Pam Martin
Dear all,
On Saturday 3rd July 2010 we drove to Beaufort.
As many of you already know, Dad and I went to Beaufort in Wales last weekend. It was my first ever visit and I had no expectations as to what we would find – as it turned out we had a fantastic time which I wanted to share with you all in full.
All I had to go on was a copy of the 1891 and 1901 census entries for David Llewelyn and family. The newsagent was able to point me in the right direction and our first stop was the Vicarage. It is set back from the road with its own short drive up to the actual house. From the outside the house looked exactly as shown in all the old photographs that I have.
I decided to walk up the drive and knock on the door. An elderly gentleman answered and I explained that I was a great grand-daughter of Vicar David Llewelyn. We were invited in and made full introductions with Tom and Beryl Newman. Tom and Beryl have lived in the house for 40-50 years and knew all about the Llewelyn family. We shared some photographs and also learnt that Granny G (Edith) had visited them about 30 years ago – she’s the only visitor they could recall from our family over the years. They remembered that she visited with a man, but that he stayed in the car – so I wonder who that was. Beryl also told us about a lady called Grace Davis who Granny G was very fond of. Grace lived in a cottage at the bottom of the garden – there were a couple of cottages that belonged to the vicarage but they were demolished, perhaps when the road that the vicarage stands on was widened. Grace lived to the age of 98 – I wonder if anyone remembers Granny talking about this lady?
Beryl tried to find a particular photograph in a book for us – it was of the Beaufort Orchestra outside the vicarage in 1907. A series of books about Ebbw Vale have been published by Keith Thomas and although she had most of them – she couldn’t locate the particular one with this picture. As luck would have it – there is an amazing bookshop in Tintern (www.stellabooks.com) where a couple of days later I was able to track down the series of books and purchased a couple of them. The picture Beryl was looking for is the one below.
And the 2010 view of the front of the house is below:
We were very lucky also to meet Tom and Beryl’s daughter Elaine who arrived at the house whilst we were there. She was brought up in the house and has lots of happy childhood memories especially of the garden. She showed us around the outside of the house and in particular some outbuildings, one of which would have been the laundry room, complete with old boiler below:
The garden is extensive and we had a good look around with Elaine and Tom.
Elaine is very keen on researching her own family ancestry and also wants to research the history of the vicarage. She told us that the vicarage was used for the filming of the BBC series of the Citadel (AJ Cronin) in 1983. There is a campaign to get this issued on DVD, so if and when it comes out it will be interesting to watch.
I was able to show Elaine some of the old photographs I have in GG’s albums which she was very interested in and I am sure that she and I will keep in contact and share what we have. Below is a copy of a 1918 page from GG’s album for example. I have many examples like this from her album and also an album from 1914 belonging to Ethel (one of her older sisters?). They were prolific photographers.
When we talked to Elaine about GG and Tom Greenfield, she insisted on taking us up to the reservoir behind the village where Tom would have worked. We tried to get to a plaque that may have given us some more information but unfortunately the gates were well and truly locked. Next time… Elaine also took us a little further out of town to show us the magnificent scenery just north of Beaufort. The view below is only a couple of miles away, quite similar to Dartmoor in places and of course the Isle of Man. Without Elaine’s friendly guidance we would never have found any of this!
So that was our morning in Beaufort. We also asked about the church (St David’s) and after a lunch stop in the lovely town of Crickhowell we headed back to take a look. Unfortunately it was locked so we could only look around the churchyard. Note the comment in the old picture below about the “enthusiastic Vicar Llewellyn”. And there is quite a difference in the landscape of the surrounding area then and now.
On the map below I have marked the church and vicarage and interestingly there is a Greenfield Crescent there as well.
Hope you have enjoyed this brief jaunt through our visit – I certainly plan to go back at some stage – there is a lot to learn…
Pam Martin XX
July 2010
Update – 14 July 2022 – David Clover
We visited Beaufort at the end of a few days holiday away in mid-Wales. We approached across the spectacular hills from Llangynidr via the B4560 (the route is strongly recommended to any future visitor!)
We found the vicarage and chatted to Tom and Elaine who remembered Pam’s visit and I think also GG’s, as they had a memory of someone having previously come from the Isle of Man.
We were shown a small original (possibly by ‘Dobbie and Forbes of Falkirk‘) stove in the hall which presumably had allowed heat to filter up through the house.
I had been in contact earlier with Reverend W A Hodges, currently Team Vicar, and Ann Davies, the churchwarden, who kindly opened the church at 6:00 for us to look around.
The 1905 extension is marked with a stone:
The very hard ‘capping bricks’ in the porch are inscribed with the name of the local brickworks:
The interior is generously proportioned under a single span roof with no pillars and it is regularly used for services and popular concerts of Sankey hymns:
There are memorials to Ethel Llewelyn V.A.D. who died in 1921 as a result of an illness contracted in the war as a nurse at Netley Hospital near Southampton. In the memorial she is the only woman to be mentioned amongst the ‘Men of this Parish’
We looked at the organ and its brass plate:
and the memorial to David Llewellyn and Annie. David died after taking an evening service as a member of the retired clergy at Bolam near Morpeth, Northumberland. Annie died in 1947 and has been added subsequently at the bottom of the memorial. She appears in a number of family home movies as ‘Little Granny’.
Beaufort’s Churchwarden, Ann Davies, showed us a prayer book donated and inscribed by David Llewellyn to her great-grandmother on her wedding day.
We had a fascinating visit and were made wonderfully welcome both at the vicarage and in the church.
David and Linda Clover
14 July 2022
The Greenfields 