Reader Letter Received


READER LETTER RECEIVED I received an email from Mrs Patricia Prismick, who wrote:



“I read with interest your article [Exploring Swansea’s Graveyards (October 2016)] and am wondering if you photographed the new headstone that was erected in 2014 at the grave of James Owen who was a veteran of the Battle of Rorke’s Drift (1879) and who served under the alias David Lewis”. I am pleased to say, that I have a photograph of the said headstone which I took when the headstone was erected in 2014, by South Wales Monuments Ltd., Caerphilly. James Owen died in 1938.

Mr Brian Hawes, told me a story he remembered from the valleys during the war. In the village of Pontrhydyfen, the home of Ivor Emmanuel, a stray bomber flew and dropped a bomb and most of the Emmanuel family were killed. Coincidentally, Ivor Emmanuel became a television singer and actor and he is famously remembered for portraying “Private Owen”, in the 1964 film, Zulu (pictured above right).

It’s amazing the little stories people remember – keep sending them in to me as hearing about them shows that there is a bigger picture to be discovered.



Copyright – The Bay Magazine – Winter 2016


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