00:09
Seeing the start of this, it reminds me the thrill it was when my father used to show the films because no televisions in those days. This is my mother, in, I believe, Taff’s Well Park, I think it is. Yes, this is Taff’s Well Park as I knew it as a child. This is before I was born in 1942. My mother's putting my sister on the swing. My sister became crippled from a baby, because she would have been a twin, and had to go to Great Ormond Street, where in those days, in order to remove the growth which was a twin, they removed one of her kidneys and unfortunately cut the spinal cord. So my mother was crying when they told her that she would never walk, and the doctor was very sharp with her and said, “Mother, stop crying. Don't you realise how fortunate you are to have such an intelligent child?” And she was in Great Ormond Street for six, six weeks I think, quite a long time. No, six months, that's right, they used to go up, get cheap excursion trains to go up to London, and her sister-in-law was very kind to her. She always remembers her giving her her slippers to put on because she'd be quite exhausted. And in the hospital, they had an outbreak of diphtheria, but my sister didn't get it and she had to, my mother had to climb up all the steps she was put in isolation far away. And although she couldn't move her legs, my mother said her little arms would be going all excited.
01:51
So now here my grandmother, Elizabeth Williams, from Taibach, is carrying my sister and her sister-in-law, maiden aunt, is walking alongside her. And my cousin Irene, with a very close friend who lived next door to us at the Halfway Garage Taff’s Well, Rhonwen Edwards. Her elder sister Peggy became a GI bride and kept in touch with us all through the years, and rationing carried on after the war and we'd always be thrilled to have parcels from Peggy Edwards with Spearmint chewing gum, amongst other things. And so here they all are now going up to the Rocking Stone in Pontypridd Common. My father remembered when he went to Cottage Hospital in Pontypridd, telling a specialist he used to push his grandmother around this Common when he was a boy because his father came from Merthyr Road, Pontypridd, and his mother lived the other side of the Graig. And my grandmother got married when she was very young, 17, and had five children, my father being the youngest. So here they are on Pontypridd Common. My grandmother’s still carrying the baby, my sister Betty, not quite a baby, but because she couldn't walk. And Irene was two years older, my cousin Irene, than my sister. And my mother said she always remembers her dancing around the Moses basket when my sister was in it, very excited, as Irene was an only child.
03:33
Oh, and this is the chemist shop where Irene was brought up. And they lived at the back of the shop and above the shop. And that's my aunt who became a chemist. She intended to be a teacher, but when her father died, she had to come home, and then she trained and became not only a chemist, but a pharmacist, an optician as well. Now, this is the canal in Taff’s Well. And my father volunteered in the war to go into the Air Force, hoping he could fly, but unfortunately, his eyesight, well, fortunately for me, his eyesight wasn't good enough. So these are his pals who, when my mother managed to get him transferred to St Athan, they used to come up and I think hijinks used to go on in the garage, they used to have great fun. And this is my brother, John, who was born 18 months after my sister died. And that was the little boy of one of the men who used to work in the garage, Haydn Wood. And this is my mother now, always wearing a pinny. And across the road, the Mullinses lived. And here I am, I just started school in Caerphilly Grammar School, and my satchel is nearly as big as me, and... my brother John, here he is, always the both of us used to be filthy dirty living on the garage premises.
05:01
And here is the Rolls-Royce my father bought, which was belonging to David Lloyd George. And people later on, oh, there was a thing you could lift up for his gammy leg to rest on, and people thought he had a cocktail cabinet there, but it was in fact what my father had put in when we went on a holiday to Scotland just for thermos flasks, not alcohol. Now, this is way back in the ‘30s. My sister was born in 1936, and that's my Aunty Hannah, my mother's younger sister, and my mother's first cousins, Betty and Jennet from Tŷ Draw Farm, Pyle. They and their two brothers were left orphans and my grandmother was very kind, she sent her maid from her farm at Groeswen, Margam, to Tŷ Draw Farm to help look after the family. So, there's my sister again, my mother's popping her down. And this is the youngest of the Tŷ Draw girls, Jennet, who became a matron. And they had quite a hard life, so both girls went nursing. Jennet didn't get married, but her sister, Betty, had a big family, five children.
