Category: Tuesday Group

Travels Around the British Empire

 

It was a great pleasure to welcome David James to talk to us about his travels around the British Empire. It wasn’t actually a travelogue but more like a resume of his teaching career which took him to various parts of the world starting in the late sixties. His talk was interspersed with snippets of the history of the British empire and its influence on the colonies.

David was a history teacher and his wanderlust first began with three years of teaching in Somerset. Any anecdotes were told with a Somerset accent of which he was quite accomplished. From there he went to America where he taught in a small private school in Philadelphia. They were a warm hospitable people in what turned out to be a wealthy area alongside a ghetto where the crime rate was extremely high and murders occurred frequently. He was fortunate enough to travel extensively in America for holidays making lots of friends along the way.

One such holiday took him to Jamaica where he was offered. and accepted a teaching post. He stayed on the beautiful island for two years even though there was extreme poverty and most people lived in tin shacks. The food was mostly uninspiring, mainly rice and peas. but fortunately there was an abundance of lobster.

He returned to Wales after this and while job hunting succeeded in getting a post in Hong Kong. He assured his wife that it would only be for a short while but they ended up staying for twenty eight years! He found Hong Kong very interesting and again encountered extremes of wealth and poverty. Some parts were quite beautiful but it was very crowded and became flooded with Chinese criminals.

The education here was greatly influenced by the British. The standard in schools was very high and students were ruthlessly competitive. In 1992, forty children committed suicide because of pressure to succeed in school. The rich were super rich and the poor strived to get rich.

Whilst in Hong Kong he travelled to Fiji which was beautiful, Kashmir where he stayed on a houseboat and Calcutta which had the oldest golf club in the world. They were fortunate enough to go to Japan for a wedding and a holiday in Kenya.

Throughout his travels he observed the influence of the British which included better roads and railways which greatly improved the infrastructure. The spread of the English language allowed people to communicate in a common language. The trade system allowed people to come to Britain bringing their culture to us which has made Britain more diverse. Britain also took the idea of democracy to its colonies which helped them build their own as well as law and order, a system which has been maintained to this day.

David returned to Wales on retirement twelve years ago with amazing memories of his travels and we were delighted that he came to Tuesday group to share his experiences with us.

 

 

 

Phil Bowen on Carisbrooke Castle

 

Tuesday Group meetings continued with a trip to the Millenium Centre to see "Fat Friends. Thanks must go to Betty for organising the tickets and transport. Our final meeting was a talk by Phil Bowen on Carisbrooke Castle. Phil has spoken to the group on previous occasions and so we knew that it would an entertaining talk. In his introduction Phil explained that his daughter had died from lung cancer and that the proceeds from his talks go to the Roy Castle Lung Foundation who support research into lung cancer.

Carisbrooke Castle on the Isle of Wight is a Norman castle which was altered in subsequent periods. The first castle was built by William FitzOsbern to secure the Isle of Wight for the Normans. It was then seized by Henry I when the motte-and —bailey castle was built. The castles position 210ft above sea level means that it can be protected and the surrounding land made safe from any hostile folk. It is also in a good position to watch over the entrance to Southampton.

With the aid of photographs Phil was able to explain why the castle was difficult to attack as it was protected by a dry moat which had spikes and flints and other protective features were arrow slits at strategic points to repel invaders. The Bailey was where everyone lived. The Bayeaux Tapestry depicts the building of a motte and bailey castle and this has helped the understanding of this type of fortification.

Isabella de Fortibus was the first lady to rule the Isle of Wight and she transformed the castle into a home worthy of her prestige and wealth. She added a chapel and a chamber at the end of the Great Hall. This chamber had a window overlooking the island and reflecting her status it was glazed.

Isabella controlled the castle for some 30 years and when she died power struggles ensued. This led to the demise of the independent Isle of Wight and the estate passed to the Crown.

Elizabeth I makes her cousin George Carey captain of the Isle of Wight and he builds a 13- room mansion within the castle. This became a social centre with banquets held regularly. Jesters from the mainland attended these feasts and swapped news.

