Up a Mountain down Memory Lane: Taff's Well, Pentyrch and Tongwynlais

Sat 22-Aug-2015

A Plan to Climb the Garth

Wales
The Garth is in the County of Cardiff (red)
north of the city

'For my sixtieth birthday' Lynne's sister Julia had said, 'I want to climb the Garth - and we could gather as many of our cousins as possible to do it with us.'

And so, some months before her birthday, while the weather was still amenable, we met in Pentyrch to set off on this not quite epic ascent. The gathering of cousins though was not a great success; Lynne and Julia have six cousins, but only cousin Nick was available. Even so with partners, offspring and offspring’s offspring, 11 people gathered for the team photo outside the cemetery on the corner of Heol-y-Bryn and Temperance Court (yes it really is called that) and Julia’s daughter Alison became the twelfth when she caught us up twenty minutes later.

Team photo, Pentyrch
(only ten people? Well, I'm behind the camera.)

And why climb the Garth? Because for Lynne and Julia it is a trip down (or perhaps, up) memory lane. It is a hill or mountain they climbed many times in their childhood, and it is a mountain or hill with a story.

Taff's Well and Doctor Ifor Monger

That story starts with Dr Monger. Lynne spent the first nine years of her life (and Julia the first four) in Tongwynlais. The village, a little to the north of Cardiff, is a line of shops and dwellings beside what was once the main road north from Cardiff up the valley of the River Taff to Merthyr. The modern A470 is a dual carriageway that by-passes all the villages that once straggled along it, though the valley topography means it does not always by-pass them by much.

Dr Monger was their family doctor though his surgery was in Taff’s Well, the next village/straggle to the north. Everyone thought highly of Dr Monger and Lynne used to share his homespun philosophy with me, sometimes quite forcefully. Much of it involved ‘wrapping up warm in cold weather’ - to which I have always taken a cavalier attitude. Although I never met him I developed quite a healthy dislike for Dr Monger, though to be fair, it was probably not his fault; he was, by all accounts, a first class, old-school, family doctor.

Lynne thinks this was Dr Monger's house and surgery, Taff's Well

The Garth stands above Taff’s Well and Tongwynlais, but we set off from Pentyrch on the other side of the hill as the climb is much easier. Sitting higher on the hillside, Pentyrch is less linear and more upmarket than Taff’s Well and Tongwynlais. Lynne’s father was born and brought up here and his brother (Lynne’s Uncle Lynn) lived here until his death last year.

The Garth above Taff's Well

Setting off from Pentrych

We walked up Temperance Court and turned into Mountain Road.

Up the Mountain Road, Lynne, Small, Julia, Arthur

Where the minor road swings left to cross the pass and descend into Efail Isaf, we turned right towards the open hillside.

Onto the open hillside

Christopher Monger and 'The Englishman Who Went up a Hill but Came Down a Mountain'

Dr Monger was more than just a doctor; he was a talented amateur artist and a writer with several novels and short stories to his credit, some of which are still in print. His son Christopher inherited the artistic streak, becoming a professional artist, writer and film director. His best known film The Englishman Who Went up a Hill but Came Down a Mountain starred Hugh Grant as the Englishman of the title with the Irish Colm Meaney (taking time off from keeping the Deep Space 9 space station functioning) and Anglo-Irish Tara Fitzgerald both pretending to be Welsh.

The Englishman Who Went up a Hill and Came down a Mountain, (Borrowed from Wikipedia)

The film, a whimsical romantic comedy, is based on a story told to Christopher Monger by his grandfather, and the writer’s credit goes jointly to Christopher Monger, his father (Dr) Ifor David Monger, and grandfather Ivor Monger, though both the elder Mongers were long dead when the film was released in 1995. It is set in 1917 when an arrogant English surveyor arrives in Taff’s Well (Ffynnon Taf) which is fictionalized as Ffynnon Garw (Rough Well). The name might be inspired by Nantgarw a mile or two up the valley, or it may be a little dig at Taff’s Well. Although it is hardly a picture postcard village….

Taff's Well

…. it does have some fine, sturdy Edwardian buildings as well as many of the 19th century workers cottages that abound throughout industrial South Wales.

Sturdy Edwardian buildings, Taff's Well

He surveyed the local mountain, 'Our mountain, the first mountain in Wales' and discovers to the horror of the locals that it was just under 1000ft and therefore not a mountain but a hill. As ‘the grandfather’ says:Is it a hill, is it a mountain? Perhaps it wouldn't matter anywhere else, but this is Wales. The Egyptians built pyramids, the Greeks built temples, but we did none of that, because we had mountains. Yes, the Welsh were created by mountains: where the mountain starts, there starts Wales. If this isn't a mountain well… then Anson [the surveyor] might just as well redraw the border and put us all in England, God forbid.’