06:28
And now we've jumped all the way to Scunthorpe, where my father's youngest sister, Rita, went with her husband when they got married. And that is my grandmother, my father's mother, with her grandson John, who was just a fortnight younger than my sister. And my sister was born on the 1st of September, and he was born a fortnight later. So there was a great rivalry between the two of them. And he had a sister when they were three years old and my aunt told me a while ago that my sister had said to her because she spent lots of holidays up there with my grandmother, to give my mother a break, and she told her aunt, “Well, I'm going to have a walking sister called Margaret,” because she wanted to be the same as John. So instead of being called Barbara, she insisted I was called Margaret. So my mother thought she was naming me after the doll, but she probably called it ‘doll’ [she probably called the doll Margaret] because she wanted to be the same as her cousin John. My mother had wanted to call me after my [great-]grandmother, her grandmother, Barbara, but my sister said, no way, because there was a barbershop by the garage in those days with a pole, and she said, “I'm not having her being called a barber.” So here they are, the children, playing on this lovely toy car, which later on my brother had, because he's a lot younger, he's six years younger than me. So, of course these children had grown up and he was able to have the car. And of course, war came and there weren't so many new toys then. And this is my grandmother, Elizabeth, holding the new baby called Margaret, the same as me, who I was named after really, and her husband [son-in-law] Noel, he worked in the steel industry and later on they came back to Swansea for him to work at Swansea. And he was very proud that they did the cable going over the first Severn Bridge in his works. I think it was the longest single span at that time, he used to say.
08:54
So here they are in the garden now at Scunthorpe. That's my aunt is in the coloured flowery dress. And there's, oh, my mother must have been there as well. There she is holding my sister. My mother used to go up on the train as well to Scunthorpe, I suppose, to join up with them. And she said before the war, she was travelling up and talking to a gentleman, they both could feel that war was imminent, but he said to her, “Well, there's nothing the likes of us can do about it.” So, they had a beautiful garden in Scunthorpe. I remember going up when I was six, my father drove up through the night after one of the school concerts on the field, Castle Field near the church, which, now it’s housing there. So it was the field that we used to have our bonfires in. My mother said the best bonfire was after the war. No fireworks available then, but it meant, you know, they could have a bonfire, you know, no more blackout, and she said everybody held hands around the bonfire.
10:12
Well, we're back in Taff’s Well now, this film does jump about. And this is Irene's mother now carrying my sister Betty, my mother's cousin, from Ty Draw Farm, the youngest one, and he was with us, my mother, my sister and me, and Gwilym Ty Draw, with us the night bombs dropped on Taff's Well. Luckily for us, we lived in a bungalow and the bomb skimmed over the top and landed in the field opposite. Otherwise, I wouldn't be here to tell the tale because we had petrol pumps there, we wouldn't have stood a chance. Normally, we went across to the neighbour, Granny Mullins, and that's one of my earliest memories, is being put in the washing basket and going up the steps there, and my mother and father looking down at me. So, when my mother and father went to Taff’s Well, there was no garden, but my father managed to cover over the stream and make a lovely garden for us. And this is my cousin Irene, who is eight years older than me, she's now 90. And the aunt who was walking on Pontypridd Common is there as well. Now this is David Williams from Port Talbot, who, his mother saw the Halfway Garage advertised and him and my father came to start, take over the garage. There were people there before. Oh, I forget their name now, but Granny Mullins used to be telling my mother how wonderful she was. But my mother heard afterwards that she was a very flighty woman. So, anyway, that's now Gwilym Ty Draw and David Williams were there then. And, I'm not quite sure... See, the garden, the trees are all quite small there because I think this is before I was born, but by the time I was remembering the garden, it was really nice, we had a lovely lilac tree. It was a lovely garden and we had the river then running past us alongside. And, my mother always used to sing the songs for those in peril on the sea when the rain would be dashing down and we could hear the river roaring. She was a wonderful mother who worked very, very hard. I have a lovely poem that my youngest daughter wrote when she was in school about her gran.
