Ferocious Welsh Women (Mumbles Myths I)

I was born in Albert House in the village of Oystermouth in Mumbles. A grand-sounding address for what is, in truth, only a slightly-larger-than-the-rest terraced house in a village of terraces. But it wasn’t always just that, for, according to family legend, it used to be a pub. 

My grandmother frequently told the story of how, when she was having the front pebble-dashed, a local worthy by the name of Harry Libby, accosted her. ‘You are burying a piece of Mumbles history,’ he said. He was objecting to the fact that the pebble-dash was covering up the name Albert Inn, which was painted on the front of the house. (Which in itself seems to me to be a good reason to cover it up: after all, who wants thirsty strangers knocking on the door at all hours demanding their three-happence of ale.) Anyway Granny told him where he could bury his history and the pebble-dashing went ahead, leaving only a legend.

It’s certainly one of the oldest houses in the village with walls thick enough to keep out the Normans or the Germans, not that the Germans would have got as far as the house
with great-gran on guard at the gate with her carving knife. I come from a long line of ferocious Welsh women. 

Strangely enough though I’ve never been able to find a record of Albert Inn on any map or document. Maybe it was just wishful thinking on my grandmother’s part; she liked her daily pint of stout. Or maybe, like the ice cream, it is just another of those village legends. 

Being born some years after the war, I was brought up on the story of Mr Macari of Fortes Ice Cream Parlour, and how, on the day war ended, he gave free ice cream to every child in the village. Can you imagine anything more wonderful to a child than being given free ice cream?  It was the knickerbocker glory of dreams. But then someone poured sour cream on my legend.

I was recounting this story when a lady much older than me said, ‘That can’t be true. There was sugar rationing during the war: they can’t have made ice cream.’ 

The truth or a myth? I know which one I’d prefer.

The baby named for a bet

If you look closely in the photo of Albert House you'll notice this:

It's one of two plaster ornaments that used to be sit either side of the steps outside the front door. You'll see one more clearly in the photo of my great-gran and me. (Incidentally the steps that feature in more family photos that anyone else were large pieces of slate that warmed up wonderfully in the sunshine.) One said Home and the other Sweet. For some reason I think they were placed to read Home Sweet rather than Sweet Home but I could be remembering wrongly.

Yesterday I asked my great-aunt, who was born in Albert house and who now at the age of 96 lives next door, about them and she told me her father Hobart Honey had been commissioned to make three of these saying, Home Sweet Home but the woman from Norton who ordered them died before he'd finished. So they ended up decorating Hobart's garden.

I asked the builders about them. They thought the owner intended to keep them but I might try and contact him and ask him if he'd like to sell them to me. I don't know where we'd put them but I would rather like to have them back.

Going back to Hobart Honey there is a story about him in a book of old Mumbles pubs but the story related there is not quite accurate according to family legend.

The original Hobart Pasha

He was born in the Marine Hotel, a public house near the sea front in Southend, Mumbles. At the time Mumbles was a yachting centre and was visited by the rich and famous including a Hobart Pasha, the admiral of the Turkish fleet. Apparently Thomas Honey, the landlord, got into conversation with a customer who mentioned that Hobart Pasha had left the village. 'No, he hasn't,' retorted my great-great-grandfather.
The customer argued that he was right so the landlord challenged him to put his money where his mouth was.

Once the bet had been taken, the landlord went upstairs and brought down his new baby son. 'Meet Hobart Pasha,' he declared.

We're not told what his wife, my great-great-gran, thought about this choice of name for her baby.

Homes and families

Albert House is being renovated. The house, place of my birth and my home for twenty-five years, is being brought into the 21st century. And with it the past is being chipped away. The garden has already been destroyed. The apple trees, my mother's pride and joy, are gone as is the orange blossom that she planted so I could carry some of this most traditional flower on my wedding day. She didn't live to see that day but I did carry orange blossom in my bouquet and I left for the church from this my home.

The destruction being wrought made me think back, to remember

It took the builders three days to knock through the wall of my bedroom to put in a window. Day after day, they chipped and hammered and swore until the hole in the four foot thick wall was big enough to let in the sun, but bigger than the view of Polly Garter next-door’s garden deserved. 

