.. Let's stop Yesterday's History becoming Tomorrow's Mystery by recording what we see and hear Today for Posterity ..
* The "Old Col" * Springvale Main Adit *
* My Brick Collection * Something from 1963 * St. David Lewis *
* Eastern Valley Havoc of Great Storm * 1395 Private John Williams (Fielding) V.C *
* G.K.N (Guest Keen & Nettlefolds) * The Well Centre * Penry Morgan * Irving Jones *
*Glyn Bran circa 16th Century Farmhouse * Cwmbran Cemetery * Tin Plate Industry * Cwmbran `Master Plan`*
Llanderfel Church * Henry Parfitt * Cwmbran Man`s Shocking Death * Local Historian W.G.Lloyd *
Co-operative Society * Henllys Estate * Porthmawr Colliery * Henllys Colliery * Mysterious Metal Disc *
Please help me by visiting the `Can You Help` page and play your part in `Clearing the Fog of Time`
How about `digging out` your Cwmbran photographs - Street scenes, Panoramic views, School and Classmates, your first car, etc; absolutely anything and everything would be most appreciated and enjoyed by us all.
.. Click here to email me ..
Mr. Graham Lawrence, 72, of Brunel Road in Old Cwmbran, a keen amateur historian and member of the Cwmbran Historical Society has recently been awarded a World Record in honour of Thomas and Elizabeth Morgan, who are recorded as the World's Oldest Married Couple. (Aggregate age of 211) and will appear in the 2006 edition of the Guinness Book of World Records
Graham had been researching his family history, whilst investigating headstones at Elim Chapel, Old Cwmbran in his quest for information on his uncle Thomas; he came across an ivy covered headstone that bore the names of;
... Click on the chapel to view the Morgan's Headstone ..
.. Elim Chapel (built in 1844) ..
Graham, through more in-depth research, went on to uncover more information on the couple:-
Thomas was born in Llantrisant, Glamorgan.
Elizabeth was born near Caerleon.
They married in Caerleon in 1809.
They lived in Foundry Row, Old Cwmbran.
They had 15 children, 17 grand-children and 30 great-grand-children.
Ty Coch Lime Kilns
Although little is known of the history of the two lime kilns, limestone was quarried at Henllys during the 19th Century.
The limestone would have been transported to the lime kilns and heated to a high temperature (approx.900 degrees Celsius) to convert the limestone to lime.
.. The Lime Kilns can be viewed along Garth Road, just off the Two Locks / Hollybush Way roundabout ..
Lime was used in several ways.
Mortar for building brick and stone walls.
Whitewash for exterior walls.
Fertiliser - spread over fields to encourage plant growth.
Smelting of iron.
The Ty Coch Lime Kilns ceased working before 1880.
The Ty Coch Lime Kilns were originally refurbished by Cwmbran Community Council in 1988 and were further refurbished in 2001 as one of the Council's Millennium Year projects.
Cwmbran Community Council wish to thank the Territorial Army, Chapman House, Cwmbran for essential and extensive preparation work and Nigel Jones, stonemason, for undertaking the main refurbishment work.
Webmaster:- I know of three other Lime Kilns within Cwmbran.
Henry Parfitt was a prominent local builder in the last three decades of the nineteenth century.
In the year of 1867, he took on the lease , "with the Stoves, Kilns, Smith's shop and Cottages" of a well established and sizeable Brickworks owned by a Mr. John Lawrence .
... The Brick works was situated beside the canal in Lower Cwmbran ...
.. Upper Cwmbran School (opened in 1868) ..
* built by Mr.Parfitt, mason and Mr. Hugh Thomas, carpenter *
Left to right :- William Board, Ada Board, Vicar of Primative Methodist Chapel, Pontnewydd Builder Henry Parfitt Senior, Ethel Parfitt, Arthur Lloyd, Mrs. Henry Parfitt Senior, Mrs. Henry Parfitt Junior, Henry Parfitt Junior.
.. Ashley Place now known as Ashley House Youth Centre ..
The two houses shown in the photograph are adjacent to the newsagents at the bottom of Mount Pleasant Road, Pontnewydd. On the opposite side of the road is the Ladywell Senior Citizens Complex.
The houses are numbered 40 and 42. Number 40 is the one on the left and has the letter ` T` (upside down) stamped into one of the bricks. Number 42 is adjacent, the name H. Parfitt is stamped in the keystone of the doorway.
.. Click here 
for more info ..
