We want to develop these pages of the website and we need your help!
The building has stood in Blackwood since 1925 and a lot of people have passed through the doors! We want to collect all your memories and share them with visitors to the site.
Do you have old photos of the building? We want to see them and hear your memories of activities and events of have attended in its long history.
Please send your photos and memories to bmi@caerphilly.gov.uk or post them to us at Blackwood Miners’ Institute, High Street, Blackwood, NP12 1BB.
As an evacuee during WW2 I was sent to Blackwood. In 1940 at the age of eight I was taken to see my first pantomime 'Aladdin' at the BMI. To this day I can remember one line from show, (quote). "Look here comes the dawning, there'll be silk stockings at 'Jones & Richards' tomorrow morning". Incidentally 'Jones and Richards was a department store in the high street, and if the air raid siren went off while we were at school, we would then be taken to J & Rs basement.
Peter Quin
I came across your site today. I was evacuated to the miners institute building at the age of 11 with my class from St Bartholomew's School , Tower Street, Dover . We arrived on the train and I seem to remember the building being near by. I went to stay with Mrs Sterry of 8 William Street in Blackwood. She had 3 boys and a girl. We went to the local primary school but had our own classroom and our teachers from Dover. I stayed for 2 years before I went back to my family in Dover. I was treated very well and mainly enjoyed my time down there, although I was sometimes homesick. I went back to stay with Mrs Sterry when I was 18. I used to work at Switchgear in Pontllanfraith where I met my future husband Cyril Leach. When we married we were the caretakers of the Midland Bank in the High Street(around 1950). We moved back to Dover in 1952.
Freda Leach (nee Johnson)