I created a filmlet on the subject of my Welsh Harrison ancestors, from my grandfather George Harrison of Varteg back to George Harrison of Llanthony. I worked so hard to create this again and again, the windows movie maker repeatedly declaring it to be an 'incorrect format' or 'corrupted' and refusing to open up. I kept on slogging and eventually was successful in my endeavour.
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There was another death in the family. It was the last of my Great Welsh Aunties, Aunty May. She was 82 and had turned senile these last two weeks. She smoked a lot and my mum reckoned empysema had killed her. So it was that I went to my Great Aunt May's funeral in Wales at the Victoria Village Methodist church near the viaduct in Garndiffaith. There I joined my mum, cousin Melissa, and Nan and Pop. The service was short and unremarkable. I could hardly tune into any of the words. And yet there was such a wonderful vive in the church, like it was a really wonderful place, so timeless and peaceful. My baby Eleanor made a few little squeaks and such like, but nothing major. Great Uncle John Harrison told me his new daughter Aimée, only two months older than Eleanor, was remarkably similar to Eleanor. My Eleanor was looking ultra gorgeous in her pretty girlie dress with pink tights. She was a beautiful gentle person. Her eyes reflected a magic from the distant past when women were priestesses. I had brought her forth to honour the ancient matriarchal line of which I also was a part, a sacred unbroken line of descent to Eleanor. Both she and Jai reflected different parts of my family tree. My son Jai was of the Dovercourt fair-haired brigade, as were my cousins Julie, Danny and Steve. Whereas Eleanor was truly Welsh, a Celtic princess. As was not my Welsh Great Uncle John saying that she was identical to his daughter Aimée in both looks and expressions. And yet the magic invested in Eleanor by her matriarchal line was of Ireland, which was verified so far by the family tree research I had so far compiled. We drove onwards to a cemetery, I knew not where, which was large and full, for which there was a traffic jam getting into the place. Standing in the rain under brolly's we watched the coffin being lowered down into May's husbands grave. Then we were all off to the family gathering at the Hotel Commodore in Cwmbran. It was lovely to meet so many of the Welsh relatives. I'd brought my Welsh family tree file along for people to browse through. It appeared I was not the only one to have been tracing our Welsh ancestry. One other doing it was David, known as Dai, who was a headmaster in Cumbria, but was now accepting a post to work for four years at the Missionary School in Pokhara in Nepal. Jai made 'tickets' from bits of paper and managed to sell them for 50p each to a couple of the relatives. We were invited to stay with one relative, Ann, whose husband performed magic tricks for Jai. He had a superbly eloquent Welsh accent. Oh how I loved the Welsh accent. I was so happy to have Welsh roots and to be a part of this Welsh family, despite my so English way of talking.
My parents and I went off on a trip to Wales, heading off along the M4, dads boat on top of the car, and the caravan towing behind us. One of the Caravan Club Sites we stayed at was beside the village of Pandy, close enough to our family Harrison ancestral homes for me to do some family tree research. From there we drove to the nearby village of Llanvihangel Crucorney, which I knew from the census's was where my great great grandfather William Harrison had lived. His house, Bridgend, was supposed to be right by the old Mill which his brother Lewis had been the miller of, and indeed there we found a house called 'Bridge Cottage', very old looking, but which dad reckoned wouldn't be the one, although later we would find out that it was our old family home after all. The rains came so we got back into the car and headed along the Honddu river up the valley, until we came to the hamlet of Llanthony. Not only was this a special place for our family but its old priory was on a leyline. My great great great grandfather George Harrison (the father of William and Lewis Harrison) had been the miller there. His home Mill Cottage was a scenic beauty, still standing, and there were some remains of the old mill there too. We called at the Mill Cottage and were invited in by the occupant, Mrs Powell, who had lived there for 62 years, and was nice and receptive to us. We visited the abbey ruins and looked around the church and graveyard, though found no Harrison graves. Dad enthused about our ancestral cottage and land, toying with the idea of buying it all one day from the Powells. We searched more for the graves of George and his wife, Margaret, further up the valley at Capel-y-Fin, looking through two graveyards there, and then back down at the village of Cwmyoy, but found no trace of any Harrisons. My mum decided she would be my genealogy assistant in the record Office at Cwmbran and so my dad drove us there and left us. The archivist was a shy cute Welsh boy. Llanthony records revealed nothing to us about the deaths of George or the baptisms of his children. It remained a mystery to us as to which church they had attended. We searched through many records and mum enjoyed herself a lot doing it, thinking it was something she could quite get hooked on. When my dad picked us up we shopped in Abergavenny and on the way back to the caravan site stopped for a search of the Llanvihangel Crucorney graveyard. It was there that dad discovered the grave of Lewis Harrison, who was Williams brother, by the church. We continued our grave searching, going to Govilon where William Harrisons wife, Ann Thomas, had come from. In the baptist graveyard there a lady came over to talk to us and pointed out the ancient baptism pool where people were once submerged into the water. Driving off up into the mountains we were looking for the hamlet of Pwlldu where William Harrison had looked after the pit ponies and my great grandfather (his son) John Harrison had been born. This took a while to find as there were no signs leading there. In fact, all that remained of the old hamlet were a couple of buildings, one a pub and the other an outdoor activity centre. We knocked on the door of the Lamb Fox Inn but there was no answer. A car drove up and a man, who ignored us, went into a shed. When we went over to talk to him he said the pub was open still, but he wasn't talking anymore with his father who ran the place. He confirmed that we were in Pwlldu and said the old miners cottages, school and chapel had been knocked down in 1963. He showed us lumps in the ground which were all that remained of them, showed us where the pit ponies had been kept and told us of the old tunnel which led through the mountain to Blaenavon. Mum eventually got the mans father Mr Lewis to open the pub door and we had a chat with him. He told us a BBC film of Pwlldu had been made before it was knocked down. I explored around the area, taking photographs, and further up we found the tunnel which had water in and a crumbled roof. We carried on to Blaenavon for more graveyard searching, and afterwards came to Varteg where John Harrison had begun his career as a miner who checked for gas to be sure all would be safe. The Methodist church revealed no graves for him even though we were well aware he had died there. Varteg merged into Garndiffaith. Dad had spent some of his childhood there and I remembered us all visiting the place when I was little. Great aunt Alice, Pop's sister, was still there, living in an old peoples home, so we called on her and she welcomed us nicely with tea and biscuits. She told us that John Harrison (her father) was indeed buried in the Varteg graveyard but in an unmarked grave. Stopping at Llanvihangel Crucorney mum and I went to enquire at Bridge Cottage as to whether the place had originally been called Bridgend. The lady there told us her house was ancient, the oldest one in the village, but as far as she knew it had always been called Bridge Cottage. She enthused about its history and showed us a book which not only had a picture of her cottage in it, but also one of our Llanthony cottage, which stated many famous painters had once done water colours of it. Inviting us into the cottage she showed us the original old beams and other features. It was an amazing place. She phoned her daughter who owned the cottage to ask if she knew of a Bridgend in the village, and she confirmed to us that this cottage indeed had been Bridgend. And knowing this, we excitedly took photographs both inside and out, and the lady, Mrs Snelus, took us for a tour of the gardens. It was on the last day of our Welsh holiday that we were in Cardiff, at St Mellons to visit another great aunt, May (another of Pop's sisters), who lived in an old peoples home there, drinking tea with her while reminiscing about the Harrison family history, both old and modern. Thus ended our Welsh holiday, for the next day we were off back to England.
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AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. Categories
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