Jeremy Bowen Coming Home

BBC journalist Jeremy Bowen doesn't have your typical nine-to-five.

For over 30 years, Jeremy has reported on the front line

from the world's most dangerous conflicts.

Not 20-minutes' drive from here, there's President Assad's palace,

and as far as he's concerned,

he's won an overwhelming seven-year mandate.

And he's even been at the wrong end of a bullet.

But now, Jeremy is here in Carmarthenshire

to trace his Welsh ancestry.

Jeremy had a keen interest in news from a young age,

encouraged by his mother Jennifer, a newspaper photographer,

and his father Gareth, a journalist for BBC Radio Wales.

Gareth was born in Merthyr Tydfil

where his ancestors migrated in the 19th century.

I'd like to try and find out how it is they gave up lives

that presumably were...

a bit calmer in the countryside

to move to this brand-new thing which was an industrial town.

Did they prosper? Did they get hurt in accidents?

I'd like to know a little bit about all of that.

So, with questions needing answers, Jeremy Bowen is coming home.

Jeremy's journey will begin not in Merthyr Tydfil,

but here in St Clears, Carmarthenshire.

He is about to discover his ancestry runs deep in this rural county,

and to discover just how deep, he's heading to St Clears'

parish church to meet genealogist Mike Churchill-Jones

for the reading of his Welsh family tree.

-This is what we've come up with.

-Wow. That's an awful lot of people.

-What do you think? Have a look.

-That's a lot of people.

Jeremy's paternal line in St Clears can be traced to the late 1600s.

And to the 1700s in Cardiganshire.

But it's a family on his father's Bowen line

which first catches Jeremy eye.

So I've got a lot of cousins coming from this lot.

Second, third, fourth, fifth cousins, whatever they are now.

Absolutely, yeah.

James was the oldest one, then there was William, then it was Hannah.

John, George.

Benjamin, Thomas,

and the last child was Esther Ann.

They were born to Esther Thomas and John Bowen.

And this line of Bowen siblings from the 19th century

benefited from parents with tremendous foresight.

Jeremy will learn that his great-great-grandparents, John and Esther Bowen,

set their children on a course that would ultimately help him.

Mike can also reveal that generations of Jeremy's family

have more than earned their sea legs.

Including his four times great-grandfather, Benjamin Morgan.

-He was a boatman, sailor, mariner.

-Yeah.

Did you know you had any mariners?

No.

No. My brother said that there'd been some talk of a...

Just before I came here actually, my brother said,

"do you remember some talk about some sailor in the family?"

I said, "No, I've got no recollection of that at all."

So maybe there was some folk memory had percolated its way through.

-He used to chat to my grandparents a lot, I think.

-I can tell you have.

-He was a boatman and a mariner in St Clears.

-Here?

And he has a great history in his family

of the very same occupation in St Clears.

I can see that cos his father was a lighterman.

-Yeah.

-I didn't know that St Clears even was a port.

-No?

-But they are all boatmen here.

-They're all boatmen.

Here on the river.

I mean, this is a lovely spot.

I think he must have been quite lucky to live here.

In that sense, because the river here is beautiful,

it's a nice village.

And, no, I'd like to find out about his life.

And to do just that, Jeremy can travel the short distance

to the River Taf and to St Clears Boat Club.

He's about to take a trip down the very estuary

his four-times great-grandfather Benjamin sailed on

over 200 years ago.

Jeremy is met by maritime historian David Jenkins,

who's been researching Benjamin's life on the water.

It reveals the hard life of the busy mariner

at the birth of the Industrial Revolution.

Well, we have here definite evidence that he would have been

coming up and down this river, Jeremy.

This is an account of the voyages in which the lighter

Jenny of St Clears has been engaged in the half-year

commencing 30 June and ending 31 December 1835.

Loading within the port of Llanelli, and so they would have been going

to places like Llanelli, Pembrey...

um, and Bury Port.

Quite short journeys from here.

Quite short journeys across Carmarthen Bay.

Also Kidwelly, another of these forgotten ports.

They would have been going there to load anthracite

coming down the valley.

Benjamin would have sailed on single-masted vessels

transporting goods across the open sea of Carmarthen Bay to St Clears.

Navigating this winding river was no easy task,

but for him it was simply a way of life.

So, 1835, that was when the Industrial Revolution

was really getting going and some people worked in abject conditions,

in the pits or in early factories.

Being on the river couldn't have been too bad.

On a morning like this, it's wonderful, it's absolutely idyllic.

