Tag: Quakers Yard Burial Ground

Merthyr’s Bridges: A New Bridge at Quakers’ Yard

The article transcribed below appeared in the Merthyr Express 100 years go today…

QUAKERS’ YARD BRIDGE.

A GREAT AND MUCH NEEDED IMPROVEMENT.

MAYOR OF MERTHYR PERFORMS THE OPENING CEREMONY.

In the presence of about 5.000 people, the Mayor of Merthyr (Councillor F. A. Phillips) on Thursday afternoon opened the splendid bridge of reinforced concrete. built by the Corporation at Quakers’ Yard, by cutting a silken ribbon with a pair of silver scissors presented to him by the contractor. Major Rugg of Westminster. Afterwards the Mayor and his party of Aldermen Councillors and friends, drove across the bridge and declared the same open for traffic, after which the children of Woodland School passed across in procession carrying flags.

At a meeting subsequently held the Mayor said:-

Ladies and Gentlemen.—The history of the reinforced concrete bridge which I am privileged to open today dates back as far as 1909, at which time the Town Clerk received a letter from the Road Board stating that advances were available from the Development and Road Improvement Fund in respect of works to highways.

In December, 1910. Councillor Edward Edwards moved a resolution that the attention of the Corporation should he called to the state of the Quakers’ Yard Bridge, and the Borough Engineer, Mr. Harvey, was instructed to report upon a scheme for widening the old structure. In January, 1911, plans were submitted showing the widening of the bridge to 28 feet between the parapets at an estimated cost of £250, and the Council gave instructions for detailed drawings to be prepared, but the matter deferred owing to the difficulties experienced in negotiating with the land owners.

There was now a lapse of ten years before the question was revived, as in January, 1921, two schemes were submitted for the Corporation’s consideration. Scheme No. 1 was for a proposed widening of the old bridge on both sides, destroying the existing arch and constructing in lieu thereof a concrete decking over the river. This proposal was intended to lower the level of the roadway and thus improve the dangerous inclination towards Mill-street. The estimated cost of this work was £1,350.

Scheme No. 2 proposed to entirely divert the main road filling in the Friends Burial-ground and adjoining meadow, culverting the Taff Bargoed for the width of the roadway, together with the necessary masonry wing walls. This proposal was specially recommended to the Council, and sub-committee who visited the site unanimously adopted the same, and abandoned all former proposals as inadequate. The estimated cost of this work was £4,200, the intention being to carry out the necessary filling by tipping house refuse obtained from Treharris and Quakers’ Yard.

When the committee’s resolution was brought before the Council an amendment to the scheme was proposed anti carried on the grounds that the interference with the burial ground was objectionable.

The improvement was again deferred until July, 1922. when the Ministry of Transport intimated to the Corporation that they were prepared to consider schemes of road improvement which would find useful employment for the unemployed during the autumn and winter of 1922-1923. In the same month the Borough Engineer submitted plans and estimates for various road improvements and diversions. one of which was the subject of our meeting to-day.

In view of the trend of former discussions a new line of diversion was chosen and plans prepared showing the non-interference with the Friends Burial-ground, but which involved the removal of the dwelling known as Hawthorn Cottage. The scheme was approved by the Ministry of Transport, and tenders were invited for carrying out the work. The width of roadway was intended to be 30 feet, being 24 feet of carriage-way and one six feet footpath.

When considering the tenders the committee after careful deliberations came to the conclusion that a wider structure would be advantageous, and eventually a 39-feet unit carriage -way with two 5-feet paths, was definitely decided upon.

Messrs. Lewis Rugg and Co., whose tender for the narrower scheme had been provisionally accepted, were asked to quote for the widened structure, and after examples of their work had been seen and approved of they were entrusted with the contract.

The bridge, which has a length of 360 feet, is comprised of 10 spans, each of 30 feet. and one span over the Taff Bargoed of 45 feet, together with a skew span at the lower extremity. The height of the spans vary between 12 feet and 24 feet above the ground level, whilst the river span is 26 feet shove the normal flow of the water. The carriageway on the bridge has a gradient of 1 in 36, and the kerb level of the outer side of the curve is super elevated to the extent of 7½ inches.

The work was commenced in January of this year, so it will he observed that no time has been lost in getting ever many difficulties which have presented themselves. The structure was tested in presence of a Ministry of Transport Official yesterday, when the following trains were passed over the bridge at a speed of six mike per hour: No. 1. a train composed of two 13-ton steam rollers, two 11-ton steam rollers, and two 4-ton lorries; No. 2. two trains composed of two 13-ton rollers side by side, two 11-ton rollers side by side, two 4-ton lorries side by side: No. 3.  trains as in test No. 2, passing in opposite directions. the 13-ton rollers passing each other at the centre of the bridge. The deflection as observed by instrument at three points – one at the centre of the 45-feet span and two at the centres of the 30 feet spans, was negligible, which is highly satisfactory.

