November 2025 Newsletter | Abertillery And Dist

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What’s On at The Met

4th Nov & 9th Dec 2-4pm Tea Dance £4

18th Nov 6pm - Hummadrus Blacklight Amazing Stories, tickets from £9.50

22nd Nov 2pm & 7pm Rock ‘n’ Roll Concert £12

27-28th Nov 7pm – Showstoppers presents - Vintage to Viral, tickets from £10

For more information on these and more visit:

https://awenboxoffice.com/the-met/whats-on

or tel 01495 533195

Museum Opening Times

The Museum is open to the public, free of charge:

Thursday to Saturday 10am – 1pm

Contact us

Museum phone number 01495 211140

Email: abertillerymuseum@btconnect.com

Web: www.abertilleryanddistrictmuseum.org.uk

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/abertillerymuseum

Contact Names

Mr G Murphy Curator

Mrs P. Bearcroft Deputy Curator

Mrs E. Ewers Chair

Mrs K. Pratley Treasurer

Mrs S. Murphy Newsletter

Vice Presidents (Annual Subscription £25)

Rev Roy Watson

Mrs Carol Brooks

Mrs Margaret Cook

Mrs Margaret Herbert

Ms Michele Dack

Mr Ross Leadbetter

October 100 Club

This month’s prize numbers were drawn by young visitors Luna and Willow and the lucky winners are:-

No. 14 Henry Bearcroft £20

No. 06 Kay Galloway £10

If you would like to join our 100 club and be in with a chance of winning, it costs just £1 a month. Ask at the museum for further details.

Winterfest/Christmas Fayre

Saturday 6th December 10am – 5pm

The museum will be open from 10am as usual though Winterfest officially starts at 12 noon. Any donations of tins, bottles, chocolate bars, toiletries, bric-a-brac, toys, handicrafts, raffle prizes and items for our Christmas hamper, would be very gratefully received! In fact we are happy to receive most things but please no books, DVDs or CDs. Please bring your donations to the museum at your earliest convenience.

Quick Quiz (answers on page 4)

Bonfire night falls on November 5th but what year was the gunpowder plot?
On 28th November 1919 a woman became the very first member of our Parliament. What was her name?
What is the birth stone for November?
On which Thursday in November is Thanksgiving Day celebrated in America, first, second, third or fourth?
What is celebrated by Catholics on 1st November?
On which November day is St Andrews Day celebrated?

Our AGM will be held at the museum on Friday 30th January 2026 at 11am. It is open to anyone to attend though only paid up members will be eligible to vote. Voting slips will be sent out in December.

The museum will be closed Friday 21st November for staff training.

Alton Towers by Sally Murphy

Our tour of UK theme parks continues with Alton Towers in Staffordshire, currently the largest theme park in the UK by size. Sitting in 910 acres of grounds the Towers were once home to the Earls of Shrewsbury – the Talbots – who were the owners from 1412 to 1924.

The grounds of the house were first opened to the general public in 1860 by the 18th Earl of Shrewsbury and within thirty years annual visitor numbers exceeded 30,000.

Visitors paid to see the likes of animal tamers and acrobats as well as fireworks and the gardens themselves. Then in 1924 a group of local estate agents formed Alton Towers Ltd, taking ownership of the estate, and keeping the gardens open to the general public.

During the second world war, the house was requisitioned by the military before being returned to Alton Towers Ltd in the 1950s who re-opened the gardens for public viewing. During the 1960s Alton Towers Ltd developed the park with the addition of a fairground, boating lake, a railway and a cable car chairlift before property developer, John Broome, became a majority shareholder and began planning its change to a theme park.

The transition began in 1979 with a pay-one-price entrance fee but it would be an exciting new rollercoaster the following year that would really put Alton Towers on the map! A first in Europe, the ‘Corkscrew’ was a steel coaster with a double inverted loop. It opened on 4th April 1980 to a crowd of 30,000 visitors and a summer that saw visitor numbers double to over 1 million compared to the previous year. While the Corkscrew is now gone, a piece of its track is permanently installed outside the park gates, and is the first thing to greet arriving visitors.

