The Man Who lived In A Haystack

... Domestic water drawn from a spring. Rabbits caught for the table. Foxes killed for the bounty of 10shillings on the tail. These are some of the things I'm old enough to be privileged to be able to remember - just.
This was one corner of industrial South Wales until about 1965.
The man in the haystack was called Dai Blaen-Nant. 'Blaen-Nant' being the field he lived in. 'Near the Spring'.
He had moved in to a corrugated iron shed sometime after the war. As the roof began to need patching, he used the annual straw from the field, piling it on year after year until it was five feet thick on top and reached the ground.
There were 3 other single men living in the same kinds of casual dwelling within a quarter mile radius. One in a fairly lavish affair with an iron fireplace and a grandfather clock. Another in what was barely a garden shed.
All the fields, and most of the cows in them, had names. Cae Glas, Cae Garw Mawr, Pen Nant, Cae Bach, Llandyri, ...Most fields still have names, but who is writing them down?
Some of the trees had names. The 'Devil's Oak', with a great burnt chamber big enough to hold two boys, glowering over the formidable 'Devil's Hill'.

People in fancy dress would appear at certain times of the year trying to sell Indian carpets, or clothes pegs or onions. Or would offer to sharpen knives and scissors on a huge bicycle-driven grindstone. The Indian Carpet man, with his turban, was supposed to be none other than Hollywood star 'Sabu' of 'The Arabian Nights' and 'Kim'. The onion seller wore a beret and a striped jersey.
Gypsies would pass the house once or twice a year in hooped wagons. They would graze their horses for a couple of days on the little green in front of the little council estate built in 1956. One horse one year was white, and I was a big Lone Ranger fan at the time. The rest is predictable enough. I was still very much in short trousers, and horses have their pride, and they have other uses for their teeth besides eating.
This estate (Bryn-Y-Felin' - 'Mill Hill') had electricity and gas and inside toilets and a bathroom. Most of the other houses, farms and smallholdings along the road didn't. Not until about ten years later in the mid sixties were all those things guaranteed. The C19 had survived until then in some parts of the country.

By the early 60's, we had progressed from the traditional 'long-drop' soil trap, to a modern, hi-tech Elsan, with its own cosy asbestos cubicle proudly standing in the middle of the garden for all to admire.
When it was full, my brave father would dig a big hole and bury the contents.
It was a beautiful Summer's Day. I was 7 and not a care in the world. I had been watching the Red Army Ensemble on Sunday Night At The London Palladium the night before, and was 'Cossack dancing' around the garden in my new brown wellies, which in themselves were a source of great novelty and joy.
Then there was the brief sensation of not landing when I should have, and then of being dragged out of the mire by my chortling father who kept telling me how I would be lucky for life. As he hosed me down.
I never saw the wellies again. I think they're still there.

wales rural industrial history childhood social

Llethri Road 1900's. 1940's.