In July 1909 the Gelligaer Urban District Council advertised for tenders for the hire of a horse and man for conveying patients in the Council's Ambulance to the Isolation Hospital at Penybank, near Fochriw.

Penybanc

1 January 1856   5 - 10 Stoney Houses
1 January 1859   1 – 4  Stoney Houses












Link to Google Earth

CHILDHOOD MEMORIES OF PENYBANC

By Fred Evans

I am now 'getting on a bit' and have become a bit sentimental in my old age, I have many memories and how strange it is that the older a memory is the more vivid it is in one's mind. It is sometimes difficult to remember what happened yesterday but things that happened in my childhood are so vivid in my memory.

I was born in nineteen twenty-nine in the village of Penybanc, and it was there that I spent my early life, that the memories are so vivid. Little has been documented about this place and I have decided to correct this and try to describe the way of life as it was then.

It was a special place and I am often reminded of this because when I meet anyone who was born there, there is talk of the people and events of childhood and it becomes obvious of their fondness of the place. This is perhaps hard to understand because life there was not easy because of the harshness of the times, and the poverty that existed, but it was a strong community and it is this perhaps that made it so special in the minds of those who were privileged to have lived there.

Penybanc was not originally built as a village but as an 'isolation hospital' where the contagious diseases of the time were treated, but with what success - no one knows. It was located about halfway between the villages of Fochriw and Deri in the county of Glamorgan, in the northern border of what is now Cwm Darren Park.