I was born in 1915 at Gilfach Cottages in Six Bells, but moved to Arael Street not long after. My mother Blodwen Rees (nee Simmonds), whose parents lived opposite us, had worked in the house of Arthur and Laura (nee Weare) Patey who ran the Coach and Horses Pub in Six Bells, from the age of 13, caring for their son Donald when he was born. At 18, she married my father Albert Henry Rees, a miner at Six Bells Colliery. Nearby lived Mr Patey’s brother who later went on to marry his brother’s widow, an eye opener in those days! Mum was very impressed when in later years I told her that I’d seen “young Donald Patey” taking part in a religious discussion on TV.

I can visualise parts of Arael infant/junior school quite well. The classroom I was in had a tiered floor and I remember well the dread of each step down from the back of the room to the front if the teacher called you out. Looking back, the actual position of the school would be considered a nightmare now. It was positioned similarly to the school in Aberfan in the sense that an ever-growing slag heap started just a few yards from the infant’s playground. The area was called Warm Turn. Close to the school entrance passed the huge bucket type containers full of slag. One would go up the conveyor full, another would come down empty. From time to time the boys would jump up and grab onto one of the buckets for a free ride for a few yards. I remember one day a boy called Birchall did it, got entangled in the machinery and had his leg torn off. What a difference between the dangers children were exposed to then and the “no conkers” policies they have today.

My mother was absolutely insistent that I missed as little school as possible. Despite being born a healthy 10lb baby, following a serious illness as a toddler, I was a small sickly child (one with an anaemic, weak constitution Mum was told). Some of my worst memories included the embarrassment of being carried to school on occasions, wrapped in a shawl because I was too weak to walk. The embarrassment was compounded because I had circulation problems and Mum used to swathe my legs in putties, the army issue khaki strips of material used by soldiers to keep their legs warm in the First World War. (Probably obtained via Dad’s brother Edgar who was a soldier) I certainly wasn’t alone in being sickly. I remember lots of the children seemed to be permanently 'snotty' or coughing, and endlessly wiping their green trimmed noses with rags.

Being off frequently, sometimes just too unwell even to be carried, meant that I fell well behind with the arithmetic lessons. Less able pupils had desks at the back of the room, so when I was there that’s where I sat, about as far from the only heat source, the open fire, as you could possibly get. I can remember being so numbed with cold during the winter months that I could barely think, let alone do schoolwork. My saving grace according to nasty Mr Phillips (we had a nice Mr Phillips as well) although he couldn’t imagine why, given my apparent maths inability, was that I wasn't too bad at English for a “nincompoop”. (his word) This teacher wasn’t above harshly rapping even the coldest of clenched knuckles with his cane when he was angered by anything. I remember a boy in our class, a small puny little lad belonging to the Protheroe family who used to have to deliver papers for his family’s shop before school. He would often come in a bit late especially in bad weather, and would get severely caned for his trouble, on one occasion fainting. The two girls I was friendly with at school were Thursa and Dora Phipps. Their family was comfortably off compared to some, and the local expression for recognizing that was "so-and-so's family have got a stocking" i.e. a bit of cash squirrelled away.

When you got to the last class in junior school, the clever ones would go to the Grammar School. The academically struggling children would stay on in junior school until leaving at 14, and the middling ability ones would go on to Bryngwyn Central school which was newish I think when I was there in 1928, and would also leave at 14.

The little house we lived in in Upper Arael St. was one in a long row of terraces at the bottom of the mountainside. We had the Carpenters on one side of us, and the Brittens on the other.  I can remember in summer picking whimberries (the local word for bilberries) for pies and wild watercress which we would take home for Mum to add to meals. I don’t remember us having any bought toys. Everything was made within the family from wood or scraps of material or anything else that was available. Most of our clothes were bought at chapel jumble sales and meticulously revamped and kept immaculate by Mum.

Family entertainment came as special treats during the months my Dad was well enough to be in work. We used to be taken to the matinee at the cinema in Abertillery and as we passed the tin works en route, I remember through the wide open double doors you could see women beavering away at machines, wearing huge thick protective dark leather aprons. It was silent films of course then, and we'd watch the likes of cowboy hero Tom Mix, and good old Charlie Chaplin. The live organ music would be playing from the orchestra pit below. When money was tight, our favourite entertainment was a hillside walk and a picnic by the woodsmans cottage at the bottom of Cwmbeeg Dingle.

