As a child living in East View, Gilfach I remember playing on the banking above the Gilfach Fargoed halt looking out over the vast collery complex including the power station with its large coolong towers. As a group of youngsters we were an adventourious lot riding on the coal buckets across the valley venturing into the coal train marshalling yards between Gilfach and Brittannia and ocasionally falling into the "black" Rymney river and then I was in for a row at home. It was a hive of activity but what a dirty depressing place it was. I see it now and the river is clean with live fish and the dreadful pit has gone, life has to be better now that men dont have to go down those dangerious dirty holes in the ground to earn a living. Life has improved history should be marked but not through rose-tinted glases.

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I lived in East View too. There were great characters and frinds there. I can identify will all that Ken Williams said. Fights between bottom block and top block. Catching snakes and lizards down the banking, and over by Brittania colliery. Camps down the banking at the lower end of the stree, and crossing the Blast pipe into Ol man Preeces field to ride the pigs, when he wasn`t there. Bocker, Bernard Nicholl, Susan, George , Brian and Alan Whitcombe, Paul Gifford , David Ashford, Arthur Patterson, and hos brother. Ronnie Fairfax., Steven Smith, and my brother Maldwyn. Tell me something about these characters. Hopefully they are all still with us !!