Unless you’ve spent time researching your family’s history, or have had stories passed down by parents or grandparents, you’re probably none the wiser as to where your family originally came from. Many people who were born and raised in the Welsh valley mining town of Abertillery likely think that is where their family have been for many generations. The truth of the matter is that vast numbers of families moved in to the area seeking work in the town’s coal mines, many of them having come from English counties, most noticeably Gloucestershire and Somerset, but some also came from other areas of England as well as other rural and industrialised areas of Wales. To illustrate the vast increase in population, in 1881 there were just over 6,000 people living in Abertillery, but by 1921 that figure had increased to almost 40,000.
In English, Abertillery generally means “mouth of the Tyleri River,” but in Welsh literally refers to the spot where the River Tyleri drops into the River Ebbw Fach. It was once the second largest town in Monmouthshire, Newport being the only town that was larger. It was formerly a major coal mining centre in the western valleys, located 17 miles north of Newport.
Although I’d found ancestors from both sides of my family just a few miles north at Blaina and Nant-y-glo, the earliest trace of any of my relatives living in Abertillery was on 2nd January 1870 when my great great aunt Jemima Ann Jones was born, her birthplace being given as “Square Houses, Abertillery.” This was my mother’s paternal line, but even they had originally come from more distant parts of Wales. My great great great grandfather Jonathan Jones was born at Towyn in Merionethshire, where his father John was a farmer. Jonathan’s wife Ann Esau had been born at Cardigan, the county town of Cardiganshire, where her father Benjamin worked as a Currier.
Towyn is a market town located on the Cardigan Bay coastline, 12 miles north of Aberystwyth. It is home to the Talyllyn Railway, and is famous as being the location of the Cadfan Stone, a stone cross with the earliest known example of written Welsh.
Cardigan was a sea-port and market town located close to the county boundary with Pembrokeshire. Not only did it have a thriving ship-building industry, but it was a commercial centre, and the most important port in South Wales, being larger than the ports at Cardiff and Swansea, and was used to export slate, oats, barley and butter.
Whether Jonathan and Ann had met on the distant coast of Wales before moving to Monmouthshire isn’t known. Whatever the case, Jonathan found employment at Abersychan as a Miner, while Ann worked there as a Servant.
Abersychan lies in the narrow upper section of the Afon Lwyd valley north of Pontypool. Like many of the 17th century isolated agricultural hamlets in the forested South Wales Valleys, Abersychan became a thriving industrial centre in the 19th and early 20th centuries, particularly for iron production.
Jonathan and Ann were married at the Pisgah Baptist Chapel in Talywain on 6th June 1840. The Chapel was relatively new, having been built in 1821. In the 1841 Census they are found living nearby at Monmouth Row in Trevethin, but it wasn’t long before they moved to Nant-y-glo where most of their children were born, including my great great grandfather John who joined the family on 31st December 1844. It was John, along with his wife Eliza née Veale who had been born on 7th January 1844 at Stowey in Somerset, who first brought my Jones family to Abertillery, and were the parents of Jemima Ann.
Nant-y-glo, or “Brook of Coal” in English, is located high in the western valleys of Monmouthshire, 4 miles north of Abertillery, between the towns of Blaina and Brynmawr. It was once one of the most important iron producing centres in the world.
Stowey, from the old English “stan wey” meaning “stone way,” is a small village located within the Chew Valley of Somerset. It lies about ten miles south of Bristol, and north of the Mendip Hills.
What enticed Eliza Veale to move to Monmouthshire? The only other members of her immediate family to be found in Wales were her brothers William and Joseph. William’s first brief time in Wales in the mid to late 1860’s was spent in the Pontypridd area of Glamorgan, where in the summer of 1865 he married Sarah Hunt. By 1871 both William and Joseph had found employment as Coalminers in the Haydock area of Lancashire. William had returned to Glamorgan by 1873, but by 1879 was back in Haydock. In 1882, he was once again in Glamorgan, this time in the Ogmore Vale area. Joseph also married in the Pontypridd area in 1873, his wife being Mary Griffiths, but they also returned to Haydock to live, before moving to Ogmore Vale during the 1880’s.