These vessels were not easy to work, there was a heck of amount

of really hard, physical effort required.

No mechanisation whatsoever,

it was all blocks and pulleys and brute force.

So he was a strong lad.

You had to be able to handle these vessels and handle them

and to be able to change course and tack and so on

just at the right moment, especially on a confined river such as this.

So, yes, it was a far, far healthier life than being in a mine

or in the copper works in Swansea.

But it was nevertheless a job that put a great deal

of physical strain on the human body.

But this isn't the end of Benjamin's story.

His life on the water took a great toll on his health.

And back at the boathouse,

David can show Jeremy a document from 1849

which reveals a broken man.

This is a petition to Trinity House.

Now, Trinity house is better known as a body

responsible for the administration of lighthouses, navigation

and so on, around the coasts of England and Wales.

But it was originally set up in 1514 as a charitable Catholic guild

for seamen, just based at a parish church in Deptford, in London.

And, so, what we have here is a petition from Benjamin Morgan

to Trinity House, when he was aged 60 years, for a pension.

-And is this then his seafaring career?

-Exactly.

What's really interesting here is that we've got his entire

seafaring service.

And we can see here that most of the vessels that he sailed on,

from the Hazard, which he joined in 1806,

these are all vessels of either 50 tonnes or less.

-So, it says he is "a person of good character and reputation."

-Yes.

"I do recommend him as a proper object

"of the corporation's charity."

But, two years later, in 1851, it appears Benjamin was at rock bottom.

And still desperately waiting for financial support from Trinity House.

As a last resort, local surgeon Dr Rice Howells wrote a letter,

pleading for help on behalf of Benjamin and his family.

"Sir, I beg to certify that Benjamin Morgan, of St Clears,

"who is upwards of 60 years of age,

"is wholly disabled in consequence of sickness

"being affected with dropsy and chronic bronchitis.

"He has been confined to his bed the last five weeks

"and in a disabled state for the last two years.

"It is very improbable that he will ever again be able to do anything

"towards getting his livelihood, and he is very poor.

"So, I beg to recommend him as very proper of charity.

"Benjamin Morgan's wife is advanced in years

"and unable to do anything for her livelihood.

"She's brought up ten children.

"Not one of whom, however, is in a position to assist the parents.

"Your able servant, Rice H Howells, surgeon."

Do we know what happened? Did he get the pension?

Unfortunately, we don't know what eventually happened.

A great deal of Trinity House's records were apparently lost

during the Second World War in a bombing raid on London.

-And then, just two years later, unfortunately...

-So, 1853.

1853, we have here his death certificate.

27th of July 1853.

And you can see here, "Of the Quay St Clears",

so, actually where we are now.

Cause of death, asthma.

"Asthma" and "two years", so, he's been suffering from asthma.

-What you've got to remember was a lot of the time they'd have been wet through.

-Yeah.

So it's little wonder that a chest complaint eventually transpired.

And these days you've got very effective drugs, and those days they didn't have any.

They didn't have any at all, no. No.

-We have it easy.

-We do have it very, very easy.

Well, I don't know about you, Jeremy, dodging bullets!

But I've certainly had it easy.

I think... I think my life has been easier than Benjamin's.

Jeremy desperately wants to know why and when his father's ancestors

moved from Carmarthenshire to Merthyr Tydfil in the 19th century.

Genealogist Mike Churchill-Jones can now answer these questions,

and has asked Jeremy to meet him

in the grounds of St Clears Parish Church.

It appears two branches of Jeremy's family made that journey

in the mid-1800s.

Mariner Benjamin Morgan's 19-year-old daughter Ann

married William Bowen, a shoemaker from Carmarthen,

in 1847.

The following year, they decided to move to Merthyr Tydfil.

-Land of opportunity?

-Mm-hm.

I can show you an extract of the 1851 census.

William Bowen, Ann...

They have their first child.

They have an 18-month... Catherine.

-And she was born in Merthyr.

-..daughter.

-She was the first generation born in Merthyr Tydfil.

-Indeed.

So, we have William, a shoemaker in Carmarthen...

-Yeah.

-..he's left his trade,

and he's come to Merthyr to be...?

-He's working as in iron puddler.

-Indeed.

Iron puddler sounds like quite a tough job...

-involving furnaces and...

-Would you like to find out about it?

..things that are molten. Yeah. I would.

The Bowens weren't the only branch who migrated to Merthyr.

In 1851, Jeremy's great-great-grandfather

Evan Griffiths was just a babe in arms

when his parents made the move.

And in 1861, the Merthyr census reveals ten-year-old Evan

was already hard at work.

