26 Dr Ernest Jones, psycho-analyst

26. Dr Ernest Jones (photos: Freud, Morfydd Owen, Ernest Jones, Grammar School) - 28/11/15

A few months ago we wrote about Morfydd Owen, the brilliant mezzo-soprano and composer who died tragically in 1918 and is buried in Oystermouth cemetery.  Today we look at the life of her husband, psychoanalyst Dr Ernest Jones.

In Gowerton a blue plaque presented by the British Psychoanalytical Society hangs above the front door of number 12 Woodlands Terrace.  On New Year’s Day 1879, when Gowerton was still known as Gower Road, that semi-detached house became the birthplace of Ernest Jones.  The son of a colliery manager, he went to Swansea Grammar School, won a scholarship to Llandovery College, and from Cardiff University went on to University College Hospital, London, qualifying as a doctor in 1900 when aged 21.  Having read of Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytical approach in a German psychiatric journal, Jones began to use those techniques in dealing with mental illness, although the medical establishment was wary of this emphasis on the id and the libido, and he had to resign from his post at the London hospital. 

In 1908 Ernest Jones organised the world’s first psychiatric conference at Salzburg, when he first met Sigmund Freud, whose major biography he was later to write, published between 1953 and 1957 in three volumes.  While teaching in the department of psychiatry at the University of Toronto from 1911 to 1913, Jones published psychoanalytical works on Hamlet and on dreams and nightmares, and coined the term ‘rationalisation’.

Jones had an apartment in London at 69 Portland Court, and purchased The Plat, a Jacobean cottage in Sussex, for a weekend retreat.  His first wife was the talented Welsh musician, composer and mezzo-soprano, Morfydd Owen from Treforest, to whom he proposed on their third meeting.  Tragically she died after an operation for appendicitis in Mumbles in 1918 aged 26.  Jones remarried the following year – he proposed to Czechoslovakian Katharina Jokl within three weeks of their meeting.  They had four children, including the writer Mervyn Jones, and a daughter Gwenith, who died aged seven. 

Jones was influenced by Melanie Klein’s series of lectures in the new field of child analysis, and he encouraged her move to London in 1926.  Her approach and the therapeutic techniques for children that she devised were very different from those of Freud’s daughter Anna, and Jones championed Klein’s approach.  This caused sharp disagreement between Jones and Freud, and members of the British Society were polarised into rival factions in what became known as the ‘Jones-Freud controversy’.  However cordial relations were later resumed between the two psychoanalysts.

For many years the Jones family had owned a holiday cottage Tŷ Gwyn, the former bakery in Llandmadoc, which on the wall had a framed map of Gower, drawn by and signed, as an eleven-year-old schoolboy ‘Ernest Jones 19/11/1890’.  Tŷ Gwyn was a welcome holiday retreat, for he loved the Gower countryside.  He was also a keen ice skater and a fine chess player, writing a psychoanalytical study of the life of an American chess genius. 

Ernest Jones was twice President of the International Psychoanalytical Association, for several years each time, and was instrumental in the British Medical Association coming to officially recognise psychoanalysis in 1929.  Before the outbreak of the Second World War, Jones bravely flew to Vienna to bring Freud and nearly fifty German and Austrian Jews away from the Nazi threat to safety in London. 

Ernest Jones died in London in 1958 aged 78, was cremated at Golders Green crematorium, with his ashes buried in Gower in Cheriton churchyard, in the grave of his young daughter Gwenith, and where his second wife was later to be buried. 

Fluent in German, the language of the early psychoanalysts, this Gowertonian became the first English-speaking psychoanalyst and its leading exponent in the English-speaking world.  His uncompleted autobiography called ‘Free Associations’ was published posthumously in 1959.             

25 Blue Plaques

25. Earlier Blue Plaques (photos: Harry Secombe, Dylan, Ernest Jones, Amy Dillwyn) - 21/11/15

The idea of placing blue plaques on buildings with connections to famous people or significant events probably originated in 1866 in London, where the scheme is now administered by English Heritage.  From that start it has spread in various forms to many cities throughout the world.  Over the last three years Swansea Council has erected twelve blue plaques to commemorate various people and places, the most recent being in Cockett to physicist Edward ‘Taffy’ Bowen.

