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

By nineteen fifty the post War Baby boom had really kicked in, and there were scores of children in and around Thistleboon. Added to that their favourite place to ‘hang out’ was on the section of road outside Numbers 1 and 2 Higher Lane, right opposite Ma Mayfield’s front door. Why there? You might ask, and the answer is pretty obvious: it was the only piece of flat ground where children could play. Apart from Mr Rees the Baker’s Van, Mr Ost the Postman, Glyn Woollacott with his portable Milk Churn, the odd Milk Lorry, Jack Woollacott with his tractor and the cattle being driven out to pasture, there was no traffic to talk of, and we were always safe to play on the road.

Its all quite nicely summed up in this piece which I came across recently:

We ate white bread and real butter, milk from the cow, and drank soft drinks with sugar in it, but we weren’t overweight because………

WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING

We would leave home in the morning and play all day as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.

No-one was able to reach us all day: and we were O K.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of old prams and then ride down the hill only to find out that we forgot the brakes. We built tree houses and dens and played around and in Mares Pool

Who were these kids?

There were quite a few much older children born before WW2, some of whom I have already mentioned; Margaret, Nancy and Isobel Kift; Joyce Mock; John Llewelyn; Hilary Thomas and her brother; Don McKay; Margaret Gammon; Pamela and Pauline Seacombe; Jeff Jenkins; Freddie Charles; John Court; Gerald Evans; Sheila Knight and Keith Pickard to name a few.

The bulk of my contemporaries were born during and just after the War. As well as me and my sisters Sylvia and Viv living at No 1 Higher Lane, we had Keith Harris living next door at No 2. Keith’s cousins Sandra and Christopher Osborne lived in the Orphanage flat at the back created out of the nineteenth century Schoolroom (later Stuart and Christopher Turnbull’s home); and in the main building lived Roger Wilcox, Susan and Pip Wooldridge, Robert and Dinah Meyrick, and Miss Cunniffe’s nephew Noel who was around most weekends. We had Newton and Ian Woollacott in the Farm supplemented most of the time by their Woollacott cousins Mike, Dick, David and later Johnnie and Jeffrey from Thistleboon Gardens, and Roger from Newton.

As you trekked up Higher Lane you passed Jeff and Sue Wastell at No 3, Mary Woolcock at No 4, Mary Price at No 5, David (Dai, or Ardleigh) Stephens at No 7, Frank Rott at No 8 and Robert (Bobbie) Morgan in ‘White Lady Cottage’, John Paine and his twin sisters Jackie and Jenny in the house behind, and Susan Rock in ‘Evans the Blossom’ which marked the end of the hamlet. In the cul de sac known as Thistleboon Gardens lived Melanie and Mike Charles, Angela Swales, Noel and Jeremy Thomas, Roger Shefford, Susan and Andrew White, Lionel Copham, Roy and Vyv Griffiths, Jane and Susan Jenkins, Gwenllian and Janet Roberts and Heather Walters as well as the five Woollacott brothers. During this time Robert and Dinah Meyrick also moved there from the Orphanage Flats.

Christine and her sister Lynne Francis lived at 25 Thistleboon Road, Jeff Court at ‘St Ives’ and in New Villas lived Susan and Linda Beese, George and Margaret Saville, Melanie and Eleri Walters and their twin sisters. David Wooderson lived in Craig y Mor’s Gardeners Cottage (once the Brewhouse). The community was rounded off with ‘The Camps’ ( the sets of timber and half round Asbestos barracks left from the War) where Josephine and Jackie Wynters lived, Norman Hopkins, David (Dopey) Allen, Maureen and Lynne Knight, and ‘Michael’s Field’ where Judith Pickard, Tony and Marie Waygood and Colin Stewart lived.

Getting Around

My earliest memory of those days is of starting at Mumbles Junior Mixed School Infants Dept in September 1950. My teacher in the first year was the lovely Miss Edith Cunniffe who lived in the Orphanage Flats, and in the second the equally lovely, but new teacher Miss Babs or Gwen Pike. When Babs married Freddie Thomas and moved to Thistleboon Gardens a year or two later it all became rather cosy. I have recently exchanged tales with Babs, who still lives nearby, and she particularly remembers me and Keith Harris as being two very naughty boys!

