Month: October 2025

Taf Fechan or Dolygaer Church

by Alison Davies

At the far end of Vaynor, just inside the neighbouring parish of Llandetty, stood the pretty church of St Agnes known as Taff Fechan or Dolygaer Church.

Built in the 1470s, almost 400 years later it was extensively rebuilt in the 1860s. The graveyard was also extended after land was gifted by churchwarden, William Williams, Wernddu, and, a new vicarage also built.

This was a time of immense change in the valley, the building of the  Pentwyn Reservoir (Dolygaer Lake) and  the construction of the Brecon to Merthyr Railway brought hundreds of day trippers to picnic swim or sail around the lake in Mr Atkins’s steam powered boat.

Then, in 1925, with the added need for clean water, all changed.

The church, its vicarage, the neighbouring Bethlehem Chapel built 1828 and several houses and farms were all demolished for the flooding of the valley,  and the building of the Taf Fechan Reservoir that we know today.

The picturesque church with its historic foundations was gone, and, the sacred remains of 445 men, women, children and babies were removed from the graveyard.  A further 73 were also removed from Bethlehem Chapel graveyard.

A valley of memories, submerged beneath the lapping waters. Then, every so often, in hot weather, the drought beats the waters retreat, and the archway of Bethlehem Chapel freely emerges from the depths.

At Taf Fechan Church generations of families from the area such as William and Margaret Edward, their sons,  Thomas aged 7 days,  and, Morgan 2 years,  were all removed from their resting place.

Some unknown graves, whose identity was quietly recorded by an unmarked stone, a simple row of river cobbles or a parting in the grass where someone had once sat and grieved. Now, their identity gone, their history lost,  they were simply marked as ‘person’ ’child’ and ‘infant’.

Most, including, those both known and unknown, were re-interred at the new burial ground at Pontsticill.

They  included 26-year old Sarah Jones from Dowlais and her new born daughter Margery who died Sept 1841, also 71-year old station master Charles Mallet who had worked Torpantau Station for over 45 years, died 1910, or Farmer David Lewis died 1891 Cwm Carr.

Others, such as the ancient Watkins family of Blaencallan, or Rhiwyrychain, and, one of the earliest recorded families in the Dolygaer valley, were reburied at Vaynor and Llandetty Churches.

A new church was opened in 1927 on the embankment above the Dolygaer and a new chapel built in Pontsticill; both are now privately owned.

To see more of Alison’s fantastic research about Pontsarn and Vaynor, please follow this link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/747174317220437

The Growth of Football in Merthyr Tydfil – part 6

Transcribed by Phil Sweet

These articles which appeared in three consecutive editions of the Merthyr Express in March 1921 are Harvey Boots’ own reminiscences of the development of three football codes in the town up to that date.  

ARTICLE 3 MERTHYR EXPRESS 19TH MARCH 1921 (continued)

THE GROWTH OF FOOTBALL IN MERTHYR

(By Harvey Boots)

We had some really good men with us now and to mention a few here would be in keeping with the rest of the story. I don’t think they played in the same season, but about those doughty days to which I have just referred. To recall a few, I can remember now the first two backs who played for the club. I had forgotten for a moment, but I was reminded of these names by the genial Vicar of Cyfarthfa (whom we all regard as Paterfamilias apart from things pertaining to football). They were Carrier and W. Davies, the latter of whom hailed from Bristol; Jack White, a good back; little Holmes, also a back; Sam Wightman who went from us to Middlesborough (at what I think was a record fee as transfer to date), Fisher, Gates, Churchill, Whittaker, F. Taylor, Spriggs, Costello etc., etc.