Besides these plaques put up by the Council, Swansea has six earlier blue plaques.  One is on the promenade by the West Cross Inn, with another outside Mumbles Nursing Home.  Both of these were installed by the Amy Dillwyn Society and funded by the Llysdinam Trust, to honour the female industrialist and philanthropist Amy Dillwyn.

A third was unveiled by the Heritage Foundation in 2002 to Harry Secombe, outside St Thomas Church in Swansea’s Eastside.  It states ‘Sir Harry Secombe CBE 1921–2001 - goon, comedian and singer, who served here as a boy chorister’.  

Gowerton contains one at the birthplace in Woodlands of psychoanalyst Dr Ernest Jones, the first biographer of his mentor Sigmund Freud, and who in 1938 enabled Freud along with other Jews to escape Nazi persecution in Vienna by coming to London.  Ernest Jones also has a blue plaque in London.

Swansea’s earliest blue plaque used to be outside 5 Cwmdonkin Drive, the birthplace of Dylan Thomas.  The light blue plaque that stated ‘Dylan Thomas poet 1914-1953 was born in this house’ was placed there around 1963 by TWW – Television Wales and the West, the independent television company that preceded Harlech Television (now HTV).  That plaque was replaced by a dark blue plaque with the word ‘poet’ changed to ‘a man of words’, a phrase to encompass Dylan’s short stories, film scripts and of course his play for voices ‘Under Milk Wood’.

Just as the Council’s twelve plaques have included not just people but also places like Cwmdonkin Park and St Helen’s rugby ground, so the sixth plaque is on the limekiln near the entrance to Kilvrough Manor in Gower.  This states ‘Kilvrough Home Farm - Limekiln - Early Nineteenth Century’.  The Home Farm was purchased by the agent of Kilvrough estate Tom Jenkins, grandfather of local poet the late Nigel Jenkins, when the estate was sold at auction in 1919.  

Kilvrough Manor had been purchased in 1820 by Major Thomas Penrice (no connection with the Penrice estate), who built the Gower Inn at Parkmill.   The estate passed to his nephew, also called Thomas Penrice, who built Parkmill School and leased the land that became Pennard’s golf course.  The estate passed to his elder daughter Louisa, who became Lady Lyons when her husband Admiral Algernon Lyons was knighted.  But the death in 1918 of their son, to whom they had transferred the property, made them liable to double death duties, which, along with the loss of German investments during the First World War, led to the break-up of the estate.  After use as a youth hostel for twenty years, Kilvrough Manor was acquired by Oxfordshire Education Committee as an Outdoor Pursuits centre, which has enabled young people to benefit from first-hand experience of Gower over many decades. 

That limekiln on Kilvrough Home Farm land is one of the many throughout peninsular Gower from when limestone quarrying was at its height.  A double kiln stands at High Tor on Penmaen burrows, for limestone quarried from South Gower cliffs was taken by boats across the Bristol Channel to enrich the lime-less fields of north Devon and Somerset.                               

Though it is reported that Llanelli Community Heritage Society has placed fifty blue plaques in the town, quantity is not everything, and Swansea’s more modest number commemorates a fascinating mixture of people and events connected with this area.

24 Rees Howells and the Bible College

24. The Bible College of Wales (photos: Rees Howells, Bible College x2) - 14 Nov 2015

The School of Ministry at the Bible College of Wales in Derwen Fawr has just concluded its first semester, with students from Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, North America, as well as from England and Wales.

That property called Derwen Fawr used to belong to the architect Sir Charles Tamlin Ruthen, designer of Pantygwydr Baptist Church, the Mond Buildings and the former Carlton Cinema (now Waterstone’s bookshop), among other prominent Swansea buildings.  After the First World War, Ruthen served as Director General of Housing during Lloyd George’s Coalition Government.  A staunch Liberal, he developed the 17-acre Derwen Fawr estate, importing stonework from Italy for the Italian gardens, and hosting Lloyd George and other prominent Liberals at garden parties.  After Ruthen died in September 1926 his widow promised first refusal on the property to Rev. Rees Howells, who had established the Bible College at Glynderwen two years earlier. 

