Katherine Jenkins Coming Home

Making the journey across the Severn Bridge into Wales

is singer Katherine Jenkins.

She's performed around the world and today lives in London,

but now she's home in Wales,

travelling on a very special journey,

here in search of her family's past,

where there are more than a few surprises

waiting for her to uncover.

First, she's heading for Neath,

the former coal-mining town where she grew up,

and where her family still live today.

Now Katherine Jenkins is coming home.

Coming up later,

Katherine learns the shocking truth of a wayward ancestor...

That is a little scandalous, isn't it?!

(Wow!)

..takes to the stage with a very special choir...

# I will ever give to thee. #

..and learns of a moving family story.

It's quite...

It's funny how history repeats itself.

Now at the start of her journey,

what has motivated Katherine to want to trace her family tree?

I think because my dad passed away when I was 15,

there are questions that, you know, I can ask my mum now

and she can answer on her side, but some of the things, you feel like...

Well, I'm not sure if I'm ever going to find these things out now,

so anything about my dad, any new information relating to him,

is always something I will treasure.

Katherine lost her dad, Selwyn Jenkins, when she was just 15.

But what does she know of her Jenkins family?

I don't feel like I actually know that much about the first few

generations above me, so this is going to be really interesting.

Katherine's search begins in her home of Neath.

In the centre of town,

she meets with genealogist Mike Churchill-Jones,

who is waiting to reveal her family tree.

And this is it.

(Oh, my gosh!)

-You can see yourself on the bottom here.

-Yeah.

You were born to Thomas John Selwyn Jenkins

-and Susan Elizabeth Evans.

-Mm-hmm.

The Jenkins came from both South and West Wales.

You've got deep Welsh roots on your paternal side,

in both Carmarthenshire and Glamorgan.

-Oh, really? OK.

-Indeed, indeed.

Katherine's Jenkins family in West Wales came from Carmarthenshire

and can be traced back to the 1760s.

The story starts with her four times great-grandparents, Mary and Henry.

Henry Jenkins was born approximately 1767 in Carmarthenshire

and he died in the workhouse in Carmarthen in 1847.

They had an illegitimate child called John Jenkins.

John was Katherine's three times great-grandfather.

He was born in 1794 in the parish of St Ishmael in Carmarthenshire.

He was an agricultural and a railway labourer.

-OK.

-OK?

-So they weren't married?

-They weren't married, no.

-OK.

In turn, John Jenkins had a daughter, Martha,

who was Katherine's great-great-grandmother.

She was born circa 1820 in Llansaint.

As Katherine will later learn,

Martha has an important story to tell.

In 1851, she was a housemaid

and after that she was a cockle picker and a gatherer.

-I wanted cockles for breakfast this morning!

-Did you?

They didn't have any at the hotel.

OK, brilliant!

In fact, Katherine comes from generations of Welsh cockle women

who often worked more than ten hours a day,

gathering cockles off the south coast of Wales.

Your great-grandparents were John Jenkins and Elizabeth Howells

and she was also a cockle picker.

OK!

-And one of their children was your grandfather, David Jenkins.

-Right.

He was born 1891, in Llansaint.

He was a labourer, he was a furnaceman and a railway ganger.

Oh.

He married your grandmother Catherine Ann Elizabeth Davies.

-Who I'm named after.

-Indeed.

-Yes.

Katherine's grandmother,

whose maiden name was also Catherine Jenkins, came from Neath, and

she was by no means the only Jenkins to appear in the family tree.

So, literally, Catherine called her daughter Katherine,

called her daughter Katherine.

-There's another Katherine there.

-Oh, my gosh!

Catherine to Katherine to Catherine to Katherine,

-miss my dad, to me.

-Yeah.

Isn't that funny? It's a real family name - I didn't realise that.

All spelt differently, though.

First, Katherine heads for Neath's High Street

and to the indoor market.

Hello, how are you?

Her great-great-grandmother Martha Jenkins was a cockle picker

and cockles are still sold today in the market.

Katherine is here to learn more about the cockle industry but,

being in Neath, there are always people who want to say hello.

You've come back! Somebody said you were here. Lovely girl!

-Are you Katherine Jenkins?

-Yes, I am. How are you?

-Nice to see you.

-Nice to see you.

-Pretty girl, you are.

-Thank you very much.

-Very pretty girl, isn't she?

Katherine's great-great-grandmother Martha Jenkins

began harvesting cockles in the 1850s

and historian Dylan Jones has been looking into her story.

She was a cockle lady and she was... Well, basically,

it was a hard life, backbreaking job.

The cockle industry during that period...

Well, it dates back to Roman times really and, basically,

it was a female occupation right up until quite recently.

Cockles are edible shellfish which thrive in the waters

along the many beaches and estuaries of the Welsh coast.

At low tide, the women could rake this prized source of food from the beach.

