrick Hennessy, chairman of Ford’s at Dagenham.

Jones wrote to his friend Stanley, after the initial opening niceties of family news: We have in Swansea one of the finest factories in Wales. Unlike most places, it is grand to look at, well maintained and situated and was until very recently the business premises of Prestcold Ltd but they have closed down and this wonderful place (almost right in Swansea) is silent. I enclose photographs.

Now I wondered if your friend Sir Patrick Hennessy would be interested in it for Fords. I believe he has retired but no doubt maintains his interest…I thought it would be a good idea to let you know of the circumstances – just in case something could be done. The factory is within a stone’s throw of splendid Docks facilities and main road and rail services – being on the Swansea/Cardiff byepass [sic]. The photographs do not lie – as many do – and I am sure you will be impressed with the potential of these premises in all ways.

I do hope you will forgive me the liberty I am taking in bringing the position to your notice but I know you believe in getting things done and, in any case, no harm could be The former factory prior to conversion, 2020

done I am sure, in bringing matters to the attention of people who, perhaps, are really on the look out for such a place. Naturally I am concerned with the prosperity of the Town and I am sure you are with me in this. Wish I had more time to state the case more thoroughly but I am sure you will get the gist of the problem and would be very interested to hear from you as soon as you have time. Do please “HAVE A GO” if you can.

Just over a week later, Stanley replied by letter to say that he believed it would not be of the slightest use but that he had done as he was asked. The following week he wrote back with some surprising news: ‘However it seems that they may be interested in a factory as large as the one depicted in the photo. He has asked me to request you to send on to him “particulars of the area and type of construction.” Thus began a series of exchanges and visits which resulted in the Ford Motor Company taking over the redundant factory, which events are documented here in the volume. Thus the four decades of automotive component manufacturing on the site can be ascribed in large measure to the enterprise and initiative of one man and his social connections. …………………………………………..

Kim Collis County Archivist …………………………………………..

Archives West Glamorgan Archive Service collections held in the Civic Centre, Swansea: The Ford Site Saga: The story of the introduction to Swansea of the Ford Motor Company. A bound collection of copies of correspondence, minutes, and news cuttings. 1964-1967 (D/D Z 332/1) The new Bay Field Hospital, Crymlyn Burrows in Neath Port Talbot

Felindre: a village in the heart of Mawr community

Our first guest author this year is former Swansea councillor Ioan Richard, who has long had a passion for the history of the area he represented for many years, the community of Mawr. Mawr lies to the north of the urban area of Swansea and encompasses several rural communities together with large stretches of open moorland, developed first in the nineteenth century with reservoirs to supply the neighbouring town of Swansea and more recently and controversially with wind turbines. Ioan wrote down his research and his reminiscences about the area he knows so well in a series of articles which he has recently donated to the archives. In this selection, he writes about the village of Felindre.

Felindre lies in the heart of Mawr Community Swansea. It nestles on the river Lliw between the rivers Dulais & Llwchwr to the west and the Llan to the east. It is a key part of the old Llangyfelach Parish Parcel Mawr, sitting on the Pennant Sandstone sedimentary geology of the South Wales Upper Coalfield deposits. These are thick beds of blue grey rocks that are of a hard resistant character that were laid down by a major fluvial channel system that once covered most of South Wales, intersected by rich coal seams of the late Carboniferous era just over three hundred million years ago. These coal beds were mostly prime quality steam coal, virtually “semi anthracite”, easily worked initially by shallow levels at their outcrops in the valley sides, later to be exploited extensively by deep drift mines such as Graig Merthyr.

The largest mine was in Cwmdulais which worked up to 1976, employing at its peak about 800 men. The larger mining operations were started by two prominent families – the Glasbrooks and Cory brothers. Nearly all the men at Felindre, if they were not a farmer or tradesman, would have worked at Graig Merthyr Colliery. This mine had a number of names at various locality entrances i.e. Graig Merthyr; Birchrock; Cory all at Cwmdulais, and latterly Lliw Drift above Cwmcerdinen, and underground connections to Morlais and Abergelli / Nixons. There are several reference source publications available for further study for Felindre village area’s coal mines.

Prehistory Felindre’s pre-history is most evident at the western ridge of Cwmdulais, known as Cefn Drum, which is an area of common heathland of mostly low altitude (less than 230m) extending northeast onto the steeper and more prominent Twyn Tyle. Extensive remains of early agricultural and settlement landscapes survive here, on its summit and south-facing slopes, mostly of medieval and later date but also with some evidence for prehistoric activity which becomes more prevalent further to the north-east. Just below the highest point of Cefn Drum is a kidney-shaped hollow measuring 30m long east to west by 10m wide and no more than 0.5m deep. Although the hollow is now dry it may once have served as a dewpond in an otherwise 'dry' landscape once given over to cultivation but lacking stream courses. This hollow is a distinct feature lying on the north side of a track and is surrounded by faint cultivation ridges.

A group of ancient house platforms is located on common land at an elevation of 120m, on the south-west end of Cefn Drum. An extensive cairnfield is located on the SW-facing slopes of Cefn Drum. This is the southernmost of two groups of small cairns. The other group lies some 250m to the north-east. The cairns are a variety of shaped stony mounds, resulting from field clearance, varying in size from 2.5m across to 9m across and rising to 0.4m high. Another extensive cairnfield is located on the south west-facing slopes of Cefn Drum. This is the more northerly of two cairn groups and spans an area roughly 300m (NE-SW) by 270m. The cairns are round/oval/linear or otherwise irregularly-shaped stony mounds, varying in size from 3m across to 9m across and rising to 0.5m high, and probably result from field clearance. There is no clear date for the construction of these cairns. Bronze Age burial/ritual monuments are numerous, and a prehistoric date is likely. Also several house platforms and rectangular buildings with associated field systems located nearby suggest that some small cairns are contemporary with a broadly medieval date. Some cairns may be associated with prehistoric field cultivation marks.

Penlle’rbebyll on Mynydd Pysgodlyn

Penlle’rbebyll on Mynydd Pysgodlyn is a very impressive early settlement site at the roadside of Heol Glyndyfal – a bit further on than the cattle grid. There is a lot of information readers can easily find about this site on the internet, including photographs and professional archaeological reports. So it will not be repeated here.

Chapel and school Capel Nebo Independent Chapel was first built in 1824, rebuilt in 1857 and rebuilt again in 1896.

