“It’s all changed now.”

- Gordon (and Linda) Shears, farmer (St Brides)

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Gordon and Linda Shears (Emma Drabble)

▶ Watch interview with Gordon and Linda Shears

The Second World War made a big impact on Cherry Orchard Farm at St Brides.

One day a Luftwaffe reconnaissance plane flew low over the farmhouse: “I waved at the pilot!” recalls Gordon. Another time a landmine fell, blocking the lane. Military trucks drove onto the sea wall, belching out smoke screens to shield the docks from enemy bombers while US GIs marched by, heading back to camp at Tredegar House. The spoils of war included kitchen spoons dropped in the pigswill, spent bullets from the nearby firing range, and little silk parachutes from military practise targets.

Gordon has lived at Cherry Orchard Farm since his father, injured First World War veteran William, moved here with his wife Beatrice in 1934. Gordon learned how to thatch the hay rick, work their cart horses, Blossom, Flower, Diamond and Bonnie, and how to haul a half-drowned cow out of the reen (the beast survived the ordeal).

He remembers rushing through floods on a double decker bus, watching an old man fish for eels using an umbrella as a keep net, and the business of living below sea level: “At night you could hear the sea,” remembers Linda. “It’s changed a lot.”

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Life on the Levels

Life on the Levels Interview

Gordon grew up on a farm in St Brides and reflects on farming life in the 1940s and 50s, witnessing the transition from horse to tractor power, holes in the sea wall and German planes flying overhead during the war.

“Nearly every family had someone who went to sea.”

- Edward Watts, MBE DL (Newport)

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Edward Watts (Emma Drabble)

▶ Watch interview with Edward Watts

Edward Watts is chairman at the Mission to Seafarers at Newport docks, a safe haven for seafarers from all over the world. He has family connections to the sea.

“I went into shipping, but on the land side. My father went to sea, my grandfather went to sea. In…Pill, or Pillgwenlli if you want to call it by its correct name, nearly every family had someone who went to sea within their family. It was just part of life.”

“I’ve been here over fifty years. In the recent past the docks were full, this was a busy place with boats coming in from all over. Because you had coal, iron ore, steel, because Llanwern was going full pelt. So, Newport was a very big and very important port. Therefore, there were people here from all over the world. It is a dock area, and so it was a multi-cultural area long before it became twee to call it multicultural. Take me. My grandmother is from Cornwall and my grandfather from America.’

“We would have upwards of 100 seafarers in here at the Mission of an evening once upon a time, but also you used to have hostesses come down and dance for the seamen. And these days people go ho-ho, you know, but it wasn’t – it was quite…innocent! You know, they would come dance for the seamen, their taxi would come at half past nine and take them home! And the elderly ladies from the church would come down and chaperone! You know, it was quite quaint.’

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Life on the Levels

“There was noise and a vibrancy to Llanwern steelworks.”

- Bob Dowsell, engineer

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Bob Dowsell (Emma Drabble)

▶ Watch interview with Bob Dowsell

Three generations of the Dowsell family put in time at Llanwern steelworks and Bob is the last of the line.  “Grandfather Charlie Dowsell was a night watchman down there and my father, when he retired from the RAF, drove the shale lorries.”

Shale was used to build the steelwork’s foundations and to bury four and a half kilometres of the Levels under a metre of rock. As a ten-year-old, Bob used to visit the steelworks. While his dad chatted with his mates, he’d wander off to see steel being made. “I’d make my way up onto the landings and I’d be watching the plant. Brilliant!”

Bob joined the steelworks after a spell with Black Clawson. Llanwern was, he says, “the most sophisticated steel plant in the world. One time we had 15,000 people working there and as many outside the plant, supplying materials.” 

When steel making finished Bob joined Llanwern’s decommissioning team. “For five years I worked demolishing what I’d enjoyed for 20 years.”

It wasn’t a happy end. “I feel sad. There’d be smoke and steam coming out of the works . . . there was a vibrancy there. Now? It’s a ghost town.”

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Life on the Levels

Life on the Levels interview:

Listen to Bob reflecting on his childhood in Goldcliff and Whitson, his career in a Newport foundry and the Llanwern steelworks and the ghost of Whitson.

“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.

“We started finding material on the landward side of the seawall.”

- Bob Trett, retired museum curator (Newport)

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Bob Trett (Emma Drabble)

The Severn ranks as one of the world’s most important navigable waterways. It has done since the Bronze Age.

The Levels is “a hugely complicated area,” explains former Newport Museum curator and Newport Ship saviour, Bob Trett. “The estuary is made up of layers of peat and alluvium or clay, and each tide drops down extra layers of mud.” Occasionally a storm or tidal surge will scour away at these layers exposing evidence of the past. Assisted by local detectorists, Bob has logged some of the 20th century’s most exciting finds on the Levels. There was an Iron Age village at Goldcliff Pil and, near Magor Pil, an ancient submerged road. (It was named the Upton Trackway in honour of ex-steel worker turned archaeologist Derek Upton.)

Sections of Bronze Age craft have been discovered along with the Barland longboat, which dates from Roman times; the now famous 15th century Newport Ship and an almost complete 200-year-old canal boat. They’ve even found a World War Two Spitfire.

 “Having started with virtually nothing, we’ve finished up with an important collection. And it’s amazing what you find out there: the president of Gwent Wildlife Trust discovered an enormous long bone. When we got an identification done it turned out to be the leg bone of a giraffe!”

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Life on the Levels

Life on the Levels Interview

Former curator at Newport Museum, Bob Trett charts his career on the Levels and the extraordinary archaeological finds during his tenure. He was a key figure in saving the Newport Ship and describes the battles that had to be fought. He describes the rich finds along the Levels and the mudflats.