... The Mysterious Metal Disc ...
... The `Old Post Office (now a private residence) on Newport Road, opposite Llantarnam Church ...
The metal disc is actually a Tyring Platform used by a wheelwright who would lay the wooden cartwheel on the metal platform and clamp it through the Hub; a steel `tyre` would then be heated and the expanded `tyre` placed around the wooden wheel, whereby copious amounts of cold water would be thrown over it to shrink the `Tyre` enabling a snug fit.
Sister Marie de Montfort, formerly of Llantarnam Abbey relates to the reference above (Mysterious Metal Disc), that this was at one time, the site of a `SMITHY` where in November 1678 soldiers arrested Jesuit preacher David Lewis.
(`Smithy` or Blacksmiths - date unknown)
Pritchard George, blacksmith & shop keeper, Post office
Kelly's Directory of Monmouthshire 1901
David Lewis was born at Abergavenny, Monmouthshire, in the year 1616. He was raised as a Protestant.
At sixteen years of age, while visiting Paris, he was reconciled to the Catholic Church. Subsequently, he went to study in Rome, where in 1642, he was ordained as a priest. Three years later he became a Jesuit. In 1647, he returned home and, for over thirty years, worked in South Wales, with his base at the Cwm.
1678
The Popish Plot.The Catholics in England were put under pressure to conform to the Church of England. Titus Oates and Israel Tonge placed before Parliament the false charges that the Catholics were plotting to assassinate King Charles II, and bring about a Jesuit dominated Monarchy headed by James II, the Duke of York. Oates and Tonge took pleasure in their scheme padding it with forty-three trumped-up charges. Many Catholics were executed. This plot was conceived by Oates and Tonge and formatted by the Whigs in the House of Commons. This plot was the deathblow to the Catholic Church in England.
David Lewis often visited Llantarnam Abbey where he would celebrate Baptisms, Weddings, funerals and hold Mass.
This may be due to the possibility that he was the nephew of Lady Frances Morgan, herself a fervent Catholic and the wife of Edward Morgan who owned and resided at the Abbey.
Therefore as a `practicing` Catholic priest, he undoubtedly had a `price on his head` and was allegedly betrayed by a servant girl at the Abbey.
In November 1678 he was finally captured and arrested at the nearby SMITHY. He was carried in a sort of triumphal procession to Abergavenny, where, in allusion to one article of Oates' fabrications, he was shown to the people as "the pretended Bishop of Llandaff". He was then committed for trial, and meanwhile imprisoned, first at Monmouth and then at Usk. The trial came off at Monmouth, 16 March, 1679. It was impossible to connect Father David with the pretended Popish Plot, so he was charged under the Statute of 27 Elizabeth, which made it high treason to take orders abroad in the Church of Rome and afterwards to return to England and say Mass and was therefore condemned, as a Roman Catholic priest and for saying Catholic masses. He was then sent to London to be cross examined by the infamous Titus Oates.
Subsequently, he was brought back to Usk in Monmouthshire, where he was hanged, drawn and quartered on the 27th August 1679.The gallows was set up by a bungling convict who was offered his freedom for playing hangman. (The official executioner and his assistants had fled; so, too; did the amateur, who finally ran off, threatened by the crowd with stoning. A blacksmith was finally bribed to carry out the death sentence, but after he did so, nobody in the area would give him any business. Lewis was apparently too well thought of in the neighbourhood for his execution to be popular!)
- Beatified in 1929; canonized in 1970 by Pope Paul VI as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales.
... ST. David Lewis's portrait can be seen in the Chapel Corridor at Llantarnam Abbey ...
On November 17th, 2007, a plaque was unveiled by Cwmbran Historical Society to `acknowledge` the place where David Lewis was arrested in 1678 .
.. Newport Road - Llantarnam ..
.. The site of the `smithy` which at a later date became a Post Office and finally a private residence ..
Titus Oates fabricated a Jesuit plot later known as the Popish Plot of 1678-79. Oates falsely claimed that there was a Catholic conspiracy to kill King Charles II, place James, his Catholic brother on the throne, massacre Protestants, and reinstitute Catholicism with the help of a French army.
On 18 June, he was fined by Judge Jeffreys �100,000 for scandalum magnatum. Then, in May, 1680, he was tried for perjury, and condemned to be whipped, degraded, and pilloried, and imprisoned for life.
Jeffreys said of him: "He has deserved more punishment than the laws of the land can inflict."