The 1896 chapel was built in the Classical style with a gable-entry plan. This chapel has been central to the spiritual good of forming characters at Felindre for nearly two centuries. It has also helped, together with the village school, to preserve a stronghold of the Welsh language - Felindre being the most bilingual of all of the communities of the Swansea local authority area. Sadly, due to dwindling pupil numbers, Ysgol Gynradd Gymraeg Felindre has recently closed.

Alongside a continuous flow of reliable, honest, hard-working and compassionate people, this tiny school produced several notable people over the decades: Henry Eifion Clement and Elfie Clive Beynon, war heroes who made the ultimate sacrifice, and William John Jones decorated by King George with a DFM; Handel Clement principal civil servant running a Secretary of State’s Department; Graham Jones a Deputy Chief Constable of Police; Meirion Evans an Archdruid, Preacher and Poet of Eisteddfod fame; Alan Jones a first class cricket batsman; Eifion Jones a first class cricket wicket-keeper; Carol Bell a scientist is globally known as an economist in world energy business; Helen Jones & Phyllis Bell honoured members of the Gorsedd; Phyllis Bell was also the first Deaconess at Capel Nebo.

Farms and smallholdings Many of these are viable beef and sheep-rearing hill farms supporting families or family businesses, mostly reliant on the summer grazing of the various local upland commons. Few dairy and arable farms are any longer what they once were. Some contribute to the Swansea tourism trade - others are smallholdings. Most contribute to the Swansea economy by hard grafting work with which these farmers all support their families and local suppliers. The underlying Pennant sandstone makes for good drainage for growing fodder, etc.

Several farms have been held in their families for generations and are mostly Welsh-speaking.

The following list of farms is not exhaustive: nearly all are listed in the 1764 Survey of Gower by Gabriel Powell. Most are still inhabited and worked, but a few farms have amalgamated land as several farmers have retired, keeping the house and selling or letting fields to neighbours who wish to expand their holdings.

Gerdinen Fawr; Tylecoch; Ceunant; Gerdinen Isaf; Cefn Betingau; Pantycoedcae; PantyrUchedydd; PenyFedw; Llidiadau; CaeNewydd; MaestirFach; MaestirMawr; Cynghordy Fawr; Rhosfawr; Bwllfa; Cwmcile; Blaen yr Olchfa Fawr; Dan y Darren; Crwcca; Blaen Myddfai; Gelli Cwm Isaf; Gelli Cwm Uchaf; Twyntyle; Hafod Las; Henglawdd; Ysgiach Ganol; Cwrt Mawr; Ysgiach Uchaf; Darren Gelli Cwm; Cilfaen; Glandulais; Gelliwern Ganol; Gelliwern Isaf; Gerdinen Isaf; Glyncasnod; Abergelli Fach; Pantyffa; Blaen Nant Ddu; Ffynnon Fedw; Lle’r Fedwen; LlwynGwenno; Ffynnon Sant; Gareg Lwyd; Gellifeddan; Llety Thomas; Pantyfallen; Ty BlaenNant Ddu; Cefn Myddfai; Penfidy Isaf; Ty Mawr; Penfidy Uchaf; Gelli Gron; Cefn Fforest; Sgiach; Pentwyn; Garreg Lwyd, Llety’r Scilp, Ffynnon Llefrith

Smallholdings are not worked these days as they once were for agriculture or horticulture - if they are not used for horses, the land is generally rented out to neighbouring bigger farms for grazing.

A few farms on the list are ruins, but their fields are still worked. Only one or two farms are still milking – it’s all beef and sheep with one farmer keeping Alpacas for their wool.

There is little arable cropping that I know of today i.e. growing crops for sale. Arable farming today is generally reserved for growing crops for animal feed for the farmer’s own livestock, such as swedes and rape etc. One thing to bear in mind is "grazing the common lands" - these "Rights of Common" cannot be sold - they stay linked to the land they were intended for - but they can be split if farms are split. Those left farming here are hardy folk and mostly Welsh-speaking of a long line of local descendants by family roots.

Felindre a cluster of old farms or a new village settlement?

For all of those of us living today, Felindre is a village. Yet it might come as a surprise to many that until about the end of the Victorian era there was no village as such, only a tight cluster of farms, with all roads converging on the centuries-old water-powered flour mill on the river Lliw. A simple car drive around every nook and cranny of today’s village will show houses that were nearly all built after the year 1900. There are very few old cottages, examples of these being Crwcca Fach and an old cottage at Tyle Martha hill between the Mill and Bwlchygwin.

The 1764 Survey of Gower, which includes the Felindre area, shows no listings for cottages or free standing houses, whereas other areas that were becoming future townships showed several entries listing ‘cott. and garden’. Similarly the 1891 census just lists people mostly living in farm holdings in Felindre area, not cottages. So as a village it is a ‘new’ settlement set amongst old farms – but it is still one tight-knit community. …………………………………………..

Ioan Richard Local historian, former Swansea councillor and Lord Mayor of Swansea 2011/12 …………………………………………..

A copy of Ioan Richards’ collected articles and short works will soon be available on the reference shelves of the archive searchroom library.

The case of the missing file: CND and Swansea’s nuclear bunker

Our second guest author is Jen Wilson, academic, social activist, jazz musician and founder of Jazz Heritage Wales. Here she writes about a file which passed through her hands on its way to the archives. The early 1980s saw a huge increase in concern about the threat of nuclear war as the nuclear arms race escalated under US President Ronald Reagan. The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) was active in Swansea as it was across the rest of the country.

Veronica Wood approached. She looked anxious, a large, buff folder clutched in her armpit. The folder, it appeared, needed a safe home, as Veronica no longer lived in Swansea; its contents were too important, historically, for it to be mislaid. She spied someone across the Ystradgynlais Welfare Hall, then hesitated. I was hooked. What is this? It was a CND folder dating from 1980 concerning Swansea’s nuclear bunker in West Cross. I grabbed my chance, offering a temporary safe home with a view to a permanent one with Kim Collis, Archivist at West Glamorgan Archives.

Veronica accepted the offer. Back at home with a glass of wine, I read through the folder.

My first reaction was to laugh at the Monty Pythonesque contents, except this was serious governmental business. National fallout shelters had been built for government officials and not to be made available to the general public. The immediate question I needed answered was who chose the government officials who would then hand over authority to local commissioners, usually a Chief Executive of the local authority? The Chief Executive would have absolute power, including the right to execute people without trial and CS gas to be distributed to local police forces for use in controlling “unsettled” sections of the community. This was a dummy run for nuclear war.

