The Treorchy of my youth and dreams

I am English, born in 1945 in the North Western London suburb of Greenford. I was a 'baby boomer' born in March of that year, as the defeat of Germany was becoming increasingly inevitable. My parents would tell me of the terror of the 'buzz bombs' launched across the channel in the Pas-de-Calais region of Northern France, and the buzz of their engines was timed to cut out over London. The most terrifying bit was when their engines cut out.

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A few seconds after that, there would be an enormous explosion, and houses and the families within them would be destroyed. In a way this explains the peaceful and somewhat boring life lived in suburbs like Greenford. As a young child, I understood none of this of course. I had always found it to be an anonymous and dull place, and I was eager to leave. But no wonder the nation and its families desperately wanted peace, however suburban and however boring to impatient youths like me!

My parents had met at a dance held regularly at the Davis Theatre Croydon. As a young woman, my mother had had to leave school at 14 and move to London. She had found work as a housemaid in a middle class family in Croydon. As for my father, he was born in Croydon. He had not served in the war as he had broken his leg so badly when young, so was invalided out of the army. He was working as a clerk.

My mother had had a very difficult childhood. She had been a very beautiful young girl and had been sexually abused by a catholic priest, and also by her oldest brother, Jack. She had kept these secrets close to her chest for many years, but finally shared them with me many years later. Understandably, she was a somewhat troubled and unhappy person.

My childhood wasn't especially happy, and my parents were not well-suited and bickered regularly, occasionally violently. My mother was Welsh, growing up in the Rhondda Valley, born in Gelli. My mother was the youngest of five sisters. Her oldest sister was my beloved Auntie Winnie, who was married to my equally beloved Uncle David. They were both absolutely wonderful to me. They lived in Treorchy, at 10 Dyfodwg St. In those days, coal and steam were the primary sources of energy. In our backyard in Greenford, as in Treorchy, there was a coal bunker, filled regularly by a coal cart that would pass through our street, delivering our weekly coal supply. In my early teens, I would travel down to Cardiff and then on to Treorchy by a steam train. I remember sticking my head out of the window of the train, hearing the steam engine puffing away, and smelling the soot and the smoke.

In the early days, when I would visit, there was an active coal mine in Treorchy. As soon as I was able to travel independently, I'd go down to Treorchy every Easter and Summer holiday. Auntie Winnie and Uncle David became a refuge from my fractious home in London, a place of refuge and peace. I would keenly look forward to the school holidays and travel down there, almost as if it were a spiritual refuge. All the neighbours on Dyfodwg Street got to know me, and walking down the street was for me like a homecoming, where all the neighbours would give me a friendly greeting. It was magic, and balm to me, and my unhappy spirit. In those days, I felt far more Welsh than English; it was, after all, my spiritual home and refuge.

Many of my relatives on my mother's side lived in the valley, especially my Uncle Dennis and Auntie Katie at 8 Stuart Street, with their lovely adopted daughter Patricia. I was haplessly and hopelessly in love with her for many years, but far too shy to, as the Victorians might have said, make a declaration!

No. 10 Dyfodwg St, my spiritual home.

Some years, we would spend our holidays with my Uncle Dai and Auntie Winnie. I think we were all so very happy to be together!

Uncle Dai was an electrician who worked in the Treorchy pit and the neighbouring one in Treherbert in the neighbouring valley. He was an excellent storyteller and would tell stories of tramping over the mountains in thigh-high boots, in the middle of winter, ploughing through six-foot snowdrifts.

The whole of the Rhondda Valley had working pits back then, which would provide the high-quality anthracite coal, which would be shipped through the narrow, snaking valley train lines by freight trains to the steel works throughout the area of the Rhondda Valley, and up through Cardiff to all points north, south, east and west. As a boy, I'd join the small gang of boys of my own age in Dydodwg Street, At the bottom of Dyfodwg Street, there was a narrow, dank tunnel underneath the trainline, and as naughty boys, it was possible to sneak onto the trainline, not electrified in those days, and put a penny on the line. After the train passed over it, we'd pick up our flattened coins, and I'd proudly show them to my friends at school in London. I loved Treorchy, and its landscape huddled between the brooding mountains.

The mountains overlook Treorchy.

The valley was all around them, just a couple of hundred yards from their homes.

My mother would tell stories of the miners, who, after a shift gauging coal hundreds of feet below, and having been hauled through the mine shaft with their faces still coated in coal dust, would joyfully sing their traditional hymns and songs of Wales. They'd sing them joyfully, striding through the little town of Treorchy, being welcomed back home by their wives and sweethearts, family and friends.

What I didn't realise at the time was that what they endured was horrendous and dangerous working conditions for very little pay, and life-threatening conditions, which inevitably shortened their lives. Indeed, my uncle Will contracted the 'miners' disease' of Pneumoconiosis, which poisoned his lungs with coal dust, preventing him from living an everyday, active life. This basic truth was often romanticised in early films like How Green Was My Valley. But to survive a shift together with their mates, clanking upwards hundreds of feet through the mine coal shaft, returning home, was a daily ritual of coming home after many tribulations underground, where the narrow tunnels along which they had to crawl on their tummies, propped by wooden supports which could split and collapse, to survive all this to live another day. This was not just another job, neither was it a vocation. it was not just another day, it was a triumph of survival. No wonder they sang, and no wonder they sang with such passion and unity. They sang because it was the story of their life. They knew this; their families knew this. This is how the Treorchy Male Voice Choir became famous, not just in Wales, but throughout the world. Similarly, many valleys also had their brass bands, and for many years, the Parc and Dare brass band was truly excellent, winning many competitions. Every Easter, a concert featuring both the choir and the band would take place in the Parc and Dare concert hall, located at the corner of Dyfodwg Street. The Parc and Dare working man's Hall was the centre of the life of the whole town.

I mentioned earlier that I had an adolescent crush on my cousin Patricia. Here she is as a pretty young girl.

As a young woman, she was drop-dead gorgeous!

I didn't realise it at the time, but I was quite a good-looking young lad myself!

Pat broke many hearts when she married Alan, who I reluctantly have to admit was a handsome lad himself! Then my own life took many new directions, and inevitably, perhaps, these golden threads of my youth got somewhat frayed in the passage of time. Just in the last few years, I have reconnected with Cousin Pat, her husband Alan and their daughters Louise and Nicola. We are all in our eighties now. Where did the time go?

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Just this last summer, I went back to visit Pat and Alan and their two lovely daughters, Louise and Nicky. This is Pat and I standing outside No 10 Dyfodwg St in the pouring rain! We spent some time visiting cemeteries and finding graves.

This is Pat and I outside 10 Dyfodwg in the pouring rain!

My mother had always spoken yearningly of her Irish father, who had settled in the Rhonda Valley in the 1880s, a refugee from the Irish potato famine. Astonishingly, we were able to find his grave.

This is Pat, Alan and I in the cemetery, having found the grave of Patrick Hanly, of whom my mother would always speak so lovingly.

At Pat's friend's house in Treorchy, we ate some excellent fish and chips, and an equally excellent trifle made by an old friend of Pat's who still lives in Treorchy.

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