The wily and, it must be said, eccentric, locals devise a plan to delay the surveyor’s departure while they build an earthwork on the summit. The hill is resurveyed and now, lo and behold, it is over 1000ft and secure in its classification as a mountain.

The pimple on the broad back of the Garth

The Summit of the Garth, the the Truth about its Height

It is a steady climb, but not very steep and it does not go on for too long, indeed the youngest member of the party was among the first to reach the top of the hog’s back. The summit sits on a pimple at, according to the Ordnance Survey, 307m. The magical 1000ft mark has disappeared with metrication - and it is a fiction that this modest height ever ‘officially’ defined a mountain.

'I've climbed my first mountain. Now, which way is Everest?'

But 307m is 1,007ft, and if 1000ft makes a mountain then the Garth is a mountain only because of the pimple. So it happened just as the Mongers, grandfather, father and son told it and the pimple exists solely to make the Garth a mountain. Sadly, Pentyrch Community Council and the Pentyrch Local Historical Association disagree. According to their plaque at its base, the pimple is the largest of four Early-Middle Bronze Age Circular Burial mounds on the Garth dating not from 1917 but around 2000BC. You may believe whichever story pleases you.

Nick, Lucy, Henry and Anne on the summit

The youngest member of the party was the first to leave the pimple and lead us to the end of the ridge where there is a 20th century earthwork of non-obvious purpose.

Come on you lot, let's get on

There are fine views south over the city of Cardiff and the Bristol Channel, reputedly as far east as the Severn Bridge, though that was hiding in the mist. The view north to the Treforest Industrial Estate, Church Village and Llantwit Fadre is less pleasing though the Brecon Beacons were perhaps visible in the far distance.

Cardiff and the Bristol Channel from the Garth

At the very end of the ridge looking down on Taff’s Well the linear nature of settlement in the Welsh valleys was obvious….

Taff's Well from the Garth

… and, looking a little south, the turrets of Castell Coch could be seen poking out from the trees on the opposite side of the valley.

Castell Coch from the Garth

We returned through the bracken on the flank of the hill, at one point braving an infestation of midges which for a few yards meant the air was so thick with insects they got down your neck, up your nose and into your mouth. Thereafter the descent was straightforward.

Turning back through the bracken, the Garth

Dinner in the Cwrt Rawlin Inn

All 12 of us met again for dinner in the Cwrt Rawlin Inn on the edge of Caerphilly. It is a large family pub that Lynne and I have visited before and were impressed by the friendliness and efficiency of the young staff. They did not disappoint, and while the Cwrt Rawlin could never be accused of being a gastropub, their food is wholesome enough and very reasonably priced. Thereafter Nick and family returned to Bristol while the rest of us crossed the road to the Caerphilly Travelodge.

Julia and Alison.
I know this picture is in the wrong place, but Alison did catch us up, and as there is no other picture of her.....

Sunday 23-Aug-2015

Castell Coch

Friday had been a day of rain. On Saturday we had walked in a window of glorious sunshine, but it rained while we were in the pub, rained overnight and was still raining in the morning, the mist sitting low on the hills.

Castell Coch, Tongwynlais

Anyone who has driven down the M4 past Cardiff will have noticed the turrets of a fairy tale castle rising above the trees just north of the road. This is Castell Coch; it sits in the woods above Tongwynlais and is exactly the sort of place an imaginative four year old would like to visit on a wet Sunday morning. It also has a family connection - Lynne's grandmother was once a cleaner here.

On the drawbridge of Castell Coch, where an imaginative four year old would want to be

It looks like a fairy tale castle because, for the most part,it is. The foundations and the first metre or two of the towers were built by Gilbert de Clare in the 13th century, everything above that is Victorian.

The Coutyard, Castell Coch

Gilbert de Clare, the Norman Earl of Gloucester, has appeared in this blog before as the builder of castles at Llantrisant and Caerphilly. He was known as ‘Red Gilbert’ because of his hair colour or his fiery temperament (or both) and it is alleged that Castell Coch (Red Castle) was named for him. It was subsequently destroyed in a series of Welsh rebellions

Dubious turrets, Castell Coch

500 years later the ruins were acquired by John Stuart, Earl of Bute as part of a marriage settlement. Although they were of the Scottish nobility it was his great-grandson John Crichton-Stuart who built Cardiff docks to export the mineral riches of the interior and started the transformation of a small coastal settlement with barely 1,000 inhabitants in 1800 into a city which would become the capital of Wales.

The Dining Room, Castell Coch

His son, also called John Crichton-Stuart inherited the title in 1840. Extremely wealthy and with an interest in architecture and antiquarian studies he contracted William Burges to rebuild the castle. Burges was a fully paid up member of the Gothic revival and a drinking buddy of the Pre-Raphaelites and although the exterior is a reasonable historical pastiche (except for the fanciful pointed turrets) he let himself go on the interior, carefully locating the top, then going way over it.