Charles I was imprisoned at the Castle during the Civil War and although he tried to escape both attempts were unsuccessful and he was eventually taken to London where he was executed.

The castle then fell into disuse until Princess Beatrice, Queen Victoria's youngest daughter modernises the castle and makes it her residence.

The castle is now maintained by English Heritage and having seen how Phil can make the various features of the castle come alive with his wealth of anecdotes I am sure it will be on the to do list of any member visiting the Isle of Wight.

The final event of the year is our annual dinner which is being held at the Blue Anchor.

 

 

John Sheen and Farming in Cameroon

 A talk by John Sheen

Our meetings continued with a talk by John Sheen with the very intriguing title “Five Boys and a Pasty”. It was even more puzzling when John produced several gift bags which were obviously going to play a part in his talk.

For most of his working life John had been a teacher and then an Education Officer in Cwmbran. During this time he had been very active in local theatrical societies and so when he retired from education he spent a couple of years as the manager of the Dolman Theatre in Newport. While at the theatre he was asked by a local Probus group to give a talk and not having a clue what to talk about he decided that he would speak about his childhood. This was the talk we were about to hear and to date it has been delivered some 286 times to a variety of local groups in South Wales.

John was born in 1947 and considers himself to be one of the “lucky generation” or alternatively the “sandwich generation” i.e. those caught between caring for parents and grandchildren. John described his post-war childhood living in Port Talbot in the words of Bill Bryson as “radiantly unsophisticated” as those were the days without a car, fridge and credit cards.

Friday night was traditionally bath night when a dose of Syrup of Figs was also administered. Other memories were sweet rationing, which ended in 1953, liberty bodices,darning socks and turning of worn collars. The front parlour was kept for special occasions such as funerals and Christmas. Some of the remedies that were used such as Friars Balsam, Goose Grease and Gentian Violet were remembered by some of the group. As a special treat John was allowed a bar of Five Boys Chocolate (used as part of the title for the talk).

School day memories included Daps ( Dunlop All Purpose Shoe), Ladybird books which kept their price at 2/6p for many years and the First Aid in English used for the 11plus. Other school memories were the milk and orange juice and the savings stamps one could buy.

The 1950’s were eventful years and John remembered the announcement of the Kings death, the conquering of Mt. Everest and the coronation (pasties were provided for the party), Roger Bannister and the 4 minute mile and the Empire Games.

Other highlights of John’s childhood were day trips to Barry Island and Weston-super-Mare, the Corona man bringing bottles of Dandelion and Burdock and television programmes such as Andy Pandy, Mr Pastry, What’s My Line and Archie Andrews – the ventriloquist on the radio. John then demonstrated one of his favourite childhood toys the Magic Robot. Childhood finally ended when John moved from short to long trousers.

Everyone really enjoyed this talk which was

delivered so professionally which is not surprising as John has the theatre in his genes – his nephew is the actor Michael Sheen and his daughter Caroline has played in musicals in the West End. We hope that John will visit us again with another of his talks.

 

Helen Joy – ‘ Food for prosperity’

On the 10 th April we welcomed back Helen Joy who was going to talk about her experiences in local radio. However, she introduced us instead to ‘ Food for prosperity’ which is a project based in Cameroon in Africa. Through her radio work and her membership of Glamorgan Small Holders Association, Helen had been introduced to Carol Adams who is in charge of the project in Cameroon. The aim of the project is to help the people there to improve their farming and make the most of what they produce.

Helen brought Maurice Price with her. He is a fellow member of the Glamorgan Small Holders Association and he was persuaded by Helen and Carol to join five other people and go to Cameroon. His speciality is animal husbandry and the others comprised an electrician, and experts in charcuterie and preserving fruit and vegetables. They took a lot of cooking materials and what not. It was a special experience for Maurice as he had never been abroad or even on holiday before.