It was apparent that civil defence plans, in place since the 1960s, had nothing to do with the saving of lives. The West Cross Nuclear Bunker needed a £73,000 upgrade, better still a new one for £250,000. CND initiated a campaign to persuade the Council not to waste public money on this folly at a time when services were being cut, school meals under threat and teachers being reduced. £7,000 million had already been spent nationally on new Trident submarines. Swansea CND swung into action.

Meetings, resolutions and proclamations were issued in swift succession, with West Glamorgan to be declared a Nuclear Free Zone. Screenings of the BBC film The War Game concerning the aftermath of a nuclear attack on Britain, were shown across the area. National CND issued Nuclear Free Zones packs initiated from a document drawn up by Manchester City Council.

Nuclear initiatives were explained such as Square Leg, a civil defence exercise that had taken place throughout Western Europe in September 1980, briefing that 125 nuclear bombs would hit Britain, coming in two waves, equivalent to 13,000 Hiroshima bombs. This initiative prompted a further plan called Hard Rock, a nuclear attack with exercise play in the post attack period.

There were pages in the folder drawn up by CND of mathematical equations to an accuracy of three decimal points. In 1981 the file declared that the real purpose of the British Nuclear Home Defence programme was not to attempt the impossible task of protecting civilians from the effects of heat, blast and atomic radiation, but to persuade people to accept the possibility of war. In 1981 President Reagan proceeded with the manufacture and stockpiling of the neutron bomb thereby impressing Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and possibly leading to the Soviet Union producing its own stockpile. Reagan’s bombs were designed for use in Europe, not America, ergo galvanising CND to protest at this massive escalation. Flying pickets were despatched to the Patti Pavilion to protest at the Royal Air Force’s Presentation Team propaganda exercise to be held there.

The Home Office directed local authorities to embark on an expanded programme of civil defence, with an additional budget of £47,311, with the local authority contributing 25% of the cost. The West Glamorgan County Council Public Protection Committee met in July 1981 and recommended that it agree with the resolution of the Manchester City Council in calling upon the Government not to manufacture or position nuclear weapons of any kind within the boundaries of the county. CND pushed the local Public Protection Committee to go further and refuse to participate in the government’s nuclear civil defence programme. CND also held a Festival at St. Philips Community Centre to mark the anniversary of the nuclear annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The folder also contained proceedings of the First Congress of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, Airlie, Virginia USA 20-25th March 1981. National CNDs collaborated in producing documents to argue their case for a national nuclear free country. Swansea CND Labour Group produced an illustrated document of the aftermath of a one megaton bomb on Swansea exploded at a height of 9,000 feet The bunker control room, 2003, photographer Nick above St. Thomas. The force of the Catford (courtesy website Subterranea Britannica) explosion would blast a crater 140 feet deep and 1300 feet across, killing or seriously

wounding 90% of the population as far as Gower, instantly vapourising people in Sandfields, Brynmill, Mount Pleasant, Uplands, Townhill, Brynmelyn, Hafod and Bonymaen. In an arc curving round from Port Talbot to include Neath, Clydach, Gowerton and Bishopston, there would be severe structural damage to buildings and one in three of the population would perish or be mutilated. Home Office guidelines stipulated that social workers would be responsible for looking after homeless children.

To what use would the West Cross Nuclear Bunker be put? In the event of war, the County Council would set up its emergency HQ there, called County Main Control and registered with the Home Office, to provide a minimum standard of protection against nuclear explosions and radioactive fallout to those within. It was stated that its present condition would do little to meet those minimal standards nor the accepted Health and Safety Executive. To renovate the bunker would cost £73,000 and the council were reminded that there was a specific grant of 75% toward many budget codes within the Emergency Planning Department including salaries, office accommodation and training. Neither Whitehall nor West Glamorgan County Council stated in any official documents what the criteria were of deciding who would accompany the Chief Executive into the nuclear bunker. The County Clerk recommended that:     

Participation in such exercises continue That continuation training is given to staff already trained That many more staff are trained for wartime appointments That all County Council staff are given at least basic information on Home Defence e.g. Day Courses That the bunker is thoroughly renovated and vital equipment provided.

However, the fact that the bunker was left to deteriorate proves the barrage of documents, screenings, lectures, meetings and public protests had worked. On 16th July 2001 Veronica Wood received a letter from Councillor Lawrence Bailey, Leader, City & County of Swansea. He thanked her for her letter reminding him of the 20th anniversary of West Glamorgan County Council’s declaration of a nuclear free Wales in February 1982. CND formally congratulated Swansea Council on the decision and its recognition of the anniversary.

The Postscript is that in September 2017 the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was adopted by the United Nations, supported by 122 countries. ICAN the International Campaign Against Nuclear weapons was awarded the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of this achievement. This coalition of groups in 100 countries includes CND Cymru.

Veronica Wood was a Greenham Common and anti-Cruise Missiles campaigner and member of WONT (Women Oppose Nuclear Threat). The Ystradgynlais event was the unveiling of a Purple Plaque on 6th March 2020 to Eunice Stallard, peace campaigner and one of the original marchers to Greenham Common in 1981. …………………………………………..

Honorary Professor Jen Wilson Academic, author and founder of Jazz Heritage Wales …………………………………………..

A Serendipitous Discovery…

David Lloyd George seated between Henry Coombe-Tennant (right) and his brother Alexander Our third guest author is Bernard Lewis, retired Council officer and local historian with a number of books already in print, particularly relating to the period of the First World War and its effect on our area. In particular, his book, ‘Swansea Pals’ is a great read and enduringly popular. Bernard’s attention has recently been drawn to the Tennant family and here he explains how he came to write his latest book, due for publication shortly.

I have been fortunate to have had a number of books published on aspects of the history of Swansea. When undertaking research for such projects, my first port of call is always to the West Glamorgan Archive Service website. I know that there is a very good chance that the archive will usually contain material that is relevant to my researches that will need to be consulted. In 2013, I was looking into aspects of Swansea during the Great War and my interrogation of the WGAS online catalogue revealed in excess of 300 files that might be of use to me. There were several references in there to a soldier named Christopher Tennant and I wondered if he had been a Swansea lad and, if so, would his story be worth including in my forthcoming book?

