“The church is dear to us”

- Nonagenarians Mary Hann and Ruth Richards

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Mary Hahn (Emma Drabble)

Marshfield Church played an important part in the life of the community. “It was church three times a day on Sundays,” remembers Mary who taught at Sunday school and went on to become church organist. Ruth, meanwhile, served some 75 years in the choir while brother Doug has been singing with them since he was seven.

“The church is very dear to us,” explains Mary. “My husband and my brother are buried here; my mum and dad are buried here.” Their parents were William and Olive Richards. William was the gardener and Olive the cook for the Gunn family at Crag Hall House. “We were a poor family, five children.” There were summer outings to the sea wall, paddling at Peterstone beach and the occasional crisis such as the time when Ruth cut her toe on a piece of glass. “I can see Mother now, carrying Ruth in her arms to the road, when a baker’s van came along and took her up to the doctor’s.”

Their school days at Marshfield were comparatively uneventful until the dental service’s dreaded green van arrived. “They visited school every couple of months for extractions or fillings. You’d be notified you were on the list and you played hell because you dreaded that green van!”

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Life on the Levels

“It’s a throwaway society.”

- Tim Rooney, farrier (Marshfield)

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Tim Rooney (Nanette Hepburn)

Brought up and schooled at Marshfield, Tim Rooney was, by his own admission, never happy in the classroom. “I wasn’t very keen on school, but I was always very keen on horses.”

Not surprising given his family background on the Levels. “In those days,” says Tim, “every farm would have a Point-to-Point horse” and local hunt masters like Lord Tredegar relied on a good supply of horses. Tim’s grandfather Gustavas, was a horse dealer and sold horses to the army. “He was still riding in his seventies.” Meanwhile Tim’s father, former soldier and Marshfield farmer ‘Guvo’, rode some 70 winners at Point-to-Point.

Tim started a shoeing business in 1972 when there were very few farriers around. There was no shortage of work. “We didn’t go out shoeing: a lot of hunt horses came to the forge.” Then there were the council workers who brought their hand tools in for sharpening or repair. “No mechanisation then. They don’t repair things now.” On one occasion Gypsy Tom Price arrived in a little van. “In the back was a Shetland pony!”

But now, he says, traffic deters owners riding their horses to the forge. “We go out to shoe virtually every horse: it suits us a lot more because the horses are quieter in their own environment.”

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Life on the Levels

Life on the Levels Interview:

Tim, a farrier based in Marshfield, grew up on a dairy farm and played on the foreshore at the lighthouse as a child. He tells of Gypsy fortune tellers, buying and selling horses, beagle hunts and wildlife.

“I grew up in Utopia.”

- Arthur Thomas and wife Anne, farmer (Marshfield)

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Arthur Thomas (Emma Drabble)

St Mellons-born Arthur recalls how his little village (“it was very compact”) once supported five pubs including the White Hart, Fox and Hounds, Star Inn and the Bluebell. But it was the milk meadows that really made the place: “The grass grows wonderfully.”

These rich pastures led to the Levels serving as Cardiff’s dairy and before he and Anne took on their own farm, Arthur helped his father, Walters deliver milk by pony and cart from his farm, Hendre Isaf, to St Mellons and beyond to Rhymney and Roath. Walters progressed to a three-wheel Raleigh van and even built his own house in 1935 “from the makings of the milk”.

Arthur, after serving with the RAF on atomic warfare, left and with Anne bought their own farm. He was a self-taught farmer and when it came to hedge repairs he was stumped. “I’d never done hedge laying so I stopped and talked to this grumpy old so-and-so laying a hedge.

“Next thing I know he was at the back door: ‘I’ve come to see if you’ve got a job for me.’” Evans the hedge layer stayed with the Thomas’ until he retired.

“We put that farm right. We did all the fences, the walls: marvellous. I had a great education off this gentleman. I owe him a lot.”

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Life on the Levels

Life on the Levels Interview:

Arthur recounts his childhood in St Mellons, school life, church, dairy farming and the milk round, utopia, drinking from the reens, wartime and the drainage board.