A normal day for Martha would have been up at the crack of dawn,

go down to the cockle beds and then retrieve the cockles,

either by using the cockle knife and the sieve, and then the rake.

Anyway, as I say, a backbreaking job but,

thankfully, cockles are still sold in this market today.

SHE CHUCKLES

-My mum comes to actually buy cockles from here.

-Oh, I see.

It appears that Martha did more than

just collect enough cockles for her family.

So she would have been picking them and then would she have sold them on,

or would other people have sold them on for her?

Yes. She would have gone round the various houses,

knocking on the doors.

Well, the same customers, she would have gone round for years.

With the rest of the cockles,

she would just go round the local markets.

Katherine can't resist trying some cockles for herself.

-Got to put vinegar on cockles.

-Yes, you've got to!

Thank you. It's been the staple diet for Welsh people for many centuries

and long may it continue, really.

It's one of the things I really miss from not living in Wales any more,

so I find this so funny that this is actually part of my history!

Good, good.

Mmm, yum!

Katherine has clearly loved learning of her cockle-gathering heritage.

I would never have imagined in a million years

we'd have cockle pickers in our family.

I'm sure I've never...even ever heard of anyone

talking about that as a possibility.

Having said that, I love cockles!

So, yeah, I am surprised by that.

I'm not surprised, in that I expected my family to be hard workers,

to be doing very normal jobs.

It just never entered my head that they would be in that industry.

For the next part of Katherine's story, things become more serious.

Katherine has learnt that her great great-grandmother

Martha Jenkins was a cockle woman but,

as she's about to discover, there's a great deal more to Martha's story.

This marriage certificate shows that in 1852, Martha Jenkins,

at the age of 31, married an Evan Walters.

Sadly, that marriage would not last, as Mike Churchill-Jones now reveals.

Could you read that?

It's actually an extract from the Carmarthen Journal in 1854.

"An inquest was held on Friday last,

"on the body of Evan Walters.

"It appeared that on the previous day the deceased was in the act of

"following his barrow in a deep cutting

"when a large quantity of earth and stone fell, and nearly covered him.

"And when brought out,

"he only survived the accident for a short time.

"Verdict 'accidental death'."

-That's your second great-grandfather.

-Oh.

Evan Walters was Katherine's great-great-grandfather.

His tragic death left Martha his widow, facing a bleak future.

-What are your thoughts?

-It's just tragic.

How old was he?

-Erm, he was about 32 years of age.

-That's my age. It's tragic.

He was so young.

And how long had he been married?

He'd been married virtually two years.

Martha was expecting their second child when Evan died.

She had lost her husband and, at that time,

the main breadwinner in the family.

And what happened to her afterwards?

Basically, Martha, I can tell you, was a very, very strong woman.

The 1881 census shows her here.

She's now a very successful cockle merchant.

So she's running her own company.

She's a very successful cockle merchant, a very brave woman.

She never remarried.

Katherine's own father, Selwyn Jenkins,

died when she was very young and her mother had to cope

with bringing Katherine up without her husband,

so Katherine can see parallels in Martha's life.

It's silly! Um...

-I think the strong, the strong woman thing is a family trait.

-Indeed.

And I'm thinking about my own mum,

and being left on her own, at a young age.

It's quite... It's funny how history repeats itself.

I can just show you another glimpse of the census.

It's Martha living alone now in 1911.

She's still in Llansaint, she's in the cockle industry.

I love that she built up her own business, though. I love that.

-It's great.

-Especially in this kind of era where, you know,

it's not necessarily thought of for women to do that, so I like that.

That's definitely where the independence comes from.

The end of her story is...

Martha Jenkins - she eventually died in 1921,

but look at her age.

Wow! 101.

-101.

-That's a good innings.

All she had to put up with, successful business...

-But she never remarried?

-She never remarried.

Wow.

Next, the Jenkins story in Neath moves forward two generations

to Katherine's grandmother, also called Katherine Jenkins.

She would play an important part in the morale of this industrial

town in the darkest days of the Second World War.

Neath, like so many of the Welsh coal-mining communities,

paid a heavy price in the war.

Nearly a quarter of the men conscripted into the mines

would suffer an injury during their time underground.

But, in the blacked out streets of Neath,

the community spirit of this Welsh town was sustained by music.

CHORAL MUSIC PLAYS

In chapels and mission halls across the valley,

special wartime concerts brought the community together and,

amongst the singers, was Katherine's own grandmother who,

like Katherine, was a mezzo soprano.

Here in Neath, Katherine visits one of the surviving venues for

these concerts, the Presbyterian Mission Hall in the centre of town,

a building that offered a beacon of hope amidst the despair of the war.

Here to show Katherine around is Neath historian Tony Hopkins.

I can't believe that I haven't ever been in here,

even though it's been on my doorstep all this time.

