My Life on a Hillside Allotment

by Terry Walton

  For my mother the Rhondda was home. My father came from Ramsgate, in Kent, where Mother had been sent when she was a fourteen-year-old girl, along with her sister Gaytha, to work ‘in service’ at his parents’ boarding house. It was common practice in the early part of the twentieth century for daughters of poorer households to go into service when they reached their early teens. There was no further education for them in those days, and all children were expected to contribute to the family income as soon as they could.

  Sons generally stayed at home and followed their fathers down the pits, but there was little work locally for girls and so they would be sent anywhere in Britain to work as cleaners, maids and general servants in large houses where domestic help was needed. They would then send home part of their meagre wages to boost the family budget. It was not an easy life: they worked long hours, had few privileges and rarely saw their families. But it turned out well for my mother because it was in Ramsgate that she met my father and got married.

  I don’t tend to waste much time on regrets, but I do wish (now it’s too late) that I had asked my parents more about themselves. I was brought up in an era when parents never talked about life before you were on the scene, and if you didn’t enquire you weren’t told. I never met most of my mother’s or father’s brothers or sisters, and with the passage of time all my parents’ early life is lost to me. We were not inquisitive about these things, which is a pity: few of us realize early in life just how important family history can become once the connections with the past are gone. It would be nice to think my parents had a romantic meeting and an exciting courtship, but all that will now remain a mystery to me for ever.

  What I do know is that my parents married in the 1930s and settled in Ramsgate, where my brother Eric was born. They stayed there until just after the start of the Second World War, when they moved to the Radford area of Coventry to be closer to my mother’s family, who had moved there to find work in the car industry.

  Here in the Rhondda there was coal mining and little else. My mother’s family had worked down the mines but wanted something better, so they decided, like many others, that the best way out was to move to the Midlands, which were becoming quite prosperous as the engineering industry developed. After joining them there my mother started to work in the munitions industry and my father found a job in a factory.

  One evening the sirens announced another air raid on Coventry, which was targeted because there was a lot of heavy engineering and many ammunition factories. The air-raid shelter was at the end of the street where my family lived, and they duly trooped down there to sit out the raid. After the all-clear sounded they found that the whole block of houses where they lived had been flattened and the remains of a German aircraft were sticking out of the wreckage. They had nothing left but the clothes they stood up in. For safety, they all headed back to the valleys, to live with my aunt, uncle and cousin in the house where, in 1946, I was born.

  So ultimately it was thanks to Mr Hitler that my long love affair with my allotment on the hillside developed, and maybe it was the fresh mountain air of the Rhondda which ensured there was a Terry Walton in the first place!

  My earliest memories begin in the fifties, when the Rhondda was still dominated by the mining industry and almost every village had its own pit, employing the majority of local men. This was not the only employment in the valleys: there were also several engineering companies, such as Bramber Springs, which made components for the motor industry, T. C. Jones, making structural steel for buildings, and Rollo Hardy, who produced steel tubing. But most men worked in the pits, father and son alike.

  There were no pithead baths in those days, and men coming up from a shift underground walked home in their grimy clothes, their faces still covered with coal dust. I can see them now, with black faces and gleaming white teeth, and typically carrying a metal food box under one arm and a few blocks of wood from pit props under the other for the coal fire that would be blazing brightly at home. Their wives would have the tin bath full of hot water in front of the fire, ready for them to wash as they walked into the house. I reckon the drains and sewers of the Rhondda must have enough small coal down them to keep a power station going for years.

  The role of a woman in the mining communities was clearly established: she was there to keep house, bring up the children and prepare a meal for the man returning from work. No women worked outside the home in those days, but that’s not to say they didn’t have to work hard.

  There were none of the modern appliances then to help keep the house clean. With no vacuum cleaners, floors were swept with a broom and corners with a brush and dustpan. The menfolk’s grimy clothes were all washed by hand, using a scrubbing board and the tin bath. Ironing was a particular chore, with a large, chunky flat-iron constantly needing to be reheated over the open fire. Thank God for technology!

  Microwave ovens, ready-made meals and pre-packaged food didn’t exist then. Everything was freshly cooked, with produce grown on the allotment or in the back garden, or bought from the local shop that stood in every street. My mother spent much of her time making hot dinners, invariably consisting of meat, vegetables, and gravy made with the meat stock and water from the veg.

  During the long cold winters she would buy lambs’ breasts, which she diced and then put in a large pot. To this she would add plenty of water and whatever vegetables my father had growing on his plot or in store: parsnips, swedes, potatoes, onions. This pot of goodies would simmer for hours on the open fire and become cawl (traditional Welsh broth), which was consumed over several days, getting richer and tastier as each day passed, and helping to keep out the cold. By contrast, summer meant plenty of salads, predominantly lettuce, new potatoes and home-cooked boiled ham. It’s no wonder that allotments thrived in the valley in those days because they were the major source of all this fresh food.

