MEDIA: BOOKS, TELEVISION, FILM, RADIO AND IMAGES

The following publications / television, film or radio programmes contain information or have used Treherbert and district as a film location.

BOOKS
Cameron, Sean James: "Rhondda Voices"; "Then & Now. Rhondda: From Cwmparc to Blaencwm".

Carpenter, David J.: "Rhondda Collieries".

Davies, Alun: "Alun Blaenrhondda".

Evans, Avril & Hawkins, Elaine: "A Dark Past".

Jenkins, Emrys & Green, Roy: "Upper Rhondda: The Second Selection"; "Upper Rhondda: Treorchy and Treherbert"; "Rhondda Revisited".

Jenkins, Emrys & Eckley, Simon: "Rhondda - A Second Selection"; "Rhondda".

VIDEO/DVD
"Singing from the Heart (The Story of Treorchy Male Choir" will be available this Summer. The DVD looks at the history, life and people that make this world famous choir a success. Costing £16-99 the DVD last for over two hours. Pre-order your copy here. We will also have a few copies to give away in our Summer competition.

Publication: "RHONDDA VOICES"
Written by Sean James Cameron.

This enthralling collection of memories records life in the Rhondda Valleys from the late nineteenth century onwards. Drawn from a wide variety of sources, it includes the often humorous anecdotes of everyday life from local people, notes from the diary of a surveyor prospecting for coal, and extracts from a log book from the National School. All combine to create a unique picture of how life used to be.

Accompanied by over one hundred old photographs, experiences are recalled vividly; from work in the mines to celebrations and life in the valley during wartime. A chance to reminisce for many, this valuable record of local history will offer newcomers an opporunity to understand how modern Rhondda has been shaped.

First published 2002. Price £10-99. Purchase.

Publication: "A DARK PAST" .... Top
Written by Elaine Hawkins and Avril Evans.

A Dark Past is a portrayal of murders in the Valleys covering a period of ninety years. Although treated with compassion and sensitivity by its two Welsh authors, these true stories are often gruesome and harrowing in their content and reflect the changes in attitudes and procedures among the authorities that were called upon to deal with them. They are also stories of hardship and poverty about people and situations which however simple and unremarkable, transcend the ordinary in the horrow of their unfolding.

Delving into our dark part may be a disturbing journey but hopefully the road may be lightened by the fact that muder is still a rare occurrence in the Valleys.

First published 2002. Price £9-99. Purchase.

Publication: "THEN & NOW. RHONDDA: FROM CWMPARC TO BLAENCWM" .... Top
Written by Sean James Cameron

This collection of photographs paints a vivid and revealing picture of many of the changes that have occured in the upper part of the Rhondda Fawr, between Cwmparc and Blaencwm, over the last 130 years.

The book contrasts the older mining community with the re-developed landscape since the coal companies left the valleys. It charts the changes that have come about in social life and looks at how these communities have adapted with the sharp rise and decline of the valley. The old photograhs have been gathered from local collections and are contrasted by modern day portraits photographed by Sean James Cameron.

This beautifully crafted photographical history of the Rhondda Fawr stands as a telling testament of its history, over the last century. A lively and informative narrative traces the changes that have taken place in the photographs, as we compare the Rhondda Fawr, then and now.

First published 2000. Price £10-99. Purchase.

Publication: "RHONDDA COLLIERIES" .... Top
Written by David J. Carpenter.

When King Coal came to Rhondda he changed the face of the valley forever. Where sheep and small farming communities had dotted the hills, there sprang up a multitude of collieries and industrial working towns. By 1911, 42,000 men and boys were employed in Rhondda' fifty-three collieries. The dramatic growth was not to last, however, and from the 1950s an equally dramatic decline saw the coalfield beset by closures and redundancies. Today, efforts to bring new employment to the area have seen many of the colliery sites redeveloped and it can be hard to see the remaining traces of the industry.

In Rhondda Collieries David Carpenter has compiled a vivid record of the valley's mining heritage, from the daily working of themines to the sudden tragedy of pit disasters. Putting the history in perspective, he also shows the use to which colliery sites are put today.

First published 2000. Price £9-99.

Publication: "UPPER RHONDDA: THE SECOND SELECTION" .... Top
Written by Emrys Jenkins and Roy Green.