Yeah, these buildings have been the lifeblood of the town for the last

150 years and they really came into their own during

the Second World War period cos the buildings were used not just for

church services, but they were used as gathering points for the people.

Some people were made homeless when the bombs fell,

people needed morale lifting,

and your grandmother's voice sort of played a part in that,

as she sang to the locals. It would have meant a lot to them

and they would have gone back home into that sort of dark world

invigorated and ready to carry on with the home effort.

So do we know if she sang in the choir or was she...?

-She was a soloist.

-As a soloist?

-I gather, yes.

Katherine can be very proud of the part her grandmother played

in this Welsh choral tradition

and in raising the wartime morale of her hometown of Neath.

There were a number of soloists around and, of course,

there was a strong choral tradition in the town anyway,

which stretches right back to the 1850s

-when nonconformist chapels started to proliferate in the town.

-Yeah.

A lot of nonconformists were great hymn writers, and churches

and chapels started to perform all sorts of music and, gradually,

they put on secular concerts as well, in the churches, so

there was always a strong tradition in the town of choral singing.

This choral tradition continues in Wales,

and the Kenfig Hill & District Male Voice Choir

are today busy rehearsing.

They've specially gathered for

a little surprise performance for Katherine, later on her journey.

# Amen. #

But first, there is one more twist in the story of Katherine's

great-great-grandparents, Martha Jenkins and Evan Walters.

Earlier, Katherine was clearly very moved by the tragic death

of Evan Walters, her great-great-grandfather.

That's quite... It's funny how history repeats itself.

But was Evan really worth shedding a tear for?

In 1852, Evan had married

Katherine's great-great-grandmother Martha Jenkins,

but why had Martha not changed her surname to Walters?

Mike Churchill-Jones has finally uncovered the answer.

This is just to remind you,

that's the 1861 census that says her name was Jenkins which intrigued me.

It intrigued me - why was she calling herself Jenkins?

After extensive trawling through the newspapers,

I think I've come up with the answer.

"Extract from Carmarthen Journal Newspaper, September 23rd, 1853."

"On Wednesday last, Evan Evans, alias Walters,

"was brought up and charged with having, on the 10th May,

"married one Martha Jenkins at St Ishamel's Church,

"Elinor his former wife being then alive."

Oh, my goodness!

"Rev TB Gwyn said,

"I am vicar of the parish of St Ishmael's in this county.

"On Tuesday 2nd September, the prisoner's first wife called upon me

"and told me that she had heard that he had married another woman.

"I recollected marrying him according to the rules of the established church

"to one Martha Jenkins of St Ishamel's parish on the 10th May 1852.

"The depositions having been taken, the prisoner

"was fully committed for trial for Bigamy at the next Assizes."

-(Oh, my God!)

-Your thoughts?

That is a little scandalous, isn't it?!

-Wow! So he married two women and went to prison.

-Mm-hmm.

-Do you want to know more?

-Yeah! Of course.

My mother was joking with me this morning about there being a criminal in the family and there is!

He was remanded in custody until March where,

if you look down the list, you will see Evan Evans,

alias Evan Walters, charged with bigamy.

So, it was how long between first marriage and the second marriage?

Five years.

And was he with the both of them, do we know? No.

So he married one, then, for whatever reason, married the other,

without dealing with the circumstances of the first wife.

Mm-hmm.

Six years before he married Elinor,

we find him in Llanddewi Aberarth,

the next village to Llanbadarn Trefeglwys,

and he's with another family.

He's the head of the household,

he has a wife listed as Rachael

and a son listed as David.

Now, I failed to find a marriage for these two,

so we can't call him a double bigamist,

but he certainly had a third family.

-So, basically, he had three different families on the go?

-Mm-hmm.

And do you think that either of them knew about each other? No.

-So poor Martha went through all of that as well.

-Indeed. Mm-hmm.

God bless her. She had all that stuff,

and then she found out her husband was...

-She was a really strong woman, this one.

-Indeed she was.

(Wow!)

-So he came out of prison and then he got killed?

-Mm-hmm.

-More or less a month and a half later.

-(Wow!)

-That has blown my mind!

-Right.

I wish my dad was here to talk to about this.

Katherine has taken her father's side of the family tree as far as she can,

so now she's off in search of her mother's branch of the family.

Katherine is visiting the nearby coast,

and the seaside resort town of Porthcawl.

This is where her great-grandparents

on her mother's side of the tree came to live.

David and Elin Parry Evans were residents of Porthcawl in the 1920s.

To try and understand what might have drawn them

to this seaside town that time,

Katherine meets with historian Peter Stead on Porthcawl's seafront.

-Wonderful Porthcawl!

-I know! I haven't been here for a long time.

It's wonderful. I'm absolutely fascinated by this place.

By the end the of the 19th century, start of the 20th century,

Neath is beginning to lose some of its prosperity.

