Shakin' Stevens Coming Home

Making the journey into Wales from his home in Berkshire

is rock'n'roll singer Shakin' Stevens.

he's travelled the world with his musical career,

and is now home in Wales on the trail of his family ancestry.

saw Shaky spent the equivalent of five years in the UK singles chart

reaching the top 30 no less than 30 times.

Making him the household name he is today.

But now, in search of his Welsh ancestry, there is an issue.

Although I grew up in Wales, most of my roots are English.

to one of the most dramatic events in recent Welsh history.

Shaky learns of his grandfather's role in Britain's imperial past.

That's quite heavy. In the sands of the Sudan. That's quite heavy, yes.

Discovers the tragedies that beset his grandmother's life.

Life after that must have been wretched.

And learns the final part of a moving family story.

It's a horrible thing, war, isn't it? Dreadful.

Singer Shakin' Stevens grew up in Ely, Cardiff.

a building site foreman who had fought in World War I,

and Mum, Florence May Venables, a hospital cleaner.

Shaky was the youngest of Florence and Jack's 13 children

Now on the road at the beginning of his journey,

Nervous, yeah, but I'm excited at the same time. I'm very, very interested.

He's travelling with a very special photograph.

It's of his maternal grandparents, Charlotte and Herbert Venables.

Two people he never got to meet and is very keen to know more about.

This is Herbert and Charlotte, my mum's parents

I thought you could tell me that as we go along.

That's as much as I know about these fine looking people.

Shaky's family story begins in the town of Pontypridd.

When his family first came to Wales in the 1880s,

they headed here in search of work and a better life and,

in the centre of town at Pontypridd's Museum,

Hi, Shaky. Welcome to Pontypridd Museum.

Mike has traced his earliest ancestors to Shropshire and

the parish of Mainstone, where the family lived for many generations.

It was not until the 1890s that his grandfather, Herbert Venables,

He died in 1937, so you wouldn't have known him,

because he's obviously died 11 years before you were born.

Herbert married Shaky's grandmother Charlotte Quartley.

He had come to Wales from Shropshire. She, from Somerset.

Now, Charlotte Quartley is the reason why

She moved to Pontypridd from Somerset in round about 1889.

Herbert and Charlotte had a daughter,

Florence May Venables, Shaky's mum, and a son, Leonard.

But does Shaky know anything of his uncle Leonard

or remember meeting his grandmother, Charlotte?

No. I don't remember meeting them at all.

Shaky's mother never spoke to him of his uncle Leonard.

the times of the day, really. How it was.

So, Shaky really is on a journey into the unknown.

By revealing the lives of the two people in this photograph,

he will unlock so many of the untold stories from his family's past.

In search of his grandfather, Herbert Venables' story,

Shaky is travelling just across the Welsh border into Shropshire,

a place that would have been very familiar,

not only to his grandfather, Herbert,

At Mainstone's Primitive Methodist chapel,

he meets with the Rev Stephen Hatcher.

because your great-grandfather William Venables was

a Primitive Methodist local preacher and an agricultural labourer.

is there a difference between the Primitive Methodist and Methodist?

Yes. The Primitive Methodists were a 19th-century revival movement.

Primitive Methodists felt compelled by their Christian beliefs

to take more direct political action than their Methodist cousins.

Their mission to help the working poor made them popular

with farm labourers in places like rural Shropshire.

Their worship often took place in large open-air prayer events

Amongst them was Shaky's great-grandfather, William Venables.

And they used to go out to the people?

Very much, very much going out to the people.

which is, as you'll see, the Primitive Methodist preacher's plan

for 1851 for the Bishop's Castle circuit. Ah.

This circuit plan shows all the places that he went out to.

What we have here is a list of the preachers to start with.

And then we come to an on-trial category.

That means they're still being tested.

And then we, here, have a W Venables.

That is without doubt William Venables, your great-grandfather.

It's not long before they send him to Mainstone,

the very chapel that we're in, and it is your great-grandfather

But, what he doesn't yet know is that,

whilst one side of this parish is in England, the other half is in Wales.

