DEVELOPMENT
little damage was done. If that German aeroplane had dropped its bombs a fraction of a second sooner it would have hit a huge munitions dump at the site of the old Fochriw Colliery and Fochriw would have disappeared.
hi the field below Penybanc school was a small army encampment with a huge searchlight and gun pit, but I don't think it was ever used in anger.
The L. D. V. (Local Defence Volunteers) later to become the Home Guard was formed and all the able bodied men were required to join. Dad had to join and was duly issued with an armband with L.D. V. printed on it. Exercises were held and it was absolutely hilarious to see them charging about the hillside in an attempt to discover imagined enemy parachutists. He was eventually issued with a uniform and a rifle, which I had to clean every week before he went on parade at Fochriw.
There was some fear that we would be attacked by poison gas and everyone was issued with foul-smelling rubber gas masks in a cardboard box with a piece of string attached so that it could be carried where ever one went, including to school. If it was forgotten we were sent back home to get it.
At about this time I sat the eleven plus examination and was fortunate enough to get sufficient marks to obtain a place at the Grammar School in Bargoed where I spent four happy years. Travelling to school was difficult as it entailed walking one and a half miles to Fochriw to get a train to Bargoed and then another mile from Bargoed station to the school- not easy because of the heavy bag of books and the infernal gas mask. However returning home was not quite so difficult as I could do the same as 'Gilbert stale cakes' with my bag of books. We were given a great deal of homework to do and this occupied most of my evenings. It was difficult to study at home and during the summer months I would take my books to a quiet spot near the river, there to wrestle with the intricacies of physics and mathematics.
Saturdays were spent playing rugby for the school team and this was greatly enjoyed, although this activity was more like war on many occasions!
My efforts at school led me to a good job, which I held for forty years until I retired.
I left the village when I married, but Mam and Dad remained in the village until Dad's health gave out and he was forced to give up his job and move to a modern house at Fochriw.
After a few years at Fochriw Dad died of the coal dust, which he had, inhaled during his time at the mine. Mam was never happy living in Fochriw and moved back to Penybanc, with an elderly aunt who had lived with my parents for quite a few years.
One evening in 1964 Mam was in bed and heard a loud rumbling and shaking, and part of the ceiling fell on to her bed. Large cracks appeared in the structure of the house, which had affected the whole village, and rendered the houses uninhabitable.
This was the death knell of Penybanc. All the residents were re-housed by the local council.
Mam moved to a council flat at Gelligear. A wonderful community was thus broken up and it was a heavy heart and indeed a tear in my eye that one day shortly after this event, I stood near the Penybanc Hotel and watched the demolition of Penybanc.