Ynysybwl | Pea soup
Pea soup, power cuts, pedal bikes, and pumps
Barbara Castle
Pea soup, power cuts, pedal bikes, and pumps – these were the themes that accompanied my childhood in London in the '50s. I hurt my head walking into a lamp post on my way to school because the fog was so thick; London was regularly covered in green smog. When the electric power failed, as it did for days on end in winter, we read by candlelight and I felt scared to go upstairs alone. And everyone I knew had a bicycle. That was how we went to school; how we went to the shops; how we enjoyed our days out of the city. My Dad was an engineer and co-ran a pump design, repair, and servicing company. The factory off the Old Kent Road had filthy sumps and lathes, and everywhere we went in the city Dad would point out the places their pumps were keeping things running – heating pumps, sewage pumps, and water pumps, even the pumps running the fountains in Trafalgar Square. I came to Cardiff aged 23 in 1973 to follow a postgraduate course at the University of Wales Institute of Science and Technology. For the first time I came up into the Valleys and was amazed. I caught a bus up into the Rhondda Fach on August Bank Holiday Monday, through the caverns of dark grey housing and narrow roads, past the pit heads and the grimy yards, the drama of the pitheads and wheels and coal heaps. Here, simultaneously, was the source of the London 'peasoupers' and the power cuts: Coal. That same day we walked through Ferndale, past Blaenllechau, up the mountain side, over the top, into the Llanwonno forest, through farmland and moor and then down again into the Cynon Valley and mountain ash. The contrasting beauty of the mountain struck me as hard as the valleys had in their darkness and harshness. Years later I chaired a Union branch that organised support for the '84 strike and later still I came to live in this place, outside Ynysybwl, in an old farmhouse on the edge of the same forest. Through my work, I got to know the men at Tower Colliery and through living here much more of the lives of the Valleys communities. The Tower story inspired me and the cleverness of the way they ran the whole mine using power converted from the underground methane was fascinating. Most of all I was gripped by the politics of them taking ownership and control of the pit. In my own village, Ynysybwl, we have now looked at a 20-acre empty pit site for more than 20 years. We have seen the entire history of coal and mining in this community disappearing into the metaphorical 'pea soup' fog of forgotten places and sadly disappearing lifetimes. We are still surrounded by the flattened tops and terraces of the old slag heaps, although the forest and fridd are gradually hiding it all from sight. 222