 In my case it was probably because I had come to the rescue of my sister Sylvia in 1951 or 1952 when she was a year behind me. John Mahoney had been bullying her, so I took retribution by pulling at the elastic of his Sou’wester and letting go, giving him a good sting under the chin. Needless to say, I was hauled before the headmistress, the redoubtable Miss Gwladys Bowen (who was a bit like Peggy Mount) and delivered of her slipper across my thighs. It stung too, but I was not cowed as I had done the right thing by my sister who has remained eternally grateful to me for defending her. You can see us all in the photo of the school Christmas Party in 1951.

 In later life Miss Bowen married and became Mrs Gwladys Ferris the headmistress of Newton Primary School. I became her solicitor in due course by which time I had become one of her best pupils! Her ultimate accolade to me was to be appointed her executor jointly with her great friends, Dr Julian Bihari, and our own dear Grafton Maggs.

Mumbles Hill Games

Not only did we play football on the flat ground alongside ‘Briarhurst’ bungalow, but we were often joined by the ‘Tichborne Gang’ led by Brian (Bunny) Evans or the ‘Southend Gang’ including  Arthur Eynon, Tony Lewis ‘2D’ Jones, Allan (Tilley) Thomas from Park Place and Keith Harris from Hall Bank (he was known as Little Harry to distinguish him from our Keith Harris who was, and still is known in Mumbles as Big Harry). Gangs were just a group of kids that played together. There were no real territorial divides and newcomers were always welcome to join in. The only serious issues arose at the beginning of November when our bonfire on the Hill was a prime target for any budding pyromaniacs!

As we didn’t have cameras in those days, I have no photos to show what the Hill was like then. Sheep were still grazing there so there were short grassy banks to play on and roll down, not at all like the overgrown place that is now a Nature Reserve. I reproduce a photo that is in the OHA Archive taken of a Group of children on Mumbles Hill in the nineteen thirties taken near ‘Westward Ho’. The children are from Thistleboon Orphanage, and the little boy is Hilary McKenzies’ brother. Those children obviously enjoyed the place as much as we did…as did the occasional courting couple!

The Mumbles Hill was an amazing place to play Cowboys and Indians, and War Games between British and German Soldiers. We spent hours perfecting the art of being shot and ‘dieing’ dramatically over ever steeper grass banks, and competing with one another for the prize of being best. The War Games became more and more daring as we also had the abandoned Ack-Ack Battery its Dug-outs and the Control Room to use as our HQ. We didn’t play where the Big Guns were looking over the Channel as that was still fenced off and patrolled by the military.

Keith Harris and I were usually in trouble when we played there: once we found an old heavy-duty Battery which we thoroughly enjoyed dismantling covering ourselves in dirty black carbon deposits; when we got home very pleased with ourselves looking like colliers we both had a good hiding from our Mums and were sent to our bedrooms. As our rooms immediately adjoined each other we were soon hanging out of our bedroom windows holding a Post Mortem when we were caught again, and then had a second hiding from our Dads!

We were equally pleased with ourselves when one day we found a live shell buried in one of the dug-outs. It was painted an attractive shade of red, and a wonderful prize to take home with us after we had dug it out. I can’t now conceive why neither of us could foresee the welcome we were to have when we got home. More hidings and banishment to our bedrooms! Its only in the recent past that I have discovered from John Powell that as the shell was painted red it was a blank.

The Control Room was also the scene of my only broken arm on 3rd June 1953 the day after the Coronation. The Coast was illuminated by beacons lit in sequence as they had been in the time of  Queen Elizabeth 1 to celebrate the defeat of the Spanish Armada. You can get an idea of the size of a Beacon from the photos I have reproduced from the Mumble Scouts Archives. The first shows the completed Beacon built to celebrate King George V Silver Jubilee in 1935, and the second being built on the Mumbles Hill in 1937 to celebrate the Coronation of King George VI. The Rover Scouts had a plentiful supply of wood to build it, being left over from the Sewage Scheme under the Hill.

