About Grosmont

Imagine, if you will, a small terrified Welsh boy, no more than 3 years old, running across a lawn, then turning to watch his home go up in flames. The burning family house, called Cwm Ffrwd, had 6 bedrooms, several living rooms, a large kitchen, and many other rooms, as well as a dairy, cellars, and good number of outhouses. You arrived at the house through double gates and along a circular drive, and you could see an orchard, walled garden and a dozen acres of fields and woods beyond. Rumour had it that the culprit was one of the boy’s brothers, who had been severely reprimanded for filching his mother’s egg money.

The boy Philip was a son of Edwin Morgan and his wife Margaret Agnes. He was the 8^th of 10 children. After the fire, the family rescued what belongings they could and set up a new home in a townhouse in nearby Camarthen where Edwin was the first-ever practising dental surgeon. For a few years life continued and the family thrived.

But after a while the family broke up and Phillip went with his mother and sister Mary to London. They arrived desperately hard up but, through Margaret’s ingenuity and by working her fingers to the bone, they gradually prospered. Phillip attended Alleyn’s School in Dulwich and flourished in many ways – he played cricket and rugby, became an accomplished singer, and did well in all his subjects. Those of you who are avid cricket followers, and enjoyed England’s victory over Australia at Lords in 2009, will know that the last time they did that was in 1934 – and Phillip was there, on the grass beyond the boundary rope!

Phillip hoped to study medicine at Guy’s Hospital but chose instead to try for a choral scholarship at Cambridge University. His audition did not go well, for when he was asked to sight read a piece by Messaien (rather than sing the piece he had prepared), he lost his way among the black mass of notes that were literally – as he reported later – “crawling with crotchets”. However, he was offered a place at the University and chose to study general science – a decision that would stand him in good stead for the career opportunities that lay ahead.

His mother was not particularly pleased about his choice of university – in a letter to Geoff, Phillip’s eldest brother, she wrote: “Pity he has chosen Cambridge – if only he had been better advised he could have gone to Oxford.”

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During World War II, Phillip spent three years working at the Royal Ordnance Factory near Bridgwater in Somerset. Here, he made bombs and experimented with new forms of munitions for the war effort. Late one night, he was caught in a small explosion and damaged his right arm. Surgeons worked for hours to successfully rejoin the nerves and save the arm, leaving a scar from his wrist to his shoulder.  

In 1944 he took lodgings in a farm that was owned by Ruth Westcott, recently widowed with two small boys – Gerald and John. Phillip and Ruth married, had a son called David and in 1947 they all left the farm and moved to West Byfleet in Surrey, where I was born in 1948.

Phillip became a journalist and commuted to London by train every day: he worked on pioneering science and technology journals for Iliffe Press, and soon became editor of “British Plastics” – this was at a time when a whole range of remarkable plastics were about to transform our everyday lives. In 1957, he and his friend Archie Renfrew, a consultant chemist, published “Polythene”, a magnum opus that was welcomed by industry experts around the world.

As managing editor at Iliffe Press Phillip developed a reputation for innovation, launching low-circulation, high-priced and very specialised scientific journals such as Cryogenics, Non-destructive Testing and Fibre Optics. He also launched the more generalised Science Journal as an English competitor to Scientific American.   

In 1967 Phillip left his home in Surrey and moved to London, where in 1968 he met and fell in love with Anna. They lived together in a flat in Dulwich and continued working at their respective careers. Phillip was awarded the Freedom of the City of London, an honour that enabled him to marry Anna in Guildhall in 1973.

By the early 1970s, pressures of living and working in London were making Phillip think about early retirement.  He had seen Arthur Tunstall, a superlative graphic designer with whom he had worked closely for many years, leave the city and settle in the gorgeous village of Grosmont – and wondered whether he should make the move to Wales, too.

Phillip and Anna spent several weekends with Arthur and his wife Alys in their house at Castle Gate, and surveyed the region for possible places where they could find a suitable house and open a bookshop.

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Eventually, in 1974 they left their jobs in London and headed west to Wales on a new adventure. Within a couple of months they had opened their bookshop in Abergavenny, where Phillip worked until the late 80s. They stayed for a year in Llanellen at the foot of the Blorenge before moving into the Steps in Grosmont – and in 1975 Anna gave birth to their son Llewelyn.

Phillip’s interest in the local history of Grosmont and the surrounding parish had been growing all the time so now he devoted himself to it on a full-time basis. He rented a room from Jenny Pile at the end of Poorscript Lane, rolled up his sleeves and passionately came to grips with the story of the village and its people, particularly the Grosmont poor.

With the persistence of a scholarly detective, he scoured parish records, antiquarian books and maps for facts, figures and other nuggets of information; frequent trips to the Public Records Office at Kew and endless searches on the internet unearthed still more pieces of the Grosmont puzzle.

He wrote A Year on the Land, with illustrations by Arthur Tunstall, describing the lives of the people in medieval Grosmont. His ultimate aim was to publish a hardback edition of his local history, an aim he achieved in 2008 with A Grosmont Miscellany, not long after we had celebrated his 90^th birthday that brought many friends and family members together in a suitably effervescent occasion.

Notwithstanding his ability to tell a good story and his ardent support of Welsh rugby, Philip had a cultured eye, a ready wit and a socialist philosophy that wanted the best for all people. And somewhere along the way Phillip learned the art of gardening – I remember the rich variety of flowers, fruit and vegetables he cultivated in our Surrey garden.

And here, in his garden in Grosmont, which he created out of a wilderness and where he grew a cornucopia of food, he nurtured – amongst many other species – the most exquisite blue gentians in a rockery that you can best see from the kitchen window.

Yechid.