by Carol Elliott
Many will remember Rowland’s ironmongers, a long-established shop at the corner of Kensington Road and High Street. For generations the Rowland family were known locally as ‘the ironmongers’, trading from what was once known as Picton Place: this is a name that is now forgotten and fell out of use with the renaming of streets that followed the formation of the Neyland U.D.C. (Urban District Council) in the early 1900s.
(generated AI image)
Rowland’s ironmongers shop stood for decades at the corner of Kensington Road and High Street, and the history of the Rowland family in Neyland fully reflects the town’s development from its maritime roots and Irish Packet steamers, through the years of railway, to the growth of local trade in the ‘Golden Years’ of Neyland. In the twentieth century, the fish industry and the demands of the First and Second World Wars further shaped the town, with the ‘hustle and bustle’ of businesses adapting to support both industry and the community. And there was always ‘Rowlands’ the ironmongers.
The earliest member in the family we can identify is Thomas Rowland, born 1833 in Morvil near Maenclochog, Pembrokeshire. As a young man he moved to Fishguard and became a sailor. By the time of the census in 1861 he was living in Milford and had married Margaret Rees, who had been born in 1833 in Dale. He was then a mariner employed in the Trinity Service. This refers to Trinity House, who were responsible for navigation safety, including lighthouses, buoys, and seamarks. This work was essential in the Haven, given the volume of naval and commercial traffic using the waterway. As activity increased with the railway at Neyland after 1856, Trinity House expanded its local operations in the Haven, and Burton became the centre for Trinity Services. By the census in 1871 Thomas had moved to High Street in Neyland, and he and his son William, who had been born 1855 in Dale, were working as ironmongers at their address in High Street, Neyland. Another son, Sydney, was an apprenticed photographer.
Son Thomas Williams Rowland was born in 1858 in Milford, which was at that time in the parish of Steynton. When the family moved to Neyland about 1871 he was still a boy, but by the census of 1881 he was a young man of 22 years and his occupation was listed as 'schoolmaster'. We know from records in Haverfordwest archives, that as a young man Thomas had served as a pupil teacher at Neyland National School between 1873 and 1877, during which time he produced a substantial hand-drawn atlas of thirty-one maps.
All of these thirty-one maps can be seen in the Haverfordwest archives, and they are a lasting testament to his skill. They were almost certainly drawn from the kind of school atlases used at the time, such as those by William Hughes, with Thomas carefully copying each map by hand and working to keep the proportions and detail as true to the original as he could. What strikes me is not just the skill, but what it represents. Here was a young teacher in a growing railway town, sitting in a classroom in Neyland, teaching about distant countries such as France, Spain, Switzerland, Canada, Australia and beyond. Through those maps, we can see he was teaching about each country’s boundaries, their regions, and the political world beyond Pembrokeshire.
In an age when news travelled slowly, these maps and lessons would also have touched on a wider context of Europe and the Empire, to include the shifting politics and recent conflicts that shaped those maps. His work shows real care and discipline and survives as evidence of a high level of education and ability for a local pupil teacher of the period. They are carefully drawn by hand, from the fine lines of the coast to the neat lettering and gentle colouring which takes patience and it speaks of a young man with both skill and determination. His mapping work survives as evidence of a high level of education and ability for a local pupil teacher of the period, and it is hard not to feel that Thomas Williams Rowland had a natural gift for this kind of work.
By the 1891 census, Thomas Williams Rowland had retired from teaching and had entered trade: he was an ironmonger. However, he had not joined his father and brothers’ ironmongery business on the High Street, he had instead set up his own ironmonger’s shop and this was located at 'Picton Place' at the corner where Kensington Road and High Street met. Sadly, the name Picton Place has long disappeared and does not exist now.
In Victorian times, ironmongers were central to the functioning of such railway and maritime towns like Neyland, supplying tools, fittings, and household goods required by both domestic and industrial life. The ironmongery business appears to have been well established in the Rowlands family, with his father and brothers also engaged as ironmongers.
On 18th March 1885 Thomas Williams Rowland married Tryphena Flora Ayers at Llanstadwell Church. Tryphena had been born in 1860 in Appleton, in the county of Berkshire. She was the daughter of Richard Ayers, who was an engine driver on the railway; a native of Berkshire but now living in Neyland. In the 1881 census the Ayers family were living on Picton Place in Neyland, very near to her future husband.
