100 Year History

In 1912, Swansea Chamber of Commerce members formed a company called Swansea Exchange Buildings Limited to build a meeting place for ship owners, ship brokers, coal and general cargo exporters and their agents, and offices on the upper floors. The building was completed in 1916, and Frank Bevan, who had acquired several clients by then, moved into rooms 62 and 63 of the Exchange Buildings.

The practice expanded with the shipping boom following the end of the Great War.

In those early days, the clients were chiefly from the Docks, the most important being the companies that Thomas Picton Rose Richards operated. These companies remained clients of the firm until they went out of business after the Second World War, and Frank C. Bevan and H. I. Bangham acted as Liquidators for them.

After the war, T.P. K. R. Limited diversified into the coal importing business in the Channel Islands, and their Agent in Guernsey, J. F. G. Williams, set up a transport business there. We also had other London clients, including Norman Tremellen & Co., Insurance Brokers.

The firm’s history between the war’s end is vital to its development.

The firm also had clients from various other businesses, including ironmongers like Evan Jenkins & Co. Ltd. and Samuel Bevan, Son & Roberts Limited, and a grocery business run by Mr. George W. Holmes. In addition, solicitors were important clients, notably Collins & Woods and Collins Woods & Vaughan Jones in Worcester Place, who introduced other legal work to the firm.

Before computers, handling accounts was an uphill task. Junior audit clerks would carefully copy entries from cash books, sales/purchase journals, and other records into ledger books, which senior clerks then verified. The senior clerk was responsible for compiling the trial balance, while junior clerks cross-referenced entries with original documentation and added financial figures in the ledger books. This manual process required the use of ink and frequent blotting paper. Additionally, office juniors were responsible for maintaining time and task records, including collating and transcribing entries into the Time Book and Time Ledger, which were then used for bill preparation.

During that time, the charges for services were considered low by modern standards, although clients often had heated exchanges over them. The bookkeepers cherished the books, primarily handwritten in ink, and alterations were prohibited. The shipping industry prospered after World War I, but the late twenties brought hardships, leading to the depression of the thirties. The staff, already on low wages, faced further cuts, and some sought other jobs. World War II loomed, and staff members joined the military, leaving the office short-staffed. Despite the challenges, they managed to carry on with limited personnel.

After Mr. Bangham’s return from the army, a girl was hired as an office junior, and for the first time, the staff could enjoy a drink in the office. Previously, senior staff members would sneak off to a cafe, but now they could have a break in the office. These were remembered as the “good old days,” despite the challenges and panic when the partners unexpectedly returned to the office.

This first girl (she was only 16 but was always Miss Davies – I can’t remember her forename) was followed by a succession of others until, as business settled into a steady rate of growth, there were as many as four young women who took over the reception area with typewriters, comptometer and other mechanical aids.
But this is jumping ahead of my story.

After Mr. Bangham’s return, Mr. Bevan’s health began to fail rapidly, and he became housebound. All the time I knew him, he lived in the Uplands at 6 Richmond Terrace, and during his illness, I used to take work up to him. I would take the train, or the bus, from the bottom of Wind Street to Uplands Crescent, walk the length of Uplands Terrace to the house and wait there while he worked. Mrs Flo Bevan always made me welcome and sometimes regaled me with snippets of family and neighbourhood gossip. The only tale I can remember was of her next-door neighbours who were vegetarians. They had a cat they tried to adapt to their meatless ways, but cats like to roam, and garden walls are easily scaled, and Mrs Bevan, who had a sense of humour, had no compunction in feeding it meat when he came into her garden. Mr Bevan died not long after the war ended. George Gibbs (who had qualified as an Incorporated Accountant before the war began) had been made a partner. The firm was still Frank C. Bevan & Co. but now just “Accountants”, which was the designation until the amalgamation of Chartered and Incorporated and “Chartered Accountants”. My qualification to sit the examinations had been nine years of experience in a practising Chartered Accountant office. I sat the final twice but failed to pass.