Something that will prove significant in this story.

First, he meets with Dr Kathryn Roberts from Cadw,

who can explain the historic reasons why there is a border here.

Welcome to Offa's Dyke. It's great to be here. Look at that view.

And, this is the Dyke itself, just next to us, which is

probably the most famous historic monument to run through

the parish of Mainstone, which is where your ancestors come from.

Today, Offa's Dyke has come to symbolise

the border between England and Wales.

over 1,000 years ago between two distinct kingdoms.

We're standing on the edge of two kingdoms.

On that side, the kingdom of Mercia, which was in England,

or, where England is now, and on this side, the kingdom of Powys,

which was part of Wales. The Welsh kingdoms.

And this marks the boundary between them. Ah!

Of course, over time, the Welsh-English border has moved,

but there are other sections where Wales has expanded

and it's moved inland, and there are sections which are, of course,

in England, so it still is a border, in a way.

My ancestors are from Mainstone, so which side of the dyke would they be?

That side, or this side? English or Welsh?

Well, Mainstone parish expands across both sides,

but the town itself, or the village, is on the English side.

So, I suppose if they were born on that side,

that places them on the Mercian side, the English side.

So Shaky's ancestors were living right on the border with Wales.

Something that may prove significant as the story moves

even further back into his ancestral past.

he's off to the nearby Shropshire town of Shrewsbury.

He's here to continue on the trail of his great-grandfather,

He had a son, Herbert, Shaky's grandfather.

Shaky has always wanted to know about the medals

Herbert is wearing in this photograph.

In Shropshire's Shrewsbury Castle, there is

a record as Herbert's earlier life as a soldier.

In 1885, he found himself in the Sudan, northeast Africa,

involved in one of the more unusual adventures of the British Empire,

He was in the first battalion of the Shropshire Light Infantry

and he's wearing there... Those are the medals. Exactly.

Well, these are exactly the same type.

Each soldier was given a medal for service in the Sudan.

They were out there fighting a tribe called the Hadandawa.

Very, very highly-respected warriors.

But just why in 1885 did Herbert find

himself in the Sudan in the northeast of Africa?

A year earlier, Sudan's capital Khartoum

was under the command of famous British officer

But Gordon badly underestimated the strength

Khartoum was overrun and Gordon killed.

For the British, it was seen as a humiliating defeat,

so an extraordinary plan was drawn up to retake Khartoum.

The plan involved building a railway in Sudan from the Red Sea

port of Suakin across 300 miles of desert,

carrying troops and supplies inland towards Khartoum.

Through the tribal lands of the Hadandawa people.

Your grandfather would have been out there

with the Shropshire Light Infantry as part of the garrison of the port,

protecting the railway, going out on patrol to fight these tribesmen.

They're not. They were by no means pushovers.

Although they were only armed with spears and shields and swords...

Well, their reputation as fighters was just second to none.

These are some of the weapons that they brought back.

These are tribal spears from the Hadandawa in the Sudan. Wow.

..Sudanese sword, the kaskara,

which they used as their main fighting weapon.

Brave though the Hadandawa may have been,

swords and spears were no match for British rifles.

The counterbalance to all that was that your grandfather

would have been trained to use one of these,

which was the standard British rifle of the period,

Very accurate, long range. A really powerful weapon.

Your grandfather would have had his fill.

Yeah. Carrying that around... That's quite heavy.

How long would it take to...? To load?

Take out, back in. Off again, do the same.

They reckon about 20 rounds a minute.

The railway that Herbert was sent to protect was never built.

The plan was abandoned, but clearly he was proud of the medals

As well as Mainstone in Shropshire,

Shaky's earlier ancestors in this area

can also be traced to the nearby village of Kerry,

and it's to Kerry that he's going to next

and a visit to the parish church of St Michael's.

But unknown to Shaky, by travelling to this village,

he's just crossed the border into Wales.

It's here in Kerry that genealogist

Mike Churchill-Jones has traced Shaky's family back even further -

all the way to his four-times great-grandfather,

His name is Richard son of Francis Gwilt.