Oh, he's in the ironworks at the age of ten.

-Yeah.

-As... What does that say, catcher?

-Catcher.

-..catcher in the ironworks.

-Ten years old.

-Hmm.

My God. My son's 12.

He doesn't work in the ironworks.

If he was ten years old, it's possible

he could have worked in the ironworks at a younger age.

-There you go.

-It's very young, isn't it?

It's unbelievably young.

Working as a catcher in an ironworks doesn't

sound like a very safe job to me.

So, shall we find out what a catcher is as well?

Yeah, I'd very much like to.

What I suggest you do is go off to Merthyr Tydfil.

I'm sure there's someone who can help you.

-I think, right now, all roads lead to Merthyr.

-Indeed they do.

So, the next leg of Jeremy's journey will take him

to his father's home town of Merthyr Tydfil.

But he is going to make a quick stop en route, in Cardiff, to visit

St Fagans National History Museum.

Here, he can learn about the Bowen family trade of shoemaking,

and ask why William left this profession in rural Carmarthenshire

for an industrial life in Merthyr.

Shoemaker Bill Bird can help answer these questions.

So, who would William have been making shoes for?

Was it a premium product, or something very, very everyday?

The bread and butter would have been making shoes for farm workers

and people working in agriculture.

If you got a name for yourself,

people would come from long distances

to have their shoes made by you, you know,

and it would primarily be in the quality of the uppers

-the quality of the leather...

-So, it's like today, shoemaking.

-Absolutely.

-But presumably, if he had a business that successful,

-he might not have moved to Merthyr Tydfil.

-That's right.

-Then Bowen shoes would now be known worldwide.

-That's right.

It's never too late to see if Bowen shoes can become a reality,

so Jeremy has decided to give the traditional methods a try.

Pull it. That's right. Lay it down.

And poke that in. That's it. So...

Oops.

-That's it.

-Ta-da.

So, the straighter in you go, the better it's going to be.

-That was an angle.

-Yeah.

I don't think I've ever managed to knock a nail in

that didn't go in at an angle.

And William probably would have had a mouthful of these tacks,

so he'd just reach out and they'd come out,

he'd manipulate them with his tongue

and they would just come out in the right direction.

A bit quicker than I can too.

-So,

-what do you think? Yeah, it's a start. You've actually done it,

-which is actually very good.

-Thank you very much.

-It's in the DNA somewhere.

-It is.

-All those generations of shoemakers.

I'm impressed that you actually got four in.

-Well, that is really good.

-Yeah.

But I'll stop while I'm ahead.

What I can conclude from all this is that making shoes was

probably a harder job than I thought it was.

-It was tedious.

-Hmm.

For somebody like me that loves just sitting,

contemplatively stitching, love it.

If you're kind of young, 21, it's not for you.

-And William obviously didn't.

-I don't think he did, no.

He took his family when they were small, the kids were small,

and they migrated.

It must have been, in those days, quite a hard journey...

-Yeah.

-..to start a whole new life in Merthyr.

-In Merthyr, yeah.

It was quite a way in those days. Maybe he had a good bootmaker.

-Maybe he made himself some special boots.

-That's right, yeah.

So, William and his family moved to Merthyr Tydfil in search

of a better life.

They were followed just a few years later

by Jeremy's great-great-grandfather, Evan Griffiths, in 1851.

Evan worked at this famous ironworks in Cyfarthfa at the age of just ten.

The works are now in ruins, and nature has reclaimed this

once-great industrial powerhouse, but what remains is still

testament to the people who built the ironworks 250 years ago.

Jeremy is meeting historian Chris Parry

to learn more about this historic site.

So, we have come in round the back of the furnaces now,

and so, what have we got here?

It's the natural... It's the living rock.

It is the natural wall.

Well, it was kind of customary at the time,

when you were building a blast furnace,

them being 50 feet in height on a regular basis,

that you would look for a natural wall or hill to build that into,

because you needed direct access to the top of the furnace.

-Because they put the stuff in from the top?

-Exactly right, yeah.

So, all the coke, all the ironstone and then the limestone

all goes into the top and then it gradually seeps down through

the furnace with the heat that is being applied constantly,

a white-hot furnace, and then, when it gets down to the bottom,

you tap out the molten mixture,

let it cool and you've got pig iron.

So, this kind of thing is what started making Britain

-a world power as well?

-Definitely, yes.

Well, Cyfarthfa was made famous by the cannons

they produced at one time. They produced cannons from 1774.