As I have brought this little history nearly up-to-date, I must obviously refrain from comments. I can only say in passing that some of these served the Club really well. Just here came the parting of the ways as far as the Merthyr Athletic Club was concerned. Although the game had undoubtedly come to stay, it was not by any means a paying proposition, and we felt that if the public wanted Association Football, they should help to support it, and so the Merthyr Association Football Club, Ltd., came into being. A limited liability company was formed, and we of the old Athletic Club retired gracefully in favour of the new company formed to carry on. The only one of the old pioneers remaining was Mr. W. T. Jones, who still acted in the capacity of secretary. A strong directorate was elected, embodying the various interests of the district, and everything seemed on a sound basis, but alas! Football, like life, is very uncertain, and the new regime had to encounter the same vicissitudes as formerly. But I think the culmination arrived when that great holocaust of world war smote us all. Football was out of the question, and for five years the game was not seen or even spoken of. The Park was still there, but owing to these unforeseen circumstances it was becoming sadly dilapidated. However, as soon as things became normal, and the menace that had been threatening us as a nation had been laid by the heels the old Club was once again resuscitated. The chairman of directors (Dr Duncan), who has held that office since the formation of the Club into a limited company, called a public meeting in the Drill Hall, presided over by the esteemed president, Mr. Seymour Berry. I was at that memorable gathering, and I shall recall how the enthusiasm of the President gripped the meeting. Money was wanted and he got it! I think the sum promised that evening was over £2,000. I am not going to relate how many or who subscribed but it was a goodly sum, and just depicted how willing the public were to foster the game that had now become so popular. But I believe a great portion of this went to put the ground in proper repair again. After an interval of five years things had sadly got out of repair, and although £2,000 seems a great del of money, by the time the necessary repairs, etc., were done, it was not a great deal for a fresh “dip” into the uncertain waters of Association Football. However, Dr Duncan, with that spirit of the “dour” Scot, with the aid of his loyal board, has now at last seen the fruits of his labours.

In conclusion, I trust, too, that the Merthyr Club will make history in the football world and that our genial President, who has for so long been in loco parentis, will in the near future have the pleasure of seeing that insignificant, elusive, but highly interesting trophy, “The Cup” gracing his sideboard.

Vincent Charles Arthur Giardelli MBE, artist, 1911 to 2009 – part 2

by Christine Trevett

Part Two: Changing the face of Art in Wales

In the years of war, and in the 1950s and beyond, Arthur Giardelli, the evacuee to Merthyr, would prove to be very active for art and artists in Wales. In 1956 with artist Heinz Koppel and others he  was a founder member of firstly the South Wales Group (later The Welsh Group) of artists and then in 1956 of the 56 Group Wales. (https://56groupwales.co.uk/Arthur-Giardelli.html ).

He soon became its president and remained so until 1998, when he was made life president. At the time art in, and from, Wales got little attention and kudos among the art establishment. The 56 Group forefronted modernism in Welsh art and Giardelli, Koppel and others had helped to bring wider European trends to it. Through such groups Welsh artists got opportunities to exhibit in country wide touring exhibitions, so bringing attention to work from  Wales. There was regular lobbying of institutions and politicians on behalf of art and artists, so that art galleries, museums and private collections came to have many more items by such contemporary Wales based artists. Giardelli’s conversation was sometimes peppered with phrases in other languages and phrases from Dante and Racine and he had collected European artwork since the 1930s. Here was a well travelled linguist and the man who helped to facilitate exhibitions in France, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany and elsewhere, as well.

So what of his own work as an artist?  By the end of the 1940s he had moved from the Merthyr area but he was still ardently promoting adult education and the accessibility of art. He taught for the WEA and for University College Cardiff. In 1979 he was awarded an Honorary Fellowship of University College Aberystwyth, for apart from his many other activities, now based in west Wales he had taught in that university’s Department of Extra Mural Studies in the 1960s and 70s.  He lectured extensively overseas too, was a committee member of CASW (the Contemporary Art Society for Wales, founded 1937) and from 1965 to 1975 was on the Welsh Arts Council arts committee. More than one film was made about him and for services to the Arts in Wales Arthur Giardelli was awarded MBE in 1973.

His own art was not being neglected. At the same time he was creating and exhibiting his own work in galleries in London, Oxford and Wales. A clue to an aspect of his style lies in the title of a film which BBC Wales made in 1967. It was See What the Next Tide Brings. This conjures up not just the importance of the sea for him in the landscape where he then lived in Pendine, Carmarthenshire but also the serendipity of the finds from which he had created artwork since the latter half of the 1950s. There were abstract constructions in relief, formal in style, collage and utilizing both found natural objects and scrap manmade objects. Shells, slate and wood, watch parts and glass, cut up brassware, string, paper and other materials figured. The works evoked nature and the seasons. His ‘Pembrokeshire Panel’ can be seen in Cyfarthfa Castle Museum & Art Gallery in Merthyr Tydfil. His work is found in galleries from the Tate in London to others in Prague, Dublin, New York and elsewhere, in museums and private collections, whether in pen and ink, mixed media or construction from found objects.

