jadewest94
Active member
The boys have long gone from St Athan Boys' Village. Its dormitories, church and the canteen that fed 200 boisterous young colliers enjoying a free holiday are now burnt and dilapidated. The ruin, on a windswept plot near Barry, south Wales, is the only known monument to a unique experiment aimed at giving teenagers a respite from doing the work of men, six days a week, in the filthy blackness of their country's coal mines. But nowthe former holiday village faces the threat of total erasure.
Founded close to the sea on the outskirts of West Aberthaw in 1925 by the Boys' Club Movement, St Athan was a place for the poorest boys of the mining community to take a week's summer holiday, a chance to be children again.
Now their teenage descendants in West Aberthaw use it as a different kind of playground: a focus for vandalism, drink and destruction.
One of their most popular targets is the cenotaph at the heart of the holiday village, dedicated to the memory of "the youth of all nations who fell that war might end, by the boys of the South Wales coalfield".
This year on Remembrance Sunday, just a handful of those who remember the memorial's significance scaled the broken boulders at the entrance to the camp to pay their respects. There is a steep decline in attendance from years gone by when (in 1962) the Queen Mother visited. - Independent News.
Founded close to the sea on the outskirts of West Aberthaw in 1925 by the Boys' Club Movement, St Athan was a place for the poorest boys of the mining community to take a week's summer holiday, a chance to be children again.
Now their teenage descendants in West Aberthaw use it as a different kind of playground: a focus for vandalism, drink and destruction.
One of their most popular targets is the cenotaph at the heart of the holiday village, dedicated to the memory of "the youth of all nations who fell that war might end, by the boys of the South Wales coalfield".
This year on Remembrance Sunday, just a handful of those who remember the memorial's significance scaled the broken boulders at the entrance to the camp to pay their respects. There is a steep decline in attendance from years gone by when (in 1962) the Queen Mother visited. - Independent News.
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