Glimpses of Margam Life 1830 - 1918
General Work and Deer
General work on the estate included cutting chaff, mowing, collecting thistles and ferns, hauling dung, repairing walls and fences, clearing thorns and cleaning the ditches on Margam Moors. Sheep shearing was an annual event, and the shearers’ reward was a kilderkin of porter. In 1843 there were 145 ewes, 124 wethers and 135 lambs grazing at the park, and each summer the persons holding the office of Hayward were requested by the land agent to meet for the purpose of collecting stray sheep from Margam Mountain. Parties left from Bryn and Cwm Kenfig, and the unshorn animals were delivered to the pound; if unclaimed, they were sold at Taibach market for the benefit of the lord of the manor.
From the late 1830’s Isaac Stubbs was receiving payment for the tack of cattle and horses in the park, and Job Townsend, groom, was in receipt of £9.3.6d. from one of Talbot’s associates for keeping his colt in the park for three years.
Each year in early spring the dry fern and undergrowth on the perimeter of the park was burnt, a vast conflagration usually visible from Swansea. The ‘firing’ normally took place on a Sunday, when it was more convenient for the local farmers to attend to the flames, and the refuse was utilised as manure. Haymaking lasted a fortnight in 1852, with thirty-eight men, women and children taking part, and William Richards and his son were paid for three days’ work thatching the hayricks.
There have been deer at Margam for many centuries. The earliest pictorial evidence of their presence is in two late seventeenth century paintings of ‘Old Margam house’ where they are portrayed in an extensive deer park. In 1740 their numbers had been depleted, and there were plans to stock the park with 800 deer, but whether this was implemented remains uncertain. A chattel lease of 1758 granted to the Rev. John Williams refers to red deer at Margam, and in October 1788 David Morgan and William John were paid for masons’ work “making a Penn by the Rookery to catch the red deer.” In the 1830’s there were both red and fallow deer at Margam, with Talbot purchasing two stags in 1832 “in the hope that they would breed with the hinds now there.”
Estate accounts of 1835 – 6 indicate Talbot’s concern for the damage these animals could cause in woodland when Margaret Betterton of the Corner House Inn was paid 10/- for beer for persons involved in the pursuit and capture of an outlying buck in Cefn Cwsg. Farmers received compensation for damage caused by deer, and one can imagine the plight of one Charley Hayward who spent 42 nights during the winter of 1846 “watching to preserve his turnips being ate by the deer”, at 2/6 a night. The present deer herd numbers are approximately three hundred; fallow deer thrive in captivity, and are maintained in parks for their grace and beauty and the high quality of their venison.