Welsh Journals

THE HISTORY OF A SOUTH WALES FAMILY THROUGH PUBLIC RECORDS by H. E. ROESE Walking across the hills and mountains of Wales can be a most exhiliarating experience, because the Welsh landscape offers sights ranging predominantly from' beautiful' to immensely impressive'. However, one meets few wanderers on the hills and mountains of Wales, where the air is fresh and where it can be so clear that, from strategic points, one can see the Brecon Beacons, the Preseli Hills and the Plynlimon Mountains all in one "eye-full". This beauty was first discovered for the literate in the I 7th and 18th centuries by travellers such as H. Rowlands and T. Pennant, who recorded their travels in monographs frequently entitled Tours of Wales'. Despite their efforts, however, the Rev- erend H. L.Jones could still write in the 19th century that the mountains are very rarely visited by natives or strangers (Jones, 1849). To date not much has changed in this respect. A 73-year old miner from the Rhondda Valley, whom I met recently on a hill above Ystrad Rhondda, was one of the few, who despite his years preferred the mountain paths to the motor-cavalcade-congested roads on the valley floors. We discussed the future of the community at our feet, and of course its past. He reminisced about the fact that in his great-grandmother's time "a squirrel could run up the whole length of the Rhondda Valleys without once having to leave a tree." This kind of time reckoning is fast becoming extinct, although judging by a recent newspaper article in the Western Mail, this partic- ular methaphor seems to have been a common one in the area (Orchard, 1979). Nevertheless, it was a fairly accurate method of dating at the time, and clearly places the squirrell event' into the early 19th century, just before coal mining in these valleys took its toll amongst the local tree population. It also indicates that great-granny had lived in a farming community. As the trees diminished so the human population in the valleys increased. It was not only a time of enviromental disturbances but also of population relocation and social upheaval. The coal mines needed props and men, regard- less of whether this was a good thing in the long term or not. Whereas the props were supplied for a while by the local woodland, the men were supplied by the manpower reservoir of the farming communities in the neighbouring counties. Farming as a livelihood had reigned supreme in Wales until then, and when one looks down from the hills upon the sprawling expanse of urban growth in the valleys, with only a spattering of farms on the periphery along the foot- slopes, one can still imagine what the rural valleys must have looked like. A late 18th century farmer, especially if he was a yeoman, found it possible and desirable to bring up 6 to 10 children, occasionally even more. Four or five boys in a family were not unusual. The upheaval which culminated in the mid-19th century produced an entirely new class of men-the Welsh Coal Miners and Foundry Men. These