Born in Brynamman in 1879, the sixth of eleven children, Rees Howells had been influenced by the Welsh Religious Revival of 1904-05 to serve God with the South African General Mission.  He returned to Britain in 1920, and two years later received the vision of establishing a Bible College in Wales to train and equip those seeking to serve God in mission work.  He followed the principle of George Műller, who, in the nineteenth century by faithful prayer without the backing of any Christian denomination, had looked to God to prompt people to provide the means for the purchase and upkeep of his orphanages in Bristol.

Without making special appeals, Rees Howells and those who shared his vision prayed, and sufficient funds came in to purchase the seven-acre Glynderwen estate in Blackpill, to found the Bible College of Wales.  That site later became Emmanuel Grammar School, in recent years developed into the Bryn Newydd Estate of twenty-nine homes.

The second property purchased was Derwen Fawr, which besides the large main house comprised three cottages and 17 acres.  In the grounds a chapel was erected to seat 200, a conference hall to accommodate 400, and men’s and women’s hostels, with funds to meet the extensive financial outlay being ‘prayed in’.

In addition to the residential Bible College, on the opposite site of what was then called Derwen Fawr Lane, a third estate Sketty Isaf was purchased in 1932 as a school for the children of missionaries.  Three years later this moved to Glynderwen which became Emmanuel Grammar and Preparatory School.  In 1970 the school had 450 pupils and 27 staff, serving as a first-class provider of education in Swansea until closure in 1994.

While people were being trained to serve God in missionary work, the Bible College was used for intercessory prayer for issues further afield, particularly throughout the dark days of the Second World War.  For some people the concept of people gathering to pray for hours at a time during the war might seem an irrelevance, but others believed that those prayers contributed to the overthrow of the Nazi tyranny. 

Rees Howells died in 1950, and his life and ministry have been documented in Norman Grubb’s book Rees Howells, Intercessor, which has been translated into more than 40 languages.  His son Samuel Howells became Director, but the Bible College faced difficult times, especially during the 1990s.  It closed as a residential college and part of its land was developed as housing.  

Thankfully in recent years Derwen Fawr itself has undergone extensive renovation and refurbishment, through the impetus and generosity of Cornerstone Community Church of Singapore, which purchased the property in 2012.  It was officially re-opened in May 2015 aiming to continue and develop the vision given to Rees Howells, with a vibrant Liberty Church established on the site. 

Though the Bible College is in South Wales, the mixture of student nationalities demonstrates that the Christian gospel is for people of all nations.     

23 Sir Arthur Whitten Brown

23. Sir Arthur Whitten Brown (photos: Heathrow statue, plaque, memorial) - 7/11/15

Some achievements that seemed impossible a hundred years ago are now almost commonplace.  Visitors attain the summit of Mount Everest (albeit not always unscathed), scientists visit and work at the South Pole, and each day hundreds of people fly across the Atlantic Ocean.

Such accomplishments used to be beyond the scope of any except the most highly skilled and best equipped men and women, and one of these subsequently came to live and work in Swansea. 

The names Alcock and Brown became famous in June 1919 when they achieved the first non-stop transatlantic flight.  They flew in a modified Vickers Vimy bomber from St John’s, Newfoundland, to Ireland in sixteen hours, of which fourteen-and-a-half were over the north Atlantic.  They covered 1,890 miles at an average speed of 115 mph and encountered fog, ice, snow, and much bad visibility.  Several times Brown, who was navigator, had to climb out onto the wings to remove ice from the engine air intakes.  They landed in Connemara, County Galway, near their intended destination but in a bog, which caused some damage to the aircraft, though neither airman was injured: two memorials now mark the site.    

For achieving the first non-stop transatlantic flight they were presented by Winston Churchill with the £10,000 prize put up by the Daily Mail - and they were knighted by King George V at Windsor Castle.  

But six months later 27-year-old Lancastrian Sir John Alcock, the pilot on that epic flight, was killed when a new Vickers Viking amphibian that he was flying to the Paris air show crashed in fog near Rouen in Normandy.  For his colleague, however, there remained years of useful service ahead.

