Category: Rhondda
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Feeling Bushed
Exploring Bush Houses, Clydach Vale
Exploring Bush Houses, Clydach Vale It is a couple of years since I first stumbled across Bush Houses as the place where my coal mining ancestors lived on moving to the Welsh valleys. I can still remember the confusion of trying to work out quite where Bush Houses was (were?). From the 1891 census for the Osborne family I could track down the ‘hamlet’ of Clydach, recorded here as part of Ystradfodwg parish in the Rhondda. But where was ‘Bush’ – seemingly having no road name? » »
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Keen eyes and some groundwork to find the name
Another selection from the recent Trealaw cemetery trawl. This time they are all related in some way to the Osborne (Somerset) side of the family, but as with my first piece on this (A quick look at family gravestones at Trealaw), they are all different in style. The pub connection This headstone is interesting mainly because of the initial dedication “In loving memory of Mary Jane Minton beloved sister of D. A. Morgan Central Hotel Blaen Clydach Died June 6th 1917 aged 37 years”. ‘The » »
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A quick look at family gravestones at Trealaw
It is now two weeks since my visit to Trealaw cemetery, near Tonypandy, checking out as many grave plots as possible of my mum’s immediate and extended family. High time for some photos and a few notes. Monday 18th April was a fine day. We (my brother and myself) got out of the campsite a few miles away in good time and found the cemetery without much bother (it is rather too large to miss). We were a little perplexed to start with by a film » »
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The Tonypandy that Mum knew
I spent a few days last week visiting the old coal mining area of Rhondda in south Wales with my brother. The Tonypandy environs was where the previous couple of generations to mum lived, worked and many died (often at a good age but not all were so fortunate), along with plenty of cousins, aunts, uncles etc. We spent a long morning in Trealaw cemetery tracking down as many related gravestones as we could, followed by an afternoon exploring the town, in particular Blaenclydach, finished off » »
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The show must go on … the railway
A major collision on the railway near Pontypridd a hundred years ago had a small part to play in the ongoing Tonypandy coal miners strike 1910/11, with a senior union official killed in the incident. (I don’t have the details of the person to hand as my copy of the ‘Tonypandy riots’ book is currently on loan.*) National Archives have marked the anniversary (23rd January) by making the records of the subsequent Board of Trade inquiry (document RAIL 1057/2707) available for free for a month. (At » »
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A birthday memorial
I’ve been aiming to get some material together to post here early each week, a chance to write something a bit more rounded than a family tree data record or the abbreviated voluntary sector news I produce. Today is 1st February, the 81st anniversary of Mum’s birth and the first one since she died. So I can hardly do better than include a little from her ‘Recollections and reflections’, written a few years ago. I was born somewhere in the district of Neath Abbey near the » »