Taff Street

[darran]

And I think everyone used their back door as their front door.

Sheila

[GaryLockyer]

Got it in one Shiela.
I think that it is the only street in the Rhondda that does it.
You could always tell if a stranger was in the area.
They would try to open the front gates - usually with little success, as they had not been opened for years. It was more normal for us , as kids, to climb over the gates than try to open them. ( I have had one or two come off their hinges by trying to force them).
SO, now that you have answered my question, I will set up a new topic for Rhondda Tce.

[darran]

Now Gary, as you're in Australia and you have lots of sheilas there you could spell my name right!!!!!!

Sheila

[MartinTann]

In duffryn villas we also used our back doors as our front doors. soul mates with rhondda tce.

[JohnPitt]

Gary/John, your memories have certainly got me going, and I've been amazed at what I've remembered since coming on this site.
On Taff Street, when I used to collect the Echo for Blaen, the station staff would get very angry if we did not put the wrappings in the rubbish bin before we walked away - in fact I think one guy who lived in Taff Street, stood by us to make sure we did it.
Iechydd
Brian Evans

Right Brian can you identify yourself on the 1960 Grammar school photo?

For example, Glennys Webber is filling the middle pane of the first window from the left (top row)

[brianblaenboy]

John,
After using the magnifying glass, I've managed to find where I am.
Count 9 from the right sitting on the floor. Then look up to the back row, and the one in front with head to one side is me. I'm in between Keith Phillips to my left and Sidney Tibbles (Blaenboy as well) to my right. Slightly to the left behind me is Terry Blake - his family moved away from Blaen. My best friend, sadly no longer with us, John Allen is between the Hudson brothers, Michael and Alan more to the left nearer the girls and in the row in front of the back row.
Not many people in that photo are still living in the Rhondda, I joined the Army in 1963, and lived back home between 1989 and 1997 when my parents health was on the rapid decline.

[JohnPitt]

Thanks for that Brian afraid I didn't know you or your immediate circle - in fact there are far more people here I don't know. When you say left and right do you mean left and right on the photo?

[evandale]

The large house at the entrance to the station was a railway house. When I got married in 1958 my wife and I rented the front room and one bedroom opposite at number 46
for 10 shillings a week, the occupants of the rail house then were the Williams family, the husband was a guard on the railway, and they had a daughter named Brenda , who married Emlyn Davies from Church Street, they moved to the Slough area. and I am informed that Brenda has returned to Ferndale and is now living in Rhondda Fechan Farm
area.

[mochyn]

Very interesting. I now live in the Slough area (though not as a result of my families and their immediate migrations from the valleys) and there are quite a few Welsh people around here. My father told me that this was one of the areas that people moved to in search of work when times were tough in Wales in the thirties. At that time, my family moved to Rugby in Warwickshire where there was a lot of industry. Back to Slough though, my father (born in 1919) said that a lad he was at school with went on to become mayor of Slough. I have no idea of his name though.

[brianblaenboy]

I can remember the 'railway house' in Taff Street, because when I collected the Echo to deliver around Blaen, some-one always was standing outside the door to make sure we didn't leave the wrappings and cord lying around, was it Bill Fisher that collected them for Ferndale? With regards to Slough, my father, Alwyn was a painter and decorator and was offered a very good job in Slough in the 50's but wouldn't leave the valleys after his father died. Didn't know of the 'welsh connection' then.