Born in Germany, and raised in Wales and New Zealand, actress Pam Ferris had a globetrotting childhood. But it was her early years in the village of Aberkenfig near Bridgend that she really wanted to revisit for a Coming Home genealogy adventure.When actress Pam Ferris decided to return to her Welsh roots, she didn't expect to uncover a family history of mental illness.
Pam - best known as Ma Larkin from TV series The Darling Buds of May and Aunt Marge from the movie Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - had a patchy knowledge of her family history. But it was not until she revisited her childhood home for the BBC Wales TV series Coming Home that the pieces of the jigsaw finally came together.
"There were all these family myths that had got twisted over the years, and it turns out there was a grain of truth in all of them," she says.
Heading back to Aberkenfig for the first time in 45 years, Pam recalled memories of life in the village before she emigrated to New Zealand with her family when she was 13.
Her mother, Ann Perkins, worked in the family bakery business - founded by grandfather Evan Perkins and whose premises today house the village's Simla Tandoori restaurant - and her father Fred was the village policeman. They had met across the rear wall of the police station which backed on to the bakehouse yard.
Meanwhile, genealogists working on Pam's story discovered that her great-grandfather John Perkins was an ostler, looking after working mine horses at the nearby pit. Records show that when his first wife died, he was remarried just months later to Welsh-speaking Eleanor from Cardiganshire.
"This must be the couple that I've heard the family story about," says Pam. "They couldn't speak much to each other, so they communicated through food. If he was in the good books she would serve him apple pie but if he was out of favour the food would go downhill."
But it was the story of her great-great-grandfather, Richard Perkins, that proved most fascinating for the actress. Through desperation, he walked from north Devon in the 1840s - known as 'The Hungry 40s' - with his eight children. This much Pam already knew.
But when the Coming Home team reunited Pam with a living cousin, Cynthia, she discovered a bundle of family photographs, including a faded image of Richard Perkins' son, also called Richard who also kept an enlightening hand-written journal more than 120 years ago.
The writings detail events throughout his life, but become more bizarre as the journal progresses. Research for the programme shows that although a successful man in his younger days, Richard Perkins found fortune in America, but returned to the UK bankrupt and eventually ended his life in a 19th Century lunatic asylum.
As Pam pondered the wacky entries in Richard's meticulous hand, she tried to understand what the writings imply. There seems to be just one obvious, and unhappy, conclusion.
"I have the feeling this is charting a man losing his mind, which is very sad," she says.
your comments
Karen Williams, Sydney, Australia
My mother and father Margaret (maiden name Thomas) and James Tippett lived in Llanelli up until 1966 when we emigrated to Aust. My Grandmother was Gwen Ferris - she and Fred Ferris are brother and sister. My dad James Tippett passed away March 2008 and we took his ashes back to Llanelli. I married a Welshman from Llanelli. There are plenty of cousins related to Fred Ferris living in Llanelli who we still visit regular. Everyone reckons I look like Pam Ferris. I think quite a few years back we tried to contact Pam Ferris via the BBC. My mum Margaret has a photo of Fred in his Police Uniform, who is her uncle of course. My Mum is 80 now.
John Richard Jones from Preston, Lancs
After being brought up in the Kenfig Hill area I relocated to the Blackpool area in Lancashire in 1993 and regularly visit South Wales as well as tour various parts of Northern England. Having visited areas around Leeds, Huddersfield and other Pennine/Peak District areas I gradually became more interested with what was going on to get an appreciation of village and country life up there. Suddenly, one weekend, after visiting the village of Slaithwaite (the real name for the village from Where The Heart Is) I journeyed to Kenfig Hill and visited a few pubs in the Aberkenfig area, and unaware of Pam Ferris having lived in Aberkenfig I spoke openly about where I had been and the lovely countryside up there as well as in South Wales. A conversation got going with a few locals and I was surprised how much knowledge there was about parts of Yorkshire. I was then told about Pam having been in the area and then realised why. Whether they know of it through watching such programmes or having been there I don’t know. It was wonderful to see how some people from two communities so far apart were together like this and I have some friends from the Leeds area that I bring down from time to time as they take me to their roots like Bridlington, Scarborough, Whitby, etc. – it would have been useful if they were present when this happened. The two areas have a lot in common along these lines and have that village spirit about them.
Howell Morgan, St Bride's Major
I am 63 years old and grew up in Aberkenfig and remember Perkins the bakery very well and the family who ran the business. Collecting the hot bread from the bakery on daily basis and eating some on way home to St Brides Road was a joy. I note that Pam's father was a policeman in the village, and plainly she was living there, but on another website it refers to the fact that she grew up in Llanelli. Aberkenfig was a fantastic place to grow up and looking back on childhood it is remarkable how free we all were, however within a strict self imposed code laid down by our parents and quite frankly fear of the police. The working class people I grew up with were the salt of the earth who had very little in terms of the material wealth that is around today. However they got on with life with happiness and stoicism that seems to be sadly lacking today.
