forum.ferndale-wales.co.uk

Posted in 1954.

The Ferndale of my boyhood.

Several distinctive features now demolished/removed.

1/ The Tudor Hall (just above the word 'view')
2/ The workman's Hall (Big white building behind that)
3/ The Banana tip (behind that)
4/ The coal-washery (behind that)
5/ No 9 pit (as the valley disappears right).
6/ Hendrefadog school (just visible halfway up the slope)

The river was diverted after the removal of all the colliery buildings, which has allowed Greenwood Park to be where it is..

Thought so.

The banana tip was better than any park! Lots of humps and dips fully overgrown with rough grass and foxgloves isolated by the river, railway and colliery. You could play war games or just enjoy the sheer isolation!

Yes, but Health and Safety has put a dampner on all of that, kids are not allowed to use their imagination, play outdoors, fall down and cut themselves, let alone stay out all day until you were hungry, and went home. As the late Sir Stanley Baker said in a documentary, "Yes, we may have been relatively poor, but we were happy"!!

Spot on Brian. How did we all survive the risks which we took in our stride and which developed self-confidence..........Devil's and Angel's Ladders, the old pit buildings above the Wagon Works, the sledgetrack where you hurtled into a dodgy trench at the bottom.
Going back to the Ferndale photo, the Grammar School clssrooms 1-10 and part of the main hall are shown. Viewed from Park Road the school formed the letters EH which coincidentally were also the initials of Headmaster Emrys Howells.
The Senior Boys School appears on the left behind the Tudor Hall but my old North Road Infants School was out of shot to the left.
Regards
Dave

Dave, in recent weeks, during conversations of today's children and all the gadgets that they want, I said, "Nothing new about Playstations, I had one". Apart from the look I got, I had to tell them mine was a mountain!!!

Brian

daveporthcawl wrote:...The Senior Boys School appears on the left behind the Tudor Hall but my old North Road Infants School was out of shot to the left.
Regards
Dave

Yes the Senior & my old infants school demolished with a nice new infants school. Well it's only natural that the rather severe looking buildings should have run their course. Ironic though, that the lower profile gives a view to the skyline, where the Devil's ladder and Angel's ladder cliffs can be seen!

Remember too how that bend up to the Strand used to make double decker buses lean over 20degrees as they went round to the right!

If you google across the road from this photo of the Strand corner you can see how posh the outside of the flats looks. The railings are lovely and the stone work. I think this must have been done with the EU regeneration grant.

Sheila

darran wrote:If you google across the road from this photo of the Strand corner you can see how posh the outside of the flats looks. The railings are lovely and the stone work. I think this must have been done with the EU regeneration grant.

Sheila

Yup - all so different from the ration-book era or even the mid 70's.

Many many tips were removed not just 'landscaped' Like the wattstown tip (near 'old smokey') - I missed in the list of my first post