Life in the tight-knit Valleys street where everyone knows each other and residents still use coal fires
One street on the edge of Treorchy, Tylacoch Place, is a stark reminder of our industrial past. Houses in the street date back to the 1800s and were originally built with the sole purpose of being yards away from the old Tylacoch Colliery site, which firs
MANY people won’t remember the days when terrace homes were heated by open coal fires.
For decades, coal kept the south Wales valleys alive.
Houses, villages even, were built surrounding collieries to give a home to the miners, and those of us who live in the Valleys walk in the footsteps of our industrial history every day.
One street on the edge of Treorchy, Tylacoch Place, is a stark reminder of that industrial past.
Houses in the street date back to the 1800s and were originally built for workers at the old Tylacoch Colliery site, which first opened in 1854.
The houses were simple. Two up, two down.
The toilets, outside of course, sat in front of the little cul-de-sac of houses, possibly shared between neighbours.
The back gardens levelled up the mountainside, and as one resident told me, used to have a little lane going through them where the coal cart would come through, delivering fuel to each home.
And to this day there are still homes in the street that are heated purely by coal fires, with no access to a central gas heating system.
The Echo visited the street in 2018. At the time, residents had been enjoying the recent installation of a gas line which cost thousands of pounds – but some homes still didn’t have the gas link-up. Five years later there are at least two residents relying on their coal fires to keep their houses warm.
One told us they are forking out a staggering £275 a month for coal.
The street is beautiful, with picturesque views over the valley.
Many of the residents have lived in the street for decades, and for some the homes have been in their family for generations.
One woman was born in the front room she now calls her sitting-room.
As Welsh people, we often joke that we all know one another, and everyone knows about the “Joneses” who all live in the same street.
You could say this is true for Tylacoch Place, as new generations move into the sought-after area.
Dom Adams, a 27-year-old engineer, bought his home in the street in 2015, then his younger brother followed suit and moved in next door a few years later.
Another brother – he is one of six boys – is currently renovating a home which was heated by coal until the previous owner passed away in recent years.
The house he chose has another family connection.
He said: “This house was originally my great-grandmother’s house. My grandfather was born here in this room in 1935. My great-grandmother died in 2001 and the house went out of the family.
“Then this house came up in 2015, and because of the family history, I had to buy it.”
When Dom bought the house, the previous owner had already carried out an extensive renovation on the property and it was completely different from what Dom could remember of it as a child. However, it still had the open fireplace, which Dom has now converted into a log burner.
Dom’s house, like many in the street, isn’t connected to a gas line, though – as many of the homes that were able to get the connection only did so as they had grant money to pay for it.
Dom has been advised it would cost thousands of pounds to carry out the job.
Instead, he is using gas bottles, which have gone up from £54 to £85 and need replacing every three months or so, but are probably cheaper than mains gas at the moment.
However, the energy supply issue clearly didn’t put his brothers off moving to the street – and Dom praised the sense of community, with his neighbour, Jean Burns, describing him as a lovely boy who checks in on her in case she needs anything.
And now his house, which has been home to so many generations of his family, has turned a new page of history as the place where a Ukrainian refugee has found a safe haven.
Dom opened his home to Yana Kovalenko, also 27, three months ago.
Yana, a schoolteacher from Ukraine, described the terror of living in a city where sirens would go off seven or eight times a day.
She said she would sometimes spend two to three hours in a bunker following the sirens, waiting to be told that it was safe to leave.
This was affecting her mental health.
“I felt like my life had been put on stop,” she said.
She started to look for a host to provide refuge in the UK as part of
the Government’s Homes for Ukraine scheme, and met Dom. The pair spoke for three months online, video-called and met each others families before Yana moved here.
"At Christmas it was amazing. In Ukraine we celebrate different and on a different day, and it was nice to spend it here with his family and see our frends,” Yana said. On of Yana’s best friends from Ukraine is also in Rhondda, being housed by someone in Tonypandy. She said how it was nice to have someone from her home country living so close. Tylacoch Place is a far stretch from her usual life, though. She said: “Where I lived in Ukraine is a city, there’s buildings, shopping malls everywhere, here it is nature. It is beautiful.” Dom and Yana spend many weekalking end walking around the local area.
He has shown her Pen Pych and Blaenrhondda waterfalls.
Yana said that her parents and sister are still in Ukraine, in a “safe area, if you can call it safe”, she said.
Her dad, who is 50, was fighting in the war but was injured so is no longer in the military, offering a little bit of relief to Yana.
She is currently studying at the University of South Wales and waiting for her DBS checks to arrive so she can work as a teaching assistant. She hopes that one day she can start teaching in Wales, just like she did in Ukraine.
I stopped at the house of Lynn Jones, the farmer who owns and tends most of the land behind the terrace. Lynn is one of only two people I could find still lighting a coal fire to heat his home – and I admitted it was probably the first time in my life I’ve seen one.
Lynn bought his home for £1,200 in the 1970s and it boasts history spanning five decades.
Lynn, 73, described how he wanted to be hooked up to the gas line, but mixed messages about whether or not he was eligible for any of the grant funding that helped some of the elderly people in the street mean he has gone without.
At one point all the houses in the street were to be hooked up, he said – they started from the top, but by the time they got to two doors up from him, the pandemic hit and brought progress to a grinding halt.
His coal fire is connected to a central heating system and is kept on for 24 hours a day, though he can control the radiators by a thermostat.
But it is no cheap alternative to gas. In January and December he spent £275 a month on coal – that’s without his £60 electricity bill.
One resident who has made the switch away from coal in recent years is Jean Burns, though she still illuminates her multi-fuel stove with red fairy lights to give it that same cosy effect.
But she too is not connected to the new gas line – her home is heated entirely by electric radiators – and it was just as warm and cosy as if the fire was roaring.
Jean spoke fondly about her time using the coal fire – and just as fondly about the street. She told how the coal fire would heat her downstairs to a comfortable 25 degrees.
She moved there with her husband, Ken, who passed away in 2019, and her neighbour and good friend from two doors up shortly after.
“We all used to sit out in the street and have a cup of tea and a gossip,” she said. “And we still look out for one another. My neighbour next door, she still uses coal, and she will do it herself and her niece comes to help her.
“They’re great – she [the neighbour’s niece] even did my food shopping during the pandemic.
“She always makes sure I’m OK and if I need anything.
“You know my neighbours down, they are the same, they have a key to make sure I’m safe in case I fall. Everyone looks out for one another, you know. They are good as gold.
“I remember the day we moved in, there was a knock at the door, it was a neighbour introducing themselves and asking do we need anything. Five minutes later, another knock and another neighbour.”
It would be hard to avoid your neighbours in a street like this.
Jean’s stories about the difficulty that lorries have getting down the street paint a perfect picture of just how quaint and idyllic it is.
She described how delivery men often phone her after getting lost as their sat nav has taken them into forestry, with the street hard to find on maps.
“And when people have stuff like washing machines delivered, they ask, ‘Can I turn down there?’ and you just have to say, ‘No – you’ve got to reverse all the way back.’”
Even the bin men have specific instructions for the street, as their new wagons can’t fit down there.
“They send one of the small vans down to us to collect our food and garden waste, then the old recycling wagon comes to get the rest – the street is too narrow.”
In front of Jean’s house is a small stretch of road and then her front garden, where the outdoor toilet would have been years ago.
As you walk up and down the street you see some houses pebbledashed, some newly rendered, some with single-glazed windows, most double-glazed – the new and the old.
It’s a perfect little picture of life in the Valleys, where some things have never changed – and I don’t mean the coal, but the truly welcoming and warm nature of Welsh people.