He gave us a detailed picture of life in Cameroon. The people are poor but make the most of what they have, turning old cars into pots and pans and using spare parts for whatever they can. Motorbikes are used to carry everything from the family to coffins!

He was impressed with the way the farmers looked after their pigs.Labour is cheap so farming tends to be by hand and not mechanised. They could produce meat but did not know how to butcher into different cuts and that was what one of the group showed them and another held classes teaching people how to preserve fruit and make jam.

Helen gave reports of their work on her radio programme. It is hoped that more people will go out to Cameroon to continue this work. More needs to be done to improve building and health care. At the moment, life expectancy there is 57.

Maurice enjoyed his first trip abroad especially as he was upgraded to first class on the way back! He has happy memories of hospitable people- he even had marriage proposals!

 

 

The Joys of Bee Keeping

 

Our programme continued with a talk by Alun James on the Joys of Bee Keeping. Alun began his talk with a brief history of bee keeping. The honey bee has certainly been around for a long time – fossilized remains date back some 135 million years. Some of the earliest records of bee keeping are to be found in prehistoric drawings.

The Egyptians practised a form of bee keeping using simple hives and the beeswax was used in embalming and also turned into writing tablets. Jars of honey were found in the tomb of Tutankhamun.

Alun’s grandfather was a bee keeper and so it was that Alun decided to carry on the family tradition. A friend happened to be downsizing and so Alun was able to get the equipment needed for him to start his new hobby. Following a trip to Ammanford to a bee auction the nuclear collection of bees purchased was brought back to Cardiff and after a few incidents all were safely installed in their new homes.

Alun then went on to explain the structure of modern hives – honey bees are social insects and form a colony in the hive. This is made up of the queen, whose sole purpose is to lay eggs, female worker bees who collect the nectar to produce honey and male drones whose function is to mate with the females.

Once the honey has been deposited in a cell it is capped off with a wax coating. The moisture content of honey is very important and should be no more than 20%. Alun explained how the honey was collected and all the steps that have to be adhered to in order to gain a hygiene rating of 5 so that it can be sold.

Bees perform a waggle dance – this is a form of communication between the bees giving information about where to go for the best sources of food. By measuring the angle of the dance in relation to the sun and the length of time the bee waggled its abdomen researchers have been able to map the distances and locations where bees forage.

In winter damp can be a problem for bees and supplementary honey is provided for them as food. Alun finished his talk by telling us of the problems that can be encountered such as the varroa mite. Pesticides are also a problem and in parts of Sichuan province in China bees have been wiped out and the pear orchards have to be fertilised by hand to sustain the fruit industry.

Alun has a colony of bees at Insole Court and jars of his honey can also be purchased there. Bees are very important as some one third of human food is dependant on pollination by bees. It is good that this is a flourishing hobby and anyone interested should contact Cardiff beekeepers (www.cardiffbeekeepers.co.uk)

After all the cold weather and snow it was good to have a reminder that Spring was just round the corner. We were treated to a fashion show by M&Co organised by Lorraine, the manager of the Penarth branch assisted by Jill and Cineade.

Our models for the evening were Sandra, Jill, Irene and Christine. It was good of our members to give up time to choose their outfits for the night but they all looked very glamorous on the catwalk. I am sure we all found something we liked and will be going to the shop to see what else they have to offer.

 

 

Shopping in the Old Days

 

Our Spring/Summer session of Tuesday Group began with a social evening. Everyone had a pleasant evening catching up on the latest news. A big thank you to everyone who helped by supporting the Bring & Buy and by laying on a very tasty spread. The funds raised will be used to support charities.

Our first speaker was Rosemary Scadden whose talk was entitled “Open All Hours”. Rosemary had contacted The Grocer magazine for information about shopping practices and was provided with contacts who she interviewed about life behind the counter.

Unlike today shopping was a very personal service and a slow process. Most items arrived at the store in bulk so everything had to be weighed and bagged before it could be sold. As there was no Cellotape available, folding paper into bags became quite an art. Someone recalled having to whistle while weighing out fruit as it is difficult to eat whilst whistling,.