13:25
And now we've gone now back to, oh here we are, no this is the garage in early days and David Williams again working there. And now we're going over, these are my father's friends in the RAF. Oh, they're up in, my father was stationed for a while in Blackpool, and also he was on the east coast for a while, but here they are now messing about in Blackpool, the RAF boys. And my father does manage to get into the film. You will see he's in civvies and you'll see him in a moment in his hat. But they're there fooling around. And I don't think, they might not show it on this film, but on one of the films it shows where they're fooling around. Oh, there's my father now his hat. When they're doing all this fooling around, a sergeant comes past and they immediately pull up to attention and salute. But my father enjoyed his time in the RAF. The worst bit for him in the war was when he was camping on the east coast and it was snowing and ice and they were under canvas. My mother said, my sister used to say [with glee], when you hear on the radio, oh, heavy bombing now on the east coast, and my mother would be quite worried. But she managed to get him moved to St Athan on compassionate grounds, because of course she was left to man the garage on her own. She had help from one boy, I think it was.
15:03
And now this is across the road [in Taff’s Well], this is Mr Mullins doing the garden, Granny Mullins' son. And, wonderful, wonderful neighbours we had. And here is Granny Mullins, I never met her husband, but it's quite comical how she used to walk in front and he'd walk behind. And out of the garden, there used to be a spout of water. My sister, because we lived opposite, used to love to watch the people getting soaked with water when they were walking past. So this is my cousin Irene, and of course she's got a lovely pop-up book. And here's my sister Betty playing in the mud, and she's making mud pies. And that's my uncle, Irene's father, Lawrence O'Brien, a very devout Catholic, and Irene is there with him. And there's my mother with my uncle, and those two took me, in 1952 [1953], to see the Queen's coronation procession. We slept on the pavement for two nights on the Mall. And on the Tuesday, when the coronation procession, we had to stand up at 1 o'clock in the morning. I was only 10 years old.
16:29
Oh, here we are now on the canal bank. It was lovely in Taff’s Well when I was young. As my mother used to say, we only had to go over the railway bridge and we were in the country. This, of course, has now all been demolished in the '50s, but we had several locks ending up in Glan-y-Llyn with a triple lock. And here they are messing about again, the RAF fellas. Sometimes when I was young, they'd be calling in the garage and reminiscing, and when my father took us to Cornwall, he was very anxious to see the valley where one of them had grown up. And he said, oh, no wonder they were so homesick, it was so beautiful. But they... had great fun, these boys, and there were lots of parties in the Halfway Garage, Taff's Well, when my father was stationed in St Athan. And in fact, after I was born in Porthcawl in a nursing home, my mother was spending a month with her mother on the farm in Caegarw, Pyle, and the NAAFI girls called to see the new baby, and once they told my mother about the parties she decided it was time for us to get back home so…
17:46
So here now is the Taff’s well, which is I believe the only known thermal spring in Wales and one that my father helped, that was the weir which is now gone. And these films now, I think these are from the ‘30s. My father managed to save this site becoming just an ash tip, by buying the baths in the ‘50s. Because he's taken these films, I think these are from the ‘30s, when my sister used to go down with her friends, I don't think she ever went in the water. Oh, and you can see there they had cubicles to change in, and, all the villagers loved having an open-air swimming pool, as I did as well in the ‘50s. And most of us learned to swim in this lovely warm water, not quite as warm as Bath, but same consistency as the water in Bath, and very, very clear. And my father used to drop a coin at the deep end, and you could tell whether it was heads or tails. Here I am swimming, so this must be in the '50s now, we've jumped to the '50s. I think that is me, I'm not quite sure. You can see we all used to wear swimming hats to keep our hair dry. You don't see that today, they don't seem to mind. They used to pay sixpence for a 20-minute session and then they'd all have to get out and another crowd came in, they'd be queuing up to go, and then we could sunbathe on the top there. And there's a diving board as well at the end. But such a shame, my father more or less gave the bath to the council, but unfortunately, they decided to cover it in. Fortunately the well is still there and the baths could all be uncovered. Now this is Mervyn Sandall who worked in the garage, and you can see E.F. Williams, my father was very proud of his initials, Evan Foulkes, the Foulkes coming from the North Walian side of his family. His mother's family had come from Dudley, the only one who was born in England of my grandparents. And my great-grandfather walked from Dudley to Pontypridd, and as soon as he got there, did a shift down the mine.
