Excerpt from the Llwchwr
Society Magazine
The Growth of the village of Penllergaer
In the early stages the
story of Penllergaer must be understood to infer
simply and solely to the house of that name and any thoughts of the so called
present village must be removed from our minds. The half dozen or so small
thatched cottages in the vicinity of the house were known as Gors Einon, whilst the present
township of Gorseinon was not even envisaged.
In time Penllergare
began to draw people, attracted by the prospects of work, from over a wide area
in South Wales. These years near the middle of the 19th Century saw
the beginnings in the neighbourhood of many of the older families in the
village of today (the late A.J. Maddox was writing in the 1930’s) One of the
first to settle there in this way being the late John Vaughan who came from
Llanelli.
There was apart from the
work provided at Penllergare house, livelihood for a
few in the mills driven by the waters of the Llan and
Lliw rivers. At Cadle a
grist mill was worked by the brothers Bowen. There was a mill for hand weaving
at Parc Bach and larger mills at Lliw
Bridge and Melin Llan. The
woollen mill at Melin Llan
was worked by William Lewis, who later started the Melin
Mynach Mill at Rhydymaerdy,
afterwards to turn to milling tinplate near the same spot, and so laying the
foundations of a modern industrial centre.
In addition, there was the
old Lliw Forge where at this time agricultural
implements and ladles for the copperworks at Landore were being made. The sound of the heavy tilt
hammers driven by water power, which can still be seen in the ruins of the old
forge, could sometimes be heard up on the bank near Penllergare.
The road to the three or
four white washed cottages at Rhydymaerdy was a rough
cart track winding over Garngoch Common and crossing
the Lliw River by a ford and a plank bridge. Very old
people remember this track which is not the main Llanelli Road, under its old
name of Heol Galch, a name
given to it because it was very much used for the carting of lime, which was
landed at Bwlch Y Mynydd, Loughor, after being shipped across from Gower. It was for
many years nothing but a deeply rutted track and the pedestrians of those days
invariably used the Common alongside it.
Where the road to Rhydymaerdy began its decent to Garngoch
Common, and near the spot today known as Penquar (Pencwar), there was a gate from hedge to hedge across the
narrow road, for the purpose of keeping stray cattle out of Higher Gorseinon,
as the village was sometimes known. The rough stone uprights of the old gate
are still in use, supporting the side gate of a house near the spot.
In the angle formed by this
road and the main Carmarthen Road, there were at
most, half a dozen thatched cottages, occupied by the workers on the estate,
and these, apart from the few scattered farms, made up the entire village of
that time. These cottages remain today, although Letty
Newydd once the village shop and Ffald
Cottage have been rebuilt in modern style. Whilst Tir
Edwin has completely disappeared. The last named was the home of the late John Vauhan, and the ruined walls could be seen until a few
years ago, when a modern villa was built on the site.
In the corner of the Gors was the poundffald, near
which stood Island House, the home of the Rosser family, looking much the same
then as it does today. A little beyond Island House were two or three thatched
cottages which were unfortunately destroyed by fire, in one of which, New Well,
was kept as the old Village Post Office, dating back to 1852 before it was
removed to the site of Ysgol Gamp.
Among the earliest slate
roofed house in the village were the model workmens’
cottages, built in the 1860’s or 70’s to the design of Emma Llewelyn,
wife of the late John Dillwyn Llewelyn. She in common
with the other enlightened employers of the day, sought to break away from the
traditional low roofed thatched cottages, to be replaced by stone constructed
houses, having larger windows and more headroom, and are still in occupation.
There are two at Pencwar, two near Cadle Mill and two at Ty’rheol on
the Pontlliw Road, one of which was severely damaged
by fire.
The Old Inn was a thatched
house until it was rebuilt and moved back from the road in the 1880’s. A very
old house, it was, for generations, in the occupation of a well known local
family, the Beddows, one of whom, with his wife,
acted as sexton and caretaker of St. David’s Church. The family name has
completely died out in Penllergaer. The Williams’ of Pencwar (formerly of the Old Post Office at New Well) and
Mrs. Ton Jones of Ivy Stores are, however, a branch of the family, according to
the late A. J. Maddox.
A story is told of how Mr. Beddows and his wife were awakened in the middle of the
night by the ringing of the church bell. Old Beddow hurriedly
dressed and ran to the west door of the church, which he nervously unlocked and
opened. Suddenly, something darted past him into the darkness of the night, and
it was some days before he discovered what it was. It appears that a small boy,
attending choir practice, had fallen asleep in one of the old high backed pews,
where he remained unseen and was locked in when his fellow choristers went
home. He woke sometime after midnight and could think of no better way of
obtaining release, than of going to the gallery and ringing the bell. Hearing
Sexton Beddow’s footsteps crunching on the gravel
path, he waited furtively behind the door and darted out as soon as it was
opened.
It is difficult for us, in
the fullness of these fast moving times, to imagine how self contained was the
life of the village in the latter half of the late 19th Century.
Swansea might have been a hundred miles away, for any difference it made to the
lives of the villagers.
The hub around which their
hours of work and leisure revolved was the “Big House”, and interest in the
church and its work provided all the relaxation they needed. The paternal
interest taken in the material and spiritual welfare by the church’s founder,
John Dillwyn Llewelyn and later by his son, John
Talbot Dillwyn Llewelyn, the famous Baronet, meant a
great deal to the small community.
