Amy Dillwyn, Frances Havergal and Morfydd Owen
by Gary Gregor
Three Remarkable Ladies
Amy Dillwyn, Frances Havergal and Morfydd Owen
by Gary Gregor
Editor's note: Mumbles has been home to many remarkable and talented people down the years. Living at Ty Glyn in West Cross, Elizabeth Amy Dillwyn (1845-1935), novelist, benefactor, suffragette and industrialist was a granddaughter of Lewis Weston Dillwyn, an industrialist and naturalist and of Henry De La Beche, a geologist. Frances Ridley Havergal ( 1836- 1879) poetess and hymn-writer, came to live with her sister at Park Villa near Caswell and was the daughter of William Havergal, a clergyman, composer and hymn-writer. Morfydd Owen (1891-1918) on holiday here for just a short time in 1918, was a gifted composer, pianist and mezzo-soprano. All three women made their marks in their chosen fields.
ELIZABETH AMY DILLWYN
On the seafront adjacent to the West Cross Hotel, just across the road from Tŷ Glyn, (now Mumbles Nursing Home), a blue plaque honours the memory of Amy Dillwyn. She was the grand-daughter of Lewis Weston Dillwyn of Sketty Hall, owner of the Cambrian Pottery, and the daughter of Lewis Llewelyn Dillwyn, Liberal MP for Swansea District, and the niece of pioneer photographer John Dillwyn Llewelyn of Penllergare. Born at what used to be Parkwern in Sketty (later to become the nurses training school), Amy grew up at Hendrefoilan House in Killay, and was presented at court to Queen Victoria. This privileged upbringing did not make her immune from tragedy, for when her fiancée Llewellyn Thomas died of smallpox she was expected to settle for a life of ‘quiet spinsterhood and good works’. She began writing novels - her first The Rebecca Rioter is set in the Killay area - and reviewing books - her review of Treasure Island for The Spectator brought its author Robert Louis Stevenson to general notice.
But her father’s death meant that Amy had to move from Hendrefoilan House, for she was left the Llansamlet Spelter Works, which was deeply in debt. She moved into lodgings in Tŷ Glyn in West Cross, and took over the zinc factory (in days when for a woman to run such an enterprise was unthinkable), travelling daily to the office in Cambrian Place. She was responsible for the livelihood of a hundred men, at a time when they, not she, had the vote. Aided by a good manager Amy turned the business around
Amy Dillwyn was able to purchase Tŷ Glyn, and became a benefactor of several Swansea institutions, such as The Infirmary, the Ragged School and the YMCA. When this somewhat eccentric but courageous character, a water
polo player and cigar smoker, died in 1935 aged ninety, her ashes were interred in the Dillwyn grave in St Paul’s Sketty. The seafront plaque is inscribed ‘To honour the memory of the first woman industrialist’.
Elizabeth Amy Dillwyn
FRANCES RIDLEY HAVERGAL
In the village of Newton, at the top of the hill that leads down to Caswell, a plaque (below) in the wall of the house on the right states that the Christian poetess and hymn-writer Frances Ridley Havergal lived and died there. Frances was in her early forties when she joined her elder sister Maria there in 1878, after the family home in Worcester had been sold following their step-mother’s death.
The family had visited Langland while on holiday, and rented from the Tuckers a new house then called Park Villa. A fine musician and the daughter of an Anglican clergyman, Frances wrote seventy hymns (including one in French), and devotional books for children and adults. In her study where the west window looked over Caswell Bay stood her harp, piano and her American typewriter, for she was constantly writing articles and checking proofs of verse and music. She enjoyed walking on the cliffs, going onto Caswell beach at low tide to explore the rock pools, watching the ships with all sails up entering Swansea harbour, and was interested to visit Mumbles Lighthouse and speak with the lighthouse keeper. She became involved in temperance work, encouraging the young people to ‘sign the pledge’. As St Peter’s church in Newton was not built until after her death, Frances would attend Paraclete congregational chapel to play the organ and assist with the children’s work.
Frances Ridley Havergal
She declined several proposals of marriage, and after a short illness died of peritonitis in June 1879, being buried in the family grave at Astley in Worcestershire, within sight of the Rectory where she had been born 42 years earlier. Her hymns such as ‘Who is on the Lord’s side?’ and ‘Like a river glorious’ are still sung today, especially ‘Take my life, and let it be’, which she preferred to be sung to a tune composed by her father, instead of the usual Mozart tune! The house Park Villa was re-named Havergal, and the plaque outside was unveiled in 1937 on the centenary of her birth, while nearby a street is named Havergal Close.
MORFYDD LLWYN OWEN
Next to the house in Thistleboon, Mumbles, which belongs to Catherine Zeta-Jones and husband Michael Douglas, is an older house called Craig-y-môr. There in 1918 the Gowerton-born psycho-analyst Dr Ernest Jones brought his wife Morfydd Owen, who was from Treforest, for a holiday in Gower. They visited Caswell, Langland, Sketty, and Swansea Market, before Morfydd was taken ill with appendicitis, necessitating an operation. Instead of taking her to Swansea Infirmary, it seems the operation took place at Craig-y-môr. Tragically chloroform instead of ether was used as the anaesthetic, and Morfydd Owen died, just weeks before her 27th birthday. An Associate of the Royal Academy of Music, Morfydd Owen was an outstanding mezzo-soprano and one of Wales’ most gifted composers and musicians. She composed choral works, chamber music, piano and orchestral works, songs and hymn tunes. A Welsh speaker, she had been admitted to the Gorsedd of Bards at the National Eisteddfod at Wrexham in 1912.
Several friends from the Welsh Presbyterian chapel in Charing Cross were shocked by her marriage to Ernest Jones, an atheist with a flamboyant lifestyle, at a time when psychoanalysis was viewed with suspicion. Jones had proposed on their third meeting, and they were married at Marylebone registry office, with her parents absent as the wedding took place a day earlier than planned! Seven months later, however, there was a ceremony at Charing Cross chapel at which her parents could be present. Dr and Mrs Jones had been married for 18 months when Morfydd died.
Her grave at the top of Oystermouth cemetery is marked with a red sandstone column bearing a quotation from Goethe’s Faust, for German was the language of Freud and the leading psychoanalysts. In translation this can be rendered ‘Here the indescribable consequences (of love) have been fulfilled’. Her obituary in Y Gorlan commented: ‘Oh, Death! we knew that thou were blind, but in striking Morfydd thou hast taught us that thou art also deaf’.
Morfydd Llwyn Owen
Photo Credits:
Memorial plaque to Frances Ridley Havergal, situated at junction of Caswell Road and Caswell Avenue -User: Threefoursixninefour, From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia -This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.
HAVERGAL Frances Ridley -- Project Gutenberg eText 18444 - English Wikipedia-his work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.
OWEN Morfydd Llwyn -Scanned from Davies, Rhian. Never So Pure a Sight: Morfydd Owen (1891–1918) A Life in Pictures. Llandysul: Gomer 1994 -This file is in the public domain in countries with a copyright term of life of the author plus 70 years or less.