LAST week, we featured a picture of the Ebbw Bridge in Newport.

THE Ebbw Bridge is the crossing for the River Ebbw in the west of Newport. Today the bridge forms part of the B4237, where previously it was the A48 before the Newport Southern Distributor Road opened and assumed the A48 number.

Ebbw Vale is the largest town in the County Borough and contains a population of 24,422. The town started as a mining and engineering town where during the 19th century it grew with an influx of people from the West Country, the Forest of Dean and the rest of Wales. Towards the end of the 18th century, the population living in Ebbw Fawr valley was about 140 where today, due partially to industry, the growth is regarded to be between 24 to 35 thousand people now residing in the area of Ebbw Vale.

THIS looks like Ebbw Bridge taken from Tredegar Park. From the end of the bridge it was open country before the building of the various office blocks and the Duffryn estate. In the 1950’s, more or less opposite the gates of Tredegar park, I can remember watching the driver of a steam lorry raking out his ash pan. I went to Stow Hill Secondary School which had no playing fields so, once a week buses used to carry us over the Ebbw Bridge into Tredegar Park for football or cricket.

Dave Woolven, Newport.

WHEN we were kids in the forties we played in the area and watched waves breaking at the top of the Lighthouse Road, now a roundabout. I could tell some yarns of these events. My first dog was run over by a bus on the bridge and a vet took him in a sack and drowned him in the river. There wasn’t a great deal of traffic in those days, so Bob was very unlucky. I was less than five-years-old at that time and ‘friends’ had taken him from our garden, led on a piece of string. It snapped and I cried when someone called to tell me. I ran from Park Drive to the bridge just in time to see the vet’s action.

Gerry Rose, Stow Hill.