POSTAGE AND PACKING: You are paying £9 for the book and £4.00 p&p (2nd class)
We also sell our books, at our POP-UP SHOPat our monthly talks in Bedwelly House, Tredegar (2nd Thursday in the month)
The ‘History of Tredegar’ provides a comprehensive account of the development of the ironworks and coal mining in Tredegar from 1738 to 1900. It is a valuable source for anyone interested in finding out more about one of the important industrial towns that developed in the Industrial Revolution. There are plenty of interesting details to satisfy the general reader, too.
Derek John Southall was born in December 1936 in the South Wales valley town of Tredegar. He spent the first twelve years of his life living with his close-knit family in Upper Mount Pleasant on the mountain above the Georgetown area of the town. Although life was hard there, it was a period that he cherished all the more as he grew older.
This unique and engaging book takes us back to a time before most of our modern day conveniences, when life in the valleys was shaped, and tainted, by heavy industry. The houses in Mount Pleasant lacked running water and electricity and often accommodated several families. However, the community was a strong one, held together by bonds of kinship, friendship and shared experience.
Derek fondly recalls his family and neighbours in the days before television, when the only escape was the long walks to the picture-house to catch a glimpse of the magic of Hollywood. He revelled in those films and the glamorous lives of their stars, and remained a passionate film-lover all his life.
Derek, passed away at his home in Ashton-under-Lyne in March 2015, but he never forgot his first 12 years in ‘the street at the top of the mountain’ and this book is a testament to those far off days of his childhood.
Henry Hughes’ autobiography, originally recorded in Welsh in a school notebook, is a fascinating record of his experiences in two very different countries during a period when both were radically evolving.
It is an illuminating social history, containing eye witness accounts of an early 19th Century Welsh iron town, life as a collier both in Wales and USA, and then as a pioneer settler on the western frontier.
Never so Innocent Again, is a narrative written from the notes and diary of Corporal Richard Llewellyn Davies of the 3rd Battalion of the Monmouthshire Regiment and the 9th Battalion of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers.
Richard left his village of Hollybush in the Sirhowy Valley, Monmouthshire on the morning of 5th August 1914. Three times wounded and twice gassed, he survived all of the main battles of the Western Front and returned home in January 1919. Of the nine volunteers that left the village with him, he was the only one to return.
