My lovely Dad and Melingriffith by Ann Sullivan (nee Williams) apatsull@aol.com
My lovely Dad was Harman Williams, born at Melin House, Melingriffith, 5th August 1913. He was one of a family of eleven children born to Jennet Ann and David John Williams. Grandad Williams was superintendent of the Melingriffith Tinplate Works and they all lived in a very large house [had to be with thirteen of them!] and were locally referred to as Williams the gate, because theirs was the only house that sported a gate! and to differentiate them from the other Williams in the area.
Dad was called Harman because that was his mother’s maiden name. She was born in the 1800’s in a little cottage in Tongwynlais on the right hand side of Merthyr Road just past the Lewis Arms - those little cottages with the railings outside. I wish I knew which one but there’s no one to tell me now.
Dad was the youngest but one of seven boys and he had four sisters. The boys were Harold, Harry, Charlie, Les, Cyril, Harman and David John who was known as Jack. The girls were Nancy, Margaret, Ella and Betty. There had been another little girl called Nancy but she had died in infancy and when the next little girl was born all the children said “We’ve got another Nancy” so Nancy she was called. Margaret is miraculously still alive and will be one hundred years old next month and she lives in a nursing home in Poole, Dorset.
The boys went to school in Tyn y Pwll Road - Dad stressed that Whitchurch and Melingriffith were entirely separate from each other. Often when walking home from school they would catch sight of a man they called George the Oil. He had a horse and cart which delivered oil, presumably for oil lamps, to all the houses in the area. The children would run after the horse and cart all the way home to Melingriffith and were very out of breath by the time they reach Melin House. Cyril and Dad were both asthmatic and their mother would get very angry with them because they were gasping for breath on arrival and took hours to recover!
Dad described Nancy as a bit of a social butterfly - what that meant exactly I don’t know. None of his sisters worked when they were young and Nancy actually had a motorbike - something called an Indian which she rode around Whitchurch. She married a chap called Reg Arthur and they had the ironmongers shop in Taffs Well. Nancy used to play the piano for the silent films in the Rialto Cinema in Old Church Road.
Dad told me a story of how on Halloween he and his brother Cyril, who were about seven and eight years old at the time were dressed up in white sheets and covered in flour by their Mum and went out “haunting”. They walked down by the canal which had some little hump back bridges over it. They decided to cross over the bridge to the other side from the road and when they heard footsteps approaching, would hover up over the bridge through the mist which had settled over the canal and make moaning sounds to frighten people.
This unfortunately had catastrophic results. The woman who was walking down the path had recently lost her brother off that bridge when he had committed suicide off it. How were they to know that she would be the first person to come along! The screams were horrendous apparently as she picked up speed, running like something possessed to her house in Velindre Road. They in turn were absolutely petrified and ran straight home telling their mother what had happened. She realising the gravity of the situation cleaned the flour off them, removed the sheets and sent them back out to see what was happening. Well by the time they got back to the scene of the crime a mob of angry men had formed a kind of posse to seek out these heartless villains and sort them out! Dad and Uncle Cyril decided the best thing to do was to join the posse. Dad said he recalled walking up Velindre Road and seeing the poor lady in her front room, lying back in a chair being ministered to by various do gooders who were comforting her. The whole incident was written up in the local newspaper the next day and my Gran warned them never to tell anyone it was them and they never did. I do know the name of the lady in question but even though she is now long since dead even I would be afraid to divulge the name!
Sadly Jack was killed at the beginning of the first world war in Germany and his name is on the war memorial at the library in Whitchurch. The family had always thought Jack was killed by a sniper and had no grave but I found out a few years ago that in fact he was killed while crossing a field with the rest of his unit near Mametz woods. Germans hiding in the woods opened fire and killed them all. Jack was buried in that field. However, some time later the burial ground was blown up and that is why Jack’s name is on the Menin Gate as having no grave. I did visit the Menin Gate and searched for his name, but for anyone who has visited the site will know, there are literally thousands upon thousands of names listed from all countries in the commonwealth and I failed to find it. His sister Margaret was so pleased to know that he did in fact have a proper burial initially. Jack had joined the Melingriffith Volunteer Cadet Force before the war started and so here was a ready made unit ready to go to war and this is why he was in at the very beginning.
Harold enlisted on the 23rd August 1914 as a driver in the Army Service Corps, 2nd Division, 46th Company, 5th Brigade Cavalry Supply Column of the British Expeditionary Force. The diary is very interesting and I have a copy of it, having sent the original to the Imperial War Museum as I felt I had no right to keep it. I did try to trace some of my cousins [he had ten children apparently, none of whom I ever knew] but I did know he moved to Malpas in Gwent and tried to make contact through the South Wales Argos with no luck at all.
Considering that in the whole year this diary was written he got no further than Marseilles and saw no military action, but they all suffered appalling deprivation with regard to food and accommodation that it is quite unbelievable. Sleeping on straw in barns and having little food and at one point had no facilities for bathe for months. He refers to a man called Evan from The Mount going to hospital with diphtheria, Farringeson with tonsillitis and a chap from Porth called Burridge being taken to hospital with pneumonia with the Red Cross man giving little hope of his survival. This all happened in Marseilles.
It really is very sad indeed, but I have to say that Harold was a survivor and had a sort of Del Boy instinct for survival and things looked up for him when he was put on security on the docks giving him the opportunity to steal what he needed to survive. If anyone wanted a copy of this diary I would be only to pleased to let them have a copy - I know it is of enormous interest to the many people who study the first world war. Charlie joined the Royal Flying Corps - lucky to do so I imagine as you needed money to get in there.
As children they had an idyllic life at Melingriffith, learning to swim in the feeder which was so clean then and swinging from ropes on the high branches of the trees in the Long Wood. Dad said they were like Tarzans swinging through the trees out over the canal, sometimes dropping from great heights when the ropes broke!
Cyril and Les were courting two sisters from the garage on Llantrisant Road so they had a boat which they rowed across the river and then walked across the fields to meet their sweethearts in Radyr, both of whom they eventually married.
My Dad absolutely loved the canal all his life and when he was too frail to walk down there from Llancaiach Road where we eventually moved, I used to drive him down there on fine days and leave him there for hours. He loved carving sticks in the most beautiful patterns and I am pleased to say I still have one of them, and a beautiful photograph of him doing the carving. This was taken by an amateur photographer who was down the canal one afternoon. Apparently the photograph was entered into a competition and won! Dad could also make wooden whistles and he taught me how to throw ducks and drakes at the bottom of the weir with those lovely flat pebbles that collect a the foot of the weir.
I have a delightful photograph of Dad when he was about ten or eleven years old sitting on the well opposite New Houses with all the other children in the area. The well is still there but now it’s descended into a pile of rubble so I doubt whether many people know what it actually is. I feel it should have been preserved.
He said that on Fridays when the men at the tinplate works got paid the children would take buckets of spring water over to the men as they came out from work in Summer months and usually they got some pennies for doing this - they only did it on pay days - how mercenary!
There were many horrific accidents at the works. I should imagine Health and Safety was a bit of a non-issue in those days. Cyril had his thumb pulled out completely by one of the machines which rolled the tinplate. He said he felt no pain in his hand at the time, only in his elbow when the sinew was pulled away! Ugh!
Some people were actually pulled into the rollers and killed and some had their feet sliced off by sheets of tinplate. Imagine these days if that happened you would be in for millions in compensation but in those days you probably got nothing and lost your job and livelihood into the bargain.
by Ann Sullivan (nee Williams) apatsull@aol.com