A Community History

It has long been my ambition to publish a history of Pembroke. While Pembroke's past is well documented, there is no collective work on Pembroke in more modern times, other than articles in e.g. the excellent 'Pembrokeshire Life' and newspaper articles (remember the late Vernon Scott's Then and Now?). Much of the information lies in the memories of our senior citizens and during the course of my research, I have collected oral histories and photographs depicting social change in Pembroke from late Victorian to modern times.

Regarding Monkton, we had very little material until the formation of the Pembroke and Monkton Local History Society, which launched the Monkton History Project in March 2010. This met with great success and the society has produced bi-lingual heritage leaflets 'Monkton: a sense of place', followed this year by one on Pembroke. These were funded by Planed and are freely available and also available to download from our website.

Looking at ways of making this material accessible, we devised a project called 'Through My Eyes: a Community History of Pembroke and Monkton', which will involve making short films or digital stories of Pembroke people. Since making the initial few films, and showing them in talks and exhibitions, interest has been huge. The idea has gained momentum for a DVD of the stories and an accompanying book. We have deliberated for some considerable time on how best to achieve this, but eventually a detailed plan was submitted to the Heritage Lottery.

Success

Last Saturday, at our Coffee Morning in Monkton Priory Church Hall, I was pleased to make an important announcement: we have won funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund for this major project.

We are under no illusions about the volume of work we have set ourselves and many well-known Pembroke personalities are taking part. This is a voluntary, community project in the true sense of the word: a history written by the community for the community and all done for love not money - the grant of £9,900 is for publication and associated costs only.

But it is so wonderful to have these costs covered in one grant - while we do fundraise to cover our running costs, to be able to raise such a sum would be very difficult. We are therefore extremely grateful to the Heritage Lottery Fund for their faith in this project, and also to the Pembrokeshire Museums and Libraries for supporting our bid.

Home Movies

The entertainment at Saturday's Coffee Morning was the showing of old home movies introduced by Pauline Waters. Home movies reveal so much more about the community and its personalities than still photographs and are fascinating to watch.

One of the films, shot in the early 50s, belonged to Mary Dewhirst who gave us a commentary - Mary incidentally has many more films, but in 8mm format. When we visited the National Library of Wales last Easter we enquired about copying these onto DVD. In return for depositing them in the National Sound and Film Archive, they will digitalise them and present Mary with her films on DVD. So - more to come in future.

The Project Team

As an example of what we are aiming to achieve in our project, we showed a film made by Pauline, who is on the project team along with Liz Jenkins, Ann Lankshear, George Lewis, Vicki Haggar, Jim Spooner, Stuart Asman and myself. Her story is a snapshot of what life was like growing up in the 1950s in Monkton and the wonderful community life which existed then: a time many of us look back upon with great affection. Here is her script.

Pauline's Story:

Growing up in the 50s was a wonderful time - a sense of community which we have lost in many ways, a community which was very much centred around my family home, Priory Farm. Here Monkton people found employment, children played and all shared the daily chores.

Farming was different then, still carrying on traditional practices. We had cattle which were milked by hand for the milk round, which was delivered by horse and cart. We soon learned to keep away from the kitchen when Nanna was making butter because you would be given the handle to turn and dare you stop! Your arms would be aching! - but, oh, the taste of the butter! Or you would be asked to scrub the eggs and take them in the basket up to Simons' in the Main Street where they were graded.

I remember so well the seasonal delights - Easter we would all go down the fields picking primroses and violets, if we were lucky, to put in jam jars to decorate the church. Then Easter Monday down the fields with Vergie to troll our egg and cake which we had boiled in gorse and decorated.

The summer. Oh what lovely weather! Sandwiches, bottle of water, down the fields and into the Pond (making sure the tide was in as it was tidal then). Then swimming across to Rocky Park and on to the Mill, over the road then jumping or diving into the Millpond. Then of course there was hay making. Once it was cut we would be given pitchforks and told to turn the hay by hand. But oh what fun! Then Nanna would send out a huge basket of food and a can of tea.

Of course the main attraction was the horses. My grandfather was a great horseman, having the local race course on Priory fields which then went to Lydstep. All of us children would work cleaning the stables, mucking out, just for a ride on the horses which was our payment.

My grandfather had a riding school with over 30 horses. A half-hour ride to Lamphey cost 2/6 and an hour's ride to Freshwater East was 5/-. My father bought me a racehorse called Parasilk and soon all I had to do was to shout 'Para' and up he would come from the field.

Greyhounds were another passion. Grandad owned the White City greyhound race track where we used to race Rex. Rolls was his racing name, trained by my brother Wyn on the bike round Priory fields, chasing the skin of a rabbit. He was raced by my mother Lilla, who operated the machine for the hare.

The Jenkins' of Priory Farm go back over 100 years - and the family have always taken a leading role in the community which relied so much upon them. My grandfather Georgie Jenkins and his wife Venetia were Mayor and Mayoress of Pembroke. My father Ernest Jenkins followed in his footsteps, then my brother Colin. Carrying on down the line my brother Wyn and his wife Liz still farm at the Priory. Both Wyn and I are now Town Councillors, while my brother Lloyd continues the passion for horses keeping about 30 on the farm.

To find out more about our project, please come along to our Coffee Morning on Saturday, November 3, at Monkton Priory Church Hall, for a full presentation on what we are doing and hope to achieve.