The following year, 1981, saw no less than four big rides added to the park; two water rides; ‘The Flume’ and the ‘Grand River Canyon’, as well as two ‘dark’ (indoor) rides, ‘Around the World in 80 Days’ and ‘The Black Hole’, the latter being an indoor roller coaster. It was around this time that hubby and I made our first visit of many to Alton Towers.

In 1987 a ‘Star Trek’ themed Monorail was installed to transport guests from the, by now, massive car park to the park entrance (a journey, and I speak from experience, that can take up to 30 minutes on foot) and it was opened on 13th August of that year by none other than ‘Captain Kirk’ himself, actor Mr William Shatner. That same year the cable car chairlift that had been operating since 1964 was replaced. It had ran from what is today ‘Tower Street’ to the area we know as the ‘Forbidden Valley’. Its replacement followed the same early route but added a third station and allowed riders to continue on from the Forbidden Valley to the ‘Dark Forest’.

Renamed ‘Skyride’, it was (and still is) not just a ride but a means of travel around the huge expanse that makes up Alton Towers and can save considerable time, not to mention shoe leather!

It can accommodate pushchairs and wheelchairs as well as those on foot and is a great way to get an aerial view of the park and gardens as you pass over from a height of 200 feet.

In 1996 the quirky Alton Towers Hotel opened its doors, turning the park into a ‘resort’. This was followed in 2003 by the Splash Landings Hotel complete with a 7 pool / 10 slide indoor-outdoor waterpark. The Enchanted Village (log cabins) followed in 2015, with a third hotel, the CBeebies in 2017 and finally Stargazing (glamping) Pods in 2019, making Alton Towers the biggest theme park resort in the UK by far. Alton Towers is home to many ‘firsts’ such as its coaster, ‘Smiler’ which has a world-beating 14 inversions.

Another that is worth a mention is that it is home to the UK’s

one and only ‘Rollercoaster Restaurant’. Opened in 2016, diners order food

and drinks from a pad and the food is delivered to their table by overhead tracks. Yes you read that correctly! One track even sends the food through a full 360º loop!

Today the park is home to nearly 40 attractions, a quarter of which are world-class rollercoasters, and with the Towers open to the public as well as its extensive gardens, it has something to offer not only thrill seekers but historians and horticulturists alike. One word of warning; do not be fooled by the park map into thinking the gardens offer a shortcut from one area to another – it’s anything but!

St Fagan’s Welsh Folk Museum

If you ever fancy a nice day out walking in the fresh air, learning about the history of south Wales then take a trip to St. Fagan’s near Cardiff.

St Fagan’s Castle was originally built in 1580 and later became a grade 1 listed building. The Elizabethan manor house with beautiful formal gardens was donated to the National Museum of Wales in 1946 by the Earl of Plymouth for a site of an open air museum. Although much of the interior was restored in the 19th century, it began as a home for a local lawyer Dr John Gibbon in 1580. It was then bought by Edward Lewis of Y Fan, Caerphilly in 1616 and still today the initials EBL 1620 can be seen in fire backs and panelling as Edward and his wife Blanche put their ‘stamp’ on their home. The Lewis heiress, Elizabeth married the 3rd Earl of Plymouth in 1730 and the manor passed into the Earl’s of Plymouth and was rented out for many years afterwards until 1880 when Lord Robert Windsor, soon to be Earl of Plymouth, and his family used it as a summer escape. Now it is furnished to reflect a family home of the late 19th century as well as illustrating some of the history through its lifetime.

It opened to the public in 1948 and its aim was to show how the people of Wales lived, worked and enjoyed leisure time over the centuries. The buildings are all original buildings from places all over Wales and have been moved, brick by pain-staking brick, and re-erected on site and they include a school, Oakdale workman’s institute (pictured here), a chapel, public house, fair ground, farms as well as homes, shops and places of work. There are also several workshops demonstrating the skills of the day such as leather tanning.