On 10th May 1887 their son Cecil Williams Rowland was born. At Llanstadwell Church, on 9th August 1915, he married Gwendoline Griffiths, who had been born in Neyland in 1885. She was an assistant schoolteacher and was the sister of Lillian Griffiths, who became the Births and Deaths Registrar in Neyland.
Cecil Williams Rowlands worked as an ironmonger alongside his father Thomas Williams Rowland at 4 Kensington Road until his father died in 1932. At that time the business fully passed to Cecil Williams Rowland.
On 27th January 1919, Cecil and wife Gwendoline had a son, Bernard Cecil Williams Rowland. Many Neylanders will still remember Bernard Rowland the ironmonger. In 1949 he married Mary Matilda ‘Mattie’ Williams, born in 1893 on James Street in Neyland.
Bernard and his wife Mattie appear not to have had children, and with their deaths the long continuity of the Rowland ironmongery business in Neyland came to an end.
My Personal Recollections
As a child, I remember entering the shop when it was kept by Bernard and his wife Mattie. As you pressed down the door latch and stepped inside, you were met by a distinct mixture of smells: paraffin, oil, leather, candles, and metal. The wooden floorboards creaked underfoot as you walked towards the counter.
Behind it stood Mattie, a small woman in spectacles. She always appeared just visible above the counter, as though she might be standing on a stool to serve customers. The shop felt unchanged by time, an accumulation of stock and memory built up over generations.
There is also a direct family connection. My great-grandfather, John Jenkins of 49 Kensington Road, named Cecil Williams Rowland, (Bernard’s father) as executor of his estate. This seems to reflect the trust placed in the Rowland family within the community.
Further Recollections of Rowland’s Ironmongers
These memories are not mine alone. My cousin Bob also recalls the shop vividly from his boyhood, and his recollections add another layer to the story of the Rowland family in Neyland.
He remembered saving what little pocket money he could earn from running errands and then spending 4d (fourpence), in the days before decimalisation, on a wooden apple box. With that in hand, he would go into Rowland’s ironmongers to buy a yard of wire netting and a handful of staples, setting about making a small coop to keep pigeons. Bernard Rowland would patiently cut the wire to size with a pair of tin snips, taking the time to help.
Bernard himself was always seen in his brown coat. He was physically disabled and walked with difficulty, but this did not prevent him from running the shop or serving customers with care.
Inside, the shop left a lasting impression. There was a large mahogany wall chest with deep drawers that extended far back, each one carefully labelled and fitted with a distinctive green glass knob. Within them were kept every imaginable size of screw and nail, along with brass hinges, door locks, and countless small fittings. Even onion sets could be found there, stored neatly until required.
Above, the ceiling was crowded with goods: galvanised watering cans, garden riddles, and coils of rope of all sizes. It was, in every sense, a fully stocked ironmongers, and to a child it felt like an Aladdin’s cave.
On the counter stood a display of pocket knives. The cheaper ones, known as 'scout knives', had two blades, a marlin spike, and another attachment said to be for removing stones from a horse’s hoof. They were often the only ones a boy could afford.
The smells were as memorable as the sights, paraffin, lubricating oil, leather, and rope, the same mixture of ‘glorious ironmongery smells’ that many in Neyland still recall today.
Mattie Rowland, Bernard’s wife, was a small woman, well under five feet tall, but full of character. She had a sharp sense of humour and was remembered with great affection. Together, Bernard and Mattie were regarded as kind and approachable, forming part of the everyday life of the town.
Bob also recalled that he had been a pupil at the National School, the very same school where Thomas Williams Rowland had taught many years earlier. It was the school that our parents had also attended. The school stood next to our grandparents’ house at 49 Kensington Road, linking these memories directly back to the earlier generation of the family.
Reflection
Memories such as these bring the Rowland family story into sharper focus. They show not only the continuity of the ironmongery business across generations, but also its place within the daily lives of the people of Neyland.
With the death of Bernard Cecil Williams Rowland in 1987, and that of his wife in 1991, the Rowland ironmongery business, which had served Neyland across several generations, finally came to an end. In that moment, an established and long-standing part of the town’s commercial life passed with them.
Sources:
Family tree of Bernard C. W. Rowland, compiled by Carol Elliott, from census returns (1861–1939), parish registers (Llanstadwell, Steynton), and Ancestry records (user-compiled dataset).
Neyland and Llanstadwell local history research notes; Haverfordwest Archives (Thomas Williams Rowland atlas, 1873–1877); contextual analysis of Trinity House operations and Neyland railway development (post-1856).
Personal recollections of Carol Elliott and Bob Reeves, recorded 2026.