Some precious footage even if there is no sound.
The village of Pantywaun disappeared when Taylor Woodrow extended its opencast site a few years later.
Showing posts with label Wales. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wales. Show all posts
The last train from Newport to Brecon, 1962
Some precious footage even if there is no sound.
The village of Pantywaun disappeared when Taylor Woodrow extended its opencast site a few years later.
Warning sheep high on cannabis could cause havoc in Swansea Valley village
Congratulations to the South Wales Evening Post, which wins our Headline of the Day Award.
A sheep adds: Like baa, man.
A sheep adds: Like baa, man.
Tim Farron backs Kirsty Williams's cabinet post plan
And he's right.
In the elections earlier this month Kirsty Williams was the only Liberal Democrat to win a seat in the Welsh Assembly.
She increased her majority over the Conservatives in Brecon and Radnor to more than 8000. It's strange to recall that the 1985 by-election, when the seat first turned Liberal, was a neck-and-neck contest with Labour. (I was there.)
Beyond Kirsty's victory, our results in Wales were universally dismal. We are firmly established as the country's fifth party - that rumbling sound you can hear is Lloyd George turning in his grave.
Though I can't find the figures, I believe we finished behind the campaign to abolish the assembly in a couple of regions.
So the opportunity for the only Lib Dem AM to take up a high-profile position like education secretary is a godsend.
The Welsh Lib Dems are holding a special conference tomorrow to vote on whether Kirsty should take up this appointment.
If they do anything other than welcome it with open arms, they are madder than Mad Ianto Ap Mad, the winner of this year's Mr Madman competition.
Before we finish, let us pause a moment to mark the defeat of Leighton Andrews, Liberal Gillingham Town fan turned Labour Cardiff City fan, in Rhondda.
The Welshpool and Llanfair Light Railway in 1960
In 2014 I travelled on the Welshpool and Llanfair Light Railway. After doing so I posted an old video of the lost line from through the streets of Welshpool that once connected the line's Raven Square station with the town's mainline station.
Click on the photo above to go to the BFI site and view film shot in 1960. It shows the whole line, including that abandoned section.
There you will also learn about the man who shot it:
Footage shot by Ion Trant, originally from Dovea Farm, Tipperary, Ireland. He farmed Maesmawr farm, Welshpool (plus the adjoining farm, Cefn Du and a Radnorshire hill farm, Esgairdraenllwyn) with his wife, Janet (nee Lewis). Conscious of a growing gulf between town and country, he welcomed school visits to his farm and created the BBC children’s series "Country Close-Up" (1956-62), featuring his land and children.
Cliff Michelmore at Aberfan
Cliff Michelmore belonged to the generation that pioneered television presentation and still possessed a certain decency and innocence about the medium.
His heyday fell just before the point where my memories of television begin, but I do recall people like his Tonight Fyfe Robertson. He gave the impression that he did not realise he was on television or at least that he was constantly surprised to find he was.
The 50th anniversary of Aberfan, the disaster in which a coal waste tip slid down the hillside and engulfed a primary school, falls on 21 October this year. In many ways it was the first televised disaster, and I do just remember it.
This is Cliff Michelmore's report from the scene on the evening of that dreadful day.
Modernity, High Speed Trains and opening doors
As this video shows, British Rail introduced their new High Speed Trains on the Great Western mainline in October 1976.
They were a powerful symbol of modernity and I remember being regarded with envy when I travelled from Paddington to Swansea and back on them early the following year.
Now I commute on HSTs every day. I like them better than the other stock used on the Midland mainline as they are more spacious.
Time moves on, however.
This morning I got on an HST and walked the length of the carriage looking for a suitable seat.
At the end of the next was a young woman. "Please can you tell me how to get off?"
To get off an HST you have to open the window in the door and turn the outside handle. To a generation raised on pressing buttons, this must seem extraordinarily old fashioned.
Mr Gladstone's orphanage at Hawarden
Lord Bonkers has his Home for Well-Behave Orphans, but then it seems at one time every self-respecting Liberal politician had his own orphanage.
Caroline's Miscellany writes of William Ewart Gladstone and his wife Catherine:
As a regular visitor to the London Hospital, Whitechapel, Catherine saw at first hand the effects of the 1860s cholera epidemics on the East End poor.
She founded an orphanage for the children of cholera victims, in a large house in Clapton. It also took in convalescent patients, and the convalescent home later moved to Woodford Hall, Essex, in 1866. Adults and children were sent here from the London Hospital in the East End to recover from illness or surgery. The home moved to Mitcham in 1900, eventually closing in 1940.
As for the orphaned boys, Catherine sent them from Clapton to a new orphanage in the Gladstones' home village of Hawarden. Initially, she took a dozen boys from London to the village and accommodated them in a former coach house; Gladstone paid for their keep. (The couple also accommodated unemployed Lancashire mill girls and elderly women on their estate.)
The orphanage continued for many years, and seems to have taken in other children in need of a home. A guide to the village of 1890 describes it as housing twenty to thirty boys and being 'hard by the Castle [the Gladstones' home] and across the yard'.And this blog's hero J.W. Logan had a home in East Langton for the children of men killed on his works.
Lizard that leapt out of Christmas dinner is now prized pet for Knighton boy
Well done to the County Times for winning our Headline of the Day Award.
The poet A.E. Housman adds:
And lads knew lizards at Knighton
When I was a Knighton lad.
Six of the Best 553
Raymond Smith speaks up for the Green Belt: "The Green Belt may not have turned out quite as it was planned, but it is increasingly used for urban recreation and, if protected, could be of ever greater environmental value.
"During the latter half of the 1930s, a surprising number of Nazi-themed summer camps sprouted across the United States. Organized locally and without the support of Germany, these summer outings bore a startling resemblance to the Hitler Youth." George Dvorsky on a forgotten slice of American history.
Yes you should drag your children round museums, says John Lanchester.
Lynne About Loughborough is pleased by the opening up of the town's Old Bleach Yard.
Wales Online has some fascinating photographs of lost towns, villages and neighbourhoods in Wales - some of them "dismantled for English gain," as it puts it.
