Many of us have enjoyed accessing different spaces around our town of Pontypridd over the years. Spaces that provide us with a strong sense of perthyn, of feeling related to and belonging with these places.
People make spaces, places, and in the act of doing so, name them. In their turn these places may also leave us with a strong sense of hiraeth, a longing for spaces that hold a special place in our hearts, long after we have left them, or they us. We carry our memories and our names for them in our hearts, wherever we may go.
Mhontypridd memories
For those who have grown up ym Mhontypridd, memories of accessing land around our communities go back generations. Childhood memories of exploring, Winberry-picking, den-building, fire-lighting, camping, and swimming. Surrounded by nature, creating a strong sense of connection, of perthyn.
Even for those who moved here in later life, these memories have been formed. Visiting places to get away from our everyday cares, to walk, run, cycle, exercise dogs, or inexplicably leave pants and shoes in bushes and trees for litter pickers to find. Places we can go to be with nature in our own myriad ways.
Places we return to time and again, feeling welcomed, nurtured, loved. Such places may become sacred to us, deep bonds formed through the ritual of repetition, quiet places where we can commune with something greater than ourselves. Spaces become imbued with deeper meaning. Where we may have scattered the ashes of our loved ones; places of remembering, providing a connection to our ancestors. This landscape of our ancestors can be very dear to us.
We can become so used to being able to freely access spaces, to thinking of them as public places where we belong. It rarely occurs to us that these places belong to others. It can therefore come as an unpleasant surprise when we find ourselves made to feel unwelcome or excluded from them.
What becomes of our sense of perthyn, when all we have left is our hiraeth?
Those who grew up ym Mhontypridd can fondly remember the unwritten laws and customary rights of access between those who own places, and those who access them for a variety of purposes. Customs of access etched deep into the relationship between those who have farmed here for generations, and those who settled later.
Dis-place-ment
“I really had no idea how lucky I was growing up in the area, when the farmers and landowners had a deep connection to the land, and recognised it was okay to share. There was an unwritten understanding: ‘Don’t interfere with my farming, and you can wander where you like’.”
Rob Peterson, Save Craig Yr Hesg
It’s often not until such places are advertised as being for sale, change hands, or become fenced off that our feelings of perthyn a hiraeth become more strongly felt. And when we see places where we once felt that ‘welcome in the hillside’ becoming laden with ‘keep out’ and ‘no trespassing’ signs. We find ourselves dis-placed. An ages-old process of exclusion sundering people from land and nature once again.
Yn Gymraeg, in Welsh, the names given to places are themselves imbued with meaning, often relating to the way such places have been accessed and used by the people belonging to them. If we take time to listen, we can learn a great deal about the stories of places from the names they’ve been called since people have known them.
Y Graig is a space that was once so well known as a place of rocks, and of quarrying them, that it’s what the place is still known as today. In an earlier time, other people may have known this bryn by another name. But ‘the Graig’ is the name by which it’s known by most people living ym Mhontypridd today.
The rocky place
As I write, I can look southeast towards Caerdydd from my desk window in Pwllgwaun, a damp pool of a place, past the shoulder of Maesycoed, a once-wooded field place, towards Y Graig, the rocky place. And once in a while, Y Graig will call to me, cast its spell of perthyn upon me, causing me to leave my desk to fill a deep hiraeth.
I leave my front door and walk through the lanes of my children’s formative years, briefly joining the flow of the Afon Rhondda as it runs past Y Clwb Rygbi. Crossing Sardis carpark, I traverse the culverted and buried Nant Gelliwion stream and, on its long-buried bank, take the cut-through to follow the route of the old Barry railway.
This route carries me past the former site of Graig railway station, demolished to be replaced by the now-itself obsolete telephone exchange. I cross the raised walkway above the carpark of Ysbyty Dewi Sant. Where the line of the old railway tunnels runs beneath Y Graig I join the steepness of High Street, before turning into Graig Street, beyond the end of which lies Y Graig.
A steep footpath climb brings me to the Pontypridd Circular, where it passes into the open space of Y Graig. Like many mynydds of the Cymoedd Cymru, Y Graig is a landscape of once-open grassland slowly becoming scrub woodland, a ffridd of a place where residents are accustomed to roam at will in place of cattle.
Here, in recent years, observant residents have reported that their accustomed right to roam has become diminished. Small plots of land changing hands have borne testimony to new signs erected, warning the unwary to ‘keep out – private property’.
Finding time
As much as people feel they belong to Y Graig, Y Graig also belongs to other people. A tapestry of ecology, reflecting an underlying tapestry of ownership.