Born to American parents in Glasgow, Arthur Whitten Brown’s career was in engineering.  He took up British citizenship during the First World War when his plane was twice shot down over France; the second time resulted in him becoming a prisoner of war and interned in Switzerland.  In 1923 he was appointed chief representative for Metropolitan-Vickers (formerly British Westinghouse) in the Swansea area.  In his office at 62 Wind Street (part of present-day Ice Bar), one of the propellers from the Vickers Vimy hung on the wall for many years, before he presented it to RAF College Cranwell in Lincolnshire. 

At the time of the 1926 General Strike, Whitten Brown served with the County Borough of Swansea Police as a special constable.  Two years later he went to Burry Port to congratulate the American Amelia Earhart, who in 1928 became the first woman to fly the Atlantic.  Although she had not been pilot or navigator on that occasion, four years later she became the first woman to fly the Atlantic solo.

He taught pilots at Fairwood Airport, for after the Air Training Corps was formed in 1941, Whitten Brown became the first Commanding Officer of 215 (City of Swansea) Squadron Air Training Corps.

During the Second World War he served in the Home Guard as a Lieutenant-Colonel, before rejoining the RAF to work in RAF Training Command dealing with navigation.  But the death in a 1944 aircraft crash in the Netherlands of his only son Arthur, while serving with the RAF, affected him deeply.  Sir Arthur Whitten Brown died in 1948 from an accidental overdose of sleeping tablets aged 62, and is buried in Buckinghamshire.

In Langland a plaque in the wall in Overland Road states that he had lived initially in Overland Court, while another plaque is placed above an entrance to Belgrave Court in the Uplands: the 1939 Register of Electors lists him and his wife Margaret at flat number 24.

At Heathrow airport a statue of Alcock and Brown was unveiled in 1954 - it now stands outside the visitor centre. 

22 Frances Ridley Havergal, Christian Poetess

22. Frances Ridley Havergal (photos: plaque, house, Astley church,Frances) - 31/10/15

When Frances Ridley Havergal moved in October 1878 into a rented house in Caswell, she was a 41 year-old hymn writer, an accomplished musician and singer, a writer of devotional books for children, and an esteemed speaker at Christian meetings.  The house then called ‘Park Villa’ stands at the top of Caswell Hill, at the junction with Caswell Avenue.  It was later re-named ‘Havergal’, with a plaque placed in the wall in 1937 stating that Frances Ridley Havergal, Christian poetess and hymn writer, lived there before her death on 3^rd June 1879.

In Victorian times it was still customary for families on Sundays to attend a place of worship.   The vicar of a parish was an important person in the community, and such was Rev. William Havergal, a notable church organist and composer, whose contribution to church music is remembered by a plaque inside Worcester Cathedral.  His youngest child Frances was born in 1836 in the Rectory of Astley, a village in Worcestershire.

As she grew up her musical and poetic abilities became evident, but Frances experienced times of poor health, and with her alert mind she chafed at the enforced rest.  A good linguist, she became fluent in French and German to appreciate visits to Switzerland and Germany.  But being the daughter of a clergyman and accustomed to attending church did not make her a Christian, for only after her mother’s death when Frances was aged 11 did she come into a relationship with God through Christ Jesus.  Her own times of illness and the later deaths of two nieces and one of her brothers did not undermine her trust in God, whom she knew to be good, personal and in control whatever happened to her. 

Many of her seventy hymns in English (she wrote one in French) are still sung today – among the 12 in the Methodist Hymn Book are ‘Who is on the Lord’s side?’, ‘Like a river glorious’ and ‘Take my life and let it be’ - which has been translated into Arabic, among other languages.  Frances preferred ‘Take my life’ to be sung to a tune of her father’s instead of what she called ‘that wearisome hackneyed Kyrie of Mozart’, but the Mozart tune named ‘Consecration’ prevails today. 