John and Eliza were both said to have been residents of the Parish of Llanhilleth when they were married on 20th September 1869 at the Church of St Illtyd. The Church is high on a mountain road between Brynithel and Talywain, approximately 1200 feet above sea level. It is generally thought to have been built by Cistercian monks from Llantarnam in the 13th Century on the site of a previous Church, which may have dated as far back as the year 863. St Illtyd’s was the Parish Church of Llanhilleth until 1911, and it remained in intermittent use as a place of worship for several decades after that.
Llanhilleth has had many variations of spelling over the centuries, including Llanheledd Forwyn, which in English means “Church of Heledd the virgin,” Llan Helet, Llanheledd, Llanhiledd, Llanhylithe, and even Llaniddel. It is located 4 miles northwest of Pontypool on the River Ebbw and was a mining community.
When the 1871 Census was taken, John and Eliza Jones were living at William Harris’ Row, close to the centre of Abertillery. You only have to look at the birthplaces of their immediate neighbours in this Census to begin to appreciate the diversity of the families who had begun moving into the area: Breconshire, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Middlesex, and Somerset.
All of John and Eliza’s children were born in Abertillery, including my great grandfather William who was born on 14th December 1871 at Harris’ Square. By the time of the 1881 Census, the family had moved a short distance away to the area known as Blaenau Gwent. Again, looking at their immediate neighbours shows how the number of areas where people were moving in from was becoming even more varied: Berkshire, Breconshire, Carmarthenshire, Dorset, Glamorgan, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, and Somerset.
During the 1860’s, three Godwin brothers, John, William and Samuel, had all moved from Nailsea in Somerset to the Pontypool area. William married his first cousin Emily Gray at the Register Office in Pontypool on 13th January 1862, most of their children being born a few miles north of Pontypool at Varteg, including my great grandmother Louisa who was born there on 10th December 1878.
Nailsea is a town located 8 miles southwest of Bristol and 11 miles northeast of Weston-Super-Mare, and was an industrial centre based on coal mining and the manufacturing of glass.
Pontypool, meaning “bridge over the pool,”was one of the largest and most influential towns in South Wales for most of the 18th and 19th centuries, and is one of the oldest industrial towns in South Wales. A map dating back to the 1500’s in the National Library of Wales names the area as “LePool.” David and Ieuan Graunt established forges in the area in 1425, and Richard Hanbury opened furnaces and forges there in 1577.
Varteg is a village within the Trevethin parish located close to Abersychan on the hills above the Afon Llwyd valley, 5 miles northwest of Pontypool. It’s hard to believe that in such a small area, at one time around 900 people lived there, while 1,000 people worked at the coal pits and a further 1,500 worked in the iron works.
For me, the 1891 Census of Abertillery is of particular interest. That Census recorded my Jones family living in the area then known as Newtown, which was later renamed Blaenau Gwent Rows. Just 2 doors away was John Godwin and his 2nd wife Ann (née Woolford), and a boarder by the name of Harry Luton who had come to Abertillery from Frampton Cotterell in Gloucestershire. It seems quite obvious to me that Louisa and Eliza Godwin and their cousin George (the son of Samuel Godwin and Phoebe née Jones) must all have visited their uncle John and aunty Ann in Abertillery before all three of them decided to move here, got married, and raised their families.
On 5th December 1896, William Jones married Louisa Godwin, but not before his sister Mary Jane had married Louisa’s cousin George Godwin on 29th February the same year, both marriages having taken place at the Old Blaina Baptist Chapel in Abertillery, which is better known as the Blaenau Gwent Baptist Chapel.
Also in early 1896, William and Mary Jane’s brother Jonathan Francis Jones married Mary Stafford in the Crickhowell Registration District, and with that marriage came another connection to an English family. Although Mary had been born much further down the valley at Risca near Newport, her family had spent several years in the Durham area of northeast England where 3 of her siblings were born. Prior to that, the Stafford family had been in the Pontypool area for a short while, but they originaally came from Cromhall in Gloucestershire.