Arthur Giardelli at work

In 1969 Arthur bought the former school house ‘The Golden Plover’ near Warren, Castlemartin in Pembrokeshire, as a home, a studio and a gallery space. There he lived with his second wife, artist Beryl (Bim), née Butler. Given Giardelli’s Christian pacifism it seems ironic that nowadays Estate Agents highlight The Golden Plover’s spectacular view over a Ministry of Defence Training area. This talented man, cosmopolitan in outlook, devoted to communicating art and promoting modern artistry in Wales, had found his feet and confidence as an artist in our Merthyr Tydfil County  Borough.

See many examples of his work on the Mutual Art website (free to log into).

https://www.mutualart.com/Artist/Arthur-Giardelli/9EE7775ED81C701B/Artworks

Read Arthur Giardelli obituaries in the Guardian and Independent newspapers

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2009/nov/11/arthur-giardelli-obituary

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/arthur-giardelli-painter-steeped-in-the-avantgarde-who-used-found-objects-to-evoke-the-forces-of-nature-1815655.html

Vincent Charles Arthur Giardelli MBE, artist, 1911 to 2009 – part 1

by Christine Trevett

Part One: Coming to South Wales 

“When the train finally pulled into Merthyr, I felt I’d come home”
(Arthur Giardelli to Meic Stephens)

There were, a few years ago, still people of very mature years around Merthyr Tydfil who remembered Arthur Giardelli as a teacher of music and language in Cyfarthfa Castle secondary school. One or two I met did not know that he was also (or especially) an artist, and a significant one in the history of 20th century art in Wales. They knew him only as a Cyfarthfa teacher. In 1940 he had arrived in Merthyr with his school as an evacuee teacher, coming from Folkestone. It was the start of a remarkable story for the man who made Wales his home and who had loved Wales ever since family holidays in Pembrokeshire in his teenage years.

Arthur Giardelli was a Londoner, son of an English mother and an Italian father, a father who had become determinedly ‘English’ and had abandoned things ‘continental’. His son Arthur was highly intelligent and talented. He studied modern languages at Oxford and in parallel did some study at Ruskin School of Art. He was also passionate about music and  would use his viola and piano  playing skills (and those of his first wife Phillis, a very talented pianist) to good effect in due course. Unlike his father’s indifference, Arthur became steeped in knowledge of the European scene and of avant garde art. Above all he was a good communicator and widely read, a man who wanted to see the arts appreciated by everyone and accessible to all. Art in Wales would gain from that passion.

In 1940 his wartime pupils from Folkestone’s Harvey Grammar School shared Cyfarthfa Castle school with the local classes on a ‘split day’ basis. Arthur Giardelli soon found himself  unemployed, though, a married man with two young children, sacked by Folkestone Education Authority. This was due to being  a pacifist  and an  admirer of Gandhi and now declaring himself a conscientious objector (C.O.). Fortunately the Dowlais Educational Settlement was on his doorstep and it had been involved in adult education and social care since 1929. Giardelli had been volunteering there. Its Warden, the sculptor and Londoner John Dennithorne was a Quaker, pacifist and fellow admirer of Gandhi. With the agreement of the Settlement’s Quaker committee he took the Giardelli family into Trewern House (the Settlement base), provided a maintenance grant while the result of the teacher’s Tribunal appearance was pending and employed him as a teacher. In Merthyr Central Library, in one of the boxes housing the John Dennithorne papers is a copy of the letter Dennithorne wrote on April 10th 1941, to the the Chairman of the Appeals Tribunal at Cardiff.  He was advocating Giardelli’s unconditional exemption from service because he was valuable as an educator and on other fronts. Through the Settlement, for example, he had oversight of a newly-formed mixed-sex social club for young factory workers; he led members of Settlement classes in a new allotment scheme in which produce would  also be shared with the elderly, infirm and those feeling the loss of their gardening menfolk who were now away at war. As he reported himself, Arthur Giardelli was also a part time fireman. Interestingly, in his letter John Dennithorne made no reference to Giardelli as an artist, for that was not how he was known at the time.

Arthur was exempted from war service. It would be some time before he regained a teaching post, in Cyfarthfa school where he taught music, languages and English. At the time there were objections to the Education Committee from people who felt someone who had been a C.O. should not be given such employment.