And I'm excited to reveal to you that he was born

and baptised in the very church you're standing in.

What Mike has discovered is that Richard Gwilt,

Shaky's four-times great-grandfather, was Welsh.

Born on the Welsh side of the border in the mid-18th century.

He was not the only generation of the family from Wales.

We've managed to research your Welsh Gwilt line.

Back from your four-times great-grandfather Richard Gwilt

back to his great-grandfather, who was also a Richard Gwilt.

He was born in the early part of the 1600s.

Yeah, so a lot more Welsh ancestry for you now to explore. Wow.

The story now moves to South Wales and Pontypridd.

Shaky's grandfather Herbert came here in the 1890s

Charlotte Quartley is Shaky's grandmother.

She's the lady in the family photograph he's travelling with.

He wants to know more about his grandmother's earlier life.

In the 1880s, she came to Pontypridd from Somerset,

Ponty's old bridge in the centre of town

would have been a familiar sight to them.

Historian Dr Louise Miskell has been looking into their story.

Your grandmother came here in the late 1880s.

At that time, Pontypridd would have been

which for Wales was quite a big town.

I think the fascinating thing about Pontypridd,

It's on the border between the affluent coal-mining areas

So it was really on the edge of different cultures.

Lots of families like your grandmother Charlotte were

coming from exactly Somerset in the southwest of England...

That's right. ..at that period, because there was so much work.

That's right. They went where the work was, didn't they?

They did. You had Albion Colliery just up the road at Cilfynydd,

which was one of the many steam-coal collieries in this area.

There was such an appetite for Welsh steam coal

They were really looking for labour. Work was plentiful.

Relatively well paid, although it had its dangers as well.

There was an opportunity to move into an industrial environment

and come to a town like Pontypridd which not only had employment

but it had all the shops and facilities of an urban area,

as well as the basic things like grocers and shoemakers

and tailors, it had jewellery shops, upholsters, watch and clock makers.

There was Turkish baths in Pontypridd in the 1880s,

Do you think she might have used those? Possibly.

Quite a fashion in the Victorian period.

It was just an attractive up and coming vibrant place. Wow.

So it pulled them in, and many of the families like them too.

Shaky's grandparents Herbert and Charlotte married in 1906,

this was not his grandmother's first marriage.

At the Rhondda Heritage Centre, Mike Churchill-Jones has been

looking into the archives to discover more

of Charlotte's earlier life, along with her brother James.

You can see James's name on the bottom there, and his wife.

I'm afraid, it goes over the next page...

Also in the household is a Henry John Bale.

Henry John Bale became Charlotte's husband.

They married in the registry office in Pontypridd. The second marriage.

This is the first marriage. First marriage.

Once they married, they stayed there

and they moved to Middle Street, which is just round

the corner from where Charlotte was living with her brother James.

They were working just across the railway track in a colliery

In Cilfynydd, little village just on the outside of Pontypridd.

Now life was going relatively well for them.

Mike has discovered that both Charlotte's new husband, Henry Bale,

and her brother James were coalminers

In the 1890s, they were working at the Albion Colliery.

To learn more of the jobs they were doing,

Shaky goes underground at the Rhondda Heritage Centre,

so he was working in a roadway like this.

A ripper's job would be to keep the roadways open.

Henry was a labourer, removing debris,

who were setting roof supports, pit props.

Henry and James were working underground in the Albion Colliery.

A fateful day in Welsh coal mining history.

So they were underground on a Saturday afternoon

and at about ten to four in the afternoon,

just under two hours after the shift started,

people on the surface heard two loud explosions.

The blast could be heard in the main high street of Cilfynydd.

Hundreds of people would soon rush to the pit head.

The men were 500 odd yards underground,

but the blast could be felt up on the surface.

A cloud of smoke came up one of the shafts.

Huge gas explosions deep in the pit shaft signalled what would

become one of the worst mining disasters in Welsh history.

In all, 290 men and boys would lose their lives.

Dust, debris everywhere. Coal dust, debris.

They found bodies strewn everywhere. Terrible.

