Elfed J. Bowen, B.Sc.
Teacher & Educator
(ABGS 1938–1945)

Elfed Jonah Bowen was born in the Cynon Valley on 9 August 1927.  He was brought up in Wesley Villa,  Foundry Rd, Hirwaun, the son of a fitter.

He attended the County School, later grammar, from 1938 to 1945.  He had exceptionally good CWB examination results and progressed to University College, Cardiff, where he graduated with a degree in chemistry in 1948.  He stayed for a further year to acquire secondary school teaching qualifications, fulfilling his teaching practice placement in Mountain Ash Grammar School.

His first teaching appointment was at the Rhondda County Grammar School, Porth; but after a year there, he briefly left teaching for an industrial research post at Fort Dunlop, Birmingham where he worked for a year during 1950 and 1951.  There followed a series of brief appointments in schools in England and Glamorgan until, on 1 January 1953, he was appointed to teach Chemistry and Maths at his old school, Aberdare Boys’ Grammar, and remained there until July, 1956 when he returned to Porth Grammar as Head of Chemistry.  He later transferred to lecture at Pontypridd Technical College, Rhydyfelin, and his final post was as Head of Science & Chemistry at Mountain Ash Comprehensive School where he spent eleven years before retiring in 1992.

Elfed was a much-respected townsman who gave unstintingly of his talent, time and energy to public life in Aberdare.  He was closely involved with Aberdare Town Tennis Club, ATTC, from 1948 to 1973.  The club had its courts situated between the Boys’ Grammar sports field and the GWR engine shed.  Tennis was one of his great loves, and he was a past captain and secretary of the ATTC.  His future wife, Cecily, was also a member.1

He also took a keen interest in local history and took up membership of the Cynon Valley History Society.  On retiring, Elfed’s involvement with the Society grew and he served as chairman in 1992–93 and 2001–02. By 2010 he had been given life-membership.  In 2012 he was made an honorary vice-president — only the fifth to receive that accolade in the  fifty-year history of the Society, (the others being former pupils Tom Evans, John Mear, Ken Collins, and the Girls’ Grammar headmistress Mrs Tydfil Thomas). He also contributed a chapter to Volume 8, (1997), of the Society’s occasional publication Old Aberdare, about the ATTC, and in which he named almost all its members in the years from 1934 to 1973, when the tennis club closed.

Elfed attended Ebeneser Welsh Congregationalist Chapel, Trecynon, where he remained an active member until his departure from Aberdare.  Elfed was keen to use his native tongue, and always took the opportunity to speak Welsh whenever he met a fellow Welsh-speaking acquaintance.

Elfed married Cecily Manser, a teacher, in 1968.  They lived most of their married life at 1 Plas-draw Road, and it was with reluctance, when Elfed was in his early nineties, that they eventually decided to move to Pontarddulais to be nearer their daughter, Catherine, a GP in that area, their son-in-law and grandchildren.  At first, they lived in their own home; but as Cecily’s health declined, and subsequently Elfed’s, both moved to live in Llys Gwyn House a residential care home, in Pontarddulais. Eventually Elfed died there on 2nd July 2021, just a few weeks short of his 94th birthday. The funeral took place at Llwydcoed on 16th July 2021.  Cecily remained at Llys Gwyn, but died there on 19th November 2023.  Her funeral followed, on 5th December, also at Llwydcoed Crematorium.

 

 

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Footnote

1. Cecily is present in the front row of the tennis club photograph, as Miss Cecily Manser.
    

Acknowledgement

D.L. Davies, for “E.J. Bowen: an obituary,” in the CVHS Newsletter Hanes, No.95, 2021.

CR, December 2023.