When she joined her elder sister Maria at Caswell it was not for a holiday.  Requests for writing and to check her proofs flowed in from English and American editors, while correspondents sought her advice and help.  Frances enjoyed walking on the cliffs, going onto Caswell beach at low tide to explore rock pools, watching the ships with all sails up entering Swansea harbour, and she was interested to visit Mumbles Lighthouse and talk with Mr Ace, the lighthouse keeper.  Furthermore Frances became involved in temperance work, encouraging the young people to ‘sign the pledge’, and, with the Vicar of Swansea’s permission, she took Bible readings among cottagers in the village.  She sang and spoke at Swansea’s YWCA, giving a card containing the words of ‘Take my life’ to each of the women.

With no St Peter’s Church yet built in Newton, Frances would attend the village’s only place of worship - Paraclete Congregational Chapel - to play the organ and to assist with the children’s work. 

An animated personality, Frances declined several marriage proposals.  In May 1879 following a visit from American Ira D. Sankey (of the Moody and Sankey missions), she became ill and had to cancel a visit to Irish mission stations.  After a short illness she died of hepatitis and acute peritonitis, being buried in the family grave at Astley, where at her request the verse ‘The blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, cleanses us from all sin’ is around her grave.  

Over the next 20 years ‘Memorials of Frances Ridley Havergal’ edited by her sister sold 250,000 copies, but her lasting legacy remains her hymns, written to the glory of God.            

21 St Helen's cricket ground

21. St Helen’s Cricket (photos: Parkhouse, Pressdee, cricket ground) - 24 October

A blue plaque outside St Helen’s rugby clubhouse celebrates Swansea’s initial wins over the three major southern hemisphere sides, but St Helen’s is also famous for cricket.

As early as 1785 Swansea had a cricket club, though mainly for the gentry, and £2,000 was spent in 1848 to transform a sandbank into what became St Helen’s ground.  The South Wales Cricket Club staged an exhibition match there against the touring Australians as early as 1878.  Ten years later Sir John Talbot Dillwyn Llewelyn of Penllergare was instrumental in forming Glamorgan County Cricket Club, and became its first chairman; it played in the Minor Counties Championship.

Closely associated with St Helen’s was W.J. Bancroft, Glamorgan’s first regular professional player.  Besides gaining 33 rugby caps between 1889 and 1900, he played for Glamorgan 230 times between 1889 and 1914.  In later years among the youngsters whom Billy Bancroft used to coach at St Helen’s was the elegant Swansea-born batsman Gilbert Parkhouse, who played for England.                      

In 1921 Glamorgan became the 17^th county admitted to the County Championship and thus could play first-class cricket.  The Welsh county was often out of their depth in the competition, but there were signs of brilliance.  In 1927 Nottinghamshire visited St Helen’s needing merely to draw the game to clinch the County Championship: they lost by an innings, and Lancashire became champions.

On the north side of the ground the original 1880’s pavilion was demolished and replaced in 1924; later concrete terracing was built in front which obscured the lower floors.  After a cheap dismissal a batsman’s climb up the pavilion’s 72 steps must seem endless.

St Helen’s had good access to public transport with a Mumbles Railway stop outside, and could attract large crowds.  Glamorgan was fortunate to be allotted the August Bank Holiday weekends for games against the tourists - 25,000 were in St Helen’s to see the famous victory by 64 runs over the 1951 touring South Africans, when off-spinner Jim McConnon took six wickets, including a hat-trick. 

With the sandy soil the pitch could assist spin bowlers, and during the 1960s the combination of Port Eynon-born off-spinner Don Shepherd with the slow left arm spin of Mumbles-born Jim Pressdee often caused difficulties for batsmen in those days of uncovered pitches.  They each took nine wickets in an innings when Yorkshire visited St Helen’s in 1965.  That decade saw the two famous victories over the Australian tourists, who in 1964 arrived from the Manchester Test Match having retained the Ashes when their captain Bobby Simpson had scored a triple century.  They were hitherto unbeaten on the tour, but Glamorgan won an absorbing match by 45 runs.  For good measure four years later the Welsh side, captained by Don Shepherd, repeated the victory on the next Australian visit. 