Apart from shouldering most
of the church’s financial burden, members of the Llewelyn
family entered fully into the social life of the village, taking part with the
cottagers in concerts and different kinds of entertainment.
By the middle of the 19th
Century things were beginning to show signs of change in the village. The name
of Penllergare was still being used only with
reference to the Big House itself. Inscriptions on tombstones in the churchyard
marking burials at the time and for nearly forty years later, continued to
mentioned the name “Gors Einon”
in the Parish of Llangyfelach. The postman rode out
on horseback from Swansea, delivering, collecting mail at Penllergare
House and left letters for the village in the cottage Post Office at New Well
at the highest point of the road to Pontarddulais.
Here they were placed in the little window, addresses facing to the glass to be
called for by the intended recipients.
In 1870 a coal pit had been
sunk on the far side of Gangoch Common, alongside the
road from Swansea to Llanelli, by three brothers from Llangyfelach,
David Morgan, Thomas and Isaac Glasbrook, and in
spite of fluctuating fortunes, it prospered sufficiently to warrant the sinking
in 1886 of a sister pit on the near side of the Common, just below the handful
of cottages still known as Gors Einon.
Changes were taking place,
just inside the Northern boundary of the Llewelyn
domain, near the old Melin Llan
Bridge, stood a small weaving mill worked by a man named William Lewis, with
his wife and three sons and two daughters.
They were regular worshippers at St. David’s Church where one of the
daughters, Bessie, played the harmonium. A few years before the building of the
new chancel (1886), William Lewis, anxious to extend his business, took over a
larger mill with surrounding land at Melin Mynach, in the broad Lliw Valley,
a mile to the West, where a few cottages called Rhydymaerdy
formed a growing village, becoming known as Lower Gors
Einon.
In 1881, attracted by the
nearness of the railway which had just been laid through the Lliw valley from Swansea to connect with the Llanelli to Pontarddulais Line, and also by good quality coal supplies
from the newly started Mountain Colliery, a small group of businessmen from Aberavon ventured upon the building of a tinplate works on
some land which had been acquired by the weaver from Melin
Llan. They failed in a very short time, and after a
period of idleness, the works were taken over and re-started by William Lewis
and his sons, with such a measure of success that work people and their
families were attracted from the older tinplate districts around Swansea and
Llanelli.
Rows of workmens’
houses were quickly built near the works. The Lewis family built a church in
the centre of the growing community and very soon it was realised that the
importance of the neighbourhood called for a station on the railway.
The entire locality was
still known as Gors Einon
or Gorseinon, and with the new railway taking this as its name, the older part
of the village, distant upon its hill top came to be known as Penllergaer.
True modern houses were
being built in the field spaces between the thatched cottages, but life
continued very much the same, and with its chief interests centred around Penllergare House, the Llewelyn
family and the Church, the church’s part became an important one. Village
entertainment was shared by the Llewelyn family,
members giving their active support in various directions, whilst John T.D. Llewelyn, who followed closely the tradition of his father
and grand father, was a scholar and a traveller and gave talks and lectures,
illustrated by lantern slides in the Sunday School room.
Later he provided a village
hall on the corner site formerly occupied by an orchard, where the road to Llangyfelach turned beside the church. Control of the hall,
which is now vested in the vicar and the church wardens, was at that time
entrusted to a committee representing the church and the village.
Situated at the end of a
tree lined drive off the Gorseinon Road , not far from the centre of the
village, Llwyn Yr Eos was one of the few remaining
cottages which once housed workers on the Penllergare
Estate. Some of the old inhabitants were able to recall when Penllergaer village was still nothing more than a few
thatched cottages, only two of which remain Llwyn Yr
Eos and Penderi Cottages.
In July 1927 Sir John Llewelyn died at the age of 91, 10 years after his wife,
and for a considerable time the house and the family interest continued to play
a not unimportant part in the life of the community, under his elder daughter,
Miss. G. H. Dillwyn Llewelyn.
Penllergare, situated less than 5 miles from the important sea
port of Swansea, was near enough to be disturbed by nightly bombing attacks and
to see the saddest sight of all, the night sky lit more than once by widespread
fires in the streets of the town. The few bombs which fell on the village did
no more damage than to shatter windows in the Big House, then occupied by
troops, and to raze to the ground a pheasant rearing house in the woods,
leaving two huge craters among the splinter torn trees.
Long before the close of the
war came in sight every village was feeling the effects of the war strain.
Nevertheless, although Penllergare got off very
lightly in the matter of air raid damage, with no civilian casualties, and the
additional quota of evacuees, numbering with their teachers, more than a
hundred and hailing from Kent, were on the whole, a well behaved and co
operative band of young people. Everyone was glad to welcome some sign of a
return to normal conditions of life.
In the 1930’s the lower
levels of urban areas were becoming so congested that the local authorities in
the quest for land for housing development, had been forced to look at sites
once considered too hilly and unsuitable, but with modern methods and machinery
did not present the problems they did a generation ago. Indeed there was even
more urgent need for the Llwchwr U.D.C. to turn its
eyes wistfully to the higher ground, East of Gorseinon on Garngoch
Common.
The end of Hitler’s war
opened the door to many changes