We are taken on a journey in time through the Rhondda Valley, travelling back through the years to discover the places and people of yesteryear. Memories of schooldays and growing up are brought to life with the display of schools and streets where education and play took place. Remarkable events are commemorated in pictorial from - floods and fires to VE Day celebrations. Working life and the vast changes experienced by employers and employees skills are recorded here - most significantly the disapperence of collieries that once dominated the landscape and the lives of Rhondda people.

On this second fascinating journey through Upper Rhondda the older inhabitants of the area are granted a further opporunity to remember the rich heritage of their home, with younger residents given a chance to discover their roots.

First published 1999. Price £9-99. Purchase.

Publication: "UPPER RHONDDA: TREORCHY AND TREHERBERT" .... Top
Written by Emrys Jenkins and Roy Green.

Using the images captured by the camera lens over the last hundred years, Emrys Jenkins and Roy Green have reconstructed the broad canvas of past life in the Upper Rhondda Fawr valley - in Cwmparc and Treorchy through Ynyswen and Penyrenglyn, Treherbert and Tynewydd finishing in the often-forgotten corners of Blaenrhodnda and Blaencwm.

The selection is a wide-ranging one: from colliers to carnivals, soup kitchen to champion gardenrs, hospital queens to blacksmiths. Much nostalgia will doubtless by evoked in the older generations and the pictures should provide a useful introduction to the area's facinating past for the young. The book will be of particular interest to those who have left the valley to make new lives overseas, or in other areas of Britain, but who still remain a love for their homeland.

First published 1997. Price £9-99. Purchase.

Publication: "RHONDDA: A SECOND SELECTION" .... Top
Written by Simon Eckley and Emrys Jenkins.

This new selection of photographs and postcards from Rhondda's past continues the work of last year's publication in chronicling the rich pictorial history of these two famous valleys.

The townships of the Fawr and Fach are again treated separately but unifying and distinctive themes emerge clearly; the economic mastery of coal; the fierce sense of community; the energy of the people which has been expressed in a myriad of social activities organised often in spite of a poverty of resources.

Through its pages, this book leads the reader the length and breadth of the two valleys, gradually revealing a world lost, but never to be forgotten.

First published 1995. Price £8-99. Purchase.

Publication: "RHONDDA" .... Top
Written by Simon Eckley and Emrys Jenkins

The explosive growth of the second half of the nineteenth century, which forged this 'one community' of the Rhondda out of rural wilderness, is now a retreating folk memory. Its active symbols, the pitheads and looming tips, are gone and much of its stolen natural beauty has been returned. Yet through the mines and mineowners dominated the Rhondda economy they never deadened the creative spirit and humour of the people. On the contrary, the hardships of work for men and women built up a formidable solidarity and a courageous determination to fight injustice and win a better future for the generations to come.

First published 1994, reprinted 2003. Price £8-99. Purchase.

Publication: "RHONDDA REVISITED" .... Top
Written by Emrys Jenkins and Roy Green.

This absorbing third collection of old images offers a nostalgic glimpse into the history of the Rhondda Valley during the last century. This collection of over 200 postcards, many never before published, highlights some of the important people who have populated, and places that have shaped, this important region of South Wales. Many aspects of everyday life are featured, from schools and churches, public houses and shops -- the double-decker buses, taking the workers to Alfred Polikoff's and local sporting derbies between Treherbert and Treorchy are also featured -- to the carnival bands, the Saturday matinees and the local residents who have proudly called the Rhondda their home. Accompanied by supporting text, this book is a valuable pictorial addition to histories of the area, which will reawaken nostalgic memories for some, while offering a unique glimpse of the past for others.

First published 2004. Price £12-99. Purchase.

Publication: "ALUN BLAENRHONDDA" .... Top
Written by Alun Davies.

A personal account of living in the village of Blaenrhondda at the head of the Rhondda Fawr since a boy.

Book Extract: "On Mondays usually during the dinner time break, an enormous steam operated lorry with huge solid rubber tyres on the wheels would trundle its way up through Blaenrhondda coming to rest at the Blaenrhondda Hotel better known as The Kick bringing the weekly supply of beer in huge wooden barrells and in wooden crates each holding about 20 bottles. Having heard this monster chugging and puffing its way up the steepest part of Brook Street, the school yard would empty and we would run as fast as our legs would carry us out from the school over the river bridge and up to the pub to witness this monster at close quarters where we would all surrouind this huge machine. Firstly studying the red hot sparks and ashes falling from the fire box at the front, then watching the boiler spurting and splashing small jets of boiling water from its valves and gauges and jumping back out of the way. From along the side of the lorry, we would watch the two very large and obviously very strong draymen with long leather aprons from their neck to their ankles haul up the empty barrells from the cavernous cellar of the hotel beneath the two trap doors opened up on the pavement, then tossing them up onto the bed of the lorry as if they were made of paper instead of oak and metal."

