"Ceiber" is a Welsh word for joist, there was once an avenue of trees on the Llanwynno Road which looked like the joists of a house. Then we get "the top of the hill where there was a joist or avenue"
Penrhiwceiber Clock Tower
George Henry Hall 1881-1965 First Viscount Hall of Cynon Valley
George Henry Hall was born the 31st December at Harris View Penrhiwceiber Mountain Ash, His father George was a miner from Marshfield in the county of Gloucester his mother Ann who came from Midsomer Norton near Radstock Somerset. He was educated at Penrhiwceiber elementary school but on attaining his twelfth birthday he was compelled to leave to take up work at Penrhiwceiber Colliery, so that he could assist his widowed mother, who had been left with a large family to support.
This was all the formal education he received but a prolonged absence from work following an accident in the colliery gave him an opportunity for self-education and extensive reading. He worked as the coal face until 1911 when he was appointed colliery check weigh man and local agent of the S.W.M.F. in 1908 he won a seat on the Mountain Ash U.D.C, as the first Labour member for the Penrhiwceiber ward. He remained a member of this body for 18 years, during which he became chairman of both the U.D.C .and of the Education Committee. In the general election of 1922 he was returned as Labour member for the Aberdare division of the Merthyr Borough, defeating the sitting member C.B. Stanton and retained his seat with large majorities (twice unopposed) until he was elevated to the peerage in 1946.
In the 1929 Labour Government he was given office as Civil Lord of the Admiralty, during 1931-35 he matured greatly as a parliamentarian. Hitherto he had concentrated mainly on the affairs of the coalmining industry of which he had an expert knowledge, but now, owing to the depleted ranks of his party, he was frequently called upon to speak from the front bench in debates on a variety of topics outside his previous range on interest.
He was also a powerful propagandist for his party outside Parliament; he waged a vigorous campaign in South Wales in the years 1934-35 against the Means Test Regulations. In 1940 he was elected leader of the Welsh Parliamentary Party, but resigned when in May 1940 he took office in the wartime coalition as Parliamentary Under-Secretary in the Colonial Office. He was made a P.C. in 1942 and became successively Financial Secretary of the Admiralty, 1942-43 and Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs under Anthony Eden, 1943-45. On the formation of the Labour Government in July 1945 he became Secretary of State for the Colonies and continued in this post until October 1946, when he was made First Lord of the Admiralty. He acquired a deep and abiding interest in the navy and was very happy in this office but owing to advancing years and indifferent health he decided to retire in May 1951.
He was Deputy Leader of the House of Lords from 1947-51 and continued as Deputy Leader of the Labour peers till the end of 1953, when his active office involvement in politics virtual ceased. He was a first class constituency M.P. always courteous and approachable he was ever ready to take up the grievances of his constituents. Aberdare owed a great deal to him for his efforts to attract new industries into the own during the dark days of the depression. In 1927 he was able to persuade a new company Aberdare Cables to establish their factory in Aberdare and he was eventually invited to join the directors, thanks largely to his efforts Royal Ordnance Factories were establishes in Robertstown and Rhigos in 1940 and in 1945 the Hirwaun Trading estate was founded. These developments helped to establish Aberdare as a centre of light industry, which was an inestimable boon for a town which had become too heavily dependent on coal.
He was awarded honorary LL.D degrees by the University of Birmingham 1945 “of which Anthony Eden was chancellor” and the University of Wales in 1946. Always a faithful member of the Church in Wales he was elected member of it Representative Body, he died on the 8th Nov 1965.
St Winifreds Church
Note: The Panelling and alter rail are to the glory of god and in Memory of George Henry Hall
Viscount Hall of Cynon Valley B C: who was born and worked in Penrhiwceiber and who died in November 1965 and to is beloved wife Margret who died 24th July 1941
Enter the Vaughn Lees
By Nancy Smith (The Story of Dillington a 1000 Years)
John Lee Lee married Jesse Vaughn the daughter of John Edwards the daughter of John Edwards Vaughn of Rheola and Llanelay of Glamorgan and their son Vaughn Hanning Lee, was born on 25th February 1836. His mother died a few days later on March 1st. Eventually his father John Lee Lee married the Hon, Mary Sophia daughter of Lord Bridport and had two sons and two daughters were born.
The Crimean War
Letters some sent by Vaughn Hanning Lee from the Crimea where he served as Lieuatant in the 21st Royal North Fusiliers. In one letter:
I know I wish I was at Dillington now, just getting on my boots to go out shooting, or getting on horseback in order for a gallop after the hounds.
He then goes on:
We begin now to read about fox-hunting which makes me feel the loss of England very much, and I suppose soon Balls will begin. It’s a pity a few young ladies could not come out here and we could get some first rate balls and dinner parties in Sebastopol, which would be great for as some of the Russian officers are very nice fellows.
He continues to describe conversations in French with some of the Russian officer prisoners whom he had to escort. Before we went I gave them a rattling good dinner and we talked and chatted all the way and smoked as if we had been old cronies got years.
In describing more serious events in the wat, he says:
I managed to knock four unfortunate Russians. One I sent to long homeas he was coming down to water from a well, I shot him through the coat tails and sent him headlong into the well. One thing I know, my mouth was so black with bitting cartridges that I could not get off for three to four hours.
Towards the end of the war, in 1855, Vaughn Hanning Lee reports:
As conditions worsened he had to take more and more opium for his diarrhoea and his men continued to die, he became disillusioned, he wrote caustically:
I may say, without doing Lord Raglan any injustice, that he has completely disorganised the British Army by his indolence and callousness. It is to be hoped you will send us out a better commander or we are all done for. I hate seeing our best men carried to their graves every day, not from the casualities of war but from disease and cold.
Vaughn Hanning Lee was obviously something of a reprobate , finding himself in serious trouble through gambling, drinking and getting into debt even while in Crimea and his father had to bail him out several times. It seems even a cheque once bounced which was enough to have had him cashired if he ahd been found out.
John Lee Lee Dies
John Lee Lee died on the 16th August 1874, his will appointed Johm Walrond Walrond of Devon as Trustee and Executor and mentions a poignant bequest of a torquise ring containing some of his first wife’s hair. His eldest son inherited, adding Vaughn to his surname to become Vaughn Hanning Vaughn Lee so he could inherit the Welsh estates of his mother.
Vaughn Hanning Vaughn Lee
Vaughn Hanning Vaughn Lee died on 7th July 1882 and is buried at Whitelackington church, his mother the Hon Mary Sophia Lee Lee, outlived him dying on the 29th January 1888 at a nearly eighty years of age. On his death, his Welsh estates were divided between his two older sons. Llanelay containing a coal mine near Neath went to Arthur, along with Dillington, while Rheola estate went to John Edwards who then dropped the Lee from his name.
Arthur Vaughn Hanning Vaughn Lee inherits
Arthur had entered the army and fought in the Boer war, during which time he kept a diary of his experiences. He succumbed to typhoid and was hospitalised for the remainder of it. When he eventually retired from the army in 1911 he was a Colonel in the Royal Horse Guards (the famous blues)
At the age of fifty three in 1915, he married thirty seven year old Mary Ursula Umfreville Pickering. Her family is an ancient one, tracing its lineage back to Alfred the Great and the kings of Scotland, their family tree referring to “Duncan , murdered by Macbeth 1040”.