Tag: Dowlais Educational Settlement

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…..

A General View of Pontsarn

by Alison Davies

I love collecting Vaynor memorabilia and postcards of the area, like many local collectors it’s a lifelong passion.

Then every so often a card comes along that is both historically important on the front and back, and please excuse the phrase but ‘it blows me away’ and below is one.

A General View of Pontsarn

This is a rare image taken from the fields overlooking Vaynor a little way below Pontsticill. It’s like peeping through a curtain back in time.

In the centre of the picture is the back of the Church Tavern pub with the two churches at Vaynor you can see the steeple on the new Church, the pathway leading from the old church and first few headstones in the new cemetery. The houses too: Dolcoed, Hy Brasail and Bragty Cottages are clearly visible along with the fields systems around.

The view then sweeps down the valley to the viaduct, Pontsarn Station and beyond its one of the most incredible postcards of Vaynor that I’ve seen.

The back of the card is equally important, it is an incredible piece of Merthyr’s history. Postmarked Merthyr Tydfil 27 Dec 1936 and sent from Gwernllwyn House Dowlais by M E Horsefall (Mary Emmeline Horsfall)

It reads:

Thank you for your card and good wishes.

I hope you and Mr Cobby are well

With good wishes M E Horsfall

Mary Horsfall was a philanthropist who came to Dowlais in 1934 to help at the Educational Settlement formed by John Dennithorne. She lived at Gwenllwyn House Dowlais and from there ran classes teaching unemployed men and women the arts.

Mary invited important artists including Heinz Koppel and Cedric Morris to teach art at Dowlais. Her address book must have read like a who’s who of the art world. Whilst in Dowlais Heinz Koppel painted Mary’s Portrait from his studio at Gwenllwyn House. Also in Dowlais between 1936-1939 Cedric Morris painted two of the most iconic and celebrated paintings in Welsh Art today, Dowlais Tips and Caeharris Post Office. Now in Cyfarthfa Castle Museum.

So who is the card written to ?

Mary Horsfall wrote the card to her friend Lucy Mary Cobby and her husband Anthony Cobby at little Bognor, Frittleworth Sussex.

Little Bognor is a tiny rural hamlet in Sussex re known for its artistic connections however I think Mary knew Lucy Cobby from earlier connections rather than artistic ones.

If you’re interested in the Dowlais Settlement and Mary Horsfall see Christine Trevett’s wonderful article Merthyr Historian Vol 33 p 123.

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

Storming Iscoed House, Pontmorlais 1935

by Christine Trevett

It was a Monday afternoon – the afternoon of February 4th 1935 to be exact, and it had been snowing heavily that day. The women arrived first at Iscoed House, Pontmorlais, which housed the area offices of the Unemployment Assistance Board. There, the plan went, an orderly deputation which would include the district secretary of the National Unemployed Workers Union (NUWM) would be speaking with officials. Perhaps as many as a thousand women were part of the protest outside. They had marched there with around double that number of men, coming from all directions to reach Pontmorlais in a United Front demonstration during the Means Test protests of that year. Such things were happening all over South Wales and elsewhere.

The Unemployment Assistance Board

That had been set up by the government in the previous year (1934). It administered means-tested assistance to those who had no contributions-based unemployment benefit. In the Depression of the 1930s the Merthyr region was very hard-hit economically and many people were affected by Means Test decisions, a Test which at this time was creating even further hardship. Opposition to it was widespread, with the criticism coming from not just the working classes and the unemployed, so that the government was getting jittery. From  1931-June 1935 it was a National Government (a coalition) under the leadership of Labour’s Ramsay MacDonald and with Conservatives, Liberals and others in it.

Protests in Merthyr Tydfil region

Not quite two weeks previously, in January 1935, there had been another United Front demonstration. That Front was a sign of temporary Labour Party/Communist collaboration where The Means Test was concerned and that January demonstration had brought perhaps ten thousand people to Penydarren Park. They had marched there in organised processions from all parts of the Borough. Many women were in the throng, and carrying infants.