I haven’t been able to find a photo of the 1953 Beacon, but there was a wonderous array of debris around the Site the next morning. I was eight and with the usual suspects we were scavenging while the embers were still hot. I found a wonderful length of thick rope which might have come in handy for hanging over the cliff edge. It was very heavy and I had to haul it backwards to get any purchase. I went up and over the bank of the Control Room onto the concrete roof, and promptly fell off backwards. The locus in quo is still there!

There wasn’t time for a hiding on that occasion as I had to be taken to the old Swansea General Hospital for treatment to my fracture

The Queen’s Coronation 1953

This incident was a bit of an anti-climax to all the preparation for, and the excitement of the Coronation on 2nd June 1953. From Christmas 1952 all the families in Thistleboon were active in planning a big celebration party on the big day. My grandpa Wellington was in the Electric Trade and had procured one of those new-fangled Televisions for us. We were among the few with a TV Set and in the build up to June my parents were happy for the Gang to come in to watch Children’s TV at a penny a time. The money was to go towards the Coronation Street Party Fund, and as we often had 12 kids in it must have helped.

It was raining on the day of the Coronation so Plan B was put into operation. I think there were 20 excited adults crowded into our front room to watch the proceedings on a very small fuzzy black and white screen. When the ceremony was over, we all trooped down to the Irvine Club Hall on the Parade for the Party. As it was unusual to have cameras in those austere days I am not aware of any photos being taken, apart from the one I have shown of Class J2A taken in the School Yard to remind us of the event.

At that time Classes J2A and J2B met in the Parish Hall in Castle Avenue, but we were processed over to Dunns Lane by our Class Teacher ‘Miss Jones: Welsh’ to have the photo taken with the Headmaster Mr Albert Williams. With the help of Frank Rott and Cheryl Macdonald I think I have identified everyone, including Martyn Lewis who went on to become the ITV Newscaster.

The party was a huge success with lots of Sandwiches, Sausages, Crisps, Jelly and Blancmange and Corona Pop. There was George Charles’ band, ‘The Keskersays’ and lots of games with prizes and dancing which all the children joined in. I suspect there was a lot of Beer Drinking too. One of the ‘turns’ which really impressed me was Mumbles Railway Inspector Cyril Seacombe playing a saw with a violin bow. But the Piece de Resistance was the arrival of Peter Harris and Les Wastell dressed as the Queen and Prince Philip. They were hilarious and left us with wonderful memories.

Bonfire Night

The Coronation Party underlined the wonderful community spirit we had in Thistleboon. Everyone knew everyone else, and we all looked out for each other. No one had telephones, but we didn’t need them as the telephone box opposite No 3 Higher Lane was a huge community resource. It was an old-fashioned Button A and Button B device for outgoing calls, but it also took incoming calls, so as long as they were arranged beforehand you could wait outside it to receive your calls. Even random calls would be answered by whoever was around and it was no trouble to look out the recipients, even if they lived in ‘the Gardens’.

The highlight of every year was the Guy Fawkes Fireworks and Bonfire Night on 5th November. Preparations usually started in the last week of the School Summer holidays in August. Everyone had a Hatchet in their Coal House for chopping up firewood. I don’t remember any Saws. Like swarms of locusts, we took our weapons to branches all over the place, mainly to the Camps. As they were bigger boys Jeff Court and his cousin George Saville turned up with a real two-handed Axe one day and proceeded to tackle actual trees. A misplaced swing led to Jeff cutting a large lump of flesh from his knee, and being taken off to hospital. We weren’t very sympathetic as our priority the next day was to find the lump of flesh, led by George!

The first few days of November were taken up with assembling the bonfire on our football pitch, and loading it up with cardboard and tyres that my Dad brought home from work. On the day itself, if it had escaped sabotage, someone had the job of filling the centre with newspapers and dousing it all with Paraffin. As one of the ‘kids’ you had arrived when you were allowed to wield a lighted torch and set fire to the bonfire when it was dark enough.

It was always a huge conflagration which we had to back away from if we didn’t want to be grilled, and we were well supervised by the adults present. Jacket Potatoes wrapped in tinfoil were the only reward we had up on the Hill, before going back down our flat piece of ground outside Nos 1 and 2 Higher Lane for the Fireworks and Refreshments.

