Volume Eight - Pre-Victorian to the present day - more aspects - Chains at Penarth Dock - Macey, Mules and Wallace Family History . . .

3) The Wallace Chain

3a) Tommy 'Dodd' Wallace

My great grandfather, Tom Wallace was born in 1851, in Brinkworth, Wiltshire. Tom became known as Tommy Dodd. The reason is not known. Perhaps it was due to the fact that he was short in stature. Aged 19, he went to sea. On census day in 1871, he was recorded as being at sea, a stoker on a ship. The name of the ship is not known.

Determined to improve himself, Tommy Dodd became a stone mason’s labourer. He then heard from other Brinkworth people who had already moved to South Wales that there were good employment opportunities in Penarth, with the building of the new docks. Around 1878, aged 28, he decided to up stakes and went 70 miles west across the Seven estuary to start a new life in Penarth.

Tommy was one of millions of rural immigrants caught up in the whirlwind of the industrial revolution. He was looking for a place where the streets were paved with gold, or at least paved, and where there were jobs paving them. What he owned was what he stood up in. He came with a day’s food and the tools of his trade.

He lived at 86 Salop Street, probably as a lodger. Soon after arriving, he became known as ‘Tommy the singer’. In 1879, he married Lucy Mead. Tommy Dodd got work as a mason’s labourer.

The main development of Penarth Dock had been completed by the 1880’s. Work became short for stone masons. However, the construction of Barry Dock was started in 1884. This drew many workers from Penarth and Cogan. The 1891 Census shows that Tommy Dodd had moved his young family to live at Brook Terrace, Cadoxton, Barry, close to the new docks, where there would be plenty of work for a stone mason. The first dock basin opened in July 1889, followed within a few years by two additional docks.

Tommy Dodd and Lucy moved their family back to Penarth in 1892. In 1899, they were living at 55 Salop Street. Tommy Dodd continued to work as a stone mason and builder’s labourer in the docks area.