Of course, it's all changed dramatically. The entire road system has been reworked with the loss of Porth Square and the monument (the public toilets in the centre of the square) and the building of the splendid Golden Gate Bridge of Porth. Morrisons has replaced the old Cymmer Colliery, already out of action when I was a child, and my old school has been repurposed several times. But the essential shape of things is still there. My paternal grandparents lived in a small house built up on the hillside on the left of the photo. If you follow the line that leads left from Morrisons, then at the end of it stood an engine house with a steam engine that pulled trucks of waste rock up the hillside. A little below this engine house stood my grandparents' home. My grandfather's job was to attend to this steam engine. I don't remember the house at all, it was bulldozed when I was very small, but my cousin has written about it and described the dampness of the downstairs ro...