There seemed to be Sparklers and Bangers everywhere with Roman Candles, Rockets in Milk Bottles, and Catherine Wheels pinned to gateposts. The adults were always responsible for lighting the ‘blue touchpaper’, and I don’t recall anyone suffering any injuries. The only mishap I remember was when a Banger found its’ way into Mary Price’s Box of Fireworks which erupted into one instantaneous display.

Guy Fawkes night was always a great entertainment, and I can’t ever remember it raining on the actual 5th November!

Other Pursuits

As we got older, we spread our tentacles further afield. For part of each year the Haystack in the Meadow became a den. We would start by climbing a ladder up on to the top, and enjoy plotting lying around in the sweet-smelling hay and warmth up under the corrugated iron roof. Mike Woollacott, being a bigger ‘Farm Boy’ had access to the two -handed knives used for cutting out the hay which meant we also had little square hutches to hide in when Jack or Tom came along, which the chickens also used to lay their eggs.

Mike’s party piece was to collect some eggs and roll them down from the top of the hayrick onto the soft ground below; they never broke. Sometimes he followed this by leading us astray up through the Meadow to the field where Somerset Road now stands with a fresh egg apiece. There he would retrieve some used Baked Bean cans from the hedgerow, and with water taken from a tank in the field we would use them to boil the eggs on the campfires he lit with his cigarette lighter. With a few raw swedes taken from the fields our feast was made complete when Mike produced some little blue salt twists taken from crisp packets to sprinkle over the hard boiled eggs!

We were often joined in this activity and ‘bird nesting’ by Roger Woollacott and Neil Paige from Gloucester Place, who were both good friends of Big Harry. Having hauled himself up the steep path from Overland Road, Neil would emerge at the top of the Hilly Field. The acoustics between there and the Phone Box were brilliant, not for shouting, but for letting out the War Cry “OOH EEH OOH” It was soon picked up by one of us on Higher Lane and answered by many “OOH EEH OOH’s” in reply. The three of us, now Septuagenarians were together at a barbecue two years ago, and recalling those days bemused the rest of the guests with our cries echoing over the crowd throughout the evening.

Needless to say we were also attracted to the delights of trekking through the Well Field or, when it was wet, down Tap Lane to Doctors Mine, Lambswell Cove and its Caves, Crab Island and Rotherslade and Langland Bays. Fortunately, my parents had a Beach Hut at Rotherslade which became our base during the summers that used to go on for ever in those days. I think we were all taught to swim there by the late Alan Lloyd of Devon Place and later 146 Higher Lane a Policeman and serious life saver.

As puberty kicked in we also became drawn into what was going on in what had been the Beach Café at Rotherslade. It had become ‘Ron’s Rendezvous’ and having a Juke Box it had become a sort of shrine to Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochrane and the Big Bopper who were killed in an Air crash in 1959.  As a teenager I was mesmerised by the brilliant cartoons that had been painted on the walls by students from the Art College, including especially one of a man with a huge pair of feet which he was using as Water Skis. The spectacle of the to-ings and fro-ings of the Mods and Rockers who gathered there on their Scooters and 500 Norton Motorbikes showing off to their ‘Molls’ was not to be missed!

As the time had also come for taking an interest in the opposite sex, I’ll draw a veil over this as my childhood was coming to a close!

A Teenager at last!

I was 13 in 1958, and, since I was 11, a pupil at Dynevor Grammar School in Swansea which we got to by travelling on the Mumbles Train. The Mumbles boys were generally first on board and up the circular staircase to the front or back end of the carriages, where we commandeered the flat lino covered top to the stairwell. We then played ‘Shove Halfpenny’ on our way around the Bay, always arriving at Rutland Street Station on time.

I particularly remember the events of 1954 when the Railway celebrated its 150th Anniversary as ‘the Oldest Passenger Railway in the World’. The South Wales Transport Company (SWT) had a replica of the first horse drawn passenger train commissioned which led a Procession from Mumbles to Southend Station of Steam and Electric powered carriages as shown on the attached photo. There was lots of bunting and a Band and Regatta at Southend. It was great fun and it felt as though the Railway would last forever.