My slightly built father Albert Henry Rees wasn’t a strong man. He would come in from the mines, exhausted after long gruelling shifts. Whatever time of day or night it was, he’d get the old tin bath off the yard wall and screened by towels on the clothes maiden, bathed in it in front of the fire. Only then would he sit and eat his meal. Dad’s health deteriorated after heart attacks, so Mum had her hands full with three children under 5 and a sick husband to nurse. In those days you didn’t get proper sick pay, so many weeks when he was too ill to work, there was no wage coming in. Despite the fact things were really difficult at that time, Mum was proud, too proud to allow us to take any help from “the parish”. I can remember being glad, because I like most of the other girls, dreaded to have to wear the terrible unisex big clumpy black boots which were a feature of the handouts when the strikes were on and it meant too I didn’t have to go to the Chapel to be fed during the strikes, where the food was reputed to be 'dire'.

Mum skimped and saved, mended and worked all the hours God sent, to make sure we just about coped overall. When my father’s health didn’t recover enough to continue with deep mining and whilst he was off sick, he managed to continue his studies for pit exams which would enable him to work in management above ground. I can remember the brown envelopes used to come regularly from Bennet’s College.

As after several heart attacks, Dads health meant he was off work more and more, out of financial necessity, my mother converted the front room into a little shop selling provisions, sweets and icecream. With no spare money at the time for scales, she borrowed some from Ike James who ran a newsagents/ general store in Abertillery.  She used to make the ice cream herself. I remember one day she was panicking that the milk which had to be scalded, had caught slightly in the pan, very very slightly burning. She literally couldn’t afford for a whole batch to be ruined. It had taken on a flavour which could vaguely be likened to almonds, so she advertised it as almond ice cream and held her breath. Luckily, lots of people liked it and so she was asked to make it like that again. She didn’t though because it was too risky that it would overburn and be inedible. Many of the provisions for the shop had to be bought in bulk, weighed and then repackaged into smaller amounts for resale and I have recollections too of we children peeling small onions ready for Mum to pickle and sell and of selling home grown bunches of mint, door to door in the surrounding area.

There were three shops in Arael St. A second sweetshop (owned by the Poulsons) about ten doors up from ours in Upper Arael St - their daughter was a teacher at the school - and a bigger more purpose built general shop/house at the bottom of Lower Arael St, owned by “Grandma” Perry, a friend of my mother’s and run by her son Arthur. One of his assistants used to collect cylinders of gas from the railway station by horse and cart. These were to make the flavoured fizzy drinks my mother sold in the shop. I remember a fairly large glass globe half full of water called a vantas. Mum had a little yellow duck floating in it to amuse and attract the children. This globe was attached to the cylinder which pumped gas into the water. The flavourings sarsaparilla, strawberry, orange and lemonade came in sticks. Mum would have to add water to these to make up batches of the flavour concentrate which was stored in bottles where a wire contraption held the ceramic and rubber stopper sealed down. The customer would then get a measure of their chosen flavour in the glass provided, top it up with fizzy water from the vantas and drink the contents on the spot. The glass would then be washed and re-used.

I remember other little things too about our shop, like Mr Saye who came in as a traveller for Berry’s sweets in Newport and Mrs Picken from Richmond Street, who came in regularly wearing a gold necklace which fascinated me, a little figure of a man depicted in gold and ebony. Her daughter was called Annie like me and her husband was in charge of the mine’s ambulance station. This was funded by the mines and was exclusively for mining staff use. Minor injuries were attended to at the station, more difficult cases taken to the hospital. We used to talk to Mr Picken sometimes as we passed on the way to school. I was very impressed, I remember, when Mrs Picken told us that both her brothers were university lecturers at Bangor!

We used to sell unpasteurised milk too but people round there didn’t drink it in the quantities they do today. It was used exclusively for a dash in their tea, so customers would never buy more than a quarter or half pint at the most, decanted from our big jugs into their various containers. Each evening the cream was taken from the left-over milk, the milk scalded and sold more cheaply the next day as skimmed milk. The cream was always given to me in an effort to build me up - Ugh! To this day I can’t abide greasy food. When we children did jobs at home, the one I remember well was polishing the brass stair rods, Mum or Dad would give us a penny which of course we would go and spend in the other sweet shop. It was no fun choosing from our own.