From this elevated position above the town, my eyes are free to fly across the valleys to the surrounding hills and mynydds. Looking south from Y Graig my vision soars to the whaleback hill that became a mountain. Y Garth rises from the sea of surrounding urbanity that is Dinas Caerdydd and the commuter villages of Ton Teg, Church Village, and Llantwit Fadre, like a humpback whale breaching the open ocean.
Y Garth, ‘the enclosure’ yn Gymraeg, is ironically the nearest area of open access land for the people of Caerdydd to escape to. A place that was so full of meaning for the ancient peoples of this landscape that they built five bronze age burial mounds. Three can still easily be seen, strung out along its ridge running from east to west.
Between Y Graig and Y Garth, clinging to the lower southeasterly slopes of Y Graig, along the Taf Valley to the northern banks of the forest stream y Nant-y-Fforest, grows the ancient woodland of Coed-Fforest-Uchaf. It’s the highest wooded forest, which gave the nearby Trefforest, ‘forest town’, its name. But the name ‘fforest’ has little to do with coed, ‘trees’.
During the early part of the pandemic, many used the hour of daily exercise to lose our sense of time exploring the landscape around us. But many also found the time, inclination, and resources to fulfil a long-held dream to become owners of land, using their new rights to exclude others. But people who lived here long before the pandemic found their ancient rights of access to land challenged by new landowners.
The edge of the forest
When William the Conqueror led his barons on a royal pilgrimage to St Davids in 1081, much of lowland Glamorgan came under the sway of the Norman Marcher lords. They quickly set about acquiring the rich farmland, and the right to rule over the population of the ‘kingdom of Glamorgan’ under their Marcher laws.
Lands south of Y Graig to Y Garth became a fiercely contested border. One of the principal tools by which Marcher lords excluded the indigenous Cymry from their own lands was through the imposition of ‘forest law’, from the Latin foris. It operated outside of common law, barring folk from practising traditional grazing or foraging rights on lands held in common. Historically then, unlike woodlands, forests were places of exclusion.
Today, nestled on the northern banks of the Nant y Fforest above the Treforest Campus of the University of South Wales, lies Fferm Forest Uchaf. Following the Pontypridd Circular Walk from the open landscape of Y Graig towards Fforest Uchaf farm takes you along an ancient trackway that once carried farm traffic between Y Graig and Y Fferm Forest Uchaf.
Where this trackway crosses the boundary to the farm there’s a styal, from which a well-marked footpath through pleasant rolling fields of mixed grazing passes a large, inviting pond. Through the yard of Fferm Forest Uchaf, the trackway then joins the course of the Nant y Fforest.
Despite the idyllic surroundings, residents have long reported being made to feel deeply unwelcome for using the ancient right to walk along this trackway. This itself is a form of exclusion. The more unwelcome people feel in walking old paths, the less likely they are to walk them. The less people walk them, the easier it becomes for landowners to legally remove their rights.
Rights of way
Access has been restricted in recent years to the land holdings immediately above Y Graig. Signage has appeared on fences warning walkers that places where they once roamed are privately owned, with ‘no public right of way’.
The open, accessible nature of Y Graig and Y Garth was vitally important to people in the area. So much so that, when a large tract of Y Graig appeared on the open market during lockdown, the community attempted to purchase and protect their access to it. But their offer was refused.
In the opposite direction northwest of Y Graig, looking out across Y Cymoedd Gelliwion towards Maesycoed, lies the ruin of Llandraw Farm. Mynydd Y Glyn rises sublimely in the distance. Yn Gymraeg the word ‘llan’ denotes an enclosed settlement of the early Celtic Church, usually followed by the name of its founding saint. In this case, however, ‘draw’ translates into ‘yonder’, implying that this may have been the farm of the nearby religious communities of Llanwonno or Llantrisant.
Prior to the pandemic Llandraw Farm was another place to which I often found myself drawn. Myself and others found the ruined farmhouse and the fields surrounding it to be imbued with a deep sense of perthyn a hiraeth. A place of deep spiritual meaning to those who once had the privilege of spending time there.
During lockdown the ownership of Llandraw Farm changed hands from an older farmer, who understood the relationship residents had with the land, to a younger family member who quickly moved to terminate the rights of access residents had long enjoyed. Bereft of their spiritual connection to this place, those affected spoke of how being excluded had a deep impact on their mental health, at a time when they really needed to connect to the land.
Pooling resources
Above Llandraw Farm lies Mynydd Gelliwion, a forestry area managed by Natural Resources Wales. This monoculture woodland climbs towards a large area of hillside and the summit of Mynydd Y Glyn. At 362 feet above sea level this is a wonderful area of open access land to walk or ride to, and a great place to enjoy uninterrupted views across the surrounding hills towards Mor Hafren, the Severn Sea.
