by Barrie Jones
Born in Llandeilo, Carmarthenshire, it is not surprising that his memorial stone is inscribed in Welsh. On the stone is a verse in keeping with many Welsh headstones and is a Welsh type known as englyn. The verse describes John as a fond husband, a loving father, both willing and generous and that there has never been a man on earth with his healthy vigour, nor more genial.
At the time of taking on the licence, John Lewis may already have ‘retired’ from puddling, the Cyfarthfa Works was closed from 1874 until 1879 and this interval may have marked his ‘retirement’. More so because after such a long layoff the exacting work that puddling entailed would prevent a return to work for a man of his age. Charles Russell James recalled:
“puddlers in front of the huge furnaces plying their long puddling bars before fires that would roast an ox. To protect their bodies they wore long leathern aprons. The work was most exhausting. They did not live to be old men. They got shrivelled up at a comparatively early age, and often took to drinking beer heavily. No wonder poor fellows, for their thirst must have been a consuming one. They got heavy wages, but no wage can compensate for that class of killing work”.
Puddling was dangerous work, for example, Gabriel, one of John’s sons was forced to seek temporary parish relief for himself, his wife and four children in 1897 because of burns suffered at work.
Through his work, John would have been well acquainted with the beer trade, and the reopening of the Cyfarthfa Works in 1879 would have been a welcome boost to those inns near the works. John’s entrance into the beer trade and, the expansion of the inn, may have been prompted by the Work’s reopening. The iron masters appreciated from an early stage that their workers could not stand the hot, dusty and fume filled atmosphere of the works without regular intake of water. Beer offered the safest alternative to water and the works purchased beer from the nearby pubs on a contract basis for special exertions. When ‘encouragement’ was needed for special exertions beer notes were written by departmental managers, so that the beer could be brought into the works for the men or could be collected by them when they went home. In addition, public houses formed a useful gathering point for workers at the end of their shifts and especially those inns where gang masters paid their gangs their weekly wages.
John had a relatively short-lived career as a publican, no more than a decade. It would seem that the driving force at the Castle Inn was his son Samuel. Joan, John’s widow, moved out of the inn and Samuel became the full time landlord. During this early period Samuel’s sister Catherine and her husband Alfred Parry assisted him. Alfred was no stranger to the licensing trade; his late father Lewis Benjamin Parry was formally landlord of the Black Lion, Picton Street.
Samuel married Diana Smith in 1902 and continued to manage the inn for the next twenty years.
Samuel gave up the licensing trade in March 1915, with the transfer of the Inn’s licence to George Rees. Samuel had then moved to number 20 Gate Street. At the time of his death in March 1933, he was living at number 12 Dixon Street and working at the Dowlais Works. Samuel had inherited his father’s geniality; during his time as a landlord he had established himself within the community and must have been an active and well-liked personality, as testified by his obituary in the Merthyr Express:
“It is with deep regret we have to record the death of Mr. S. Lewis late of the Castle Inn, Caepantywyll, at the age of 57. Working at Dowlais Works, he collapsed at his work last Thursday leaving his home at 12 Dixon Street in his usual good spirits. It came as a great shock to his sons, daughters, relatives and friends. A great sportsman in past years and well known throughout Merthyr, the deceased was a widower of the late Mrs. Diana Lewis”.
It seems fitting that Samuel had returned to the industry that had helped prosper his father and his older brothers for so many decades and to what was then the last iron and steel works in Merthyr Tydfil.
It’s uncertain when the ‘old’ inn was demolished and the larger ‘new’ inn built in its place. The rebuild may have taken place just after Samuel’s retirement in 1915. George Rees was the licencee throughout and after the First World War, and by the onset of the Second World War the licencee was Arthur Charles Sussex.
