Part Four - A Trek through old Mumbles Village by Stuart Batcup

The first mention of this hamlet that I have found, is contained in Oliver Cromwell’s ‘Survey of the Lordship of Gower In the Marches of Wales’ which begins in the following way:

“A SURVEY of the Seignory or Lordship of GOWER with the several Members thereof in the Countie of Glamorgan begun the 27th day of August Anno 1650. By Bussy Mansell and John Price Esquires and George Billinghurst Gent; By virtue of a Comission to them and others in that behaulfe given by the Right Honorable OLIVER CROMWELL Lord General of the Parliamentary forces, which Survey was afterwards continued by the Perambulacon of the said George Billinghurst, beinge assisted therein by some of the Tenants and Officers of the said Seignory”

This is found in a volume published for the Cambrian Archaeological Association in 1870 incorporating the work of the well-known Swansea Historian George Grant Francis FSA published in 1861. The Preface by Charles Baker sets the scene nicely:

“The volume includes Surveys of Gower and Kilvey, and of several mesne manors within the Seignory of Gower. The earliest is an extract from a survey of Landewi, taken in the year 1326; all the other Surveys range between the years 1583 and 1689, The present collection is not an exhaustive one, but there are doubtless many other Surveys in existence besides these now printed.”

In that Survey there are several references to land holdings at FISTLEBOON or FFISTLEBOON as the place was probably then known.

As you will see from the 1844 Tithe Map this was the spelling that had by then come into common parlance, and so it has remained since. Not a bad name really?

Above the word ‘Pound’ on the 1844 Tithe Map is a yellow coloured parcel opposite Thistleboon House. This is Parcel No 1063 in the Schedule to the Map recorded as ‘Garden’ in the occupation of one Thomas Bowen, the owner being the Duke of Beaufort. 

The extract from the 1877 Ordnance Survey also produced shows the layout of that garden in some detail. The garden is long gone, and to get some idea of what it was like we have the account of Amy Winters in her booklet ‘LADY AND ME: Memories of life in Thistleboon Orphanage’ published in 1995.

Amy was 2 years old when she went to live in the Orphanage in 1926 and was there until she left aged 15 in 1938. 

Amy had very happy memories of her time in the Orphanage and says:

“I especially remember the gardens at the house because they were so beautiful. The house was surrounded by a high stone wall with double iron gates in front. In one corner of the wall was a door from which we sold fruits and vegetables to the local people. A path led from the gates to the front door and either side of the path were the flower gardens. They were full of all different kinds of flowers including lupins, wallflowers and hollyhocks. The produce was all grown in the kitchen garden which was across the road from the front gates. Here was a greenhouse, cold frames, a herb garden and gooseberry and blackcurrant bushes. We grew tomatoes, onion, potatoes, lettuce and many other vegetables.”

The booklet is well worth reading, and Amy devotes a whole chapter to Mr Morgan the Gardener:

“Mr. Morgan was the gardener at Thistleboon and touched my life in many ways. He lived with his wife in Village Lane. He was a kind gentleman with a big white moustache. I loved to go out in the garden where he was working and he would tell me the botanical names of all the flowers and vegetables………Our gardens were always immaculate – beautiful flower gardens in front of the house and a vegetable garden across the street behind a big wall.”

All this changed in 1939 -

 when the Orphanage closed and the site reverted to the Beaufort estate which, through the medium of a company ‘Picton Developments’ decided to develop the Garden and part of the ‘Great Meadow’ for housing. In the nineteen twenties the estate had developed another part of the ‘Great Meadow’ by granting building leases to `owner occupiers’ of the houses now known as 1-12 New Villas. 

After taking away the ‘big wall’ around the Garden, the five pairs of semi-detached ‘Dutch Style’ houses, then Nos 1-10 Higher Lane (now 158- 140) and the detached ‘St Ives’ on Plunch Lane were built to rent, and seem to have been the first example of ‘social housing’ in Mumbles Village. Our neighbours on either side, Les Court and Peter Harris both worked for Picton Developments.

John Court remembers ‘the Orphanage’ standing empty when he moved in as a boy to ‘St Ives’ in 1939, as did my Mum Olga Batcup when she moved in next door to No 1 Higher Lane after she and my father Fred were married in February 1940. The Orphanage did not stay empty for long, for after the Nazi invasion of Belgium later that year, it was used to house Belgian Refugees for the duration of the Second World War.