Tea came direct from the plantations in large wooden chests. The dregs that were left in the bottom were sold as low grade tea.

In some shops the coffee was roasted in-house filling the store with a distinctive aroma As it was standard practice to leave food uncovered the coffee aroma often mingled with other interesting food smells. A standard feature in many stores was the scarlet bacon slicer.

The Weights and Measures Act was introduced in 1770 when it became illegal to sell short measures. It was said that a grocer never went to heaven as many cunning tricks were learned by grocers to make as much profit as they could from sales.

Funeral teas became a very good source of income for shops. Tradition fare included beef wrapped in dough and then roasted and slab cake.

The Coop only employed men – women were confined to being cashiers. However, this all changed when firms such as Maypole, Liptons and Home and Colonial started employing women to work behind the counter. It was also noted that women were more careful driving the delivery vans.

Delivery vans were an essential part of rural life as they were a lifeline for rural farms as some women were virtually trapped on farms looking after children.

The cooperative movement started in Rochdale in 1840 and sought to provide ethical and moral trading – this ethos continues today.

Shops were the heart of a community and the shopkeepers knew their customers and often chairs would be provided so that shopping became a sociable occasion where women met and exchanged local gossip. Market days were also very important. It was not unusual for a farmer’s wife to offer butter and eggs in exchange for provisions.

In hard times shopkeepers arranged credit for customers so that families could survive although the poorest had to manage with whatever they could get from the Poor Board.

Harrods had a nationwide delivery service which is said to have been used by Tredegar House.

The modern day supermarket that we all know was introduced in America in Memphis in 1916 and was called Piggly Wiggly. This revolutionised shopping and self-service was set to take over from all the myriad of small grocers on our High Street. A lot of shops were forced to close as they were too small to convert into self-service shops.

I am sure many members of the group remembered the shopping experience as it used to be but judging how many new supermarkets continue to open I think they are here to stay.

Tracing your Heritage

Tracing your Heritage

We were delighted to welcome Heulwen Davies to talk to us about tracing your heritage. Heulwen obviously has a real passion for not only tracing her own family but helping others to get started with looking at their ancestry. Every Tuesday morning Heulwen is available in the library where one can take advantage of her expertise.

It was stressed that one had to start with oneself by writing your own biography. One should work backwards and include anything you can remember that might be of importance especially ones nearest relatives.

These days one can use the internet to search the widely available free of charges sources to help with tracking down your family. These include census records from England, Wales and Scotland 1841-1911, Births, Marriages and Deaths records, Parish records and newspaper records.

After getting as much information from ones immediate family remembering to look for letters, bibles, diaries and photos that might all hold valuable clues about family members one can look at the extended family. It is important to bear in mind ethical considerations when interviewing people and if you want to use information consent should always be sought to use the information.

Heulwen was able to give us some interesting examples of facts she had found out about her own family many of whom were farmers and tended to spend all their lives living in the same locality. By visiting locations where ones family was located and capturing images of graves etc Heulwen has written about her family and these scripts will be able to be read by her family.

Tracing ones ancestry is obviously something that once you have started becomes addictive and you need to learn more. With the advent of relatively inexpensive DNA testing one can with accuracy trace one’s own roots and hopefully glean important information.

Anyone interested in this subject should come along to the library where Heulwen will do her best to get you started tracing your roots.

Our final event of the year was our Christmas Meal which was at the Beech Tree. Once again this venue didn’t disappoint and I am sure that everyone who went had an enjoyable evening.

New members are always welcome so if there is anything of interest in next years programme please come along – you will be assured of a warm welcome.

 

 

Winter / Spring Activities

 

 

The Winter/Spring session of Tuesday Group began with the AGM where the officers and committee were voted on again to serve another year. This was followed by a social evening where everyone was able to catch up after the summer break. Joyce produced a very interesting quiz based on several decades since the fifties. It produced much discussion if not the right answers ! Thank you Joyce for a thought provoking quiz.