The Drawing Room, Castell Coch, the The Fates over the fire place

Unsurprisingly the castle has featured in many film and television productions, Siân remembers it best for the opening sequence of Knightmare, an interesting and imaginative children’s programme that ran from 1987-94, while Lynne remembers being taken to see the filming of The Black Knight an Arthurian tosherama starring a badly miscast Alan Ladd with Peter Cushing and Harry Andrews as the Earl of Yeonil (that will be the Yeonil in Sonerset, then). The jury is out as to whether it is ‘so bad it’s good’ or just plain ‘bad’.

Lady Margaret's Bedroom. There were no ropes in the 1950s and a cleaner's granddaughter could run round, open all the drawers and climb on Lady Margaret's bed.

And then we all went home. Thanks to Julia for the idea, Nick and family for being there and making it a family occasion and to Siân and James for bringing 'the chap' who was, as always, the star (or am I biased?)

Three Favourite Gravestones: Armenia, China & Wales

It Isn't Really a Holiday Unless you Have Been Round a Graveyard...

...as Lynne so often says.

Père Lachaise in Paris and Highgate Cemetery in London are well established on the tourist trail, but the graves of non-famous people in non-major cities can also be interesting.

Grave of a Baker
near Goris, Southern Armenia August 2002

We had driven out from Goris to see some ancient cave dwellings. Getting as close to the caves as we could - which was not actually close enough to make them interesting - we walked through a graveyard. Several of the newer headstones bore representations of the deceased in a style we have not seen anywhere else.

The grave of a baker, near Goris, southern Armenia

I imagine he was proud of his profession and wanted the casual visitor to know that he had spent his life producing fine bread - an honourable and noble calling.

Grave of a Miao village
An Chi village, Guizhou Province, South West China November 2010

The Miao are one of China's larger ethnic minorities. 10 million Miao live in communities across south west China with another 1.5 million in northern Vietnam and Laos (where they prefer to be called Hmong). The Miao are divided into a multitude of subgroups, speaking several different though related languages. The Chinese and Vietnamese traditionally classify the groups by the dominant colour of the women's traditional clothing. An Chi, in rural South West Guizhou, is a Black Miao village.

Black Miao women, An Chi

Graves are situated throughout the village and adjoining fields. The distribution appears random but the graves are all in auspicious sites, carefully chosen by the village shaman.

Black Miao gravestone, An Chi

The gravestone names the deceased and gives a detailed genealogy including not only forebears but also descendants who are added, generation by generation, in ever smaller script as they arrive in the world.

The Davies Family Vault
St Cynog's Church, Penderyn, South Wales Summer 1991

Lynne is a keen genealogist and despite the problems caused by the Welsh National Surname Shortage, has traced both our families back through many generations.

It has long been a source of amusement to her then when searching for the graves of my ancestors it is usually sufficient to walk into the churchyard and head for the largest monument. It worked for my paternal grandmother's family in Magor in 2010, and we had found the technique effective for my other grandmother's family in Penderyn twenty years earlier.

Penderyn is a village on the southern edge of the Brecon Beacons National Park. Since 2000 it has been the home of the first (and only) malt whisky distillery in Wales. More importantly to my ancestors it is only a long drop kick north of the industrial valleys of South Wales, where they made their money.

The Davies family vault, St Cynog's, Penderyn
The picture was taken in 1991. Little has changed, except my daughter
and I are now more than 20 years older

The angel on the top of this Victorian monstrosity is probably pointing the way to heaven. I prefer to think the mason was a cricketer (as, doubtless, God is too) and the angel is the celestial umpire giving my ancestors 'out'.

Manchester, Llantrisant and Beijing

A Chinese Visa, an 18th Century Landscape and a Medieval Welsh Castle

05-Aug-2010

To Manchester for a Chinese Visa

Greater Manchester

We popped up to Manchester to hand in our Chinese Visa applications. The comfortable, spacious offices of the new Visa Centre mean it is no longer necessary to queue – usually in the rain - outside a pokey little room at the Consulate in Didsbury; and as the Centre is in Manchester’s Chinatown, it seemed a good idea to book a morning appointment and follow it with lunch.

Arriving a tad early gave us time to look round a Chinese supermarket and make a few purchases before ringing the bell at the Visa Centre the approved ten minutes before our scheduled appointment. Perhaps because of the appointment system, perhaps because visas can now be obtained by post, not only was there no queue, but we were in and out in five minutes.