It’s set in over 100 acres, 42 of which being woodland, with beautiful landscapes and gardens reflecting as much as possible the houses of the period, as well as the geographical and social status of their original settings. You can even see native livestock and traditional farming as part of daily life showing the rich heritage and culture of Wales.

Different events take place throughout the year and with free entry, other than a small parking payment, it’s a great family day out. The entrance holds a two galley museum introducing the history and lives of Welsh people plus a nice play area just outside for children. To help make your visit more enjoyable there are cafes, a gift shop plus picnic areas and benches all over the site and even a map to suggest a good wheelchair route.

Karen Pratley

ABERTILLERY 1925

What was happening in Abertillery one hundred years ago?

More than you might have imagined. The coal trade on which Abertillery was so dependent had slumped which meant that there was a great deal of unemployment and hardship. Indeed, so severe was unemployment that it was raised in Parliament. Local MP Mr Barker asked the Secretary for Mines if he was aware that three collieries in Abertillery, all owned by the Ebbw Vale Steel, Iron and Coal Company had been shut down for several months and that over 4000 men were unemployed as a consequence.

He further asked if the Secretary for Mines had any information about their re-opening. Perhaps predictably, the reply was that he would 'make inquiries'. The MP in question, George Barker, was born in Staffordshire and started his career in the army. He served in the Anglo-Zulu War before becoming a coal miner in Abertillery where he became politically active and so he had a strong rapport with the mining communities he served.

On a happier note, on 25th April 1925 the Six Bells Recreation Grounds were officially opened. They had actually been completed a year earlier but the decision was made to wait a year to let the ground settle (the site was a former refuse tip) and for the grass and plants to properly bed in. The park at that time had a children's play area, bowling green, tennis courts and gardens. I used this park in my youth – a lovely spot. And I recall that not so many years ago the museum had a stall at an event there.

You might be interested to watch a YouTube video of 'Six Bells Park Centenary Re-enactment – Day One' using the link below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oo21XJ5m6J0

A Post Office in Church Street opened in December 1925. But is it the same one I remember from my childhood days in the 1950s, including the stamp machine outside? I'm not sure. If you want a reminder of what a stamp machine looked like, you can still see one at the former Post Office building in Blaenavon.

While the 'new' Post Office was opening in 1925, Abertillery Iron Foundry closed down but opened up again under a different name a year later and then in 1927 the foundry was registered as the Warwills Foundry & Engineering Works.

It's hard to believe now that there was a busy foundry right in the heart of the town.

Funds were still being raised for the War Memorial which is now such a feature of the town. In April of 1925 the Abertillery Division of Women Unionists Association held a Flag Day in the town. It seems it wasn't just the men who were politically active at this time.

Further evidence of how active our local women were is also shown by the many women who signed ‘The Welsh Women's Peace Petition’. The document is held by the National Library of Wales and if you go on-line you can see that women in house after house in street after street in Abertillery added their signatures; a total of 390,296 Welsh Women supported this cause. The petition was taken to the USA where it was presented to the women of America, the intention being to unite the women of Wales and the United states of America in a shared effort to fight for a world without wars.

1925 was the year that Marie Stopes set up the first official birth control clinic at Abertillery Hospital. That is a story warranting an article in its own right. It was a landmark event but sadly an initiative which did not last long due, I believe, to opposition in the town, certainly from some clergy, but you have to wonder what the majority of women in the town thought about it.

For those of you who like 'techie' stuff, it is reported that in 1925 a turbo compressor and condenser plant was installed at Cwmtillery Colliery to provide compressed air for underground haulages, coal cutters and conveyors. It could provide 12,000 cubic feet per minute.

I wonder what a report on Abertillery 2025 would contain if one were to be written in 2025?

Jen Price

Quiz answers