Our first speaker was Ann Callem who spoke about her lifetime career as a nurse. Her father was in the Admiralty and they lived abroad a lot when she was a child. As a consequence she went to five different schools before spending a settled period in a prestigious school in Kent. At first the uniform was a culture shock. After living in lightweight clothing in the tropics she had to get used to thick grey knickers and coarse stockings.

She decided to be a nurse by default. When asked at her posh school what she wanted to do in the future she said she wanted to be an air hostess. This went down like a lead balloon and she was told she’d better be a nurse, so this was the career she pursued.

She began her training at a teaching hospital in London where a Hattie Jacques type character was matron and ruled with a rod of iron !! She was a larger than life figure that petrified her. The uniform in those days was in complete contrast to the modern day where dresses and aprons were starched to within an inch of their lives and an elaborate hat was worn. She came across many celebrities during her time there as the hospital was situated in Paddington and remembers actors and other well known people such as Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice Davies.

Ann spent over 57 years as a nurse so had many funny stories to tell. She even retired once but went back on request. A high point in her career was when she was nominated for an award by her peers for ‘going above and beyond the call of duty’. She has continued nursing, though these days she is a practice nurse in a doctor’s surgery. She still enjoys the contact with patients albeit in a different setting. To have continued for this length of time as a nurse must have been a fulfilling one even though it began in an unorthodox manner.

Our programme continued with a trip to the New Theatre to see Cabaret. It was a well acted show and I am sure that everyone who went had a good time. Thank you Betty for getting such good seats.

Our indoor meetings continued with a talk by Gwerfil Gardener who became a house volunteer at Duffryn over three years ago. Gwerfil spoke to us about the fascinating history of the ownership of Duffryn.

The story of Duffryn dates back to the 7th century when the house was then called the Manor of Worlton. In the 16th century the Button family acquired the Manor and a house of some note was built. Sir Thomas Button was an admiral to Elizabeth1 and his family occupied the estate for a

number of generations.

In the 18th century the estate was bought by Thomas Pryce, who rebuilt the property and called it Duffryn House. He was only 23 at the time, an industrialist who made munitions for the government. When he died the estate passed to his daughter but as she had no children it was inherited by a distant relative, John Knigt.

In 1891 the estate was sold to John Cory, a coal merchant and he built the present house in 1893. John Cory was very wealthy and the original house was not considered grand enough so he appointed an architect, Lansdown to design the new property. The old property was not demolished but remained inside the new structure.

You can still see evidence of the family’s vast wealth today- from the 16th century fireplaces to the commissioned stained glass windows.

One of John Cory’s sons Reginald was a passionate horticulturalist and collaborated on the garden design with Thomas Manson. Sir Cenydd Traherne bought the estate in the late 1930’s and later leased it to Glamorgan County Council who used it as an educational conference facility.

The house and gardens are still owned by the Vale of Glamorgan Council but the National Trust took over the maintenance and running in January 2013 on a 50 year lease. The trust have built on the work already done to the house and gardens and hopefully this will secure the future of Duffryn house for us all to enjoy in years to come.

Our speaker on the 7th November was Mandy Morgan from Garth Mountain Silver. Mandy grew up in Pentyrch and named her company after the Garth mountain where she played as a child. Sadly, you won’t find silver there, it has to be sourced from places like Peru and Mexico these days. Mandy gave us an amusing and inspirational talk about her background. She did not do well at Radyr Comprehensive School and was even told that she would never become a metal worker. After doing a variety of jobs, she actually went on to do her degree and worked with people with drug and alcohol problems. Lack of funding meant that she became redundant and that was when she took a class in silver smithing, ironically at Radyr Comprehensive. Her hobby became her passion and her business grew. She demonstrated how she makes rings from silver spoons that she gets at car boot sales. Mandy now sells her jewellery at craft fairs and to private customers.

 

 

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