Manchester City Art Gallery, Valette and Ibbetson

With an hour and a half to kill, we were pleased to discover the city art gallery – a most un-oriental building – squatting on a Chinatown corner. It houses a large collection of mainly British paintings and we saw a couple of Lowrys and several memorable Manchester cityscapes by his onetime teacher Adolphe Valette. The Victorians are well represented with the obsessions of Rossetti and Holman Hunt, curly-haired ginges and God, respectively, fully explored. There is also John William Waterhouse’s uncomfortably sexy Hylas and the Nymphs, a copy of which I recently encountered in a Malvern B & B, where its prolonged contemplation was unavoidable by anyone taking a bath. Finally, there are as many eighteenth century portraits and landscapes as one could wish for.

Albert Square, Manchester by Alphonse Valette

Julius Caesar Ibbetson’s A Distant View of Llantrisant Castle is actually less remarkable than his name (he was born in 1759 by Caesarean section and was, allegedly, acutely embarrassed by his exotic monicker). In such small dark landscapes it is difficult to make out what is going on - I do not know if they were supposed to be like that, or are in need of a clean, or the paint is deteriorating. A view of Llantrisant from the south is well known to anyone who has driven along the M4; its church is clearly silhouetted on a hill, but we had never seen it from the west and never knew it had a castle. Maybe, we mused, it had existed in the 1790’s but was there no longer.

A Distant View of Llantrisant Castle, Julius Caesar Ibbetson

06-Aug-2010

Llantrisant and William Price

Rhondda-Cynon-Taff

Wales

As fate, or luck, would have it, we were in South Wales the very next day visiting Lynne’s extensive but aging tribe of aunts and uncles. Our last visit was in Llantwit Fadre, after which we made our way to Peterston to spend the evening with a friend. Our route, inevitably, took us through Llantrisant, and yet again we had an hour to kill.

Modern Llantrisant sits on the flat land below the hill and has dual carriageways, irritating road works and a huge Tescos. Turning off the main road and winding our way upwards we found an older, quieter Llantrisant centred on a small square at the summit of the hill.

The car park was free and offered us a suggested walk through the old town, including a visit to the castle. The coffee shop was less welcoming: “No, you can’t have a cappuccino, we close in forty five minutes.” We were graciously allowed a filter coffee, though it was not very good.

The square is still called the Bull Ring though the bull baiting that gave it its name was banned in 1827 - not for reasons of animal welfare, but because it attracted unruly crowds. It is home to a statue of William Price, surgeon, druid, chartist and eccentric. Price could hardly claim to have invented cremation, but it was not practiced in England or Wales between the Roman Empire and the death of his infant son, Jesus Christ Price in 1884. He was prosecuted for burning the body, but argued that as the law made no mention of cremation it could not be illegal. The judge agreed and within twenty years the practice had become established.

Me and William Price, Bull Ring, Llantrisant

Price had another son whom he named Jesus Christ II Price (he later changed his name to Nicholas). Although invariably described as an eccentric, Price was actually a 24-carat nutter. In his statue he wears his druid’s tunic and a fox skin hat and looks every inch a man marching gloriously to the beat of a drum only he can hear. This alone could have made him a hero in Wales, but he also gave freely of his medical expertise to help the less advantaged members of society, and espoused the Welsh language, and his own idiosyncratic version of Welsh culture, at a time when the professional classes were determinedly aping everything English. When the time came for his own cremation in 1893, a crowd of 20,000 turned out to pay their respects.

Llantrisant Castle

Twenty metres down the road, beside the old Weight House, is the entry to the castle fields. A shattered remnant of one tower is all that remains of the stone structure built in 1246 by the Norman Richard de Clare, Lord of Glamorgan, to replace an earlier wooden fort. The rebellious Welsh damaged the castle in 1294 and 1316, and it may finally have been destroyed by Owain Glyndwr in 1404. It was certainly in ruins shortly after that date, but has deteriorated little since Julius Caesar Ibbetson came here over two hundred years ago. Where he stood to get his ‘view from the west’ is a mystery, his angle apparently requiring him to hover fifty metres above the plain and be able to see right through Llantrisant’s substantial parish church. Such is artistic licence.

The remains of Llantrisant Castle

The positioning of Manchester Art Gallery on the edge of Chinatown is, doubtless, coincidental, but from the number of Chinese faces looking at the paintings, the coincidence is appreciated. Our subsequent arrival in the Little Yang Sing restaurant was less accidental, but we were equally appreciative. We went to Manchester for a visa and a lunch and discovered Julius Caesar Ibbetson and Llantrisant Castle. Ibbetson also visited China; in 1787 he was official draughtsman on the very first British embassy to Beijing, producing watercolours of the plants and animals encountered on the journey. Small world.

[and having acquired our visas we duly set off for China. Kunming and the Stone Forest, the first part of that story, is just a click away]