Wal Hannington

The crowd had been addressed by Wal Hannington, one of two organisers of the National Unemployed Workers Union (NUWM). Not a local person, he had also been the Communist candidate in Merthyr’s bye-election in the previous year. The crowd was addressed also by John Dennithorne, Warden of Dowlais Educational Settlement (the seat of all kinds of social and educational work) and by ILP (Independent Labour Party) leaders.

A deputation was agreed (it included two local ministers of religion) to interview officials at Iscoed House. They would present grievances and protest the unemployment assistance legislation. On that day the deputation had been told that its concerns would be passed on. The Western Mail of 23rd January 1935 (p. 10) had reported that the gathering ‘dispersed in good order’.That had been then. But come February 4th at Iscoed House, matters would change from being orderly.

On February 4th traffic was brought to a standstill on Brecon Road as the demonstration took its course and from all quarters marchers were heading for Pontmorlais. The protest was being overseen by a contingent of police not large enough to be effective if trouble broke out on a large scale, given the numbers in the demonstration, but then the organisers of this United Front demonstration did not seem to be expecting trouble.

John Dennithorne in 1936

The actual march and deputation had been organised by the NUWM and by invitation it was also being led by the London-born Warden of Dowlais Educational Settlement, the same John Dennithorne (mentioned earlier). Dennithorne, who had served in World War I, was a Quaker and a pacifist.

Accounts of what happened

There are some first-hand accounts of the events of Fabruary 4th, including one from John Dennithorne and another from Griff  Jones, a local NUWM member who had been with those ‘starting off from Pengarnddu with banners’(an interview with him is kept in the South Wales Miners’ Library collection in Swansea university). Also there is a fictionalised account by the Clydach Vale born novelist and NUWM member Lewis Jones in We Live – his novel about those times.

The deputation was doing its work inside the building and thousands were gathered outside. UAB clerks on an upper floor had been ‘making faces’ at the crowd (Griff Jones recalled). They soon stopped, as the slim cordon of police was clambered over by a determined group –‘a mob of men who were prepared for anything’ as John Dennithorne called them.

With no previous sign of their intention they had made ‘a sudden rush’, so The Western Mail recorded. Stones were hurled through the office windows, shattering glass over the clerks; the gate of Iscoed House gave way; Dennithorne expected to be arrested. Inside the building he clambered onto a windowsill to be heard but ‘a howling mob’, now inside, shouted down his appeals against violence. ‘Old bug whiskers’ (a jibe at the bearded Warden, who was 39 years old) was told to ‘get down!’ as furnishings and fittings were being broken up and records angrily plundered for burning. Blood was spattering through the air, John Dennithorne recalled. Only a couple of well known South Wales Communists were suffered to speak.

It was the police which persuaded the violently protesting minority to disperse and to leave the grounds of Iscoed House. Hundreds of thousands of protestors had been on the nation’s streets that day. Given the strength of feeling nationally against the government’s stance there was some rethinking of the legislation. The Western Mail was already recording on February 5th that ‘To-day Mr. Oliver Stanley (Minister of Labour) will probably announce changes in the regulations to meet the special grievances raised. New instructions have already been sent to area officers’.

Iscoed House today

There is more about this and those times in:

  • Lewis Jones, We Live (Parthian Books 2015)
  • Daryl Leeworthy, Labour Country: political radicalism and social democracy in South Wales 1831-1985 (Parthian, 2018).
  • Christine Trevett Dowlais Educational Settlement and the Quaker John Dennithorne (Merthyr Tydfil Historical Society, 2022)
  • Stephanie Ward, Unemployment and the State in Britain: the Means Test and Protest in 1930s South Wales and north-east England (Manchester University Press, 2013)

A Welsh Quilt

At the recent launch of the remarkable new book ‘Dowlais Educational Settlement and the Quaker John Dennithorne’ by Christine Trevett, local historian Terry Jones recognised someone on a photograph shown during the presentation. Following a discussion between Terry and Christine, it transpired that the photograph came from an article (below) which appeared in the Merthyr Express on 31 January 1948.