First published 2004. Price £4. Purchase from Pen Pych Community School, Blaenrhondda.

TELEVISION PROGRAMMES .... Top
2004, November 9: ITV1 Wales, documentary on the Italian Rhondda cafes. Filmed in Strinati's, Bute Street.

2004: ITV1 Wales News, Mary Strinati appears in news items about returning to Bardi in Italy, "The Welsh Connection".

2004: BBC Television crime drama "Dalziel and Pascoe" starring Warren Clarke and Colin Buchana. Filming took place on the Rhigos mountain. Screened during 2005.

2002: BBC Television "Ground Force" starring Alan Titchmarsh, Charlie Dimmock and Tommy Walsh; where gardens are transformed in order to suprise their owners. The team spent two days transforming a corner of garden for Treherbert milkman Kevin 'The Milk' Mason. Highlights of this programme are included in the BBC VHS and DVD 'Ground Force - The Titchmarsh Years'.

Before and After

FILMS .... Top
1930's "Energy/Energia" (Tydraw Colliery, Tynewydd)
A corporate bilingual (English and Spanish), self-promotional portrait of the Cory Brothers & Co. Limited. The company - owner of collieries in South Wales and oil refineries world-wide - is dedicated to supplying 'Corys Merthyr Steam Coal' and 'Cory's Motor Spirit' (i.e. petrol) across the globe but is apparently mindful of the health and safety of its miners at home and believes that "enterprise and courage has made modern coal getting a comparatively safe industry".
22 minutes. Silent. Black & White.

1934c. "Ocean Collieries Recreational Union" (Treorchy)
Incomplete film, with inter-titles, showing the improvements in the miners' working conditions (e.g. pithead baths at Nine Mile Point Colliery, Risca) and the recreational facilities provided in Treorchy for their families - playgrounds, tennis courts, bowling greens. 'Boot cleaning and Boot greasing machines' are referred to but not shown.
6 minutes. Silent. Black & White

1937 "Today We Live - a film of life in Britain" (Treherbert & Treorchy)
A documentary film sponsored by the National Council for Social Service and intended to promote the grant scheme available for the building of occupational or social centres. Such centres, the goverment believed, would alleviate the problems of unemployment and regenerate Britain's communities, which were considered to be breaking down. Ostensibly both urban and rural areas were affected and therefore in equal need of help. However, the pictures show only too well that the two representative villages chosen - Pentre in the Rhondda and South Cerney in rural Gloucestershire - are worlds, and needs, apart.
23 minutes. Black & White.

1947c. "Dogs, Sheep and Mr Bo Peep" (Treorchy)
A silent film with inter-titles, being an adaptation of a longer, sound film entitled 'Sheep Dog' which was produced by British Screen Service and focused on the shepherd - his life, his skills and his achievements. In being adapted, the focus of the film has shifted and it has become an animal story, showing the shepherd, Tom Jones, accompanied by his horse and his three well-trained dogs, ranging over the hills of Old Farm, Treorchy, tending the sheep. He finds one ewe with a dead lamb, one orphaned lamb and a killer dog that has to be shot.
9 minutes. Silent. Black & White.

1949. "Run For Your Money" (Treorchy)
Two miners, Dai and Twm [Donald Houston and Meredith Edwards], having won a trip to London and tickets for a rugby international at Twickenham, courtesy of 'The Weekly Echo', take the train to the city where they get separated and are variously led astray, Dai by a female confidence trickster called Jo [Moira Lister], Twm by Huw, a drunken, harp-playing Welsh exile [Hugh Griffith]. The Echo's gardening correspondent Mr Whimple [Alec Guinness] is detailed to meet the winners and gets caught up in the escapades. Based on a story by Clifford Evans and partly filmed at the Parc and Dare Colliery, Treorchy, and at Cwmparc.
1 hour 25 minutes. Black & White.

2003. "'Not Ready for Drowning" (Penyrenglyn)
10 minutes. Colour.