When the 1901 Census was taken, William and Louisa Jones were living at 58 Newtown, and Louisa’s sister Eliza was living with them. George and Mary Jane Godwin were just around the corner at 4 Poplar Row, while John and Ann Godwin were still 2 doors away from the Jones family at number 56, and Harry Luton was still boarding with them. In fact, Harry Luton and Eliza Godwin were married in the summer of 1902. 1902 was also the year my grandfather Stanley Jones was born on 6th December at 58 Newtown. Is it just a pure coincidence that his mother Louisa and her family were living at Stanley Road in Garndiffaith at the time of the 1891 Census, or was he named in memory of a part of her life that brought her happy memories?
It’s interesting to see how several of my grandfather’s siblings moved out of Abertillery, some getting married before moving away, while others married after they had moved. His eldest sister May married William James Cook in 1923 and lived at Penarth in Glamorgan; David Arthur married Clarice Shearn in 1936 and they lived at Penarth; Beryl married Reginald Cann at Bournemouth in Dorset in 1950; Gladys Emily married James O’Brien in East Glamorgan in 1935 and lived at Penarth; Gwyn married Dora Woodward in Lancashire in 1937 and was an Elementary School Master in Swale, Kent at the time of the 1939 Register, but I always remember them living at Gainsborough in Lincolnshire; Nancy never married and was a local School Teacher; Lilian married twice, firstly in 1940 to Paul Geoffrey Hillyard who she had nursed at the Darrell Hall Sanatorium at Battle in Sussex. It was quite some time after Paul’s death at the age of 31 in 1943 when she remarried. She actually returned to her birth area to marry in 1961, her husband being Henry Vaughan Thomas, or as we all knew him, Tommie; Doris Enid married Peter Loren Maynard in the Grimsby area of Lincolnshire in 1943; Doris, or Doll as she’s always been known, was still alive at the time I began writing this blog, and had just passed her 101st birthday!; and finally, William Towey, or Towey as he was always known, was sadly a victim of Meningitis when he was very young, which resulted in his mental abilities being severely impaired for the rest of his life. Having said that, if you tried giving him an out of date newspaper, even if it was yesterday’s, he would tell you straight away that it wasn’t the right one, he wanted today’s newspaper! He is found with his widowed mother Louisa and 2 sisters at 53 Rose Heyworth Road in the 1939 Register. I always remember him living at a care home in Llanfrechfa near Cwmbran, but he would regularly come home for visits.
The maternal side of my mother’s family also has strong connections to both England and other areas of Wales. My great great grandfather, George Thomas, who was born 5 miles away at Brynmawr according to his Census entries, married Eleanor Evans on 13th December 1871 at the Old Blaina Chapel in Abertillery. Eleanor’s parents, Timothy Evans and Eleanor Lewis, had both been born in Carmarthenshire, Timothy at Cil-y-cwm and Eleanor at Llanddeusant, but they had both moved to Nant-y-glo where Timothy found employment as an Iron Founder. They were married on 22nd May 1836 in St Peter’s Church in Blaina, which was also known as the Aberystruth parish Church.
Cil-y-cwm, possibly meaning “corner of the valley,” is a village that lies on the west bank of Afon Gwenlais, a tributary of the River Tywi, 4 miles northwest of the town of Llandovery. In the past, copper and lead ores abounded within the parish, the mining of both being worked to a considerable extent.
Llanddeusant, or in English “the Church of two saints,” is located at the foot of the Black Mountains, 6 miles southeast of Llangadock. Its surrounding scenery was once described as being “strikingly diversified, combining features of picturesque and rural beauty with objects of bold and romantic grandeur.”–A Topographical Dictionary of Wales, by S. Lewis, 1844.
All of George and Eleanor’s children were born at Nant-y-glo, including my great grandfather William who was born there on 4th August 1881. The family finally moved 4 miles south to Cwmtillery in the late 1880’s, soon after the birth of their youngest child George Morgan. At first they lived at Cwmtylery Road on the eastern side of the Cwmtillery valley, but by early 1900 they had moved to 185 Alma Street on the western side of the valley, and it was here on 5th March of that year that George’s wife Eleanor passed away. This house remained in our family until the late 1980’s, and was the birthplace of many family members, including my mother, Enid Vera Jones.