When consulted, the files revealed that he was, in fact, a Neath lad and seemed to have belonged to a well-to-do family with an estate at Cadoxton, near Neath. He had been killed in action in 1917 but, being from Neath rather than Swansea, his story was not relevant to my then-current research. However, having myself lived in Neath for over 40 years, I made a mental note to return to Christopher’s story with a view to perhaps writing an article about his all-too-short life for the Neath Antiquarian Society.

My book on Great War Swansea was published in 2014 and, after completing a publication on Neath Rugby Football Club in 2016, I eventually revisited Christopher’s story in the West Glamorgan Archives files. I subsequently wrote a 7,000-word account of his short life which appeared in the Neath Antiquarian Society publication for 2018, and it was while viewing archival documents regarding Christopher that serendipity came into play with ultimately beneficial results for the writer.

During my researches, I became aware of the existence of Christopher Tennant’s younger brother Henry, who had been born in 1913. I must confess that prior to stumbling across Christopher’s story in the archives, I knew very little about the Tennant family of Cadoxton. I had heard of the Neath and Tennant canal, of course, but had no idea that it - and Port Tennant - was linked back to the family at Cadoxton. Intrigued, I again searched on the West Glamorgan Archive Service website to see what it contained on Henry. Almost 200 results popped up!

There were intriguing references to famous personages, such as David Lloyd George, Henry Morton Stanley, the Balfour family, Tubby Clayton of “Toc H” fame and the Welsh journalist Gareth Jones. Eton College and Cambridge University were mentioned and it was clear that Henry had served in the Second World War and, at some stage, had been a prisoner of war. I decided to examine the files at the West Glamorgan Archives and see if I could perhaps write an article on Henry’s life.

My records tell me that I first visited the archive office to view material on Henry on 28 August 2017. I made eighteen visits in all, the last being on the 27 April 2018 (though I have also nipped back in to clarify one or two issues). I looked at every file that mentioned Henry Coombe-Tennant (though born a “Tennant”, he had later added the “Coombe” by deed poll, following his father’s example.) Some of the files contained his writings from when he was only a toddler. Others contained childhood drawings made for his mother, Winifred Coombe Tennant (who did not hyphenate her name). There were many letters to his mother from his time at preparatory school, Eton, Cambridge, and the Army, signed with the name his mother had pinned to him: “Wise One”.

One file contained his writings in Chinese. Others his own musical compositions (he was a gifted pianist.) And one held several of his milk teeth, carefully wrapped in tissue paper by his doting mother.

And it is Winifred Coombe Tennant who must be thanked (by this writer, anyway) for carefully “curating” a rich family archive of material relating to her entire family, a collection that is now cared for by West Glamorgan Archive Service. Winifred was a redoubtable woman of great energy and varied interests. Though never ranked amongst the wealthiest families, the Coombe Tennant’s financial means were quite sufficient to maintain the family in a very comfortable lifestyle. Winifred, therefore, was able to indulge her passions, being an avid collector of artworks and a champion of many Welsh artists, in particular Evan Walters and (Sir) Kyffin Williams.

Indeed, such was her expertise, that for many years she worked in conjunction with the artist W. Grant Murray in suggesting which artworks the Swansea Corporation should consider purchasing for the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery.

Winifred was also a committed Suffragist, a Justice of the Peace, and a Prison Visitor. Although never fully mastering the Welsh language, she nevertheless played a prominent role at the annual Eisteddfod, becoming Mistress of the Robes. A supporter of Liberal politics, she was a personal friend of David Lloyd George, an unsuccessful Parliamentary candidate in the 1922 election for the Forest of Dean constituency, and the first female British delegate to the League of Nations assembly in Geneva.

And what of Henry? He was the youngest of her four children. The eldest, Christopher, was killed in action during the Great War, while Daphne had died while only a toddler before Henry was born.

Henry at Eton College, c1930 Alexander had lived to see old age. Records preserved by Winifred allowed me to chart Henry’s progress in remarkable detail through early childhood and into preparatory school. He attended Eton College and then Trinity College, Cambridge, where he gained a double-first degree in Moral Sciences. Spurning the prospect of an academic career, he instead opted to join the Welsh Guards in the mid-1930s, the same regiment that his older brother, Christopher had served in during the Great War. Beyond the wonderful collection of records relating to Henry in West Glamorgan Archives, I obtained other relevant records from Eton College, Cambridge University, the School of Oriental and African Studies in London (Henry had visited China in the 1930s), The National Archives at Kew, Downside Abbey and the National Library of Scotland.

My researches revealed that Henry Coombe-Tennant had fought against the Nazi invaders in Holland and France in 1940 before being captured at Boulogne. Held in the prisoner of war camp at Warburg, Germany, he was one of just 30 men who got out over the barbed wire in August 1942. Twenty-seven escapees were eventually recaptured though Henry (and two comrades) made their way through occupied Europe (assisted by various escape organisations) and back to the United Kingdom by way of Spain and Gibraltar. An experienced soldier with excellent French, he subsequently joined the Special Operations Executive and was parachuted back into occupied France in 1944 where he again fought against the Germans while assisting the French Resistance. By the end of the war, he was helping release captured Allied agents from displaced persons camps in a chaotic Germany.

Post-war he continued his service in the Welsh Guards in Palestine, where he became the first non-Bedouin to climb the Jebel Rum mountain in Jordan in his spare time. He spent several years working in military intelligence with the British Army in both Germany and Austria in the early 1950s before working for the Foreign Office in the British Embassy in the Hague. He then seems

to have received the proverbial “tap on the shoulder”, an act that heralded his entry into the shadowy world of MI6 where he became “our man in Baghdad” just after the bloody Iraqi revolution of July 1958. Never previously a religious man, his surviving letters tell us that in Baghdad with MI6 he experienced trials that involved both physical and mental pain with the result that he embraced the Roman Catholic faith and, after returning to Britain in 1960, became a Benedictine monk at Downside Abbey, near Bath, where he died in 1989.

A truly remarkable life! And the element of it that is the most startling is the one that appears to have had the least impact on him. His mother Winifred, in addition to her other interests, was also secretly a psychic medium whose apparent contacts with the spirit world were the subject of decades of serious study by the learned members of the London-based Society for Psychical Research. In 1913 Winifred believed that her spirit guides wanted her to conceive a child with psychic researcher and British statesman, Gerald Balfour. And that child – Henry – would be guided from the spirit world to become the New Messiah bringing peace and harmony to a troubled world. The planned conception was indeed achieved though Henry never did become the New Messiah, of course. Nevertheless, he did lead a truly remarkable life.