  In retrospect, life was hard and basic, although relatively comfortable compared to what my mother must have experienced during the twenties, living away from home in one tiny room in a strange place and working long hours for a very small wage, most of which was sent home. But my childhood days were happy because we felt safe. While the collieries were king and provided employment, there was a clear distinction between the roles of men, whose strong, proud tradition was to provide for the family, and women, who were there to keep the home going. And I think families on the whole felt content with that arrangement.

  Mothers would take small children to school and the older ones would walk on their own – the roads were safe and the maximum distance would be three-quarters of a mile to a mile each way, which you did all the year round. And when you came home your mother was there. There were no latch-key kids, you didn’t come in and have to wait long for anything, and you would always sit down together as a family for a meal.

  You could trust people then, and felt secure. Nobody in the street had any more wealth than anyone else, so there was no cause for jealousy between neighbours, and this was something that helped cement the community together. No doors were ever locked, and neighbours would frequently walk into each other’s houses.

  The money to pay the milkman would be left outside the door with a note and no one else would ever touch it. When I was a child our milk was delivered by horse and cart, and you were lucky if the milkman’s horse left a pile of manure outside your door, as this was a much sought-after prize for feeding the rhubarb that grew in everybody’s back garden. Sometimes it wasn’t clear whose door had been favoured, and then rival claims to the manure might cause an argument.

  To think this manure went on to the very rhubarb that we children would be given instead of sweets! Sweets were always in short supply and we received them only on special occasions such as Christmas. Instead my mother used to cut short sticks of rhubarb from the garden and give them to me with a paper bag containing some sugar. I simply dipped the raw rhubarb sticks in the sugar and ate them. It was that or nothing.

  One of the most vivid memori
es I have of my childhood in the early fifties is of the empty streets completedly devoid of cars. The only vehicles you would encounter were double-decker buses and the odd car, usually large and always black, belonging to a doctor or maybe a schoolteacher. Those empty streets made great playgrounds for us children, and it’s sad to see how congested the valley roads are today.

  We had no expensive toys to play with, but we were early experts at adapting or recycling common household objects. Hours of fun could be derived from an old tin can or from two pieces of stick, one long and the other short and stubby, that were used in a game we called ‘cat ’n’ doggy’. The object was to tap the short piece of stick with the long piece to make it jump in the air; then, while it was still airborne, you had to whack it with the long piece. The winner was the one who sent it the furthest distance.

  If you were really lucky you might own a gambo, a cart made by your father from odd pieces of wood, with old pram wheels at the front and rear. The plank bearing the front wheels was joined to the main body with a bolt and a piece of string was attached at each end for steering. Most streets in the valleys sloped dramatically and there was no danger from cars, so you could safely hurtle downhill on this contraption at alarming speeds. It had no brakes, of course.

  By today’s standards there wasn’t what you’d call plenty of things for children to do, though. There was an old tip nearby where we used to kick a football around. A boy with Down’s syndrome lived at the little village shop in our street, but we looked after him because he had a real leather football. His mother would ask if he could play with us, he’d bring his football and we’d all go off and play together up the tip, making sure he was fully involved, otherwise he’d go home and take his football with him. It suited him and his mother because he was playing with other children, and no one else we knew had a leather football. Sometimes we would even get a handful of sweets from his mother’s shop as well.

  Often we simply armed ourselves with a pack of jam sandwiches and a bottle of pop, and headed up the beautiful mountainsides surrounding our homes. There we would slide down the grassy slopes using part of an old cardboard box as a home-made sleigh, which would amuse us for hours until it fell apart. (It amazes me that, despite the sledging practice we all had as children, no Welsh team has ever won an Olympic gold in the bobsleigh event!) Then it was time to go home.

  ‘Home’ in the fifties was a close-knit community with a strict code of behaviour: authority was respected, and there was no wanton vandalism and no one was terrorized. If a teacher gave you a ‘clip round the ear’ (something that wouldn’t be allowed today), you’d never go home and tell your father because he would discipline you too. I cannot recall my father ever raising a hand to me – but then, as he was a six-foot three-inch giant, just one word was enough to bring me back into line.

  I remember as a seven-year-old playing with my friends on Partridge Square, where there was a large bus station and another building with a wide roof. We decided to shin up the drainpipe to sit on the roof. We were all sitting there like a row of rooftop statues when along came Sergeant Jones, the local constable. He wanted to know what we thought we were doing up there, and told us to get down immediately, which we all did sheepishly. The sergeant gave us a stern lecture and took us home to our parents. There was no sympathy there, only another severe talking-to and a ban from playing outdoors for several days.

  When I was still small and wandering about the allotments one day, I spotted a bush of blackcurrants, heavily loaded with juicy fruit, on Alf Daniel’s plot. Now Alf was a stern, military kind of guy who didn’t stand any nonsense. I looked round furtively but couldn’t see anyone about, so I walked slowly over to the bush. Hardly had I grabbed a handful of juicy currants when there was a loud shout from behind the row of runner beans. ‘Oi!’ the voice roared. It was Alf, of course, scaring me witless. And not only did he frighten the life out of me by his sudden appearance: he took me over to my father, who told me off in no uncertain terms and banned me from the allotments for two weeks. That fortnight seemed like for ever to me, and it was a devastating blow to be forbidden my daily foray to my father’s plot to see how my crops were doing. Harsh punishment indeed!