20:18
We've got a bit of coloured film now, so this is definitely in the '50s because colour had come out, and my father always liked to be the first to do all these things. So, when my cousin got married in 1981, he got an instant film so that, she was married in Margam Abbey, and then as we were walking into the Orangery for the reception, here's the film of her wedding, which was quite something in those days. And then, he quite disappointed us, because me and my children were on it as well, he’d had it on approval, and so to get his money back we lost the film. But he proved what he wanted to do, you know, to show that, you know, he could instantly show the wedding film. Today this won't seem so amazing, but at the time it was. So you can see how much everybody enjoyed the swimming pool and it would be really great if someday this bath that's still there could be uncovered and the well water used. In the past, there were domestic baths in the building where people used to come, stay in the Taff’s Well Inn, and they'd say, they'd get cured from the rheumatic aches and pains and their sticks and that would be left in the Taff’s Well Inn. These are some of the boys who formed an aqua club and really looked after the baths. When they got older and moved on and moved away, there were another group of boys, but they weren't as good as the first lot. And my father got very worried, you know, polio was around and he's afraid of infection, and so, he more or less gave the baths to the council. He only, he'd paid £500 for it, it was worth much more by the time he gave it away because he paid the conveyancing cost which was £500. So there they are, the boys. I've got very fond memories of them all because they used to meet in our front room on a Sunday afternoon to discuss about the baths and, they had a billiard room in there. Unfortunately, the flood in the ‘60s damaged a lot of the buildings, it was all done back and then there was another flood again, and this disheartened my father as well. The boy in the school uniform is my cousin Llewellyn, my Aunty Hannah's eldest boy. He was shaking his cap at his brother, or younger brother, three years younger, he jumped in the pool in the nude because he hadn’t brought any bathers with him, but it was just too tempting not to jump in that pool.
23:16
So this is Taff’s Well Park, and the council of, just near that spot had built a, planted a tree, my grandsons and I planted it in memory of my dad, a lime tree. But we've jumped back now to the past and I can see I'm there a baby now on the swing and my sister [alongside], and I think, I think that must be Rhonwen again, Edwards. And there's my cousin Irene pushing me, and her friend who lived next door to us in the garage is pushing my sister. And now we're in Ponty Park, where there's the lovely big slide, but I think it's still there. And that is Mela Johns, another really great friend who lived in 3 Garth Street. And here I am as a baby in the garden, crawling around. And my sister, the RAF men, built this trolley for her that she could manage to get about herself, which was lovely. And here we are now in the garden, and you can see the bushes have grown, and it's a really lovely garden. And then you can see what excitement I had as a baby, because my sister's friends would put me in the blanket and they'd say, “Shake, shake, shake the blanket, shake the blanket over,” and I'd go right around a circle. And this is Granny Mullins who lived opposite, holding, I think that's my cousin Llewellyn, and…
24:50
Oh that's Garth Street, yes. And there's Granny Mullins, she's holding my hand and still carrying my cousin Llewellyn who's 18 months younger than me. And then my Aunty Hannah is holding me, and Granny Mullins holding my cousin Llewellyn. And, you'll see now in a minute, Granny Mullins will hand over Llewellyn to my aunt, and then she'll scoop me up and carry me Welsh-fashion. She was a tremendous help to my mother, and as were so many of the neighbours. It was a really lovely village to grow up in. Oh, and you look at the fun we used to have carnival time. And, I think my-- oh, there's the police marching through with their white gloves. And… Yes, it was great fun living in Taff’s Well when I was young. And because we had so many pubs and so many chapels, and unfortunately now it's just the church left and just the Taff’s Well Inn. My mother used to say, in the war, when our men used to march smartly through the village, she said the Yanks didn't have a clue, they just used to stroll through. Oh, you can see Granny Mullins, she's standing at the front of her garden. She always used to tell me how sad she was, because they had a much longer garden, but, it was a compulsory purchase to make the road wider. Because of course, there was no bypass then of Taff's Well, all the, all the traffic used to have to come through to go to Pontypridd. And you can see the garage there on the other side of the road, was owned by a Mr Bilbrough and we, in the ‘50s, we moved over to live there, in 1952 [1953]. Oh and here are all the floats going past and I think there'll be a photograph of my friend Mary Beynon, my lifelong friend, who only died in the Queen's last Jubilee year, on the Jubilee Day, in Canada. So, she's… Mr Griffiths, her stepfather, was quite a character in the village. I know many people remember him.