But that was not to be. In 1959 SWT decided that it would have to close the line as the cost of maintaining the sea wall between Blackpill and Mumble Pier had become prohibitive. An Act of Parliament was needed to achieve this which was opposed by the Swansea Corporation and the Amusement Equipment Co (AMECO) which owned, and still owns the Mumbles Pier. The tale of the Parliamentary machinations is well explained in Rob Gittins 1982 Book “Rock & Roll to Paradise; the History of the Mumbles Railway”.

Stan Bollom the owner of AMECO became a client and good friend in later life and was always bitter about his experiences of opposing the Bill in Parliament. In effect the night before the hearing in the House of Lords, the Corporation struck a deal with SWT to withdraw their opposition to the Bill on the basis that SWT would give the Corporation the site of the Railway free of charge. AMECO were left to oppose the Bill alone without legal representation as their barrister had handed back his Brief. Needless to say, the South Wales Transport Act 1959 was passed on July 29th 1959, and the death knell of the Mumbles Railway was sounded.

On January 4th 1960 the last service trains ran and the photo of a group of teenagers waving goodbye at Mumbles Station was taken, as that’s where we ‘hung out’ with our bikes at Tony Macari’s Coffee Bar. Yes, it is me who seems to be standing on Val Harvey’s head! What on earth we were cheering for heaven only knows. A much more sombre event took place later that day as Bill Barrington’s wife Veronica had hired a train to run after the last service train at 11.50pm. As Rob said in his book:

“The whole event was planned as a full-scale funeral procession. The residents dressed in widows’ weeds and mourning clothes, they carried mourning cards, chanted funeral dirges and even had a lone trumpeter by the trackside playing ‘The Last Post’. A coffin was carried on to the train and even a ceremonial ‘corpse’ placed in the coffin”

As a theatrical event it was to match all the careful 150th anniversary celebrations of 1954, save that it took place during one of the heaviest downpours that the residents of Mumbles could remember. My photo shows the participants at Southend Station, including Veronica in her widow’s weeds, and her son John as the youngest mourner.

Needless to say, on the official last day on January 5th 1960 all sorts of dignitaries of the Corporation and SWT were transported in the last train, and treated to a slap up luncheon at the Guildhall when the advantages of the new diesel buses was extolled. A sad day for Mumbles and for the whole of Swansea too.

From my point of view there were some advantages to the changes. My new Season Ticket enable me to go to School by the direct route along  Mumbles Road on the No 77 Cwmrhydiceirw Bus which stopped at the Kingsway Post Office just outside the School. On the way home the much more leisurely Route provide by the No 85 Bus which went through Derwen Fawr was a much better option. The Dynevor boys were first on and always had the best seats upstairs on the passenger side. This meant that when the bus went up Walter Road we were able first to have a good look at the Convent and Llwyn y Bryn girls getting on at Belgrave Court, and then the Glanmor girls at Sketty Road. By the time we got to Bishop Gore School there was usually no room for their boys so that insults were generally hurled both ways through the windows!

I could go on forever, but conscious that my wife Liz has always regarded me as a mine of useless information I will draw to a close recalling that when I did hit 13:

·         I joined the First Mumbles Scouts and my social centre of gravity moved to the Grove off Queens Road (see my 1984 compilation “Scouting in Mumbles: the first 75 years” for more on this).

·         Having been brought up in Mumbles Baptist Church Sunday School, I joined the All Saints’ Church Choir as a Tenor….and I’m still there! There were two reasons for this; the girls there were very pretty; and our Music Master in Dynevor School was also the Church Choirmaster! He lured the pupils from Mumbles with half decent voices  with the promise of untold riches; a shilling a week pay and sixpence for weddings. He was not only successful in enticing me in but did the same a few years later when a young pupil from Mumbles called Rowan Williams came to Dynevor…but that’s another story.

I think that all the kids and ‘Gang’ members I have mentioned will agree that we had an amazing childhood, and were very privileged to spend it ‘up there on the Hill’. Little did we realise that the post War austerity that our parents had to struggle with would lead to us becoming the ‘charmed generation’.

Stuart Batcup

April 2021

Where was Thistleboon House situated