The general scheme was designed and the specification and conditions of contract prepared by Mr. A. J. Marshall, Borough Engineer, whilst Messrs. Lewis Rugg and Co., Westminster. were responsible for the carrying out of the work. The cost of the bridge and appurtenant work is £8,650.

Merthyr Express 3 October 1925

Quakers’ Yard ‘New’ Bridge. Photo courtesy of the Alan George Archive

Don’t believe all you read about Quakers’ Yard

by Christine Trevett

Do you know the Yard – the small, walled burial space at the heart of Quakers’ Yard village where Quaker burials happened until 1891? It’s a graveyard – gravestones now removed, all but one that is, which is flat to the ground and very understated, in Quaker fashion. If you’ve read about the burial ground on local websites or in older accounts of Merthyr history it’s as well to know that not everything you might read about it is accurate.

Among those things which are clearly odd is the claim that it was ‘opened’ in 1665 by someone called William Howe from Bristol. Odd, too, are some of the dates given for Quakers having supposedly worshipped clandestinely with other dissenters at Berthlwyd Farm, above Quakers’ Yard village.

Quakers’ Yard Burial Ground. Photo courtesy of the Alan George archive.

Firstly the ‘opening’ of that burial ground … a date of 1665 makes no sense. The piece of “walled about” land (as it’s described in the legal documents) was not given to the oversight of some named local Quakers until 1667. Yes, it was for Quakers to have burials in and then the gift of it “for a thousand years” to “the people of God called Quakers’’ was ratified in the freeholder’s will of 1670. Both of the documents were linked with the Quaker and widow Mary Chapman. She owned the Pantanas (or Pantannas) estate of which that burial ground  land was a part. The documents are in the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth and at the time Mary Chapman lived in St. Mellons. But “opened” by a man from Bristol in 1665? I don’t think so.

The story makes no sense on other grounds too. In 1665 when the burial ground was allegedly opened Quakers were a newly-created sect. It had been under a decade and a half since their public emergence in England and in the 1660s they were much opposed by the authorities under Charles II. There had even been a Quaker Act in 1662, “for preventing mischiefs and dangers that may arise by certain persons called Quakers and others refusing to take lawful oaths”. The fact was that Quakers were widely suspected by “right thinking” people and this hardly tallies with some notion of them organising a formal “opening” of a very small  burial area, given that the land  was being set aside because of Quakers’ rift from the established church and the church’s refusal of ‘consecrated ground’ to such people. Presumably they wouldn’t have been inviting the local vicar to the ceremony!

In any case, the idea of such formality would have held no appeal for Quakers of those times and had there been no gifted land they would otherwise just have buried a loved one in whatever spot was available. Usually that was on their own land, while also refusing to acknowledge that any bit of earth was more ‘consecrated’ than the next one.

This was a troubled, messy time in the history of these islands and in Merthyr parish some Quakers had already been imprisoned for their nonconformity. In the 1660s, according to  the Diocese of Llandaff’s account of ‘conventicles’ (i.e. illegal gatherings apart from the established church) the houses of some named men in Merthyr parish were being described as venues for “the mixt rabble” of dissenting preachers and those who agreed with them. Those named men, Quakers, had been among the ones incarcerated previously and/or they were recipients of the ground from Mary Chapman. These seemed more like outlaws in the eyes of the authorities than people wanting freedom of conscience and freedom of worship. All things considered, I can’t see these times as ones in which local Quakers would be  getting a man in from Bristol for a nice opening of a burial ground.

And then there was Berthlwyd Farm … which was one of several places which have figured in Merthyr region’s history where religious dissent was concerned. Berthlwyd was sufficiently remote in those days to deflect prying interest and so it fitted the pattern of such places. The problem is, though, that it is claimed quite often that Quakers, with Baptists and other dissenters, were gathered together in Berthlwyd Farm “by 1650”. Yet that is impossible. There wasn’t a Quaker in Wales “by 1650”. The first Welsh person living in Wales to identify as Quaker did so in 1653, and he’d travelled to seek them out in the north of England. In South Wales it was later still for converts to Quakerism. Some of those worshippers up at Berthlwyd Farm who were religiously dissatisfied may have morphed in due course into the Quakers of the mid 1650s and 60s in Merthyr parish. In the 1640s, though, we should not number Quakers among Merthyr’s dissenters, as sometimes happens.

Some of the kind of imperfect information which gets repeated seems to come from local writers in the 19th century. They were also well confused about the Fell family. Lydia Fell was probably buried at Quakers’ Yard in 1699 and hers seems to have been the Quaker name best remembered in local folklore. She is said to have had some role in the early history of the burial ground too but misinformation and confusion about that, and about her, has also got around.

Christine Trevett was born in Susannah Place, where Treharris runs down to Quakers’ Yard.   That gave her a nagging interest in Quaker history as a hobby even though the day job required that she researched other things. She’s published quite a lot on Quaker history, including Women and Quakerism in the 17th Century and Quaker women prophets in England and Wales 1650-1700. Her look at Dowlais Educational Settlement and the Quaker John Dennithorne will be published by Merthyr Tydfil Historical Society in 2022.