  * * *

  First allotment memories

  I WAS VERY YOUNG, maybe three or four. My mother had dressed me in short trousers, a short-sleeved shirt and black wellies (my customary footwear ever since). Holding my father’s hand very tightly I entered this new world through a large set of gates, and I can still hear the loud, metallic clang as my father pulled them back to let us through.

  I stared in wonder as we walked along the neatly manicured grass paths, through vast areas of lush green foliage punctuated here and there by splashes of coloured flowers. We walked for what seemed ages, with strange voices calling out as we passed, ‘Going gardening with your daddy then, are you?’

  Eventually we reached a plot with a small shed in the corner and a little stone step, where my father sat me down while he walked out into the green rows and began pulling out the little plants growing there. I didn’t understand at the time that he was weeding his plot.

  I sat watching him intently as he moved along the rows, putting these green things in a small bucket he carried. All the while he was working he kept looking up and talking to me. Finally he came back to the shed to fetch a long stick with a strange metal hook on the end (a swan-necked hoe, as I discovered later). He dragged this up and down the weeded rows, breaking up the earth he had trodden flat.

  That experience probably started my interest in gardening. Many more visits followed, each one adding to my fascination and enjoyment, until at last he allowed me to join in and I was hooked for life. There was one particular day when it had just rained after a long dry spell, and the air had that earthy, pungent smell of dampness that lodges in your nostrils. Even now visiting my plot in the same conditions vividly rekindles all those early times on the allotment with my dad.

  * * *

  We seldom went away on holiday, and if we did it was usually to a relative. Because some of the family were still living in Coventry, the Welsh contingent would often travel up there together on the train two days before Christmas, coming back some time before the New Year. To me at that early age it seemed an extraordinary expedition. I remember overcrowded trains leaving Cardiff station, all packed with families reuniting for the festive season.

  When we finally arrived after a six-hour journey at my grandparents’ home in Coventry, we would find the house festooned with home-made decorations. Waking up on Christmas morning to a stocking stuffed with goodies – chocolates and fresh fruit such as apples and tangerines – was a taste of what paradise must be like. No expensive presents, of course, but a simple wooden toy or a couple of Dinky cars were enough to cause great excitement. After opening the presents we’d settle down to a mid-afternoon feast of a Christmas dinner.

  Sometimes in the summer we went to stay in Norfolk, where my father’s sister lived: they had a farm, so if we went up there it was for a working holiday. If the Christmas journey to Coventry meant an expedition, venturing all the way to Norfolk was the ultimate adventure to me in my pre-teen years. We’d set off from Llwynypia station early in the morning, and after three changes of train and a whole day of travelling we would arrive exhausted at the little village of Watlington in Norfolk.

  My uncle Frank grew sugar beet and wheat on his farm, and my first experience of driving a motorized vehicle came at the tender age of ten, when I was allowed to drive his tractor. In addition to being a farmer he was the local milkman, so while we were there we would be up at the crack of dawn to help out on the milk round. On our return to the farm (and before we could have breakfast) we had to collect all the eggs from the large sheds where he kept his chickens.

  One of Frank’s more obscure occupations was that of gravedigger for the local church. I well remember helping him and being somewhat bemused at the large hole we were digging in that picturesque churchyard. But the
practice stood me in good stead and I became the best on the allotments at digging runner bean trenches, which I’ve always reckoned look like medieval burial mounds.

  All that work, yet I was supposed to be on holiday and having a break from my allotment duties. But they do say hard work never did anyone any harm!

  We weren’t all that far from the sea where we lived in the Rhondda, barely fifteen miles, but we had no easy means of getting there. We had no car and we never went on a bus, except for organized Sunday School outings. We would take a penny to Sunday School every week and that would pay for us children to go away for the day. All the children went to Sunday School because you could be sure of two trips a year, to places like Barry or Porthcawl.

  One year we went to Aberavon, and that meant going on a steam train through a tunnel at the top of the valley. This tunnel started at the head of the Rhondda Fawr at Blaenrhondda and emerged several miles away on the other side of the mountain at Port Talbot. The train would be gently sauntering up the valley and then suddenly it would disappear into this dark chasm in the hillside. The lights only dimly lit the carriages, and children standing at the open windows would rush back to their seats to be with their parents in what seemed a dark hell-hole. With the windows all open the carriage would quickly fill with the distinctive smells of steam, sulphur and smoke trapped in the tunnel, leaving indelible impressions on young minds.

  Mothers of children with chest complaints would make them stand at the open windows and breathe in this strong concoction of fumes, in the belief that the mixture would alleviate their symptoms. When we all emerged into the sunlight once more at the Port Talbot end of the tunnel, the pale faces of those poor children were covered with black spots like some dreadful disease, the result of the smuts being belched from the funnel of this steam monster. Port Talbot might have been only a few miles from home, but to us youngsters it meant an infernal trip to the other side of the world.