Sunnybank: The curiosity of Whitchurch
Dec
By Nigel Lewis
This time, we visit another lost corner of the old parish; a long terrace of strange houses called Sunnybank.
Many folk will know the name and will have walked near the spot where the terrace once stood, at the entrance to the canal at Melingriffith and the Forest Farm Nature Reserve. The sketch, based on the only known photograph of the houses, gives a flavour of Sunnybank, back in the heyday of the canal.
So, when was Sunnybank built, by whom, and who for?
Certainly, it was built before 1790, which makes the block nearly 240 years old, as part of the Melingriffith Tinplate Works, to provide housing for the many workers who were flooding into the area.
A little bit of industrial history might help: Edgar Chappell in his book Historic Melingriffith, advises that there was a forge at Melingriffith by 1750, and ten years later, Richard Jordan acquired a 200-year lease. This was assigned eight years later to Reynolds Getley & Co from Bristol. Edgar Chappell tells us that they developed the works into a ‘prosperous and progressive undertaking’.
By 1775, tinplate manufacture at Melingriffith was in full swing with a new mill under construction and repairs to the older (Jordan) mill. In the 1780s, ownership transferred to Harfoot Partridge & Co with brothers John and James Harfoot – who were Quakers – in control. By 1808, John Partridge, who owned 20% of the business and was then quite elderly, transferred his shares to Richard Blakemore. He was the man who later adopted his nephew TW Booker.
It would have been during the control of John and James Harfoot that Sunnybank would have been constructed. They had already built an ironworks at Nant-y-Glo and had constructed an almost identical block of houses there (see grainy photograph below).
About the same time, the Glamorganshire Canal was being constructed immediately below Sunnybank, on land squeezed alongside the works feeder; the enormous stone retaining wall confirming how little space there was.
Sunnybank was a row of ‘dual’ houses, three storeys high. The first OS map shows the footprint as seven properties running parallel with the canal, with open yards on both sides. By then it was probably a hundred years old already!
To the west, and overlooking the canal, was access to the seven units at lower ground floor level. On the eastern side, is the lane – still leading up to Ty Clyd Farm – providing access to the two upper floors, and another seven houses. So, there would have been fourteen family units in total, with communal privvies to both yard levels.
The lower units had two rooms, with windows on one side only, probably a combined scullery/parlour and a bedroom. It’s suggested that each unit also had a gloomy larder, literally built into the bank behind. The upper units, being two-storeys high, were a little larger, with a scullery, a separate parlour and two bedrooms over.
Of course, there was no piped water and any drainage would have been incredibly rudimentary, spilling directly into the canal. Lighting would have been via candles;
I’ve heard that water was supplied via a spring emanating from the stone retaining wall behind.
And what were the units like inside? There’s little guidance now, but walls would have been rough stone, probably with a limed-whitewash finish – to reduce the risk of disease. The ground floors would have been flagstones, or perhaps rammed earth with pebbles or pitched stones. The upper storeys would have had planked floors, and all the ceilings limed.
Furniture back then would have been incredibly rudimentary, often no more than a collection of boards and boxes. Perhaps a rag-rug on the floor and mean curtains at the window. The most fortunate and provident couples might acquire new furniture at the time of their marriage, but even they had to be content with a roughly carpentered bedstead, a table, a few stools, perhaps a chair, and a chest for all their clothing – all of which had to last a lifetime!
Whilst the houses on Sunnybank would have had enormous fireplaces, it was only in the mid-1800s that the black iron fireplaces so reminiscent of grandparents and great-grandparents houses, began to appear. Before then, cooking was quite rudimentary on the open fire.
So, who were the occupants of the row? Edgar Chappell suggests that single men or married couples without children occupied the lower units, whilst families with children and dependant relatives lived in the larger units above. The census of 1841 tells a different story. Sunnybank provided home to at least thirteen families, with William Evan, a 71-year-old sawyer in one with his wife Fanny. Christopher Brangham was nearby, a 30-year-old tin man with his wife Rebecca and their five children.
The Meyricks, a little further down, had dad Edward as a tin man with both of his young sons working in Melingriffith too. With their two daughters as well, I wonder how they all squashed into the tiny house? Twenty years later, in the 1861 census, there were fifteen different families living in the row. The age of the parents seems younger, with fewer older relatives sharing. Perhaps that’s part of the Quaker/Booker largesse with older folk living elsewhere in Melingriffith – or am I just kidding myself?
Sunnybank stood for over 150 years, demolished sometime in the 1940s; and the site is now just a lost and overgrown plot on the old canal.
Life back then was hard, and childhood fleeting. A child would often share a bedroom with three or four siblings, most likely sharing a bed as well, then commencing a lifetime of work at the tinworks, when they were just eight or ten.
Were Elizabeth Rowland (age 6), her neighbour Thomas Watkins (8), and near-neighbour Mary Lewis (8), all part of the Sunnybank gang in 1861? We’ll never know.
Perhaps we’ll explore the story of the Melingriffith works another time – watch this space!
Nigel Lewis is a member of AWEN@thelibrary (awen.cymru@gmail.com)
