William Oriel

From 'Llanteg Turning Back The Clock'.

William Oriel

William celebrated his 20th birthday on 13th February 1813 by marrying 17-year-old Elizabeth David at Marros Church. By 1822 William had moved across the parish border into Crunwere and was employed as a
joiner. The following year he was living at Milton Back and was described as a carpenter. William and Elizabeth remained at Milton Back, and following their deaths in 1855 and 1861 they were buried – like many other Oriels over the next 125 years – at Crunwere Church.

William junior was baptised in 1826 and went on to marry Sarah Davis in 1857. He was the tollgate keeper, cobbler and schoolmaster at Llanteg, combining the three occupations in the little tollgate building that stood at Llanteg Crossroads. Locally he became known as ‘Billy the Gate’.
Legend has it that he would push his wife Sarah around the village in a bath-chair, which would seem to bear out her gravestone inscription, ‘long in illness borne with great patience’. Sarah died in 1873, and William later lived at York Crescent until his own death in 1890.

William and Sarah had three children, their two daughters Ann and Sarah becoming the first and second wives of Henry James on Caldey Island (there is an unusual group photograph on page 108 of Roscoe Howell’s book Caldey showing Henry with both his present and future wives, two ladies of very different appearance). In 1882 William’s only son John married an Amelia Johns at Pendine, where he lived at Wheelabout,
carrying on his trade of carpenter/wheelwright.

Llanteg Toll Gate School

From 'Llanteg Down The Years'.

In 1846 there is a Report of an Assistant Inspector in which he states:“there is no gratuitous education of any kind on week days in the parish. Many parents send their children to the schools of Tavernspite and Amroth. Generally speaking the people are remarkable for their good character. The wealthier class of farmers only are well educated, the smaller farmers are very illiterate and cannot afford to give their
children any education”.

During the middle of the 19th century a school was also held in an old meeting house at Craftie (modern Crofty).Later there was a school for young children kept by the man in charge of the Toll Gate, which used to be in existence at Llanteg Cross.

Toll Gate and School

Toll Gate - not shown on the 1841 census.
Occupied by William Oriel in 1851 - he was the toll collector and schoolmaster and was still there as toll
collector in 1871. The property was unoccupied in 1881.

Situated at Llanteg Cross. 

It was called “Billy the Gate’s school” and it was a building 12ft by 12ft, which served as a dwelling house, toll house and cobbler’s shop, in addition to being the school. The children sat on backless forms, and had no desks; all the modern school equipment was missing and the only playground the children had was the turnpike road. About twenty children attended this school, and each child paid one penny a week, besides providing a spelling book, slate and pencil.The Public Elementary School was erected in 1876 with the help 

of a £30 grant from central Church funds, and was to accommodate 50 children. It opened on 13th February 1877 with 15 pupils.

In its first years a few children were registered at only three years of age but this declined after around 1910 when most pupils would be five years old. 

Billy The Gate (William Oriel)

From 'Llanteg - The Days Before Yesterday'.

Billy the Gate (William Oriel)
extracted from the Narberth Weekly News, April 19th 1923 and October 11th 1923

At Llanteague the then new turnpike road to Hobbs Point crosses the two old roads, one from Tavernspite, and the other from the church and beyond, where they joined, and then immediately separated again - one for
Trenewydd etc., and the other for the direction of Amroth. At this point there was a gate across the new road, which you could not pass with any vehicle, horse, ass etc., without paying a certain toll. In connection with this gate, and built up to it on one side of the road, there was a little house of two floors with a hipped and slated roof, with a window at each side on the ground floor to enable the occupant, who was the collector of the toll, to watch the traffic up and down the road. There was a door in two heights looking across the road, and a window in the upper floor right over it. I am dependent on memory, but I judge the building was not more than 12 feet by 12 feet out to out.

