Have you ever had one of those evenings when all you want to do is curl up in front of the fire and ignore the rain outside?? This was just one of those for me, back on 3 November, but Jean Scarborough had kindly arranged the talk for the village residents “The Tale of Two Villages” – the speaker a local man Goff Brangham who has written a number of books about the area.
Goff spent the first half of the talk regaling us with tales of his Uncle, which were highly amusing, then in the second half went on to talk about two murders, that had taken place in Cwmbran and Pontnewydd. The murderers once caught were sent to Usk Prison and Goff kindly answered many questions about the prison, telling us about the condemned Man’s cell and the executioners – did you know they would travel from around the country to “do the deed”?? Neither did I realise that once the men had been executed they would be buried in the grounds of the prison.
So in summary – many thanks to Jean for organising such a lovely evening and to Goff for such an interesting and well informed talk. I hope that Goff will return as promised to talk about “The Llangybi Murders”. ?I for one will be first in the queue.
Hilary Jones