By the 1800s, by 1802, in fact, you had Nelson visiting,

because he was visiting the site many of the cannons

he utilised in his warships were made and cast,

and then owner was overwhelmed.

Richard Crawshay told his workers to

"Shout, you beggars, Nelson's here!"

There was an overwhelming response, apparently.

But, yeah, it was literally world famous by that point.

Former shoemaker William worked as a puddler

in the iron industry for over 50 years, well into his 70s,

a strenuous job turning pig iron into wrought iron.

Ten-year-old Evan worked as a catcher in this rolling mill.

Evan would catch the red-hot iron as it was

spat from rollers at 50mph then place it into the next roller,

which increased the strength and purity of the iron.

It is a very, very hard job for a ten-year-old to do,

and it is very risky on many levels.

But it would, if he survived, which I think he did,

he would have gone on to have been

prosperous within the ironworks, certainly,

but getting through those first years

would've been fairly difficult.

-They had to grow up quickly, didn't they?

-Yeah.

Well, young children in Merthyr would have been taken

out of education, if they were in education at all,

at the age of five, because you would pay for your education,

and so, as soon as you give them a year or two when they're a child,

maybe in Sunday school or maybe a small paid school, you would

take them out and then their real education starts - working.

Because that's what, at the end of the day, they were made for,

essentially. Their parents didn't think that they were going to be

scientists or doctors or anything.

They thought, "They're going to work in the ironworks,

"the collieries, the quarries. THAT'S education they need,

-"and they need to start it as soon as possible."

-Hard life.

-Very hard life. We've got it easy by today's standards.

-Yes.

I've got a 12-year-old son. I'll tell him all about that.

Yeah, well, send him to an ironworks.

THEY LAUGH

Education may not have been important to every family

in the 19th century, but it was of course vital for Jeremy

to succeed in his career as a broadcast journalist.

Jeremy's great-great-grandparents, John and Esther Bowen,

clearly understood the value of education,

and this is the point that schooling became a reality for the Bowens.

John and Esther's marriage certificate from 1873

shows they where illiterate,

as they both signed their names with a simple cross,

but they clearly wanted more for their own children.

Education historian Dr Sian Williams has discovered a school register

showing Jeremy's great-grandfather William,

John and Esther's son,

attending Penydarren School at a very young age.

-We have William here.

-Yes.

-He was admitted in the summer of 1880.

-10/6/80.

-Yeah.

And he was born in 1877, so he is going to school at three years old.

-That is very young.

-It's very young.

It seems to be that he is the first in the family to attend school

and to have formal education.

So, the tradition of education in my family is quite skin deep.

It only goes back a couple of generations.

-Indeed. It starts here, in 1880.

-Yeah.

But what it does show of course is that your great-great-grandparents

placed a value on education.

We've found out that at least six of the children attended school,

so it would have been a big financial commitment, really.

And William's little sister Esther was enrolled in Penydarren

at an even younger age.

-She's two.

-Yeah.

She's coming up to three in the term that she's attending.

-So, very, very young.

-Very young to go to school, by any standards.

-Yes, indeed.

-By modern standards young.

-Yes.

So, nursery... Real nursery education.

-They were little kids.

-They were tiny. They were tiny.

She is on the 1911 census,

when she's 21, and she is single, as you can see.

-Single, I see.

-Have a look at her job.

-Schoolteacher.

-She's a schoolteacher.

-Oh, so she did very well at school.

-Mm-hm.

-Yeah.

That's fascinating.

It was the start of a process

because my own father got into a grammar school and then went on to

university, so that is a beginning, it's a continuum, that,

I suppose, started with John and Esther deciding

that their children should get educated.

Jeremy's father, Gareth Bowen, used that education to become a successful

radio broadcast journalist for BBC Wales, and in October 1966,

he faced what was surely the biggest challenge of his career.

Jeremy has travelled to Aberfan near Merthyr Tydfil,

where 116 children and 28 adults lost their lives

in a devastating landslide.

His father spent many days reporting live from the scene.

Jeremy was just six at the time,

but he remembers that period in his father's life.

This memorial garden has been created

to remember those who lost their lives,

and Jeremy is meeting Professor Louise Miskell

to discuss his memories of his father's time covering

one of Wales's most tragic accidents.

I remember, as a small kid,

him coming back with the car covered in slurry

and his trousers caked in dried slurry from the tip,

and I remember him going to bed in the middle of the day,

when presumably he'd been up all night,

or even for a couple of nights.

And would this have been quite early in his journalist career?

