National Screen and Sound Archive of Wales preserves and celebrates the sound and moving image heritage of Wales, making it accessible to a wide range of users for enjoyment and learning. Its film collection reflects every aspect of the nation’s social, cultural and working life across the 20th century, giving a fascinating insight into Welsh filmmaking, both amateur and professional.
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Garden at Park Lodge
Abraham Sherman’s walled garden at Park Lodge, Queen’s Road, Thomastown, Merthyr Tydfil, with greenhouses, terraced lawns, trellised arches, a fishpond – and battery hens.
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Overview
Successful betting shops and a football pools company allowed brothers Harry and Abraham Sherman, the Cardiff-raised sons of a Jewish tailor from eastern Europe, to live in some style. Harry made his home in Cardiff and Abe in Merthyr, at Park Lodge, Queen’s Road, Thomastown, where there was a walled garden of 1.25 acres, with two greenhouses, terraced lawns, trellised arches, a fishpond – and a shed full of battery hens, then a comparatively new method of keeping poultry.
Park Lodge (7 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, behind a former synagogue, with views over the town below) was advertised for sale at Ј100,000 following the death of Annie, Abraham’s widow, in 1984. The estate agent’s blurb suggested it might be suitable for conversion to a nursing home or that the garden could be used for residential development, surely not what the proud gardeners Abraham and Annie – seen here in their beautiful garden in spring and summer, holding up home-grown produce to the camera - would have wished to see. The lodge does seem, however, to have remained a private house.
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