Dad contributed as best he could by keeping a few rabbits in a shed next to the outside toilet. He started off with standard rabbits for the table, but also kept some Blue Beverens for their fur. He kept them immaculately, just as he did the chickens, also for the table. I remember one of the things we had to do was collect any broken bits of pottery we came across. These were hammered down to make grit which was fed to the chickens to help toughen the shells of their eggs. Without these meat and egg sources and a few vegetables he grew in the allotment, I don’t know how we would have coped. That was one thing, we never had empty tummies and anything spare, got sold in the shop. Before we had the rabbits and chickens, our meat intake consisted of sheep’s heads, sweetbreads and tripe.

I don’t remember Larry the lamb but we have a photo of him with my older brother Edgar. My mother used to tell us how Dad found Larry as a tiny sickly stray. No-one claimed him so he took him home and Larry was fed his bottle at the same time as Edgar got his. Apparently Larry stayed until he was adult following Mum around all over the place. I think probably Dad let the lamb stay thinking it would provide meat at a later date, but in the end neither of them could bring themselves to sell Larry to the butcher and he went off to a farm as a wool sheep. The other animals I remember were my father’s Airedale dogs. These lived outside in purpose-built kennels and Dad sold the odd litter of puppies which contributed to the household income. The ones he kept long term were Pat and her son Bruce. These were trained by my father to police standards. In fact the police wanted to buy Bruce but my father wouldn’t sell.

My father’s health improved a bit eventually but not enough to return below at the mines. All the time he was studying for his pit exams, he was still applying for other jobs as really he hated everything to do with the mines and one day he was fortunate enough to be offered a job as an insurance agent. You used to have to “buy a book” in those days and Dad had no money for that, but the previous owner of the book had sadly committed suicide and the book had been run down and was in a shocking muddle. Refuge Assurance agreed Dad could have the book for free providing he sorted it out and built the round up.

When I was somewhere around 13 we moved to Powell Street, Abertillery. This was easier for my brother Lionel to get to Grammar School and gave Dad a better chance of increasing his insurance round. Powell Street was past all the shops in Abertillery and the Infant/Junior school was at the top of the road. Two sisters who lived opposite us were teachers there and because my youngest sister Nora was such an inquisitive bright little thing, they regularly used to take her with them to join in the infants’ class one of them taught, long before the normal age she should have started school. I remember at this house my Dad had enough money to buy a camera and he turned the pantry into his dark room when he needed to make negatives, although he sent them off to be printed.

I left school when I was 14 having been at 'Central' for a year, and had various little jobs in and around Abertillery, mostly sweet shops and similar. I worked at one large sweet shop in Church Street, Abertillery where we needed 3 girls on a Saturday night to cope with the demand for chocs and sweets from folk walking by gaslight to the cinema lower down the valley. One of the girls was the local councillor’s daughter. The two main stores in Abertillery were Bon Marche and a posh shop called Pontlottyn. This latter shop, a clothing store, was a very prestigious place to work. You would only get in if you were well spoken and well dressed and had enough money to pay them 5 shillings a week whilst they trained you properly as a salesperson! Imagine that now! The attraction was that it enabled you to have an edge when applying for other jobs in the future, jobs which of course were hard to find. Job shortages meant you couldn’t really stay at home if you wanted to get on. So when I was nearly 18, I moved up to Preston to live with Aunt Peggy, my father’s sister. She was a nice but very precise lady who liked everything just so and was as strict with me as you could possibly imagine. No way was I allowed to go out with boys! I was around 21 before I had my first proper date without a chaperone. When I returned to Wales at 21,  the family had moved to Blenheim Road back in Six Bells but this time higher up the valley where my Dad had aspired to live originally.

On returning  I managed to get a job at the Labour exchange in Blaina and was supervised by Anita Jones. Many of the girls who came in asking for jobs in service were wholly unsuitably dressed to be able to secure such a job, so it was part of my job to take them to Burnstairs drapery store, to get them kitted out in suitable servant attire -- I think the cost was picked up by the Government. We also had to visit schools to advise the 14 year-old school leavers of the different jobs available. Those we couldn’t place in jobs were referred to the Assistance Board . It was through liaising with the Assistance board that I met my first boyfriend Arthur Whitney.