My 100,000-word biography of Henry entitled ‘Neath’s Forgotten Hero: The Life of Henry CoombeTennant’, will be published by Y Lolfa in 2021. The book would not have come to fruition without the careful record keeping of Winifred Coombe Tennant and in turn the expert cataloguing and preservation of her family archive by the West Glamorgan Archive Service. I am deeply indebted to them both. …………………………………………..

Bernard Lewis Author and local historian …………………………………………..

Appendix 1: Depositors and Donors The Archive Service is grateful to the following individuals and organisations who have placed local and historical records in its care during the period 1 April 2019 to 31 March 2020.

D Ainsworth; J Andrew; Ms N Baird-Murray; Ms L Barnett; Mrs S Bell; Mrs S Benney; G Borsden; Revd P Brooks; R Brown; D Burbage; Ms J Butt; Ms J Came; J Childs; C Collins; K Collis; R Cooper; Mrs S Cooper; G Davies; Ms H Davies; Dr R Davies; S Dennis; Ms M Dobbins; Miss K Erzen; Miss S Fox; G Gabb; Revd G Green; Mrs A Griffiths; P Hall; Mrs H Hallesy; E Harris; C Hopkins; D Jacobs; Miss E Jarvis; P Jenkins; Mrs W Johns; E Jones; H Jones; M Jones; Mrs F Jones; R Jones; S Jones; T Jones; Mrs L Kneath; Mrs G Lewis; Mrs S Lugg; T Marsh; T MethuenCampbell; D Michael; Ms M Morgan; Ms P Morgan; Ms J Morris; Y Parchg J Morris; C Morriss; B Niedergang; Mrs E Niedergang; M Norman; J O’Donovan; Miss J Ogborne; B Owen; J Parkhouse; G Pellett; Mrs C Percival; D Pike; Ms A Pope; P Pritchard; Mrs S Pritchard; C Reed; Ms A Rees; Revd I Rees; P Reynolds; A Robins; D Rodgers; J Rowlands; Mrs J Sabine; J Scannell; D Shopland; Mrs S Silverstone; J Skidmore; A Stewart; Mrs D Stone; Ms W Thomas; Mrs A Thompson; Mrs C Watchman; Dr M Waymark; Ms L Whelan; Mrs A Williams; D Williams; E Williams; G Williams; J Williams; K Williams; R. Williams; Mrs S Williams; C Wilson-Watkins; Ms C Young; Ms H Young.

Benefice of Three Cliffs; Bethel Welsh Independent Chapel, Sketty; Carmarthen Road United Reformed Church; Coedffranc Community Council; Craigcefnparc Primary School; Dyffryn Clydach Community Council; Gorseinon Library; Gowerton Primary School; Hutchinson Thomas, solicitors; Jewish History Association of South Wales; Llangennith, Llanmadoc and Cheriton Community Council; Llanrhidian Higher Community Council; Neath Antiquarian Society; Neath Port Talbot Council; Newton Women’s Institute; Parish of Llangiwg; Parish of Swansea St Gabriel; Pencare Jewish Care Home, Cardiff; Penclawdd Primary School; Pontarddulais Primary School; Richard Burton Archives; Salem (Capel y Cwm), Bonymaen; Seion Welsh Independent Chapel, Glais; Smith Llewellyn solicitors; Southgate County Club; St Paul’s Sketty Women on Wednesday Church Group; Swansea Central Library; Swansea Council; Swansea Harriers Athletics Club; Swansea Register Office; Swansea Schools Football Association; The Gower Society; The Penllergare Trust; Tonner Johns Ratti solicitors; Undeb Bedyddwyr Cymru; Ysgol Gynradd Gymraeg Felindre.

Appendix 2: Accessions of Archives, 2019-2020 The archives listed below have been received by gift, deposit, transfer, purchase or bequest during the period 1 April 2019 to 31 March 2020. Not all items are available for consultation immediately and certain items are held on restricted access.

PUBLIC RECORDS SHRIEVALTY High Sheriff of West Glamorgan: declarations of Sally Goldstone and Robert Williams as High Sheriff and Under Sheriff respectively, 5 Apr. 2019 (HS/W 45/1-2); declarations, warrant and appointment of Dr Debra Evans-Williams and Robert Williams as High Sheriff and Under Sheriff respectively, 11-18 Mar. 2020 (HS/W 46/1-4) H.M. CORONER Swansea Coroner: inquest files 2004 Old papers and deeds believed to relate to Mr Cuthertson of Neath (former Coroner), 18th-20th centuries

RECORDS OF LOCAL AUTHORITIES AND PREDECESSOR AUTHORITIES UNITARY AUTHORITIES City and County of Swansea Chief Executive’s Department: ceremony card to celebrate honorary freedom of Alun Wyn Jones, 12 June 2019 (CC/S CE 12/5) and programme of ceremony to mark honorary freedom of Mel Nurse, 28 Apr. 2016 (CC/S CE 12/6); 50th anniversary of Swansea’s city status: commemorative New Testament and Psalms, 2019 (CC/S CE 12/7) Social Services: file relating to a patient detained under the Mental Deficiency Acts, 1935-1970 Economic Development and Regeneration: two reports on the Hafod-Morfa Copperworks site produced by Black Mountain Archaeology, 2019 (CC/S Pl 9/1) COUNTY COUNCILS West Glamorgan County Council Social Services Department: register of valuables handed to council officers for safekeeping by elderly persons entering council care homes, 1955-1979 (WGCC/SS 10/1-2)

URBAN AND RURAL DISTRICT COUNCILS Pontardawe Rural District Council: register of council house tenancies for Clydach, Gellionen, Mawr, Ynysymond, Cilybebyll, Blaenegel & Mawr, Godre’rgraig, Alltygrug, Cwmllynfell and Caegurwen wards (includes street names and names of tenants), 1921-1980 (RD/Pd H 1/1) CIVIL PARISH/COMMUNITY AND TOWN COUNCILS Coedffranc Community Council: minutes, 1999-2000 (P/220/56) Dyffryn Clydach Community Council: Copies of ‘Ymlaen’ – newsletter of Dyffryn Clydach Community Council, 2017-2019 (P/242/12/15) Llangennith, Llanmadoc and Cheriton Community Council: minutes, 2016-2017 (P/109/25) Llanrhidian Higher Community Council: minutes, 2019-2020 (P 111/45)