He was in his 30s, he was mid-30s, I suppose.

Yeah, 1966.

He would have been 36,

and I was six years old and I was...

In our house, we always had the news on,

so I was quite interested in what was going on,

so I was aware of what had happened and, of course, a lot of the

kids who were killed here were more or less the age I was at that time.

And I think my father always had a connection with it,

because I saw, years later, not long before he retired from the BBC,

he had, in a fairly prominent place, he never used to play them,

but they were there, all the tapes of his reporting from Aberfan.

I think it was a big moment in his career,

because he was a journalist who spent the vast...

you know, 98% of his working life working as a journalist in Wales

and, of course, this was an enormous world story.

A terrible tragedy that had hit Wales.

Louise has an original recording of Gareth Bowen's

radio report from the disaster,

and Jeremy can listen to his father's voice from almost 50 years ago.

-RECORDING:

-'I am now looking through the walls of the shattered school

'into the main hall, which is a mass of people and firemen

'and policeman, mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters

'and everybody, and standing once again on a pile of black slurry

'and, underneath us, is the infant school.

'And on top of the slurry is a human chain with buckets,

'picks,

'and the debris is going away handful by handful, brick by brick.

'Men are standing up to their knees in black water.

-'Sandwiches? Something to eat?

-Where are you from?

-'Treforest.

-Salvation Army?

-Yes.

-'How long have you been here, sir?

-This morning.

-'About 12 hours?

-Yes.

'Why are you digging?

'My niece is under there.

'OK, now. Anybody want a sandwich?'

Well, it's powerful stuff, they've put pictures to it as well.

-Yeah.

-Yeah, it is remarkable.

He was a good reporter.

Yeah.

I mean, talking to people who are actually trying to dig out

relatives from under the collapsed school, you know,

must have been an incredible challenge for him.

I think he felt a lot of...

..empathy for the people here and, actually,

the essence of being a good reporter

is feeling empathy for people.

You've got to let people who aren't there feel what it's like

to be there, give people an idea of what it's like

to be in the shoes of those who are affected

by whatever's happening at that particular moment, and, certainly,

that's something which he did from here,

and, again, it comes down to a certain sensitivity

and empathy for people.

Absolutely.

And I think, of course,

since he was from this part of the world, he felt it.

Almost 50 years have now passed

since 144 lives were lost on the final day of the school term.

The people of Aberfan will never forget what happened

here in October 1966,

and the effects of this disaster will be felt for many generations to come.

Jeremy is travelling back to Merthyr for a final surprise.

Although the Penydarren school his ancestors attended was

demolished some years ago,

Gwaunfarren Primary was built in its place.

Jeremy has been invited to meet a class of 9- to 11-year-olds,

who are excited, to say the least.

CHILDREN CHATTER

Former pupil and now headteacher Louise Bibby

can introduce Jeremy to the children.

Hello, everybody.

I've got a very important visitor who has come to visit you today.

I'm sure that they have many, many questions

-they'd like to ask you, Jeremy, this afternoon.

-Yes.

What did your parents think when you became a news reporter?

Well, my father was a journalist, so he was quite pleased.

My mother was a photographer and when she was young,

she used to work on the Merthyr Express,

and I think she was a bit less enthusiastic, put it that way,

and when I started going to dangerous places,

she wasn't at all happy about it, I think,

but I went to a war in Iraq in 1991, when I was 31,

and before I went to Baghdad, I wrote letters

to my parents in case I got killed, and I left them in Jordan.

I didn't get killed and I was so embarrassed

when I got back from that job, I ripped them all up

and threw them away without looking at them,

because I said all sorts of things about, you know...

The children have been learning about the Aberfan disaster

and have been putting their feelings into words.

What have we got here, then?

We have written some poems about Aberfan.

-And we put some of the bits together to make this.

-That's brilliant.

Thank you very much.

I watched the village waking

Terraced houses yawning lazily

Narrow, steep roads blinking blurrily

Rubbing the sleep from every street corner

I watched the village change for ever

An evil black entity awoken by a vengeful storm

I learned about a village and I felt proud

A village filled with heroes

Every woman, man and child

Today I learned about a village and I felt proud.

Wow. That's brilliant.

You're really talented in this class,

and I am going to treasure this.

I mean, this is a really serious subject, Aberfan,

but it is great to see you talking about it.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

It's been brilliant, coming to the school,

seeing the next generation of kids

and knowing that only 100 years or so before I was born,

my forebears couldn't even write,

so now I am very pleased that

I am a lot more knowledgeable about where the Bowens came from.