Monthly Newsletter
October 2024

What’s On at The Met this month

​​

Sat 5th Oct 7.30pm That 80s Rock Show.  Tickets from £20

Sun 13th Oct 8pm Desperado’s Eagles tribute act. Tickets from £20

Fri 18th Oct 8pm Met Comedy night with Paul Sinha (from The Chase).  Tickets from £15

Tue 22nd Oct 7.30pm The Three Musketeers.  Tickets from £13.

Tue 31st Oct 1pm Harry Panto & The Serpent of Secrets.  Tickets from £9.50.

Tue 1st , 8th, 15th, & 29th Oct 2-4pm Tea Dance Tickets from £4

​

For these and more visit:

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

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 J.  Price Secretary

Mrs K.  Pratley Treasurer

Mrs S.  Murphy Newsletter

​​

Vice Presidents (Annual Subscription £25)

​​

Rev Roy Watson

Mrs Carol Brooks

Mrs Margaret Cook

Mr John Cavaciuti

Mrs Margaret Herbert

Mr Ross Leadbeater

Ms Michele Dack

​​​​

August 100 Club

​​​​

This month’s prize numbers were drawn by a visiting member of the public and the lucky winners are:-

​

No.  48 Colin Ewers £20

​

No.  21 Mary Lester £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.

​​

Halloween Festival

​

​

​

​

​​

​

The museum will be open 10-5pm on Thursday 31st October to coincide with the town’s ‘Scare in Jubilee Square’.   The museum will be hosting face painting as well as a pumpkin hunt.  So don your best witches hat and cloak and come along for an afternoon of ‘spooktacular’ fun.  And if you can’t make the 31st, our pumpkin hunt, will also be operating Sat 26th Oct, Fri 1st Nov and Sat 2nd Nov (all 10-1pm), 50p per child.

​

Winterfest/Christmas Fayre

Saturday 7th 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 and CDs.  Please bring your donations to the museum at your earliest convenience.

​​​​​​

*** Many thanks to councillors, Ross Leadbeater and Keith Chaplin for their joint donation of £200. ***​​​

 

Our Past

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​​

​

Our museum fulfils a valuable role in ensuring that local artefacts, photographs and memories of the past are conserved for the future.  I grew up when local mines were active.  It would be unthinkable now to live with a mine or a tip at the front of your house (and another at the back perhaps) but it was how life was then. 

 

Our children and grandchildren can have little idea of that way of life (and can be thankful for  a more comfortable life) without the role of places and organisations such as our museum.  I can't praise enough the website https://outoftheblueartifacts.com/ as it contains a wealth of information on so many aspects of local life including the history of South Griffin Colliery. 

 

For now, I'm going to give just a bit of information on that colliery although I must stress that it had stopped producing coal when I entered the world, I'm not that old! Why South Griffin Colliery?  Well, I recently walked north from Abertillery Park along the Ebbw Fach Trail (well worth doing, it's a lovely walk) and when it reaches Bourneville you see the bridge over the twin arches over the river as shown in the photo below and I learned that this was the access to South Griffin Colliery.

​

Now for a bit of history; apologies for the statistics but they paint a picture.  The first Griffin Pit, Pit No.1 or North Griffin  was sunk in 1873.  This was taken over in 1878 by J Lancaster & Co and they then sunk Pits 2 and 3 in 1882 – known as South Griffin Colliery and located about a mile to the south.  In their heyday in about 1903, the three pits employed 3,400 men although this fell to 1,790 when North Griffin closed in 1909.  The South Griffin pit was 225.9m deep and in 1889 it produced 177,000 tons of coal.  Coal continued to be produced at South Griffin until 1921 after which it was used to aid ventilation and water pumping at the nearby Rose Heyworth Colliery until it (South Griffin) closed in the 1950s.

​

The miners at South Griffin were a feisty workforce.  I haven't been able to get details but it seems they went on strike on safety grounds in 1914 and went so far as producing a printed leaflet seeking funds to continue with the strike.  There were many casualties although whether they were more than average I'm not able to say.  The Northern Mine Research Society lists 28 men but refers to these as 'some' of those who died so presumably there were more.  The saddest death was perhaps that of J G Jones who died from a haulage accident in August 1894 aged just 13.

  

Fast forward to 1935.  The pit had closed (other than pumping and ventilation for Rose Heyworth) and had fallen into disrepair.  This was the perfect set for a film called ''Things to Come' based on a novel by H G Wells.  It needed thousands of extras and provided temporary work for many local unemployed miners as well as attracting thousands of sightseers including children.  I can well imagine that as I can recall the interest which was generated in 1966 when part of the film 'Arabesque' starring Sophia Loren was shot at Crumlin featuring views of the Viaduct.  You can see a copy of the trailer for 'Things to Come' on YouTube – it is an interesting 4 minutes – use the link below:

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

​

When you walk that part of the Ebbw Fach Trail I hope this bit of information will add to its interest.