With my great-gran on the steps of Albert House

My bedroom was at the back of the house in the part that had already withstood eight generations. In my great-great-great-grandfather’s day it had been a public house. Years later, when it was finally rid of the smell of ale and gin, my great-grandmother wanted the front, which at that time still bore the legend, ‘Albert Inn’, fashionably pebble-dashed. The work had scarcely begun before the local bigwig, Harry Libby, came thundering to the door, ‘What are you doing, woman? This is sheer vandalism, destroying the heritage of the village.’ My great-grandmother didn’t give birth to twelve and raise eight children to be told what she could or couldn’t do with her own home — especially not by an upstart village boy — and she told him so.

That house, the stands in the middle of a terrace in the heart of the village. It was a matriarchal household: throughout my childhood there were four generations of women living there. My grandfather was a quiet gentle man, content to sit in his chair by the window, listening to the wireless and smoking his cigarettes, and my father, well, he was a character in one of my library books. On the rare occasions when I felt well-disposed towards him, he was the heroic Mr March away at war; most times he was the unseen parent who packed his daughter off to boarding school and sold her pony the moment she’d gone.

My great-grandfather, the man occupying centre stage

My great-grandfather, on the other hand, had died the year before I was born leaving a legacy of legend. He – almost single-handedly if family history is to be believed - had built Ford’s first factories in America. When the hiraeth became too strong, and he returned home to Wales, Henry Ford himself – again, the stuff of family myth - came to our village and begged him to return, offering to transport the whole family back to the States. But the women wouldn’t go and a good thing too else my story would be completely different.

As I said, my great-grandmother had eight surviving children and her presence in my growing-up home meant a constant flow of visitors. The encompassing of me within this extended family provided a shelter, the walls of which were stronger than bricks and mortar, and it was easy to ignore the non-existence of one person, to have only a vague awareness that something was missing but that it didn’t really matter much. I was surrounded with love and its Welsh synonym, good home cooking. When there were lots of us, the family, there for dinner we would pull out the table and I would squeeze onto the bench next to the wall. This was my favourite place, where the bricks I leaned against were warmed by Mr Shires next door’s fire. I sat quietly in the glow of conversation and knew that here I was safe. 


In 1964 I passed my eleven plus and the door to the another world, to Glanmor Grammar School, a more precarious world of Latin and physics, was opened to me. There was one other fatherless girl in the class but her father had had the decency to die. I explained to those who wanted to know that my father worked abroad. The summer of love was still to come and, in any case, free love only applied to the beautiful people out there, not the parents of good grammar school girls in South Wales.

My French teacher was called Miss George. She was soft-spoken with a gentle face and greying uncontrollable hair. In her lesson she asks around the class the question, Est ce que faites votre pere? Thirty three girls sitting in rows waiting for their turn, or in my case, praying for the bell to ring, please, before Miss George gets to me, please don’t let her ask me. Shall I lie, make up an answer? Il est un medecin. Tres bien, where does he work? No, I’d blush, stutter, be caught out. Mon pere est mort. Convenient but they all know. The bell rings, the problem goes away for today, and I go home to steak and kidney pie and rice pudding.

Some of that extended family on the steps

So was that it? The worst I had to bear? It stands out in my memory but when I stop and think, try as I might, I cannot recall one unkind comment, not one slur on my parentage through the whole of my childhood and adolescence. If that was as bad as it got, then surely the family did its job well. 




When I enter the house that is now my home, I breathe in the same sense of security that my first home gave me; I hope my children feel it too. 

Since it was sold out of the family, Albert House has come on the market several times. Each time one or other member of the family views it with barely-concealed desire. But it’s never really suitable: too big, too small, no garage, no garden. 

I was the last of the family to be born in Albert House and I linger over the link with the past. I’ve looked on old maps, tried to locate the public house that was to become my home. I’ve never been able to find it. 

Home

I was looking for something else when I came across this piece of writing from a few years ago. Sometimes I surprise myself with what I find I have written. Does that happen to you?