EDUCATION RECORDS Craigcefnparc Primary School: log book, attendance register, admission registers, timetable, syllabus and report book, 1869-1997 (E/W 6/1/5; 6/2/2; 6/3/1-3; 6/4/1-2); class photographs, 20152016; year book, 2019-2020 and nursery school portfolio, 2011 (includes class photographs), 2011-2016 (E/W 13/4/3-5) Cymer Afan Comprehensive School: log book, admission registers, other papers, 2 registers relating to Cymer Afan Primary, 1907-2009 (E/CA 1-9; E/Gl 3/3/1-2) Morriston School: album of photographs showing pupils, staff and the school building, 1920 (E/S 13/4/1) Neath County School for Girls: photograph of pupils and teachers, 1938 (E/N G Sec 7/2) Oxford Street Junior Comprehensive School year photograph, 1977; Swansea Grammar School year photograph, 1938, 1938-1977 (D/D Z 401/2/1-2) Penclawdd Primary School: dedication ceremony on the 70th anniversary of the sacrifice made by Pilot Officer Gwilym Penry Guy of Penclawdd, 2014 (E/W 26/3/1) Pentrepoeth Boys School: punishment Book, 1920-1936 (E/S 39/5/3) Pontarddulais Primary School: log books and admission registers, 19th-21st century (E/W 32) Port Talbot Secondary Grammar School magazine, c.1947-1955 Swansea Grammar School magazines, 1942-1949 (E/BG Sec 22/57-63); Swansea Grammar School magazines, 1920s-1930s (E/BG Sec 22/68-78) Tregŵyr Infants School admission register, 1952-1971 (E/W 11/2/8) Ysgol Gyfun Gymraeg Felindre: log book, stock inventory books and other records, 1947-1995 (E/W 42/1/3; 42/5/2; 42/7/1-2)

ECCLESIASTICAL PARISH Deanery of Gower: Chapter minutes, 1996-1999; minutes of the Diocesan Board of Finance, 2010-2015, 1965-2019 (D/D RD 14-15) Bishopston: Gower Ministry Area Magazine, 2018-2019; baptism, marriage and burial registers, 1965-2019 (P/103/CW/72 (part), 73-75) Llangiwg: Bishop’s Transcripts and registers, 1672-1812; list of clergy, 1662-2019; indexes of births, marriages and deaths, 1662-2019, 2019 (Searchroom library) Nicholaston: marriage register, 1972-2005 (P/113/CW/15) Penmaen: marriage register, 1997-2006 (P/116/CW/49) Sketty: Women on Wednesday Church Group: accounts, 1989-2019 Swansea St Gabriel: parish magazines and annual reports, 2011-2018 (P/119/CW/138-152)

NONCONFORMIST AND CATHOLIC RECORDS Baptist Undeb Bedyddwyr Cymru/the Baptist Union of Wales: annual report, newsletters, 2019 Calvinistic Methodist Salem, Capel-y-Cwm, Bonymaen: annual reports, 1900-2004 (D/D CM 13/109-122) Trinity, Swansea: group photograph showing ministers and deacons of Trinity Chapel, Glanmor Park Road, Swansea, c.1950 (D/D Z 586/7) English Congregational and United Reformed Church Carmarthen Road United Reformed Church, Swansea: minutes, baptism registers, membership records, accounts, correspondence, photographs and church magazines, 1880-2019 (D/D E/Cong 15/1/1-15/14/5); marriage registers, 1982-2009 (D/D E/Cong 15/15/1-2) Roman Catholic Cathedral Church of St Joseph: marriage register, 2016-2019 (D/D RCC 2/2/3) Welsh Independent Bethel, Sketty: burial registers and register of purchase of grave plots, 1847-2018 (D/D Ind 16/2/14) Seion, Glais: additional records including financial records, membership and contributions registers, Sunday School records and records relating to celebration of the centenary of the

church in 1934, 1902-1961 (D/D Ind 53/10/1-27); minutes and sales records, 1904-2019 (D/D Ind 53/11/1-2) Tabor, Blaengwynfi: roll of honour, c.1919 (D/D Ind 54/1)

JEWISH RECORDS Ephemera relating to the Swansea Hebrew Congregation including newspaper cuttings; order of events at the Holocaust Memorial Evening, Port Talbot, 2004; polaroid photographs of Swansea Hebrew Congregation cemetery, late 1990s-2008 Certificate recording the planting of a row of 15 trees in the name of Mrs R. Britz, Swansea at the Winston Churchill Forest, Galilee, Israel, May 1966

SOCIETIES, ASSOCIATIONS, SPORTS AND THE ARTS Records relating to Mr J. O’Brien, JP, member of the Aberafan and Margam District Historical Society, including copies of the society’s transactions and an album of newpaper cuttings relating to the Neath, Aberafan and Margam area, 1924-1932 Eisteddfod Genedlaethol Cymru Abertawe, 2006 The Gower Society: AGM agenda, newsletters, 2017-2019; programmes, 2017-2019; agendas and minutes, 2018-2019; press cutings; Gower Show catalogue, 2018; Hugh Jones, ‘The Reynoldston (1914-1918) Memorial Tablet, St. George’s Church, Reynoldston’, 2017-2019 Newton Women’s Institute: minutes, record books and other records, 1988-2018 (D/D WI/N 1-4); minutes and annual reports, 1946-1980s (D/D WI/N 1/11-22; 2/13-21; 3/2) Penllergare Trust: minutes of inaugural meeting of the Friends of Penllergare, 1999; three reports on the Penllergare Valley Woods, by Dr Kevin L Davies, 2010; rolled plan of the South Wales Coalfield, 1910 (D/D PT 62-67) Pennard Parish Hall: minutes of Management Committee, 2013-2018 (D/D PH 1/6) Royal Institution of South Wales: AGM and annual reports including Treasurers accounts and reports, 2010-2019 (RISW X 2/3; 5/1); newsletters 2019; AGM, 2020; Swansea Museum 2030: ideas for discussion, 2019 Southgate County Club: minute books, 1965-1999 (D/D SGCC 1/1-3); minutes, 2002-2025 (D/D SGCC 1/4) Swansea Canal Society: additional records, 20th-21st centuries (D/D Z 80/304-306) Swansea Schools Football Association (formerly Swansea Schools Association League): minute books, 1938-1978 (D/D SSFA 1/1-2/2) Swansea Valley Historical Society: photographs of Pontardawe Grammar School, n. d.; team photographs of the Pontardawe Technical School, 1961-1962; architect’s plans of Cwmtawe School, 1960s-1990s (D/D HSV 163-166)