27:28
And oh, we've gone back now in time again. There's my Aunty Rita. Yes, we had such lovely family holidays. I think, I'm there, I have plaits, and I'm there in my plaits. Oh, and this is when my father took us on one of the birthday parties at Barry Island, and there used to be a little train, and we were all sitting on the train going round. My father was always full of surprises, doing really wonderful things for us children. And it's amazing, my youngest son is quite like him and he's all interested in the latest technology, so that I now can ask Siri to put on my bedside lamp and switch it off for me, and I think it's the sort of thing my father would do. Now this is my cousin Irene and myself, I'm 6, and we went with my grandmother and my father all the way up to John O'Groats. And I used to be very carsick until I could drive myself ,and poor Irene had to hold me on her lap for most of the journey. So here we are, my grandmother, Elizabeth Williams, Irene, and myself. And it was very, very windy on times, and the one day, my plaits blew out it was so windy. And we went in a Sheerline, a very posh car. And I remember, my grandmother being cross with my cousin Irene for buying lollipop, penny lollipops we didn't eat. And Irene was saying, “It's only a penny.” And she said, “All those pennies helped to buy this Sheerline car.” There we are. I think this is, yeah, that was the day when it was very windy, nearly blowing us about. And we saw Balmoral Castle, that's Balmoral Castle, I think, in the background. And last year, I managed what I wanted to do when I was 6, to climb well up Ben Nevis. So, thanks to my youngest daughter, my childhood dream was achieved.
29:33
Oh, and here we are back now in Taff’s Well with another carnival. It did jump about this film. It is real village life in those days. And, oh, the neighbours were all so kind. So I think this is the film where I'll see my friend Mary dressed as a nurse, because her aunt was a nurse. She was always planning to be a nurse, I was planning to be a teacher, but she ended up a teacher and I ended up a solicitor. Oh, there's Granny Mullins watching the carnival. So, my brother won first-- oh there's Mary dressed as a nurse pushing a cousin along in a pushchair as the patient. And somewhere my brother, he was dressed as the Mad Hatter, it was quite apt for him. Oh there he is, just a glimpse of him, and he won first prize.
30:50
Oh, now we're in Margam for one of the Margam shows. And I think my Aunty Hannah took over the camera at some point here, and as she'd seen in the films in the cinema, the roving camera, she thought she could do the same and didn't keep the camera still, so it's a bit strange on times. But I think actually this is one my father took and it shows my mother's youngest brother, John Joseph, of Caegarw Farm, because after my mother married, the family had to move to Caegarw Farm because Groeswen Farm, no longer any fields left because of the steel works. Yes, so this is quite a very old film now of a show in Margam. And one of the letters my father wrote to my mother before they married was saying how glad he was, my uncle had a horse. And that's my Aunty Hannah with my sister, and that's Gwilym Ty Draw. And I don't know who that smart young boy is, but, he's wearing one of the show badges. Seeing the horses with their tails plaited, when my uncle, I used to go to the farm to my Aunty Hannah, my uncle, her husband, he was used to plaiting the horses’ tails, so when he did my plaits, I could just stand them out because he did them so tight. So I think, I don't know if my grandfather, I never saw either of my grandfathers, they both died before I was born. But I think my grandfather might be walking around with one of the cattle, but I'm not quite sure. This is definitely the film my father took because, with the one my aunt took, it was zooming all over the place. You can see how important these shows were at a time when there was nothing like the entertainment that the young people have now today. Oh, there's my sister being carried. Although she only had a short life, she died when she was 11, she had a very full and happy life. Oh, that's my Uncle John Joseph from Caegarw Farm. He was very keen on horse riding when he was a young boy, a very mischievous boy, and when my mother and father got married, they all went to the studio to have the photographs taken, but, there he is, Uncle John, he wasn't allowed to go to the studio, my grandmother wouldn't let him because he was so mischievous. But he ended up a very successful businessman and farmer. But, unfortunately, my uncle Tom died before I knew him when he was only age 24 from pneumonia, just a year before the antibiotics became available. He would have been the farmer and my Uncle John would have come to help my father in the garage. And my father always used to say if he'd come, we'd have had garages from West Wales to London because he was a very good businessman.
