Memories of Victorian Bridgend.

A view of Dunraven Place.

I have been kindly donated the memoirs of a lady who lived in our town during the reign of Queen Victoria. The memoirs were donated to me by Ann Rees of Bridgend Historical Society. Written by her aunt, these memoirs give an interesting glimpse into everyday life in the town. Below are a few extracts and notes from the memoirs.

"The River Ogmore was frozen over and 

people were able to skate on it."

*Alice's first school in 1893 was in a house still standing at the bend of Cowbridge Road with Nolton Street, it seems to have been a private nursery class although far removed from the "learning through play" of today. Miss Francis who ran it with her sister, had been a pupil-teacher at the Board School in Freeschool court.

The school classroom was held in the front room of the house and the children sat on two rows of wooden, forms, with no backrest as they were always supposed to sit up straight to develop good posture while at the rear of the room there was a gallery and a raised platform. 

When the children came to school they had to curtsy and say: "Good Morning Miss Francis." They would then stand around the harmonium and sing a hymn followed by a prayer. Next, they would be given a slate and chalk and learn how to form letters with neat pot hooks, and write, "up slanty and thin, and down straight and thick."

Once a week as treat, they were taught to knit using whalebone needles and string. Miss Francis seems to have been to be quite a fashionable lady as on Church going days she wore a very long dress, which was always trailing on the ground, while on her head there was a hat with a great big feather in it.

"When we were girls waists were twenty-one inches, and there was some pulling in of stays, young ladies were always fainting in Church, I can tell you."

Alice then went on to the Board School in Brackla Street where her most vivid memory was of standing in the schoolyard to watch Mrs John Randall placing the foundation for the weathercock on the spire of Nolton Church. 

There was a lift or type of wooden cage attached to the scaffolding. Mrs Randall, her husband and the foreman landed on a platform, then climbed a ladder to the top of the spire, where Mrs Randall spread cement and set the top stone in place. The next week, after the cement was set, the weathercock was fixed there, presumably by someone other than Mrs Randall.

The school itself appears to have been run on rather authoritarian lines as the Master seems to have spent a good deal of time on caning errant boys. The Mistress too was not averse to caning girls, although on the hands, and usually for something trivial like forgetting a handkerchief.

In about 1895 there was a very severe winter, and the men who worked in the Quarry had to stop work for six weeks. Soup kitchens were set up as no work meant no pay in the days before unemployment benefit. The River Ogmore was frozen over and people were able to skate on it. One man a Mr McGaull, who lived near the river, had a very narrow escape when he fell through some thin ice.

Nolton Street was composed mainly of small shops and houses. One lady who would have lived opposite where the Rhiw Arcade is now used to take a chair on the grass outside her front door, where she sold sand to people wishing to keep a clean doorstep; another lady Miss McClellan had a sweet shop where one could have a farthing's worth of sweets or a sugar mouse for a halfpenny.

(Sources: Ann Rees of Bridgend Historical Society & BLS) 

* Name changed at request on the family.