Records of the West Wales Rugby Football League including year books; bye-laws and minute book, 1920s-1940s (D/D RC/WW 1/1-4/1)

POLITICAL PAPERS Liberal Social Club and Institute, St James’s Crescent, Swansea: minutes, 1977-1983 (D/D LSCI 1/1-4)

WOMEN’S ARCHIVE WALES Royal Welsh Show 2018 adjudication (Dosbarth Merched y Wawr, Cystadleuaeth Cwpan Radi Thomas); copy of photograph showing Catrin Stevens and another volunteer at the Royal Welsh Show, 2018 Copy of photograph showing Mary Powell, market trader; invitation to the unveiling of the purple plaque in memory of Val Feld; article by Ursula Masson relating to the Tinplate Industry; copy of photograph of May Jacquet, munitions worker (with copy of reference); copy of “Old Fires: The Elba – three narratives”; Women’s Jazz Archive information pack, 20th century

FIRST AND SECOND WORLD WAR RECORDS Records of Swansea men and women who served during the Second World War, 2010s RAF Fairwood Christmas menu 1943 (men’s signatures on reverse), 1943 (D/D Z 1075/1) Papers relating to the Swansea gas undertaking; Swansea (Blitz) occurence chart and miscellaneous ephemera, 20th century (D/D Z 1078/1-10)

LEGAL AND ESTATE RECORDS Estate of Miss Mary Rose Mumford: records of the St Helen’s Estate in Swansea, the property of Evan Morgan, including deeds, manorial survey, correspondence, financial records and probate records, 1598-1951 (D/D SH 1/1-11/2) Deeds relating to the Dyffryn Estate; Howell Cuthberson Estate; Strick Family and other miscellaneous families and properties, 19th-20th centuries Edward Harris solicitor: deeds, 19th-20th centuries Ynyscedwyn Estate: various title deeds and bonds relating to properties in the parishes of Llangiwg, Cilybebyll, Ystradgynlais and Defynog, 16th-18th centuries (D/D TDW); agreement as to transfer of mortgage on premises in the parish of Llangiwg, 1605 (D/D TDW 2/8) Penrice Estate: various documents including labour accounts, correspondence, records relating to repairs to estate properties and supply of materials, and Oxwich School, 1850s-1890s Miscellaneous deeds, 1907-1957 (D/D Z 888/2-8)

PERSONAL PAPERS ‘From pit to pulpit to parliament: the life of John Williams JP, MP’ by Gwladys Williams, n.d. (D/D Z 1072/1) Additional papers of Dr T G Davies, including photographs, slides, CDs and annual reports, 20th21st centuries (D/D Z 72) Deeds and leases relating to minerals in Ystradgynlais; tapes of carols and photographs relating to Mari Lwyd, 19th-20th centuries (D/D Z 1080) Published articles by Viv Pope. Also a photograph of Viv Pope, 1987-2012 (D/D NVP 58-65); CDROM containing correspondence of N.V. Pope, n.d. (D/D NVP 57) Photographs and other records relating to the career of Gareth Phillips as a projectionist in cinemas in Swansea; also aerial photographs of Clydach and Mumbles, 1960s-2006 (D/D Z 1084/1-12) The memoirs of J. W. Burr, Borough Electrical Engineer, Swansea 1914-1939, 1960 Papers relating to Edward Martin (son of Felix Martin, optician) including 3 WWI greetings cards; photograph of Felix Martin’s optician’s shop, c.1900-1918 (D/D Z 1094/1-4) Roy Kneath Collection: St Theodore’s, Port Talbot parish magazines, 1905-1931; Welfare Hall Cinema, Fforestfach film distribution despatch notes, 1960-1970; bundle of aerial photographs (Meridian Airmaps Ltd and Hunting Surveys Ltd), 1963-1966 (D/D Z 837) Facsimile records relating to Dr John Lewis Jones of Llansamlet, medical practitioner, 1892-1927 (D/D Z 1093/1-4) Clive Reed Collection: files containing information relating to the Swansea Canal; large file containing information about the Swansea Canal; bundle of drawings and plans relating to the Pontardawe area, 20th century; slides, photographs; video; cassette tape; two aluminium records relating to Pontardawe and the area, 20th century; records relating to Swansea Canal, coal mining, Pontardawe, social history, photographs and documents, 19th-20th centuries Group photograph of Council Members (possibly West Glamorgan County Council), c.1996; Programme for the Upper Forest and Worcester Works Welfare (The Welfare Dramatic Society) presents ‘The Druids Rest’ by Emlyn Williams, 1947. (D/D Z 995/2-3) Reports relating to Swansea Prison and Port Talbot magistrates; prospectus for West Glamorgan Institute of Higher Education; opening of Port Talbot Harbour; Script for Blue Scar, 20th century (D/D Z 653 7/7; 9/6-9; 10/6-7; 11/10-11) Records relating to Wuhan and Nantong, 20th century (D/D Z 165/35-38) CD-ROM and printout of information regarding people from Glamorgan buried in Salt Lake City, 2010s (D/D Z 1079/1-2) Three death certificates, a letter from Winifred Coombe Tennant to W. Phillips and a letter from H.W. Southey regarding the Merthyr Express and an article about the history of Glynneath by T. Williams, 1917-1923 (SL 63/151-155)

TRANSPORT, BUSINESS AND INDUSTRIAL Additional deposit of records relating to Andrews (Bakers) Ltd, Swansea comprising competition certificates and 4 35mm slides of John Andrew (1924-2013), 1922-1974 (D/D Z 1052/42; 45) Files containing notes, photographs etc relating to the history and restoration of the Swansea Canal; video; paper bags; card envelope, 20th cent Papers relating to Edward Bevan Chemists, Nelson Street, Swansea, including advertisements, invitation to the Pharmacy Ball, 1948; receipt for examination fees, 1876; prescription card, 1939; photographs of Edward Bevan and John Thomas Williams chemists, and unidentified family groups, c.1876-1958 Letters to chapels in Swansea seeking donations for children affected by the 1910 miners’ strike in mid-Rhondda, 1910 (D/D Z 1063/5-8) Croeso ’69 poster regarding an exhibition of Arts and Crafts at the Rechabites Hall, 1969; South Wales Evening Post weekend special feature about the Elba Colliery Disaster, 1977; various documents and photographs relating to the Gowerton area, 1940s-1960s