Going back to my Dad ---he had always been unhappy living with his grandparents since his mum died when he was 7, so despite having done well at school and being head monitor (headboy) in his final year, he decided at 14  to get digs and take to the mines instead of going on with his education. Apparently his friend Jinny the headgirl, was upset at his decision because they’d always said they would both go on and be teachers. Some years later, Jinny was a teacher at the junior school my brother Lionel and sister Phyl attended and according to them, they were always reminded they had a hardworking Dad to emulate! They didn’t disappoint as both to the great pride of my parents won Governors’ scholarships to Grammar school. Although he wasn’t fond of sports, I can remember Lionel enthusiastically telling us the football/rugby chant for the Grammar School - “Who killed Piker, Blood and Webby? What for? Beer! Baccy! Bread! Yah!!” Jinny Gatfield I believe went on to fight hard to stop the Marie Stopes family planning clinic continuing. I remember some sort of fuss at the time, but it was later my mum told me that most of the folk she knew were against the clinic not because the chapels were condemning it, but because they thought the products were unnatural and caused cancer!

When the war started, my sister Nora was still at school. A lot of children had been evacuated from the cities to the countryside. Nora came home from school begging my Mum for a Polish girl to be allowed to stay with them as her original family couldn’t keep her any longer. Lucia moved in and shared a room with Nora. Later in the war a Polish pilot Bruno Uram lived with our family. He adored my mother and father. He had no family of his own and “adopted” them calling them Mum and Dad. Towards the end of the war he went missing, presumed dead. Mum believed from hints in a final letter to them that he had volunteered as a suicide bomber. He was posthumously awarded the highest Polish military honour you could get. This medal was accepted on his behalf by Mum and Dad.

Mum was very involved with the chapel all the time she was in the valley although I don’t remember her going to services often - probably because Sunday was the busiest day for the shop, although she sent us to Sunday school. During the war when the government were encouraging people to grow their own vegetables, they had campaign posters of Timothy Turnip and Potato Pete. I remember she made beautiful 1 foot high dolls based on these characters which were offered as a prize at a chapel fair.

My paternal grandparents Annie (nee Lewis) and Gomer Simmonds lived opposite us in Arael St. and Mum’s sister Maggie next door to them. Apparently Annie Lewis’s family was from Scranton, Pennsylvania. They had a fruit farm growing peaches. Apparently great grandfather Lewis was drinking heavily, so great grandmother (also called Annie) dumped his belongings where he used to drink and never saw him again. Left on her own, Annie Lewis kept a gun to deter intruders and apparently wounded one. Later in life the government wanted her land for the railroad to be built. They offered her compensation money which she refused as too little. The case went to court and she acted for herself and ended up getting a more lucrative offer which she accepted.

Gomer Simmonds had a brother in Abersychen and one in America. Gomer and Annie used to go across to Scranton to visit him, Gomer seeking casual work at the mines there. Over the years they made a number of trips and eventually my mother’s brothers Joseph and Edwin ended up remaining there I believe but Harry came home to live in Wales. Born in Scranton, my Mum took her first steps at 9 months old on board the ship on the final trip back. Notably something which probably wouldn’t be allowed today, her birth certificate states that she is 'white'

My great grandfather David Rees had been involved with the planning of Bethany Chapel in Six Bells and later became a church elder. I’ve not seen it but I’ve been told that a stone somewhere on the chapel wall bears his name.

I was married straight after the war to my beloved William Casson and we had a daughter. Life was put into perspective when I had three breast cancer operations not long after her birth. No dainty stitching, neat scars, reconstructive surgery or counselling sixty years ago, it was all radical and basic stuff, so I feel fortunate to still be here in 2008.

I remember the newsagents in Six Bells very well. I was born in 1952 at Nant-y-glo Hospital, Blaina and I went to live with my grandparents Elsie and Cliff Wilsher at 23 Bridge Street.

When Muriel Brown had the shop my gran always went there to collect her papers and opposite the corner, there was a grocers' called Evans' situated at the Old Post Office. It was only down the street from Gran's.

There are a lot of people that I remember lived in Six Bells when I was young like Lil Cook, Eva Morley, Tilly Cook, Bernard Lewis, Kathleen Hemms. They are all dead now but Eva Morley lived in 13 Bryn Terrace, Tilly Cook lived in Graig Road, Lil Cook lived in Bryn Terrace, Bernard Lewis ran the Post Office and Kathleen Hemms lived in Bridge Street next to the Post Office. That Post Office and my Gran's house have both been demolished and the council have now put a bus stop in its place. 

Other memories I have of my childhood were Galey's Drapers and another general store "Leach's" This grocer's was run by Sylvia Williams and her husband Islwyn and Sylvia's mum. This was situated at no 6. My mother used to buy me dresses for the Whitsun Walks in Galey's.