Jen Price

 

Tommy Cooper 1921 - 1984

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​​

​

​​​​

For those of us of a certain age, whenever we hear the phrase ‘just like that’, we instantly think of the legendary Tommy Cooper who died 40 years ago this year.  Tommy was born in a house in Caerphilly to parents Thomas H Cooper and mother Catherine Gertrude Wright.  He was actually delivered by the landlady of the house his parents were renting.  When Tommy was three years old his parents moved to Exeter which is where Tommy developed his west country accent that became a big part of his act.  His interest in magic tricks began at the age of eight thanks to his aunt who bought him a magic set as a birthday gift.

 

On leaving school Tommy joined the ship building industry but when war broke out in 1939 he found himself called up for service, serving seven years in the Royal Horse Guards.  It was while here that he joined the NAAFI (Navy, Army & Air Force Institutes) entertainment party and developed his magic act mixed with comedy.  It was also during this period a trick he was performing failed.  However, much to his surprise, the audience thought it hilarious and so Tommy started deliberately making mistakes to get laughs and then of course, just when you thought he had failed, he would pull off an incredible feat of magic leaving his audience stunned and mystified. One night while performing in Cairo, he was supposed to be in a costume which required a pith helmet (like the one pictured on page one) however he had forgotten the helmet and so he grabbed a fez off the head of a passing waiter.  The audience loved it and so the fez became a permanent part of his act and his trademark.  

​

After he was demobbed in 1947 he went into show business full-time and soon became a member of the Magic Circle.  He made his debut on the BBC talent show

New to You in 1948 but it would be his many shows in the 1970s that cemented his place as one of the world’s most well-known comedians.  But his heavy drinking and smoking, as well as his punishing workload began to take a toll on his health.  Always the comedian, he loved to act the clown so on 19th April 1984 when he fell over backwards, the audience thought it was part of the act and continued to laugh as he lay on the stage dying of a heart attack during a show that was being broadcast live to millions of viewers.  

​

In 2008 a bronze of Tommy Cooper, wearing of course a fez and holding a wand and top hat, was erected in his honour in his birth town of Caerphilly, unveiled by none other than the great Sir Anthony Hopkins himself.

 

Sally Murphy

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Cooper

​

History of the Driving Test

​

Today no-one is allowed to drive unaccompanied on Britain’s roads without having first passed a driving test, (though given the standards of some drivers it does make you wonder) but this wasn’t always the case…

 

The Motor Car Act 1903 introduced a licence for car owners but this was just a means of identifying what cars were on the road and to whom they belonged.  It had nothing to do with driver competency.  The Act required that all vehicles had to be registered, had to display registration marks and the licence, which cost £1, had to renewed every year.  In addition, the drivers themselves had to have a licence which they bought at Post Office counters for 5 shillings (25p).  By 1931 there were over 2 million vehicles on the road and around 7000 deaths each year due to accidents and so it was decided that rules needed to be introduced to try and limit the number of accidents and deaths.  Enter the Highway Code.  The first edition in 1931 cost 1p and had just 18 pages of advice (it wasn’t law) and included advice to drivers of horse-drawn carriages as well as motor vehicles.

 

By 1935 it was decided that to improve driving competency, a test would be introduced.  The test would be compulsory from 1st June for all drivers who had started driving on or after 1st April 1934 which meant that my paternal grandfather, born in 1905 and who already held a driving licence issued before 1st April 1934, never had to sit a driving test.  To try and avoid a rush for tests, voluntary testing was available from March that year and a Mr R Beere was the very first person to sit and pass the driving test.  He took the test on 16th March 1935 at a cost of 7s 6d (37.5p) though he wouldn’t have gone to a test centre as none existed at that time.  Instead he would have had to arrange to meet with an examiner at a mutually convenient location.  Around a quarter of a million tests were held that first year with a pass rate of 63%.

 

With the outbreak of war in September 1939, driving tests were suspended and examiners were redeployed to fuel rationing supervision and other traffic duties.  Testing would not ​​​recommence until 1st November 1946 only to be suspended again ten years later on 24th November 1956 due to the Suez crisis with learners allowed to drive unaccompanied and examiners once more on fuel rationing duty.  Testing, which had gone up from 50p to £1 on 19th October 1956, resumed on 15th April 1957 and that same year the 3 year licence was introduced meaning the licence now had to be renewed every three years rather than every year, at a cost of one shilling (5p).

 

1958 saw another change in that provisional licences were now only valid for 6 months meaning if you couldn’t pass your test in that time you had to apply for a another provisional licence.  In 1962 another law change meant you were only allowed seven provisional licences and if you failed to pass your test in that time you could be refused a further provisional licence. In 1973 the computerised green paper driving licence was introduced to replace what had been the red booklet licence (similar to a passport only smaller) though it was still only valid for three years but this would change in 1976 when the green paper licence was made valid from the day you passed your test until your 70th birthday.  This is what I received when I passed my test and I still have my paper licence to this day.

 

The year 2000 saw a significant change to the driving test when the theory test was introduced.  Learner drivers could not take a practical driving test until the theory part had been passed and this is still the case today.  This theory test replaced the theory questions (such as braking distances) asked by your examiner at the start of your practical driving test.  In 2002 the test was extended to include a ‘Hazard Perception’ test.  

You can read the full history of the driving test and road safety using this link:

 

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/history-of-road-safety-and-the-driving-test/history-of-road-safety-the-highway-code-and-the-driving-test​​​​​
​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​