The bodies were taken up, the following day

they were laid out in a hay loft of the stables on the pit top.

They were so badly mutilated and covered with dust that people

were mistakenly identifying the wrong bodies.

Shaky's Grandmother Charlotte would have had to identify

the bodies of both her brother James and husband Henry.

Henry would never get to see their first child,

Cilfynydd took many weeks to bury their dead.

This photograph shows Phillip Jones,

who was the manager of the mine on the day of the accident.

Charges were laid against key members of the management.

The major charges were dropped by a local jury full of local mine

The manager and one of his key officials were fined a total of ?12.

For Shaky, this is the first time he's learned of his family's

involvement in this dark day in Welsh history.

In one fateful day, she lost all her family.

Her life after that must have been wretched.

Shaky was too young to remember his grandmother Charlotte.

She died when he was only a year old.

But being one of 13 children means there are others in the family

who do remember, including Shaky's older sister Aileen.

I do remember Charlotte, my grandmother.

It's the first time Aileen's seen this photograph of her grandparents.

Later, Aileen will be meeting up with little brother Shaky,

but now the family story moves forward to 1914

Shaky's Grandmother Charlotte had remarried to Herbert Venables,

amongst their children was a daughter -

But Shaky's mother had never spoken about her brother Leonard.

At Pontypridd's museum, Shaky meets with historian

Dr Jonathan Hicks, who's been researching Leonard's story.

Leonard enlisted, as you can see from the papers here,

in August 1914 in the Welsh Regiment.

He did. Mm. They did that a lot, didn't they?

because they wanted to join up. He wanted to fight at the front

In 1914, Leonard tried to enlist, but was deemed unfit for duty.

He's not going to take no for an answer,

because in January the following year, 1915,

And he does become successful on this occasion,

and he joins the Royal Field Artillery.

Leonard was trained as a gunner and served on the Western front.

Millions and millions of rounds fired on the Western Front

And quite piercingly low, though, you'd figure.

It would have been absolutely horrendous.

He goes through all of that, absolutely horrendous experience.

He's home on leave the following year, 1917.

So he has a bit of happiness in his life,

that up until that time has probably been absolutely awful

in terms of his service on the Western Front.

Also for Charlotte, after the many trials in her life, a moment of joy.

She could witness her son's marriage.

But soon Leonard would return to the front line,

and Charlotte would never see her son again.

he then goes straight into the Battle of Passchendaele,

that the British fired in the last two weeks of July 1917.

Something like 4 million shells were fired.

Your uncle Leonard was one of the gunners firing those shells.

You can't really imagine what they went through, really. Not at all.

It's a horrible thing, war. Dreadful. Absolutely awful.

By Christmas 1917, Leonard, who was now aged just 21,

was about to face his final assault on the enemy.

they begin the move back into the front line.

This time he's posted right at the edge of the Ypres Salient,

one of the most dangerous places on earth at the time.

Between the fifth and the seventh of January 1918,

there was an awful lot of artillery fire going from the British

to the German lines, and the Germans were responding.

He's then taken out of the front line to a casualty clearing station

but unfortunately, he passes away on the 15th of January 1918.

He's buried in the cemetery just west of Ypres in Belgium.

..his wife having had the letter from the war office informing

her of her husband's death gives birth to their son,

who she names Leonard Samuel Venables,

Shaky began this journey with a single photograph -

a photograph of his grandparents Charlotte and Herbert,

But why is he being so moved by what he's learned?

More than anything because of Charlotte.

She lost a husband, a brother just in one day.

Shaky has learnt so much on his journey that he'd like to

He's about to meet up with older sister Aileen and brother Les.

I don't call him Shaky because I've always called him Michael.

But in recent years now I've gone down to Mike,

Shaky has quite a story to share with them.

At times, this has been a difficult journey for Shaky.

It's been very emotional and sometimes very difficult.

But, of course, I'm really glad I did it.

the story starts with their grandmother Charlotte Quartley.

At the start, Shaky believed he had little Welsh ancestry.

It's funny, really, you know, I've thought of my ancestors as English.

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