Welsh Journals

The M4 at Penllergaer by A. J. MADDOX THROUGH THE LONG DROUGHT of 'Summer '76' the great earth-moving machines ground their way, ghost-like, behind clouds of self-created dust, and afterwards in a seemingly endless and rainy winter, sank deep in mud, in an overall background reminiscent of the desolation of Flanders in World War One. When we came to look around, a mile-long tract on the eastern side of Penllergaer, between Penderi Farm and Brynrhos Farm, was completely changed; woodland and copse, meadow and pasture, had been swept away in a wide, southward swathe, as from some giant scythe. Cuttings had been sunk, even down to the coal-measures; and sharp-coned miniature mountains had arisen where once was the plain. Now the rough places have been made smooth, the cuttings stoutly bridged, and today the motorway traffic speeds eastward and westward in neatly kerbed lanes and between pleasantly sloped grass-grown embankments. Luckily, the upheaval just missed Penllergaer, although by the narrowest possible margin. Still, an erstwhile native, returning perhaps after a long absence in some place afar, if he approaches from the east will find not one familiar mark to guide him, and will look in vain for well remembered features he may once have known. True enough, Penderi Farm is still there, proudly looking across the plain of Lliw; and now, it seems, standing higher, but cut off as by a deep chasm from the life of the village with which generations of its farming folk identified themselves. Between here and Brynrhos Farm, itself untouched except for the setting back of its roadside boundary wall and a few field-fences, there is a whole mile of change. Home Farm is no more, the tall, three-storied house and the great Long Barn which faced across the wide farm-yard have com- pletely disappeared, flattened into the ground to make way for one of the M4 slip-roads. At Melin-Llan our homecoming exile would be completely lost, were he to look for any of the landmarks he once associated with the spot. The two old cottages are still there, but modernised and transformed, they are now dwarfed by the towering embankment built to carry the motorway over the Llan gorge. In one of these, until the closing years of last century, lived the family of William Lewis, woollen weaver, who with his sons and daughers moved to larger premises at Melin Mynach near Afon Lliw, to turn in course of time to the making of steel and tinplate on land where eventually grew the modern industrial township of Gorseinon. The ancient triple-arched bridge at Melin-Llan, which fell into disuse when supplanted by the tall-piered high-level structure a short distance down-river, has now been restored, and the newer bridge itself demolished in furtherance of the motorway project. At the time of its construction by a local contractor in 1915, the high-level roadway bridge, built entirely of dressed stone, was regarded as of considerable engineering interest, and in response to an