Cwmtillery, which in English means “Valley of Tyleri,” is located within a narrow valley formed by the River Tyleri. It was once a picturesque woodland area based beneath the heights of the Gwastad hill to the east and Mynydd James to the north. The area was mentioned by English historian William Coxe as being “well peopled, richly wooded and highly cultivated, almost rivalling the fertile counties of England.”
At the time of the Census in 1901, number 183 Alma Street was also occupied by members of my family. William Thomas’s sister Eleanor had married Onesimus Edwards in early 1895, and their 2nd child, also named Onesimus, who was born on 5th April 1897 later became the Member of Parliament known as Ness Edwards.
On 26th April 1902 at the Hermon Baptist Chapel in the centre of Nant-y-glo, William Thomas married an English girl, Elizabeth Tiley, in the presence of George Thomas and Mary Jones. Elizabeth had been born on 7th March 1881 at Olveston in Gloucestershire, the daughter of William Tiley and his wife Mary née Michael. During the 1890’s, the Tiley family had moved from Olveston to Victoria Street in Abertillery, just a little way up from the Blaenau Gwent Baptist Chapel, and a few streets away from the Thomas family in Alma Street. The connecting street between the two families, Gaen Street (known locally as Cardiff Road), is exceptionally steep.
Olveston is a small village in South Gloucestershire, located 9 miles north of Bristol and 7½ miles northwest of Yate. The area has been inhabited since the Stone Age, and the salt marshes that made up almost half of the parish were progressively drained in Roman and Saxon times. A sea wall was constructed at the same time to prevent flooding from the nearby estuary of the River Severn. There were around 50 farms at the time of the 1851 Census, and the area remained largely agricultural until World War II.
William and Elizabeth had a total of 4 children, only 2 of whom survived. Their first child was my grandmother, Eleanor Mary, who was born at 185 Alma Street on 27th January 1904. The next 2 children both died soon after birth, their only son William George in 1910, and a daughter Ceridwen in 1915. Her only surviving sibling Elizabeth Megan was born exactly 14 years to the day later on 27th January 1918.
Both sides of my mother’s family had first hand experience of the dangers associated with working underground in the Welsh coalfield. In all, 3 members of her family were killed in mining accidents.The first was George Thomas who was killed by a fall of coal at the Pen-ybont Colliery on 10th July 1907, he was 59 years old. Seven years later, 16 year old William Jones, my grandfather’s brother, was killed at the Rose Heyworth Colliery on 9th November 1914, the cause of death being recorded as a fall of coal which caused a compound fracture to his right leg, internal hemorrhage and shock. Finally, young William’s own father, my great grandfather William, was also killed by a fall of stone on 22nd January 1927 at the Rose Heyworth Colliery, he was 55 years old.
As far as my father’s family is concerned, it was his maternal great grandfather George Cooksey who moved from Frampton Cotterell in Gloucestershire to Blaenavon in the early to mid 1860’s. It was here that he met and married Hannah Cox, whose father, John Cox, was a shoemaker who had been born in Cornwall. It was at Blaenavon, or more specifically Llanover, that my great grandfather George Cooksey was born in 1867.
Frampton Cotterell was once a rural village situated on the River Frome in south Gloucestershire, 3 miles southeast of the large town of Yate, and around 7 miles northeast of Bristol city centre. Its stone quarries and collieries were once extensively worked, and the manufacture of hats provided employment to large numbers of the population.
Blaenavon is a town situated on the edge of the former South Wales coalfield, high on a hillside north of Pontypool at the source of the Afon Lwyd. In English the name is literally translated as “front of the river,” or more loosely as “river’s source.” It is almost certainly the best preserved example of a traditional South Wales iron-making town, and is probably unique in possessing one of the best preserved late 18th and early 19th century ironworks in the world. The ironworks was never amongst the largest in South Wales, but was certainly of world importance. The town’s coalmine, known as “Big Pit,” now a museum, still offers underground tours which gives its visitors the genuine experience of working conditions hundreds of yards below the surface.
