Pontyclun
Community Garden
Our own community garden
in Pontyclun Park has been awarded the prestigious ‘Green Flag’ by Keep
Wales Tidy.
The Green Flag Award is the international mark of a quality
park or green space. The Community Award is in recognition of the contribution
of the many volunteers who have created and developed our community garden.
The volunteers, led by Lisa Williams, are all wonderful.
They created the growing beds and each year they plant the shrubs which we can
all enjoy and the vegetables we can take
home for our dinner. The volunteers are supported by the Community Council
which provides the Park and the space for the garden.
Terry
Walton Celebrates Community Garden
The famous Rhondda allotment gardener and broadcaster,
Terry Walton, came to meet our garden volunteers in celebration of the Green
Park Award.
Terry is well known for his fascinating gardening stories
on Radio 2 and other radio stations. He told us how his father first took him
to the Rhondda allotment at the age of 4 years and how he gained his own first
allotment at the age of 11. With over 60 years of gardening experience he gave
us a lot of encouragement and advice, and some very funny stories.
Celebrating
Edwina Godwin
Sadly, Edwina Godwin, the Chair of Governors for Pontyclun
Primary School, died in July. Edwina spent her life adding to the quality of
education in our schools, enriching the lives of young children, as a teacher,
adviser and governor. Edwina made this lifelong contribution with charm and
robust good humour. She was loved and admired by the parishioners of St Paul’s
and St Anne’s. She was as a director of our Community Shop which has funded so
many good causes in our community. Edwina has been active in the Soroptimist
International which works to educate, empower and enable opportunities for
women and girls. Edwina contributed to the lives of so many and will live on in
our memory.
Table
Top Sale
On Saturday, 28 September, Pontyclun Institute and Athletic
Club are holding a Table Top Sale from Mid-day to 4 pm in aid of Parkinsons UK.
If you wish to provide a stall ring Katherine on 0777 3232372.
Pontyclun
Community Centre
Also on Saturday 28 September the Community Centre will be
celebrating its 25th birthday by unveiling a commemorative bench and
providing musical entertainment. The Management Committee of this centre are a
wonderful group of volunteers who illustrate the community spirit of Pontyclun.
Year after year they manage, maintain and develop this crucial community
facility; and we are all indebted to them.
The Community Centre has a fascinating history. There had
been a social hall on this site since the time the Marquis of Bute owned the
land. The Butes transferred the land to a commercial property developer,
Western Groundrents, who offered the land for sale in 1961. Residents of
Pontyclun raised a fund of £1100 in memory of our local GP, Gordon Jones, and
used this fund to purchase the land and the hall. The residents nominated
trustees who transferred the management of the hall to a Committee which
continues to be elected annually. The trustees nominated the County Council as
the ‘executive trustee’ which exercised the responsibilities of ownership. In
1994 the Council replaced the original social hall with the current community
centre and day centre (which is now Café 50).
Pontyclun’s
Council Housing
In July 1919, 100 years ago, Parliament passed the Act of
the Housing Minister, Christopher Addison, which paved the way for the
development of Council Housing. Take a walk up Heol y Coed and admire the
quality of the original council housing which was developed by our local
council as a result of this Act.
Millions of British people benefited from the period of
council house development that followed. In the 1950’s I was privileged to be
an original occupier of a ‘prefab’ in Sandfields, Aberavon. As my sisters and
brother arrived, we became the first occupiers of a ‘Cornish house’ down by the
beach. The large majority of these council houses were sold off, and not
replaced, by the Thatcher Government in the 1980’s.
Evidence collected by the Welsh Government shows that half
of the people who now enter the housing market cannot afford to buy a house –
average house prices are over five times average annual earnings; and a deposit
will be more than a year’s wages. If our children and grandchildren are going
to continue living in Pontyclun, then
half of them will need to see the building of a new generation of council housing
– and yet many residents might say ‘not in my back yard’!
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