No Clogs in Chapel
from Songs from the Tin Tabernacle: A Roots Romance
It was thrilling for me to uncover some detail about Richard Francis the father of the larger than life Rev Benjamin Menai Francis my great grandfather. He set off as a teenager around 1848 from his home village of Llanfaircaereinion near Newtown to find work in Caernarfon. Here he was apprenticed to a local clogmaker, and he stayed with it, a Master Clogger from his early twenties through to his seventies: Richard Francis of 27 Pool St Caernarvon.
His second wife Margaret Morris, Benjamin’s mother, was the daughter of Joseph Morris a local slate miner from Llanbeblig near Caernarvon, and maybe Richard & Margaret met through this connection, as miners always needed clogs.
Meanwhile across in South Yorkshire, England, by the time old Richard Francis was ‘hanging up his clogs’ in the early 1900’s one of his sons, Benjamin the printer, had migrated to England with his young family, had been ordained as a non-conformist minister to become The Reverend Benjamin Menai Francis, and was named in florid script on a large 1901 Victorian lease document prepared for and sealed & signed by the Earl of Wharncliffe, landowner of much of the Barnsley area’s coalfields & villages through the C19th.
The Rev Benjamin was by now Congregationalist Minister for the Welsh Church members in Carlton Village near Barnsley, as there was by then a sizeable community of migrant Welsh miners and their families at Carlton Main Colliery (aka Wharncliffe Woodmoor 1,2 & 3, or Old Carlton) and they had long needed a place to gather, worship & celebrate their language & culture in. The lease was for a plot of land for them to build the Welsh Salem Chapel on, and it duly opened in June 1902.
Yorkshire coalminers needed clogs the same as the slate quarrymen of Llanbeblig, and it would be good to imagine Richard Francis, Master Clog Maker of Caernarfon supplying those Welsh Carlton miners as well with his best footwear. Either way I guess those coal miners and the slate quarrymen would have to take their clogs off before stepping into chapel.
This song imagines the Rev Benjamin some eighty years later arriving again back at the Welsh chapel porch, a fiery spirit preacher-bard wearing an old pair of his father’s finest Caernarfon footwear, returning to find the pits long closed, the miners on the dole, and the Tin Tabernacl awaiting demolition. It was empty but not yet silent. It was finally demolished in 1984.
No Clogs in Chapel (final draft lyrics)
(1)
Am stood in church porch
But she blocks me way in
The old Gymanfa songs circle around
Old Carltons gone silent and muckheap’s dead flat
And those old Gymanfa songs circle & circle, those old Gymanfa songs circle around
(2)
Tek yer clogs off sir
Before you come in
The old Gymanfa songs circle around
Pits all gone shut now but chapels still clean
And those old Gymanfa songs circle & circle, those old Gymanfa songs circle around
(3)
Miss Williams it’s Sunday
I’ve to worship and sing
The old Gymanfa songs circle around
Caernarfon’s so far now but clogs walked me here
And those old Gymanfa songs circle & circle, those old Gymanfa songs circle around
(4)
Stepped into ’Tin Chapel
On old Wharncliffe’s land
The old Gymanfa songs circle around
Francis of Pool Street made these me fine clogs
And those old Gymanfa songs circle & circle, those old Gymanfa songs circle around
(5)
Thinking back hard
To Welsh slate at me feet
The old Gymanfa songs circle around
Taid Morris blasts rock in his quarryman’s clogs
And those old Gymanfa songs circle & circle, those old Gymanfa songs circle around
(6)
Salem’s long empty
Its ghosts are on ‘dole
The old Gymanfa songs circle around
Miss Williams I’m done now please hang up me clogs
And those old Gymanfa songs circle & circle, those old Gymanfa songs circle around
(7)
I’m a fiery gweinidog
Me poems I’ll preach
The old Gymanfa songs circle around
I’m a bard, a praise-singer though Isaiah says no
And those old Gymanfa songs circle & circle, those old Gymanfa songs circle around
Let those old Gymanfa songs circle & circle, those old Gymanfa songs circle around
* Gymanfa = (song) Festival Gweinidog = Pastor
We’ve found a collaborative process works well for developing the song lyric writing in both Welsh and in English, and here my draft ‘No Clogs’ narrative has been shaped up and given voice by singer & fiddle-player Bryony Griffith as we collectively arranged, rehearsed and live-recorded the first four demo Songs from the Tin Tabernacle in two intensive studio days in Sheffield. Take a listen to No Clogs in Chapel our second song here..
Cerys Hafana (triple harp/vocals/songwriting) Bryony Griffith (fiddle/vocals/songwriting) Cath Carr (tenor steelpans) Kadialy Kouyate (kora) Tony Francis Bowring (bass/producer)