A few weeks later, West Indian Garfield Sobers hit the maximum six sixes off a Malcolm Nash over - a world record.  Usually a left-arm pace bowler, Nash had the very respectable figures of 4 wickets for 64 runs when he started an experimental over of left-arm spin.  The fifth ball bowled was caught on the boundary, but the fielder Roger Davis had crossed the boundary rope, so it counted as another six.  BBC Wales outside broadcast cameras were covering other events, but happened to return to the cricket, and fittingly former Glamorgan captain Wilf Wooller was commentating from the gantry high above the Mumbles Road end. 

Yet the Welsh county could demonstrate an erratic streak, as in 1972 when after Alan Jones and Roy Fredericks had opened with a then record 330 runs for the first wicket against Northants, Glamorgan managed to lose the match!                       

But nowadays, in spite of the sterling efforts of The Balconiers, St Helen’s usually hosts just one first-class game each year. 

20 Physicist Edward 'Taffy' Bowen

20. Edward ‘Taffy’ Bowen (photos: Stepney Lane, E.G. Bowen) – 17 October 2015

With the opening of the University’s second campus, it is fitting that one of Swansea University’s most accomplished graduates is to be honoured with a blue plaque.   Physicist Edward Bowen was born in Cockett in 1911, and graduated from Swansea University in 1930.  His involvement in the development of radar technology played a crucial part in the outcome of the Second World War.

Following graduation he conducted research with a cathode-ray finder in the course of research for a doctorate from King’s College, London.  He was recruited to work in the radar development team in 1935, particularly on the detection of aircraft by the reflection of radio waves.  As part of a team of five people working at Orford Ness on the coast of Suffolk, Bowen’s task was to assemble a transmitter.  An aircraft could be detected at a range of 17 miles initially, but by early 1936 this was improved to distances up to a hundred miles.  The team was enlarged, and moved to a new research station at Bawdsey Manor near Felixstowe, to develop the radar system. 

‘Taffy’ Bowen concentrated on whether, with the challenges of the size and weight of the equipment, radar could be installed in an aircraft - and it needed to operate in cold and vibrating conditions.  Gradually the difficulties were overcome, until in September 1937 he demonstrated the application of radar by using it to locate part of the British Fleet in the North Sea.  Amid conditions of poor visibility he used radar in an aeroplane to locate the aircraft carrier Courageous, battleship Rodney and cruiser Southampton.

In 1938 he married Enid Williams from Neath, whom he had met at Swansea University: they were to have three sons. 

At the outbreak of the Second World War, Bowen’s team moved to St Athan airfield in the Vale of Glamorgan, and were engaged in trying to detect a submarine by radar.  They developed technology to enable aircraft to detect a submarine at a range of 15 miles, which was to be a major asset in the Battle of the Atlantic.  By April 1941 110 aircraft of RAF Coastal Command were fitted with radar to look out for submarines, and the search patrols drastically cut losses of Allied shipping when fitted with the powerful Leigh light.  Bowen went to North America with the British Technical and Scientific Mission (the Tizard Mission) and helped to initiate advances in microwave radar as a weapon.  He visited laboratories in the United States, informed them about airborne radar, and arranged demonstrations.  The Tizard Mission forged technological links between Britain and America over a year before the United States entered the war.  

In late 1943 Edward Bowen was invited to Australia to join the Radiophysics Laboratory, and after the war he gave addresses on the development of radar and its potential peacetime applications.  He also encouraged radio astronomy and the construction of the 210ft radio telescope at Parkes, New South Wales.  He secured funding from the American Carnegie and Rockefeller Foundations for this large radio telescope, in return helping to establish American radio astronomy at the California Institute of Technology.

At the inauguration of the Parkes radio telescope he said ‘The search for truth is one of the noblest aims of mankind and there is nothing … which lends the human race such dignity as the urge to bring the vast complexity of the Universe within the range of human understanding.’  ‘Taffy’ Bowen's research turned from tracking aircraft by radar to tracking the Apollo space missions by radio telescope.  He was awarded a CBE in 1962, and elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. 

This cricket-loving giant of 20^th century physics declined to take out Australian citizenship, and following a stroke in 1987 he died in Sydney in 1991 aged 80.  His blue plaque will be unveiled on Thursday 29^th October at Stepney Lane, Cockett where a white plaque marks his 12 years there.