You know, the metal industries are in decline and, of course,

this place is developing, so I can imagine anyone who's interested

in business and advancement in Neath might have thought,

"Well, if Porthcawl are going to have these hotels,

"visitors there, this could really be something."

So this is probably what drew your great-grandfather here.

Katherine's great-grandfather David Parry Evans was

a respectable dentist and a leading member of the town council.

Both he and his wife Elin appeared to have had great hopes of

seeing Porthcawl grow as a genteel and respectable middle-class resort.

Everyone thought Porthcawl was going to develop as a fashionable resort -

posh hotels, the Esplanade, the Seabank and so on.

But then things changed of course - the First World War.

Then, after the First World War, two things, really.

First of all, the miners' fortnight came.

All the miners working here in the valleys -

no work the last week of July, first week of August.

With the holidaymakers came the attractions

and the building of a vast fun fair on the beach -

a huge draw for miners and their families,

and the American troops stationed here in World War II.

This was called Coney Beach because of the Coney Beach in America.

-Oh, right!

-It was named for the Americans who brought it here.

So, from the First World War on,

the thing which dictated the nature of Porthcawl

were the South Wales valleys and the miners.

When you worked in the pits, when you lived in the valleys,

-the sea was heaven.

-Mm, of course.

They used to arrive here and they'd say,

"The sea, the sea, the sea!" This was their great release,

and so the developers of Porthcawl realised that Porthcawl wasn't

going to be like Brighton, Eastbourne or even Llandudno,

with posh hotels catering to the middle classes.

The nature of Porthcawl was dictated by the miners.

As a singer, Katherine has performed many times in Porthcawl.

It's a town she's very familiar with,

but she knows nothing of her great-grandparents' contribution

to the musical heritage of the town,

or that her great-grandmother Elin was also a singer.

She and her husband David played an important role

in the building of Porthcawl's Grand Pavilion -

the concert hall that still stands today.

It's here that Katherine meets up with historian Keith Morgan,

who's been busy unearthing this hidden family connection.

It's a magnificent building, as you can see.

It was built as a centrepiece for the town.

In fact, it is what we call our jewel in the crown.

An interesting factor in the construction of this building

is that your great-grandfather, DM Parry Evans,

-who I believe is on your mother's side...

-Yes.

..was one of the supporters in getting this building constructed.

Oh! I never knew that and I've sung here.

Sadly, Katherine's great-grandmother Elin

would never sing at the pavilion.

She died before the building was completed.

But her husband, David Parry Evans, was there at the opening ceremony.

Today, Katherine is about to visit the pavilion for herself.

Inside, a plaque commemorates her great-grandfather

David Parry Evans' role in its building,

and here there is another surprise waiting for a Katherine.

She's about to receive a special coming home welcome,

from the Kenfig & District Male Voice Choir.

# Gogoniant byth am drefn

# Y cymod a'r glanhad

# Derbyniaf Iesu fel yr wyf

# A chanaf am y gwaed

# Arglwydd dyma fi

# Ar dy alwad di

# Golch fi'n burlan yn y gwaed

# A gaed ar Galfari

# Amen

# Amen

# Amen. #

Oh, thank you! You sound amazing by the way.

-Hi, nice to meet you.

-Hello.

-Welcome to the Pavilion.

-Hi, boys.

This is the Kenfig Hill Male Voice Choir.

Ah, thank you. You sound gorgeous. I got a little tear in my eye then.

I haven't been back to Wales for a bit so, lump in the throat!

Would you mind if we sang Bread Of Heaven

-and would you be willing to join us?

-Please, please!

Er, I'll try and sing a little bit with you. Go ahead.

Excellent. Thank you.

She may not have had a chance to rehearse,

but Katherine can't resist joining the choir.

# When I tread the verge of Jordan

# Bid my anxious fears subside

# Death of death and hell's destruction

# Land me safe on Canaan's side

# Bread of heaven Bread of heaven

# Feed me... #

Bread Of Heaven's just one of those songs that I've sung in

so many different scenarios, whether it be, you know,

Millennium Stadium or Sydney Opera House,

or a family party, or whatever it might be, in the pub,

and it will always mean home to me.

# Open now the crystal fountain

# Whence the healing stream doth flow... #

It's so nice to hear a male voice choir,

especially cos I don't get back home very often.

So, whenever I hear that kind of music now, it does give me

a lump in the throat and I was a bit taken aback to hear them,

but they were wonderful so that was a really nice surprise.

# Be thou still my strength and shield, strength and shield

# I will ever give to thee. #

It's been brilliant. Thank you for doing this. I've had the best time.

Aw, thank you very much.

-CHOIR:

-Wahey!

-Oh, it's my lucky day!

LAUGHTER

-I won't wash now for ever!

-Thank you!

Thank you, boys, thank you.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd