Memories of Norton Cross by Edith E Robinson
Memories of Norton Cross
by Edith E Robinson
I was born at 1, The Cross, Norton, later to be renamed 42, Norton Road which was the home of my maternal grandparents, George and Elizabeth Clement. My birth certificate was issued by the Oystermouth Rural District Council, which was dissolved quite soon afterwards.
In those days there were only our two cottages, No 1 which was owned by Aeron-Thomas and No 2 which was owned by ‘Dirty Dick’ Richards. Opposite was the big house, which was the home of Mr Kluge, the secretary of the Mumbles Lifeboat. The lifeboat could not be launched without his authority.33
I remember having a mattress on a chest in my Granny’s bedroom. The noise of the lifeboat siren (maroon) going off would wake me and then we would listen for the second signal siren (maroon) going off. The noise of the storm would whistle through the chimney. On New Year’s Eve all the ships in Swansea Bay would sound their hooters simultaneously on the stroke of twelve midnight.
George Clement on Left, with anglers at Mumbles Pier
The big house had two entrances, the main entrance was opposite us, and there was a tradesman’s entrance a little further up the hill. Below us was the tall building, locally known as ‘the chapel’ because of its appearance. I recall it looking more like a stable inside. In those days I think it housed a doll factory. But it was used for many different purposes over the years including storage, and the headquarters of Mumbles Rangers Football Club when Bill Johns was its secretary.
Above No 2 was a plot of unused land. I remember two sweet booths on the Cross – one on the left-hand corner of Boarspit Lane (now Glen Road) making the entrance to the lane very narrow, and one tucked in between the Beaufort Inn and the cottage above the big house. In the terrace along the top of the cross lived two families – the Hills and the Delves.
We lived in a grocer’s shop in Oxford Street which kept my mother very busy and when I was a young girl I would regularly be sent to stay with my grandparents in Norton. I loved travelling with my grandfather in the workers carriage of the Mumbles train. I learned a lot from my Granny Clement who I simply adored. Being in her care meant so much to me.
My grandmother was very involved in the Norton Mission church, known locally as the ‘tin cathedral’ and worshipped there regularly. But I can also remember her taking part in an open-air service on the Cross by the Beaufort Inn. In this way the Norton community continued to remember the way they had worshipped before the building of the ‘tin cathedral’.
The materials for the tin cathedral were provided by the local ‘big-wigs’ Aeron-Thomas and Richards. The men of the village supplied the labour in their spare time. All it cost was about £18 which they used to supply a luxury – a toilet! Les Vancurer told me years later that they raised a choir from three families, the father and son from each.
The then head of the Swansea Art Gallery who was a teacher, administrator and artist, presented the church with a lovely picture to go over the altar. Its subject was “Suffer the little children to come unto me”. It was later given a home by Mr Cumings. There was also a bell but it caused adverse reactions from the neighbours and so latterly it remained silent for many years.
George and Lizzie Clement, at 42, Norton Road,,1932
Coming out at right angles to the old Mission church was a butcher’s shop. The gate was just to the side and the raised path ran along the front of the mission to enter the church via the porch at the other end of the building. The covered porchway was the entrance to the two rooms which constituted the building. First, there was the chapel itself, lined with wide planks of wood painted in a dark colour, as I remember. At the side of the altar was a door to the other room which was used as a Sunday School and for meetings.
The Sunday School had previously been held at 2, The Cross.
The vicar or curate would take turns to officiate at the Sunday morning service. The mission church was not consecrated for baptisms, marriages and funerals – they were carried out at All Saints. After the service I can remember the people chatting together in groups around Norton Cross.
My Granny taught me a Victorian song which she wanted me to sing with her in church. It went like this:
I’s rather be a daisy
The little children’s flower
Than any prouder beauty
That decks my lady’s bower.
I nothing know of envy
And little have of pride
But when you gather king-cups
Let me be by their side
I was too embarrassed to remember the reaction.
I don’t remember there being a very full congregation because in the main the male population was employed in the local quarries which soon afterwards began to close down one by one with the families moving elsewhere. I recall a terrace of quarry workers houses on the hill overlooking Boarspit Lane.
The middle house was nicknamed ‘Spionkop’; this was the name of a horse which had won the Derby and was the tallest horse in the field. I don’t know whether any trace of this terrace remains. The quarry itself houses a block of flats.
The row of houses which still disfigures the upper part of Glen Road was the work of a character named Bart Beer. He was by way of being a developer and snapped up any property or land he felt could be useful to his purse.
There was a footpath running down the hill alongside a stream that probably rose on Fairwood Common and came out at the side of semi-detached pair of shops including Boyds, the newsagents, and ran down what is now Norton Avenue. It was later diverted into a culvert which took it down to the sea.
I can remember sitting in the back bedroom window of No 42 Norton Road looking out at what seemed to be a double-fronted house of one storey which a large garden at the rear that held a number of bushes under which sheltered broods of chickens. The brook ran just the other side of our back wall. When I was sent to bed for being naughty, I became so enchanted watching the chickens that I forgot I was being punished.
My friend in Norton was Augusta Pike. She lived up Castle Road on the raised terrace called Forgefield Terrace, beyond the butcher’s on the left side of the road, where the high wall starts. We used to go up to Venn Farm at the beginning of what is now Moorside Road and go into the fields, pick Swedes, and eat them.
I used to go down to the shore at the bottom of Norton Road, across the railway track, to play on the beach. Looking across to the pier one day I saw something moving in the sky and realised it must be a Zeppelin. It made very little sound. I headed rapidly for home and never heard any more about it. But I know what I saw.
The field at the bottom of Norton Road, below Norton House and owned by them was used during World War I as a training ground for volunteers, to which my grandfather belonged. They were the equivalent of the Home Guard. They had a small barracks in the corner of the field behind the postbox in the wall and opposite Bath House.
Across the road from Norton House and above Bath House were two fields in which grew dandelions, nettles and the like.
A favourite pastime for Oystermouth and Norton children was building oyster castles. They were made of empty oyster shells. We would display our castles on the pavement alongside the Mumbles Railway between Norton and Southend and they would be judged at the appropriate time.
But this activity came to a sad end when the oyster bed which stretched from Swansea to the Mumbles Pier was poisoned by effluent when the Council insisted on house drainage being put in.
Prior to that outside toilets would be emptied once a week and the contents taken away by horse and cart. I remember my Granny saying “bring out your dead” when she heard the sound of the cartwheels late in the evening and the men jumping over the back wall and returning with an empty bucket.
Extracted from letter to the Vicar of Oystermouth, Cannon Keith Evans, 10.10.2006
Grafton Maggs told me that you were intrigued by the story of the Norton Hall and Mission and thought I might be able to supply you with memorabilia. Les Vancura was the obvious person to help as he had previously compiled a booklet and this was reprinted about 1990 and used in the fund-raising years around that time. He had a lot of records but was diffident about mentioning the fact.
It troubled me at the time of his death in case these records would be lost but I was already grieving about the loss of another friend, and at the age of 93 with failing eyesight, hearing and mobility, the effort of ‘stirring’ and maybe causing resentment, kept me quiet.
Your see, my grandparents lived at 42 Norton Rd/ 1The Cross, Norton at the time of my birth there and the Mission Church was built by members of the village in 1908. Details of this undertaking were included in Les Vancura’s booklet.
I was able to buy the cottage when my father died in 1955, and left it in 1992 through ill-health. But I was there for the opening of the new church having been an active member of the fund-raising committee since its inception. I drew the original of the enclosed card as a Christmas card (verse by the late Viv Rich) a matter of a week or so before the demolition of the old church.
I was reminded of the passing of time by receiving from my son a copy of a booklet he has written about the centenary of the little church he attends in New Zealand. The celebrations are taking place this year. So within the next few years it should be Norton church’s turn. But it might not be so straightforward: I remember a meeting of the Committee when the legal ownership of the ground was discussed, and I’m pretty sure that a tenure of 99 years was confirmed.
Various legal arrangements were made and it is possible that the local authority has an interest as the question of the church being the sole amenity in the village was viewed by some members with doubt as to its full use and a General Vestry meeting was called with this in mind and with the purpose, it must be admitted, of reminding the villagers that there was a church in the village and that it was being closed – in the hope that it would prove not only an amenity but turn into a blessing. The absence of a Sunday School of a youth organization did not help this hope to flourish. The availability of the hall for children’s parties was eagerly welcomed but none of the young parents were inspired to help in the venture.
I do hope I am not wasting your time and even ‘meddling’ where I no longer have any right. But I still feel a need to uphold the faith that that the old-timers and their families had – enough to build a church with their own hands and in their own time and for a later generation to perpetuate it by collecting and fundraising for four years.
Les Vancura was inspired by his father and I was inspired by my grandmother. I pray that some young members of the community at Norton will be inspired that the gift that they left at the centre of the village.
With many remembrances of All Saints' Church, where my daughter was a chorister, and my dearly loved ‘Norton Mission’.
As dictated to Dorothy,
March 2008
Editor’s note-
A maroon is a rocket which makes a loud bang and a bright flash, and in the past, The British Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) used them to call the crew when the lifeboat needed to be launched.