After his first wife Hannah died in 1888, George married Elizabeth Cripps at Panteg near Pontypool, Elizabeth being over twenty years his junior. They had two children, a daughter Caroline who very sadly died at a very young age, and Tom who was killed in action during World War I. A few years after Tom’s birth, Elizabeth was admitted to the Monmouthshire Lunatic Asylum at Abergavenny where she spent the rest of her life. Intriguingly, George appeared in the 1901 and 1911 Censuses giving his marital condition as “Widower,” but this couldn’t have been further from the truth. In fact, Elizabeth survived him by a few years.
It was George Cooksey’s daughter Esther, along with her husband Thomas Bishop, who first moved from Blaenavon to Abertillery in the late 1890’s. At some point during the first decade of the 1900’s, George and his son Tom both moved to Abertillery to live with the Bishop family. I’m told that after the end of World War I, George’s granddaughter, Esther Annie Cooksey, who was known as Nance, came to Abertillery from Blaenavon to nurse him until he passed away in 1920. It was around this time that she met Arthur Albert Ernest Nixey (who was known as Ernie) who had moved to Abertillery from Twerton in Somerset some time around 1917. Ernie’s sister and brother-in-law, Lou and Arthur Smith also settled in Abertillery, the road that they lived in being one that was in the forefront of many people’s minds at the time. Darren Road was the very same road where the 15 year-old double child murderer Harold Jones had lived until his arrest in 1921.
Twerton is a village located on the River Avon 1½ miles southwest of the city of Bath. Many of its inhabitants were once employed in the manufacturing of wool and carpets. There were also numerous tanneries in the area, as well as quarries of lias limestone which contained ammonites and other fossils.
Ernie and Nance appear to have spent some time at the Cooksey family home at 21 Upper Waun Street in Blaenavon. While living there, they were married on 21st April 1924 at the Llanwenarth Baptist Chapel. This is one of the oldest Baptist Chapels in Wales, having been founded in 1652. The present building was constructed in 1695, and was remodelled during the 18th, 19th and 21st Centuries. The Chapel is a Grade II listed building, and is the oldest Baptist Chapel still in active use in Wales.
Llanwenarth is a village situated between the Blorenge and Sugarloaf mountains, about 2 miles west of Abergavenny on the banks of the River Usk.
It wasn’t long before they settled in Abertillery, where on 16th September 1927 at Alexandra Road, Six Bells, my father Arthur was born. He was followed almost 2 years later by his only sibling, his brother Jack.
Six Bells is a village located just to the south of Abertillery, and was a mining community until the colliery closed in 1988. It has long been debated as to where Six Bells got its name. Some say the colliery manager had 6 daughters, hence six belles. Others say it was the name of an old pub located just behind where the Six Bells Hotel now stands, the pub having been in earshot of the Church bells ringing down the valley from Abertillery. The original name of the area appears to have been Cwm-llwydrhew, or in English “Hoarfrost Valley” or “Valley of Hoarfrost,”which the warden-controlled complex Llys-Cwm-Llwydrhew, or “Hoarfrost Valley Court,” is named after.
By the time the 1939 Register was taken, the Nixey family had moved a little closer in to town, to 44 Queen Street, an address that I only have a few vague memories of. My parents were married at the King Street Baptist Chapel in Abertillery in March 1951. King Street Baptist Chapel was built in 1855, the interior of which was remodelled in 1892.
My parents first lived behind a shop in Bryngwyn Road in Six Bells, which was owned by Hector Williams and his wife Phyllis née Shattock. My mother (who was partially sighted at the time) used to clean for them, both at the shop and at their home in nearby Marlborough road. In early 1966 we moved from Six Bells to Rose Heyworth Road which is at the northern end of Abertillery, and almost directly opposite my aunties Nance and Beryl who were living at number 53.
Finally, bringing things up to date, and following on in the family tradition (so to speak), I met and married Su Albray who had grown up at Gosport in Hampshire. In 1983, some friends of her’s were moving from Gosport to Brynmawr where the husband planned on retiring. Su had the opportunity of visiting them, and then decided to move to the area herself. She soon made friends with someone I’d known for quite a number of years, and they invited Su to join them on a visit to Abertillery. Several visits later, some other mutual friends invited Su and I for tea, and, as the saying goes, the rest is history…!