34:50
Oh, now, although it said ‘the end,’ we're carrying on. And, oh, this is the bit that my aunt took. As you can see, she thought she would be like on the television and move the camera around. So I think this is a ploughing match that she took. Yeah, I’m almost certain. But this was a long time ago, too, it would be before I was born, I was born in 1942, but I think this has been taken in the '30s. You can see the tractors are just coming into use now. My mother said, the aunt who lived in Groeswen Farm with them always said, I don't want one of these modern, fangled machines when I'm buried, I want horses. My mother was the only one who came out of farming. Her sister married a farmer and they lived in Newlands Farm, Water Street, Margam. And the family now, as well as farming there, a farm at Old Park Farm, which was the home farm for Margam Castle.
36:19
Oh, here we're back to the garage now in Taff’s Well and the old signs, which I remember well. So, we were like a free pub, you know, a free station that you could sell all the different brands of petrol at one time, but it became impossible to do this and I think it was decided up in London what we should become. My father quite fancied going with National, National, oh I forget the name of it now, Benzole, but we ended up as a BP garage there, and my father was able to manage garages on Manor Way and Tonypandy Shell garages. Now, this is my Aunty Hannah's wedding at Margam Abbey. She met her husband at a dance, and when he told her his name was Evan Williams, he had to show his identity paper to prove it because it was her brother-in-law's name as well, my father. And it was a very wet day on their wedding, but she said the sun shone every day after. And of course it was wartime, so clothes and everything were rationed. So she insisted on getting a very smart suit, but it was a bit dark in colour, and when her husband looked around, he thought, oh my gosh, she looks as though she's coming to her funeral. But they had a very happy married life and four lovely children. Oh, here they are going off on their honeymoon to London in the train.
38:11
Oh, now this, I believe, is Caegarw Farm. Yes, Caegarw Farm, where the family moved from Groeswen Farm. They managed to get the tenancy here. And then in the '50s, my uncle was able to buy the land. This is my Aunty Hannah before she's married. She's carrying some milk, I think, across, both her mother and I, her [my] mother and her, used to deliver milk in a governess trap with horses, and they'd have a big churn and then measure it out into people's jugs. And, they used to say, my Aunty Hannah was always a bit too generous and a gallon would never go a gallon. With my mother, it'd be spot on. I don't know about my uncle if he ever did it, he probably had some left over. But now we're back in Taff’s Well and this is Morgan Joseph, my mother's first cousin, who became a, oh, well-known in the estate agent and auctioneer business. And, I'm trying to work out where this is. Oh, we're back in Taff’s Well. There's my mother carrying me this time, I think. And there’s one of the aunts, so it might be my sister. Yes, this is, my mother's mother is there in the light cardigan. Oh, my mother's got, not got me, she's got my sister, I think it's before I was born. And there's Morgan Joseph and his, I think it's his mother. And… Yes, this is my mother's family now come to visit in Taff’s Well when my sister was quite young. So, this is the side of the house, the bungalow we had alongside the garage, which, now it's been converted into dwelling places. So, that's, I thought that was my great Aunty Maggie on the other side, but I'm not quite sure. But you can see how they loved wearing these fur stoles, the ladies at that time.
40:31
Oh, I can see there's a car and there's some mountain. Oh, the car, we're in Taff’s Well, the car's going up on the lift. We had a lift alongside, out the front, alongside the garage. Oh, my mother agreed to put a sign up for the funeral directors, which my father was not too pleased about. So the people driving out the garage could see this sign. So now we're at my Uncle John Caegarw's wedding. So this was, she was from Cowbridge. So there they are, Glenys Williams. So it's funny how the three children all married a Williams, from Groeswen Farm. There they are throwing rice or confetti over them. So, they got married after I was born.