Apologies to David Gray the builder. I had an overwhelming urge to ring him on Saturday to tell him the dimensions of the range cooker I had ordered. Unfortunately, I rang him while he was enjoying his starter at his daughter Bonny's wedding reception! He still speaking to me and here is a photo of him outside Cefnmeurig today.
Photo of Cefnmeurig taken today, in our field above the house. The colour, although not seen in Carmarthenshire for a generation, is traditional to the county. Adrian the Plasterer said that it will be the second most visible landmark seen in space, after the Great Wall of China.
Adrian the Plasterer is a professional and takes great pride in his work. He likes straight lines and 90 degree angles and at Cefnmeurig there are very few of these. He is not a happy man and thinks that the bulges and curves on the outside walls will make his plaster work look terrible. I take the opposite view and think that he should not try to correct the imperfections.
Who wins? (Clue - Who's paying?)
Me with imperfections.
Dilwyn the carpenter says he has grown to love Cefnmeurig – he has been working on the house almost seven days a week for 8 months and for some of that time he only had Chip his dog for company. Chip seems to pick up the mood of the men; when things are going well he comes out of the house to greet me but if there is bad news to be told he pretends to be asleep and swints at me with one eye half open when I arrive. He played dead today when one of the huge slate slabs, that was originally in the llaethdy, split in two when it was being moved back into place. It was a disappointment but it was lucky that it didn’t fall on someone’s foot as it was extremely heavy.
Chip playing dead on the relaid terracota floor in the dining room.
"You Welsh people live in some strange places" said the delivery driver’s mate with a Bristol burr, as I guided him via mobile phone from St Clears to Cefnmeurig. He needed constant reassurance that they were on the right road and became very alarmed when the houses disappeared. " We’re in a kind of… desert area now" he said, "We call them fields around here" I replied. All was going well until they reached the top of the track and he declared that they couldn’t go any further. " It’s too narrow, love" he said. " It’ll be fine" I said, " Jump out and have a look, if you are worried, and you’ll see that those long green stringy things bend when you touch them. Your lorry wont be damaged!" " I can’t do that!" he replied "I’ve got shorts on" (It was a sub-zero winter’s day). So I gave up on the coaxing and played dirty by attempting to dent his male ego "Well, everyone else has managed it" I said sternly. I never heard from them again, they were off down the lane and delivered the goods to the men on site. However, they must have been so tramatised by the experience, they unloaded someone else's bathroom by mistake and had to come back again the next week to collect it.
I received in the post today, from Dominic Conway, the reconstruction drawing of Cefnmeurig farmhouse as it might have looked around 1800. I'm really pleased with the finished drawing.
We have assumed that it would have had the appearance of a long house with the animals housed where the c1890 kitchen extension is now. The roof would have been lower than it is at present and we have assumed that the roof was thatched although there is strong evidence of a slate roof being in place before the "new" 1890 roof was raised. The yellow limewash matches the wash found in the hallway. The garden walls are drawn as stone although I suspect that they might have been wooden or mixed hedges as stone was quite scarce.
My 4 times great grand parents, David and Jane John, were living in Cefnmeurig in 1800 with their five children. David John (1751-1821) was born on the farm and in 1779 he married Jane Griffith (1759-1840) from the neighbouring farm of Aber. Their daughter (my 3 times great grandmother), Esther (1784-1862) married the boy next door in 1804, Benjamin Morris (1763-1823) of Llwyntreharne. Their son, my great great grandfather Thomas Morris (1811 - ?) married widow Mary Richards in 1866, six years after the birth of their son Caleb Morris, my great grandfather. In fact they had three children before they were married.
I was really shocked when I discovered this, all the relatives I have known have been very strict non-conformists who took a very dim view indeed of "relations" outside marriage. I was a little bit concerned that my mother would be rather upset to learn that her grandfather was born outside marriage. She said she wasn't bothered as she did not have a very high opinion of her grandfather. He was a very hard man who was very tough on his children. However he did give each of his 10 children a dowry or house or farm when they were adults. He gave my grandmother, Mary Morris, £500 on the occasion of her marriage in 1914 to William Phillips of Cefnmeurig but after she was killed in 1932 he asked my grandfather William, for the money back. My grandfather gave him the money straight away but did not have any further contact with his father in law. He did not stop his children seeing their grandfather Caleb though.
I suspect that Caleb behaved the way he did because he had a very hard upbringing. Before his parents married he lived in a hovel on Llwyntreharne land and his mother was officially described as a pauper. All his step brothers (from his father's first marriage) died young and Caleb had to take on the responsibility of running the farm of Llwyntreharne before he was 18. He probably knew what it was like not to have enough food, clothes and heating and had to grow up very quickly.
Denzil is a one in three, his surname is Davies. (see earlier post)
Work is coming along at Cefnmeurig. The interior plastering is nearly finished and the layout of the rooms is looking very good. The roof should be finished this week, weather permitting.
I'm a bit concerned that the working conditions are too cold for the men. They have got a fire going in one room, where they go for a warm up and tea break but I can't stick the cold for more than about half an hour. Chip the dog has given up chasing rabbits and spends most of his time by the fire at the moment. Despite the cold, Dil the chippy said today that he loved the house and will be sorry to leave when the job is finished.
Lunchtime at Cefnmeurig
I have an appointment to see Denzil at the NFU offices in St Clears tomorrow. It's a good job that there is only one Denzil in the office as I don't know his surname. He always refers to himself on the phone as Denzil and his signature is illegible.
If was forced to guess his surname I would plumb for either Phillips, Lewis, Howells or David as West Carmarthenshire (the old administration hundred district of Derllys) has the highest concentration of these surnames in the world. There is a one in five probability it will be one the those four names. If you add the surnames Williams, Thomas and Davies to the list, the probability increases to one in three.
However should by any chance Denzil's great grandfather have stopped off at Milford Haven, from a whaling ship, travelling from the Shetland Islands to the South Atlantic and somehow missed the boat, the probability theory is harpooned in the water.
Dominic Conway contacted me today to ask whether I was going to the Carmarthenshire Antiquarian Society's study day at Ferryside tomorrow. Dominic has drawn a reconstruction picture of how Cefnmeurig might have looked in the 18th century, as a one storey cottage with a thatched roof.
2005 is the centenary of the Society's formation. Amazingly, Dominic and I are probably about the youngest members of the Society which is a shame as there is a lot going on that would be of interest to most age groups.
At the last study day the "youngsters" gravitated to the same lunch table. After we had got bored with throwing the bread rolls at one another, Dominic suggested setting up a Junior Section of the Society for the under 60s.(the Antiquarians' Apprentices perhaps) The trouble is, there would only be a handful of members, which would not make for a very lively Christmas Junior Disco. Behaving badly at the grown ups' Tea Dance would probably be a lot more fun.
Keith is 50 today. Happy Birthday from the Self-Centred Softy.
A short birthday interview with Keith:
SCS :What has been the highlight of the last 50 years?
K: Being voted the best looking boy in Maesteg Comp. in 1973.
SCS: What has been the worst moment for you in the last 50 years?
K: Sorry, I don't understand the question.
SCS: Please can you explain why someone so talented ( razor sharp intellect, quick wit, international sportsman, Eisteddfod winner and thoroughly decent chap) is pants when it comes to DIY?
K: I have been secretly hoping that you would nominate me to appear in my favourite programme of all time DIY SOS, so that I could meet the girl of my dreams Lowri Turner.
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