Living and dying...

Government’s statistics

Between the early 19th and early 20th Century the population of Blaenau Gwent as a whole, rose from around 1,200 to well over 110,000.

The Government website reveals the population of Llanhilleth, Blaenau Gwent and  Wales in the 2001 Census:

Population & Housing

Year                  Wales                         Llanhilleth Ward                   Blaenau Gwent

2001 Census   2,859,489                    4,776                                       69,367                     
Population        2,007,347                    3,360                                       31,385                     
Dwellings         1,274,501                    2,404                                       32,385 
                      

Adapted from data from the Office for National Statistics licensed under the Open Government Licence v.1.0.

It is also interesting to observe the increase in population in the Rhondda over only thirty years.

Year                 Population    Population     Population     Miners         Coal Output

                          Of Wales        Llanhilleth     Rhondda        Of Wales        Of Wales

                                                                            Valley

1801                587,128             203

1811                673,337             344

1821                789,271             438

1831                904,312             545

1841                1,045,958          403

1851                1,163,139          611

1861                1,286,413        1,020                 4,000

1871                1,412,583        1,172

1881                1,604,821        1,383

1891                1,788,639        1,956                163,000

1901                2,012,876        5,015                                        150,412           29,209,000

1911                2,420,921        3,683

1921                2,656,474

1931                2,593,332

1951                2,596,850

1961                2,644,023                                                         106,000

1971                2,731,204                                                           60,000

1981                2,790,500

1991                2,811,965
2001                2,007,347         3,360
                       

Crowded Housing

In the late nineteenth century the average life expectancy for the mining population was barely 20 years of age.   Child mortality was high and people speak of local children visiting houses to see their late school friend laid out in their coffin.   

The average life expectancy for women was 40, slightly lower than that of men working underground.   The stress of child bearing, cleaning coal dust from their homes, heating water for men’s baths and washing, drying and ironing clothes all took their toll.   

Childbirth was carried out at home with Mother or Mother-in-law helping with the delivery, and other children being cared for by close family.   A midwife or Doctor would only be called if there were problems.

The Institute amidst the smoke of coal fires

Often young couples lived in “apartments.”   This would consist of perhaps the front room and a bedroom in someone else's terraced cottage, with use of the kitchen.    If they were lucky they would be sharing the house with relatives, but even then, the family could have perhaps six children living in the other two bedrooms and the living room, maybe even a lodger.   
    

One young couple, three weeks before their wedding, found their plan for accommodation with the husband’s family had fallen through.   The bride’s father, not willing to see his daughter disappointed, decided to take them in.    Unfortunately the house had two double bedrooms and a single, taken up by the husband and wife, two daughters and a son.   But the son worked night-shift.  It was quickly organised that the newly weds could have one of the double bedrooms.   The other daughter would sleep, during the week, in the single bedroom, while her brother was in work .  The son would then take over possession of the bedroom during the day, while his sister was in work.    On week-ends when he was home at night, she would sleep a few doors down at her auntie’s house.  This situation lasted for nearly a year, until she married and moved out. 

Many families were unable or unwilling to pay the few pence for their child to attend school.   Often being unable to read themselves they signed their name with a ‘X.’    Men would walk twelve miles over the mountain from Pontypool, and Abersychan to work at Llanhilleth pit.   If they arrived one minute after the six o’clock starting time, they were turned away with no pay for that shift.
  

The clean air of the 21st century

Sunday work was overtime with extra pay to carry out repairs to the shaft or the cables.    To qualify, men would have to go on the “Sunday List” and the paymaster would call them in when they were wanted.   

When they were called in to work on a Sunday, men would then be required to explain their absence from chapel to the minister.

“Cleanliness is next to Godliness”

Community was partly created by the extended family.   People rarely moved from the village, and even from the same street.   Parents lived next door to sons or daughters, with grandmothers and aunts living perhaps only a few doors further away.   A family support structure was within yards of the front door.   The dangers of working underground required the men to be interdependent.   They needed to trust and look out for each other, no one ever knew if the current shift could be their last.   The women’s closeness was strengthened through the stress and worry of not knowing whether their men would be returning from that particular day's shift.

Meadow Street

 There were standards of cleanliness expected.   Despite friendships and closeness, women were judged on the cleanliness  or “grain” of their washing, especially the ‘whites.’    Living in long rows of identical terraced houses, great status was given to the front room window and the “grain” of the net curtains.    In the 1950s, the window often displayed a chalk figure of an alsation dog, or  a young girl holding out the hem of her skirt as if about to curtsey.   The front step and pavement was also judged as a testament to a housewife’s cleanliness.    It needed to be scrubbed clean (on hands and knees,) daily and eyes would be checking to ensure this was done.  Often a red front doorstep would gleam from regular applications of Cardinal Polish. 
   

Every morning, women cleaned their house.   No easy-clean polished wood floors, but flagstones or terracotta tiles in black and red and loose rugs to be shaken or beaten outside.  Often rag-rugs would be made from a piece of sacking threaded with scraps of fabric from worn out clothing.  These are now created as craft pieces and can fetch hundreds of pounds for even a small example.  What would granny think?

 A coal fire was the only source of heating the house and providing hot water.    The iron metalwork would rust if not looked after, so copious amounts of ‘black lead’ was rubbed on with a cloth and then removed with a brush until the metalwork gleamed.    Sometimes the fender across the front of the hearth would have brass metal decoration, or even be made wholly of brass.   Then the Brasso would be needed so that it too gleamed. 

High Street