Terry subsequently put the article on his Facebook page, and received the following message:-

The lady on the left is my mother. She was asked to make a Welsh bed quilt to raise American dollars after World War II. She agreed and my Dad made a special frame for her to use because the quilt was so big. He made it so that she could quilt then turn the frame under until she got to the middle, then because the material and padding got so thick, she started from the other end. The lady with her is the lady who drew the pattern in special chalking. That alone was amazing because she had to stay in exact pattern all the way through although she couldn’t see the rolled under quilt. The designer’s name was Miss Neale (not sure of the spelling). Other people in the UK were asked to make things too and the dollars raised went to help the repayment of the dollar debt the UK owed to America.

My mother was Mrs Gwyneth Pritchard née Richards from Caeracca Farm. She was living in 41 Edward Street when she was working on this quilt and it took up the whole of the front room. The furniture had to be removed to make room for the the frame to fit in.

At the end of the making it was put on exhibition in London, along with all the other hand made contributions and the Queen’s grandmother. Queen Mary wrote Mam a letter of congratulations to Mam for her excellence in work done on the quilt. I would love if we could find out who it was that eventually bought the Quilt.

One other incident that may raise a smile. When Mam was working on it, my sister Lynfa who was about two at the time, sat most of the time under the quilt. Mam had her there to keep an eye on her, and make sure she was safe.

Sybil Watkins

Many thanks to Terry Jones and Sybil Watkins for allowing me to use this article.

If you would like to purchase a copy of ‘Dowlais Educational Settlement and the Quaker John Dennithorne’ by Christine Trevett, please contact me at merthyr.history@gmail.com and I will pass your details on to the Merthyr Tydfil and District Historical Society who published the book.

Can you help?

I am writing a history of the Dowlais Educational Settlement. This out of focus photograph may be of some of the staff of that Settlement, perhaps pre 1936. The bearded man at the back is John Dennithorne, the Warden. The person second left may be Patrick Michael Keating of Dowlais – can anyone confirm that, please, or put names to any other people in the picture?

Thanks

Christine Trevett

The Dowlais Educational Settlement

Hello everyone. My name is Christine Trevett and I’m writing a history of the Educational Settlement in Dowlais from 1928, through the  Depression to beyond the Second World War, for Merthyr Tydfil Historical Society. Some people in the Borough still have memories of it.

I am coming across names of people who were linked with that Dowlais Settlement work and with John Dennithorne  the Settlement’s Warden,  but there are limited details or no details about the people named. Were they perhaps members of your family? Have older family members heard of them and of activities linked to the Dowlais Settlement?  I would love to know.

That Settlement’s work was centred around the Horse Street Club for unemployed men, The Armoury,  Trewern House, Gwernllwyn House and The Hafod, Pant.   Here are the people I would like to learn more about:

From the early 1930s onward

  • Margaret Gardner (née Margaret Morgan Jones), social worker distributing relief in food vouchers and clothing, later a Councillor, lived in West Grove.
  • Jeannie McConnell
  • ‘Bill’ (no surname) who  may have been the local unemployed miner who was put in charge of the gym from around 1929.  Or Bill may have had different roles in the Horse Street Club (in which case  who was the ex miner who ran the gym?).
  • Beryl (née Evans). She and ‘Bill’ were helping at the Settlement at the same time.
  • Celeste Davies – worked with young children at the Horse Street site
  • James Sullivan, gym instructor (was he known as ‘Jim’?)
  • Edward Bruten – who ran some classes at the Settlement
  • Bard Bracey – similarly was a tutor – and what was his relation to F.A. Bracey who taught French and German and ‘Swedish drill for juniors’ at the Settlement?
  • Mr Fuente, who taught Spanish.

Also

  1. Beryl Williams of Pant and
  2. Valerie Hargraves of Pant – these two may have had roles at The Armoury.
  3. Mary Horsfall of Gwernllwyn House, art patron and friend of the Settlement.

If you can shed any light on this I  can be contacted by email: rctcasagroup@gmail.com

Thanks, Christine