ORAL HISTORY, SOUND, FILM AND DVD Four video files: three of re-enactments by Phil Barrow of episodes in the First World War in Gallipoli and in the Second World War in Burma, and one showing an art exhibition by Michael H. Isaac, April 2019, at the National Waterfront Museum, 2019 (D/D Z 717/50-53) Film about the salt house, Port Eynon, 2019 (D/D Z 717/54) Films entitled ‘A brief history of St Mary’s Church, Swansea’, 2019 (D/D Z 717/55-56) Film on the Second World War and the Three Nights’ Blitz, Swansea. Glamorgan Police Officer seconded to Swansea Borough Police to assist in rescue and law and order duties. Story told by a re-enactor from accounts of a Glamorgan constable, 2019 (D/D Z 717/57) Film of an oral history interview with Frederick Jeacock, Flt Lt RAF/RCAF in the Second World War, 30 July 2019 (D/D Z 717/58) Two films: ‘150 years of 23rd 24th 41st Foot, the Welsh Infantry Soldier: “Isandlwana to Northern Ireland” – stories of the Welsh Infantryman’, and ‘Royal Air Force Police, RAF Fairwood Common, Swansea, 31st August 1944’, 2019 (D/D Z 717/59-60) Oral history interview with Margaret Hayes of Swansea aged 94, former Land Army Girl, 2019 (D/D Z 717/62) Genealogy relating to Private John Connolly who fought at Rorke’s Drift, 1906-2019 (D/D Z 717/63) Videos: Donald Richard Bowen, WW2 veteran; Clydach Art Gallery open evening; Brief History of Policing in Swansea (film and PowerPoint presentation), 2020 (D/D Z 717/64-66) Transcript of recorded histories of residents of Southgate Village, 2008-2018 (T 50/1-8) Three oral history recordings of Albert Frank Button of Dunvant (1918-2005), 1983-2001 (T 51/1-3)

PICTORIAL AND MAPS Photograph album of Clayton Tinplate Works, Pontarddulais, 1957; group photograph of players in Cwmni Dramayddol, Pontarddulais, 1911 (D/D Z 1071/5-6) 35mm slides of historical buildings and sites in the West Glamorgan area, mostly of churches and chapels, 20th century (D/D Z 1052/46-78) Various photographic prints and negatives of Gower and cockle picking in 1958, 1958 (D/D Z 1081/1-8) Photograph of Pontardawe Poultry Club/Hawick Legion Association, c.1970 (D/D Z 1083/1) Swansea Central Library: photographs, 19th-20th centuries One postcard of the Mumbles Train; 3 slides of Victoria Station and the Mumbles Train, 1910s1950s Plan and sections of Swansea Harbour relating to the proposed new channel and extension of the Western Pier, 1863 (D/D Z 810/4) Group photograph showing Gorseinon Chamber of Commerce (Llwchwr Grocers) on a trip to British Canners Ltd. (Wye Valley Preserves) Hereford, 8th July 1954 (D/D Z 1092/1) Photographs of the Finance Act 1910 map sheets held in The National Archives that cover the northernmost third of West Glamorgan, 1910-1915 (D/D Z 1090/1) Photographs of groups of smelters at the Bryngwyn Works; photographs of class and teachers at Gorseinon Boys’ School; photograph of ‘KRFC’ (?Kingsbridge Rugby Football Club); photograph of Capt. H. L. Davies 1914, 1920s-1930s (SL 64/1-7) Copies of photographs of children at Ynys-y-Plant Children’s Home, West Cross, Swansea, 19591960 (D/D Z 1089/1) Photographs of Swansea, including the North and South Docks, High Street, Weaver’s Building, old Guildhall, Palace Theatre, Maritime Quarter and Leisure Centre, 1979 (D/D Z 586/6/1-18) Three photographs of the Mumbles Railway, 1960s (P/PR/2/5/79-81) Geological maps, c.1870

PUBLISHED AND UNPUBLISHED WORKS Additional notes relating to Swansea and Gower hustings, 1885-1918 (Searchroom library, LOC/SWA 291) Miscellaneous books, booklets, programmes relating to Neath and the Neath Valley, 20th century Two copies of ‘Swansea Harriers 1962-1987’ by Dil Robbins, 2020 (D/D Z 1088/1 and duplicate copy in searchroom library)

MA dissertation by Sara Fox entitled ‘The late 18th and early 19th century landscape at Middleton Hall’ (refers to the artist and cartographer Thomas Hornor), 2014 Copies of ‘Llais’ – Papur Bro Cwmtawe, Clecs y Cwm, Y Glowr, and other papurau bro relating to the West Glamorgan area, 2004-2019

Above and following page: two early artist’s impressions for rebuilding post-war Swansea, thought to be the work of Borough Architect Ernest Morgan, 1940s (part of PL301)

Gwasanaeth Archifau Gorllewin Morgannwg Mae Gwasanaeth Archifau Gorllewin Morgannwg yn casglu dogfennau, mapiau, ffotograffau, recordiadau ffilm a sain sy’n ymwneud â phob agwedd ar hanes Gorllewin Morgannwg. Mae’n wasanaeth ar y cyd ar gyfer Cynghorau Dinas a Sir Abertawe a Bwrdeistref Sirol Castell-nedd Port Talbot.

Ein cenhadaeth yw cadw a datblygu ein casgliadau o archifau, diogelu ein treftadaeth ddogfennol a chaniatáu ymchwil er mwyn datblygu ein casgliad. Rydym yn ymroddedig i ddarparu gwybodaeth a’r cyfle i gyflwyno’r archifau i bawb.

Gwasanaeth Archifau Gorllewin Morgannwg Canolfan Ddinesig Heol Ystumllwynarth Abertawe SA1 3SN  01792 636589

Back cover: Section of an early design for a building off the Kingsway in Swansea to be called the Quadrant Shopping Centre, c.1950

archifau@abertawe.gov.uk www.abertawe.gov.uk/archifaugorllewinmorgannwg

@archifgorllmor

Gwasanaeth ar y cyd ar gyfer Cynghorau Abertawe a Castell-Nedd Port Talbot A joint service for Swansea and Neath Port Talbot Councils