It took the builders three days to knock through the wall of my bedroom to put in a window. Day after day, they chipped and hammered and swore until the hole in the four foot thick wall was scarcely big enough to let in the sun, but bigger than the view of Polly Garter’s next-door garden deserved.

My bedroom was at the back of the house in the part that had already withstood eight generations. In my great-great-great-grandfather’s day it had been a public house. Years later, when it was finally rid of the smell of ale and gin, my great-grandmother wanted the front, which at that time still bore the legend, ‘Albert Inn’, fashionably pebble-dashed. The work had scarcely begun before the village bigwig came thundering to the door, ‘What are you doing, woman? This is sheer vandalism, destroying our heritage.’ My great-grandmother didn’t give birth to twelve and raise eight children to be told what she could or couldn’t do with her own home — especially not by an upstart village boy — and she told him so.

That house, the place of my birth and my home for twenty-five years, stands in the middle of a terrace in the heart of the village. It was a matriarchal household: throughout my childhood there were four generations of women living there. My great-grandfather died the year before I was born; my grandfather sat quietly, smoking, in the corner, keeping his head down and his hearing-aid switched off; and my father, well, he was a character in one of my library books. On the rare occasions when I felt well-disposed towards him, he was the heroic Mr March away at war; most times he was the unseen parent who packed his daughter off to boarding school and sold her pony the moment she’d gone.

For a long time I believed my mother when she said my father worked abroad, like my great-grandfather had done. He, my great-grandfather that is, had worked on Ford’s first factories in America. When the hiraeth became too strong, and he returned home to Wales, Henry Ford himself came to our village and begged him to return, offering to transport the whole family back to the States. Or so the story goes. If my great-grandfather had accepted, then this story would be as imagined as I am.

But I am as real as the pen in my hand, so what more of home? As I said, my great-grandmother had eight surviving children and her presence in my growing-up home meant a constant flow of visitors. The encompassing of me within this extended family provided a shelter, the walls of which were stronger than bricks and mortar, and it was easy to ignore the non-existence of one person, to have only a vague awareness that something was missing but that it didn’t really matter much. I was surrounded with love and its synonym, good home cooking. When there were lots of us, the family, there for dinner we would pull out the table and I would squeeze onto the bench next to the wall. This was my favourite place, where the bricks I leaned against were warmed by Mr Shires next door’s fire. I sat quietly in the glow of conversation and knew that here I was safe.

In 1964 I passed my eleven plus and the door to another world, a more precarious world of Latin and physics, was opened to me. There was one other fatherless girl in the class but her father had had the decency to die. I explained to those who wanted to know that my father worked abroad. The summer of love was still to come and, in any case, free love only applied to the beautiful people out there, not the parents of good grammar-school girls in South Wales.

My French teacher was called Miss Henry. She was softly-spoken with a gentle face and greying uncontrollable hair. In her lesson we go round the class answering the question, Est ce que faites votre pere? Thirty-three girls sitting in rows waiting for their turn, or in my case, for the bell to ring, please, before Miss Henry gets to me, please don’t let her ask me. Shall I lie, make up an answer? Il est un medecin. Tres bien, where does he work? No, I’d blush, stutter, be caught out. Mon pere est mort. Convenient but they all know. The bell rings, the problem goes away for today, and I go home to steak and kidney pie and rice pudding.

It stands out in my memory but when I stop and think, try as I might, I cannot recall one unkind comment, not one slur on my parentage through the whole of my childhood and adolescence. If that was as bad as it got, then surely the family did its job well.

When I enter the house that is now my home, I breathe in the same sense of security that my first home gave me. I think my children feel it too; they continue to return here.

Since it was sold by my uncle some twenty years ago, Albert House has come on the market several times. Each time one member or other of the family views it with barely-concealed desire. But it’s never really suitable: too big, too small, no garage, no garden.

I was the last of the family to be born in Albert House and I linger over the link with the past. I’ve looked on old maps, tried to locate the public house that was to become my home. I’ve never been able to find it.