In this little house the toll collector lived. At the time I want to refer to, this office was held by a bachelor of peculiar parts and appearance named William Oriel, known locally as ‘Billy the Gate’. In addition to this
public position, he was a cobbler, and made and mended boots and shoes, and besides kept in his little house above described a school for the instruction of youth in the rudiments of knowledge. This at that time was 

the only school in the parish, and was attended by about twenty children between four and perhaps ten years of age, who were taught the alphabet, a little spelling, reading, and a little - very little - writing, mostly on a slate.
It is no discredit to the pluralist head teacher to add that this covered the curriculum of his capacity, for it represented the extent of his opportunities in that direction, and he did not attempt to go beyond his depth.

His peculiar appearance was due to a severe curvature of the spine, which gave him an undue proportion of length of leg, and shortness of body, and set his head unusually low between his shoulders. This also
was no discredit to him, but on the contrary appealed to everybody for sympathy and consideration, as it arose from some accident or weakness or neglect during his infancy. He was a strict disciplinarian, and I can even now feel the bitter sting of his ebony ruler on the palm of my hand, and of his cobbler’s knee-strap across my shoulders, and I am honestly convinced that I was not by any means an unruly little boy.

To this academy of learning my brother Tom and I were introduced in the summer of 1856 walking daily from the Roses, where my parents then lived, but my father had taken Garness Mill, and was entering into possession in September. I was then four and a half years old.

We were probably 20 children or thereabouts attending this school, each paying a penny a week for the privilege, finding his or her own slate, pencil, spelling book, etc., and were drawn from eight or ten households in the parish. I often wonder what has become of them. I don’t think I have met more than four of them since we were children. They are scattered in many directions, and the majority are in all likelihood laid beneath the sod by now.

Llanteg 'Bandy' at the Toll Gate

From 'Llanteg - The Days Before Yesterday'

Llanteg ‘Bandy’
extracted from the Narberth Weekly News, 11th October 1923
At Billy the Gate’s school (in the tollhouse at Llanteg crossroads) we sat on backless forms, had no desks, no blackboard, no maps or pictures, nor any of the now essential equipment of the meanest school in the country; no sanitary provision, no playground except the turnpike roadway, on which we played marbles, cricket, or any other game in season known to us.The method of our game of cricket, or ‘bandy’ as we called it, was very primitive and is worth describing. We selected sides as cricketers do now, and one side bowled and fielded, whilst the others were at the wicket.
Scoring was done by us then as it is now, i.e., after hitting the ball you had to run from wicket to wicket, but we generally had a rule that if you ‘tipped’ the ball you must run (a rule if adopted in modern cricket would make high scores very scarce). Another rule generally adopted by us was that if you hit the ball over the hedge alongside the road you were out, therefore, there were no boundary hits to claim credit for, but much to the contrary, as, of course, you were out if the ball disturbed your ‘wicket’, or if the ball was caught in its flight after you had hit it, or if the ball was returned to the ‘wicket’ before you reached it.
The ‘wicket’ consisted of two stones a little less in height that the diameter of the ball; these were set on the ground 15 to 18 inches apart, and a light twig laid upon them from one to the other. The stones were selected
so that they afforded the least possible resting-place for the twig in order that the least touch by the ball would knock it off. The ‘bat’ was a bent stick, after the shape of a hockey stick, cut out of the hedge, or wherever
one of the necessary shape could be found, and it was known to us as a ‘bandy’. The ball was generally made of rag or yarn wound up as tightly as we could, and perhaps covered with canvas or cloth sewn on as a cover. It was a matter of honour that the ball should be trundled along the ground, not pitched to the wicket, so ‘overhand’ bowling was out of the question; the batsman, on the other hand, was expected to hit the ball with a clear stroke, not with a sweeping motion along the ground - girls only were permitted to do this, for we had to allow the girls to join us in the game owing to lack of sufficient boys in the school.
I wonder if this kind of cricket is ever played, even in the most outlandish corner of the country, nowadays.

Football we never had. Athletics of any and all kinds were entirely unknown to us, and bathing and swimming were tabooed, even had there been opportunities for this, then considered unnecessary, exercise.