Pennant Waters – “a local company based at Hirwaun and operating nationally” and “Wales’ largest home-grown renewable energy company” – has submitted plans for “up to seven wind turbines with a blade height of up to 155m” there, that could generate “up to 30MW of electricity”. Energy aside, the imposition of such schemes is another means by which people feel excluded from their own landscape, their sense of perthyn eroded.
Returning to Y Graig, looking directly north over the Afon Rhondda, we see the community of Graigwen, ‘white rock’. The rock that may have given the community its name is now known locally as Eagle Rock, for the way it overhangs the ‘hollow’ in which sits the community of Pantygraigwen.
Behind the houses on Aelybryn, the eyebrow of the hill road, lies another parcel of land that changed hands during lockdown. Again, residents wanted to protect it, and pooled their resources to purchase it for community use. But they were outbid at auction.
Several years previously, having seen the woods above Graigwen pass through the hands of one developer after another, that community formed a group and raised the funds to purchase them. A local resident stepped in to secure the woodlands, allowing the community the time it needed to organise and fundraise. The woods the people of Graigwen belong to, belong to them.
Radical transformations
Within sight of Graigwen Woods, another recent land purchase means residents no longer feel free to roam where they once did. Beyond these fields runs the Pilgrimage Way to Penrhys, known locally as the Darren Ddu (black edge) road. Crossing this ancient way brings us to the fields above Craig yr Hesg, the rock of sedges.
Here the community of Glyn Coch, the ‘red valley’, has fought a long-running campaign to save their place of belonging from an international quarrying concern. But fences have gone up, excluding generations of residents from their precious green haven. Their exclusion is reinforced by bailiffs, legally empowered to enforce compliance with the laws of property ownership.
Returning to centre ourselves one last time upon Y Graig we can look east across the Afon Taf, beyond Pontypridd ‘common’ (a common that is not a common). Raising our eyes upwards above Pontypridd’s golf club we can see the summit of Cefn Eglwysilan, the ridge of the church enclosure. The highest mynydd in the area rewards those who climb its summit with uninterrupted views in all directions.
But here again, this sense of unspoilt isolation is threatened by another renewable energy firm. Bute Energy is pushing hard to develop the Twyn Hywel Energy Park. This will see the construction of 14 200-metre wind turbines on much of the open access land surrounding the village. Below the Eglwysilan road yet another renewable energy firm, Renantis, recently started a public consultation on plans for a new solar farm, Glyntaff Solar, around Byn Tail (‘dung hill’) Farm. Between them, these two schemes will radically transform the landscape on the northeastern bank of the Afon Taf at Pontypridd.
Perthyn a hiraeth
We come full circle, from Y Garth to the south, Mynydd Y Glyn to the northeast, Craig yr Hesg to the northwest, and Cefn Eglwysilan to the west. In each direction our eyes rest on places of belonging. Places where the people of Pontypridd find their ancient rights of access being taken from them once again.
This is one town, in one valley, bearing witness to a pattern repeated across Cymru.
Despite the power of ownership to exclude us, perthyn a hiraeth remain powerful forces connecting people to their landscape by their interactions with places that matter to them. While ownership confers the power to exclude, perthyn a hiraeth bestow powers of inclusion upon us.
These landscapes call out to us, invite us to appreciate them, and welcome those who would care for them. As we hear the call, the voice of the landscape is heard by others, too. So, as communities of perthyn, we must find ways to work together, to find a new balance between the needs and desires of those who own or seek to own land, and those who would work to prevent exploitation of our land and our exclusion from it.
Hiraeth can be felt most keenly precisely because we’ve been excluded from the places that matter to us, where we feel our sense of perthyn most strongly.
It’s people who make the spaces in our landscape places, who connect with them, use them, bestow names on them. And it’s people who reformed these landscapes over hundreds of generations, living within the land, creating rich tapestries of biodiversity through farming and forestry. But most Cymry today struggle to live sustainably in the landscapes of our ancestors.
Tir Pontypridd
How can our communities be true to their gwlad, and live sustainably within our landscapes, if we are unable to access or have little control over our own tir? In the absence of community access to land, one of the only ways communities will get to decide how the land around where they live can be managed sustainably will be by becoming the owners.
Stories of perthyn a hiraeth, of communities fighting against inappropriate developments on their doorsteps, of ownership and exclusion, of failed attempts to secure access and ownership, and of the inspirational community purchase of Graigwen Woods. All have inspired the setting up of a new community organisation, Tir Pontypridd.
Tir Pontypridd is setting out to purchase land for community use. It has learned from those ancestors who once saved a small proportion of weekly wages to build the community infrastructure so desperately needed for their wellbeing in the industrial Valleys. Tir Pontypridd invites the local community to join our Facebook page, and/or to join as members, paying a little each month to buy and protect land today for future generations tomorrow. To keep hiraeth to heel and preserve the perthyn that is our birthright.