At the bottom of the Cemetery Road was Six Bells Juniors which was my second school. I had teachers called Mrs Leyton, who is still alive, Mrs Gillingham and Mr Gillingham and the headmaster was Mr George. From there I went to Bryngwyn Secondary and left in 1968.

My grandfather, William Brown, opened the first newsagents in the Western valley in 1888. The shop was situated on a corner in Six Bells where three roads met. The roads were Bridge St, Victoria Rd and the Cemetery Rd. As Abertillery grew with people coming to the town to work in the coalmines so grandfather’s newsagents expanded.

Abertillery prospered and other businesses grew and prospered. Among these were the bus companies Ralph’s, Griffin, Jones and Collier’s. People started to buy motorcars and a lot of freight was transported by road. Our corner was on the main road to Newport and traffic was constant going around the corner. With the corner being so sharp and narrow it unfortunately brought motoring accidents and it was common to hear people say "there’s been another accident on Brown’s corner".

When people started to refer to it as Brown’s corner I am unable to say but as it was the meeting point of three roads the name of Brown being on the corner identified it to people. I was brought up in the 1930s knowing the corner only as Brown’s corner.  In fact all magazines and periodicals comics etc delivered to us by road were addressed to Browns corner.

When I was a boy I would sit on the shop window sill waiting for accidents to happen. The accidents invariably involved buses because they needed the whole corner to swing around, but car smashes and motorbike accidents were also common.

There were other kinds of accidents as well. which I did not see but was told about by the people involved. One I remember in particular. I was walking through Six Bells with my wife to be, Shirley, when a boy of my own age stopped me and said "your corner almost killed me".  I asked what happened and he said that he was on Jones’ bus coming from Brynithel to Six Bells and because the bus was full he was standing up. While travelling on the bus he had put a penny coin in his mouth to pay the conductor. As the bus came down the hill to the corner it braked suddenly to avoid a collision with a car that had come round the corner. He was thrown forward as the bus braked and swallowed the penny coin and in doing so almost choked. Instead of spending the night in the pictures he spent the night in Aberbeeg hospital instead.

We delivered papers to all of Six Bells and most of Abertillery. The most common paper was the Daily Herald followed by the Daily Express. The Herald was the most popular paper because on a Saturday it printed Templegate’s Double and Treble horse tips, which was very popular with the miners. When I was delivering papers on a Saturday morning if I was stopped once I was stopped 20 times by miners calling to me "Hello young Brown, let me see the Herald and Templegate’s Double a minute".

However in the early 1940s this changed with the coming of the evacuees to Abertillery from London. The evacuees were used to another newspaper in which they followed the adventures of Garth and Jane and others. This newspaper was the Daily Mirror. People started to cancel the Herald and Express and take the Daily Mirror to please the evacuees and it became the second most popular newspaper.

Our day with the papers started early. We met the paper train as we called it at 6am in the morning when we would unload the papers from the train and take them to the shop to be put into rounds to be taken out. My Aunty Muriel would go with the train to Abertillery where she would unload the papers for the Abertillery rounds. The papers for the Abertillery rounds were put up in the station waiting room where they would be collected to be delivered. Aunty Muriel would then deliver papers along Castle Street, down Alexandra Road, Bridge Street and then back to the shop.

In the shop the rounds for Arael Street, Lancaster Street and Warm Turn down to Aberbeeg would be put up to be taken out. I would put up my own round. I would leave the shop at about 7am and deliver papers to Richmond Rd, Bryngwyn Rd, Coronation Rd, Marlborough Rd, Kimberly Rd etc then across to Windsor Road.  Then I would race back home for a piece of toast before catching the bus for school at 8.40.

On a Saturday papers were delivered later because we would knock on every door for the weeks paper money. I used to get back to the shop at about 2pm to "cash in". After this I would receive my pay of 2/6 [half a crown]. Grandfather would give me 2/6 and go to the cupboard and get out an old biscuit tin out of which he took a National Savings Book which he would also give to me I then went to the Post Office for a 2//6 savings stamp which I would stick in the savings book and give it back to grandfather. He would check it, put the savings book back in the biscuit tin and give me a sixpenny piece for my pocket.

The winter of 1947 was something I will not forget. We would be waiting all day for the paper train to arrive and some days it came as late as 2pm. Then the day’s business started for us and we trudged through the snow and in the dark to deliver the papers.

I effectively left Abertillery in 1952 when I was called up to complete my National Service in the RAF but still have many happy memories of friends and places that I knew. I still visit Abertillery but maybe not as often as I should.