Lucky, lucky Cwmbach-ophiles… we make it our mission to spoil you.
Many more photographs of St Mary Magdalene Church, Cwmbach have been added to the Gallery.
Click here to see the full set of Photographs.
St Mary Magdalene’s Church was established in 1882. Quite late in the day to be frank.
According to Rhondda Cynon Taf Council’s Heritage Trail on Cwmbach : “Religious buildings opened, with the Baptists opening a chapel in 1841, the independents opening a small chapel known as Capel Bricks in 1846 and the Calvinistic Methodists opening a chapel at Tir Bach in 1852.”
In nearby Bridge Street, Wales’ first Co-Operative Store was opened on March 8th, 1860.
Good News today for Aberdare people… Remploy announced today that the Cwmbach Remploy site will remain open.
Remploy is the UK’s leading provider of employment services for disabled people. Today it published details of revised proposals for modernisation of the company. Following lengthy consultations with trade unions, the company is proposing to retain operations at the Cwmbach site.
Remploy was opened in Aberdare in 1973 and is part of the company’s healthcare business and manufactures orthotic products, mainly bespoke footwear. It now employs 68 people of whom 64 are disabled. The company is planning to keep the site open in order to develop a plan to support potential increases in business for orthotics arising from public procurement regulations.
Bob Warner, Remploy Chief Executive, said: “We are delighted that we are able to maintain production at Aberdare, but if we are to be successful, the factory will need to show satisfactory progress in moving toward an acceptable loss per disabled employee.
“The possible extra work has not yet been secured and so a voluntary redundancy programme is to be introduced to reduce the factory’s costs.”
Remploy’s revised modernisation proposals have been submitted for approval to Peter Hain, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.
Mr Warner added: “The plans which we have submitted meet the goals set by the Government for us to support many more disabled people into jobs in mainstream employment, avoid compulsory redundancy of disabled employees, and remain within a £555m spending limit over five years.”
By 2012, Remploy will each year be finding more than 20,000 jobs for disabled people in mainstream employment in the UK. Last year Remploy found more than 700 jobs for disabled people in mainstream employment in Wales.
It can strike a man or woman with such force and come down sudden from heaven like the elements.
Snow, wind, or rain will not hold back the desire to dive for cast-off pearls and treasures.
In Cwmbach yesterday it struck in the snow – see the photograph.
The poet
Harri Webb (1920-1994) spent twenty years living in Cwmbach in Cynon Valley. Today we could only spare twenty minutes in this Welsh village to reflect on the man and his work.
For a few of those minutes we stopped and stared from the Cwmbach hill and looked out towards the area of land they call Tirfounder Fields. The heart is being robbed from this land as the trees are ripped from the earth for a new housing development.
Hundreds of mature trees have been removed, simplifying the local environment in preparation for man and his machines to lay the concrete, the asphalt and the other toxic materials.
Harri Webb remembers the trees and birds in his poem “The Woods of Cynon” thus :
Aberdare, Llanwynno, all
Merthyr and Llanfabon,
The worst thing ever to befall
Was cutting the woods of Cynon.
They cut down many a parlour sweet
So pleasant with the sun on,
Places where men and boys would meet
In the forest of Glyn Cynon.
If a man had to take flight
From vengeance of the alien
He’d get a lodging for the night
With the nightingales of Cynon.
Many a birch tree in green attire
(Hanged high be every Saxon)
Is heaped as fuel for the fire
By the black men of iron.
For cutting down and making bare
The wild birds’ resting place
May confusion be the share
Of the false English race.
Better should the English be
Hanged in the depths of ocean
In hell to dwell in misery
For cutting the woods of Cynon.
I heard them saying yesterday
The parish is now so dreary
All the red deer have gone away
To the black wood of Mawddwy.
Hunting the badger and the hind
And the roebuck in the dell
All that is now behind
For Cynon Woods are felled.
If a stag was in the chase
Before the huntsman running
You’d never see him slack his pace
Till he reached the woods of Cynon.
If a girl came, fairest fair,
Beside the river strolling,
Pleasant it was to met her there
Down in the woods of Cynon.
And if they seek as in old days
For wood to bridge the river
Or build a church or a dwelling place
Glyn Cynon is no giver.
In judgement I’d set up a court
Of every honest fowl
And in his robes of office there
Their hangmen be the owl.
If anybody asks who made
This cruel declaration,
It’s one who often met his maid
In the forest of Glyn Cynon.
* from the Welsh of an anonymous poet (17th century).
Harri Webb, Collected Poems. Edited by Meic Stephens (Gomer, Llandysul 1995). ISBN 1 85902 299 5
Nearly fifty years ago John Kenneth Galbraith published his book The Affluent Society (1958) about the haves and have-nots of modern capitalist society.
The postcard on the left with images from Cwmbach is a reminder of the differences between the haves and have-nots.
Affluent Society was a book about contrasts in the economy. In Aberdare, the gulf between rich and poor has been transformed into a grotesque chasm in the past three decades of hyper-capitalism under Thatcher and Tony Blair, her ideological heir.
. Read the rest of this page »
Taking a short break from Welsh Nonconformist Chapels… we’ve added Photos of some of the Anglican Churches from Cynon Valley, including :