Through the war years Giardelli with his wife provided very regular classical music recitals and recital lectures at The Armoury, Dowlais (advertised in the Merthyr Express, free entry but contributions welcome to defray expenses), and with Mervyn Fry (another Settlement employee) provided recorded music sessions, lectures about musicians, painters and the interrelation of music, painting and literature, while John Dennithorne the Warden gave scheduled lectures on the theory and practice of sculpture. It was all part of the morale building activity which the government wanted to see. Significantly during the war Arthur Giardelli also worked with CEMA (Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts), the forerunner of the Arts Council. It sent art exhibitions and theatrical performances around the country at this time, including to Merthyr and Dowlais, with very well known artists and performers. Among the artists exhibiting were Cedric Morris, who was already part of the story of the Dowlais/Merthyr art scene in other ways, and he had encouraged Giardelli.

In 1940 Dowlais must have seemed an unpromising place for an evacuee but there, Giardelli said,  he had encountered ‘a whole mixed body of people’, not just evacuated teachers and Merthyr’s middle and professional classes but miners who gathered to view art, ‘people of all classes’, as he recalled in an interview included in Derek Shiel’s 2001 published study of him (Arthur Giardelli: Paintings, Constructions, Relief  Sculptures, Bridgend: Seren).  In Dowlais, though, his own art work and move to a professional artist’s life had been encouraged.

To be continued…..

Adult Learning Wales

Do you like history?

Is there anything that you want to learn more about?

Why not join the Merthyr Tydfil Branch of Adult Learning Wales for their weekly history class?

This friendly and informal class meets every Tuesday morning at 10.30 during term time at Canolfan Soar, and several regular lecturers offer informative talks on a variety of different subjects – local, British and world history, stretching from ancient times to modern. There is something to cater to everyone’s tastes.

Classes cost £5 per lecture to cover expenses.

Why not go along and join the class – you will be guaranteed a very warm welcome. No need to book….just turn up.

Glyndwr Jones – A Local Referee

by Barrie Jones

Merthyr Tydfil and District has produced its fair share of prominent football referees: Leo Callaghan (1924-1987), Iorwerth Price Jones (b.1927), and Howard King (b. 1946) come to mind, men who managed the ‘middle’ and ran the ‘line’ in English League and international football matches. To reach that status they had to ‘cut their teeth’ as members of referees’ associations, where over the decades men and now women have given up their free time to officiate at local league and tournament matches.

One such referee was my Grand-uncle Glyndwr Jones (1913-1960), a keen footballer in his youth, who also played for Hills Plymouth Cricket Club well into middle age. ‘Uncle’ Glyn’s reward for his services to refereeing was to be selected to officiate at an international schoolboy U15/16 match between Scotland and Northern Ireland at Celtic Park, Glasgow. Born in Troedyrhiw, Glyn followed his four older brothers working underground and at the time of his selection for the international match he was working as a colliery official at Merthyr Vale Colliery.

Shortly before his trip to Glasgow, Glyn attended an evening at Merthyr Vale and Aberfan Social Democratic Club, there club members, officials of the NCB Colliery Merthyr Vale, and other friends gathered to present him with a travelling bag and a sum of money. The presentation was made by Mr W. J. Williams JP, headmaster of Pantglas Secondary School and vice-president of the Welsh Schools Football Association. Mr Williams said that:

“Mr Jones has served Welsh schools’ football freely for many years as a referee to Pantglas School, Merthyr Schools League and the Welsh Schools Football Association, and he had long been recognised as a first-class referee who was particularly qualified to take charge of schoolboy football, he had always given his services without any remuneration or reward.”

Receiving the gifts Uncle Glyn said he “would endeavour to live up to Merthyr Vale and Aberfan’s fine record of sportsmanship.” Reporting on his selection and the evening’s presentation, the press commented that it was a “rare honour.”

The match took place on Saturday, 23rd of May 1953, the match programme titled it as the ‘Schools Coronation International’ and Scotland won four goals to none. The following season Uncle Glyn was further rewarded when he officiated at the Welsh Schools Cup Final.

Sadly, Glyn died at an early age in May 1960, aged forty-six, several referees’ representing the Merthyr Referees’ Society, including Leo Callaghan, attended his funeral.

Uncle Glyn with Merthyr Tydfil Police football team 1952/53 season, Troedyrhiw Welfare ground