Exchange Buildings suffered two bombings. In the second, when the building next to ours on Adelaide Street (now the offices of the Evening Post newspaper) was destroyed, Exchange Buildings had its top floor corner, including the lift cable housing, and two offices sliced off. The Secretary of Swansea Exchange Buildings Limited, Mr. Alex C. Moffat, who lived in Port Eynon, used one of the third-floor rooms as a bedroom on Monday to Thursday nights. He suffered window glass penetration and shock from the explosion and died shortly afterwards. We have been the auditors of Swansea Exchange Buildings Limited since moving to the building. Following the death of Mr. Moffat, Mr. Bangham was appointed Secretary. This involved a change of auditor, and Tribe, Clarke, Owen & Montgomery Williams became the company’s new auditors.

Frank C. Bevan was my idea of the complete practitioner in public accountancy – probably because he was the only one I had experience with. He was very hardworking, very knowledgeable and in my view infallible – a formidable presence that gave the impression of being unapproachable – although it fell to my lot, as the youngest member of staff, to approach him on the matter of pay increases (rarely with any measure of success). As usual in those days, our staff were addressed by our surnames, which persisted until after World War II. Mr Bangham was similarly addressed but avoided the issue in return by not calling Mr Bevan anything in their conversations – in my presence, anyway. Harold Bangham was a different sort of person altogether, although having reached the rank of captain in his army service, he was inclined to carry the habit of command into his dealings with us, the staff, but in the age-old tradition of office workers, we were able to cope.

I remember reading about an eminent American accountant who asserted that accountancy demanded total exclusion of all other interests in the practitioner’s life. This might have applied to Mr. Bevan, except that he was a dedicated Freemason, although his concern seemed to be with the accountancy aspect even here. One other thing in his life was music. He played the church organ, leading him to become a founder member and Treasurer of the Swansea Chamber Music Society. He was a powerfully built man, about six feet in height. I remember being alone in the general office when a man came in with a printed slip, which he claimed was the firm’s insertion in a local directory for which we owed, I think, £5. I took him into the inner sanctum, and the next thing I knew was his coming back out in a rush. Mr Bevan gripped him by the coat collar and pushed him into the corridor. Mr Bevan returned with a smile like a tiger in the limerick.

As I have already said, the practice was well established when I was taken on, but how the original acquisition of clients came about was always a mystery to me. I could understand the shipping and coal exporting agencies because the firm was in the right place (the Swansea dock area) at the right time (the post-war shipping boom). Also, there were a few ironmongery businesses which might have had a connection with Mr. Bevan’s family, who had themselves been in the ironmongery trade. There was a draper in business in Neath, a small pleasant town a few miles to the east, at the mouth of its river running into Swansea Bay. This canny old character told me he had started business as a packman, travelling the country districts, selling his goods on credit and collecting payments weekly. He did so well that he could take a shop in Neath and employ a few young men to expand his credit business and develop a cash business in drapery. When this was established, he set about looking for an accountant, and not wishing anyone in Neath to know anything about his affairs, he took the train to Swansea. He walked down the High Street into Wind Street, where he saw the name on the upstairs window and became acquainted with Mr Bevan.

All accountancy practices have honorary audits. We certainly had our share, and I came in for many of them. I have mentioned Swansea Chamber Music Society. Mr Bevan’s treasury ship involved me quite a bit, but there was a bonus because I was put in charge of the box office at concerts at Llewellyn Hall. When the doors were closed, I could sit at the concerts, which gave me a taste for classical chamber music, which I still have.

Other honorary work was with the Church Army Hostel in what is now St. Mary’s Square and the local branch of S.S-A.F.A., whose work expanded enormously during World War II. Their office was in an old, demolished building next door to the Cross Keys Inn. All honorary staff were too busy to come to us, so I used to go to them – often to wait while they dealt with pathetic, very tragic cases of servicemen’s dependants in trouble of all descriptions.

The Ladies Samaritan Fund also helped needy hospital patients and their families. I got involved in all of them.

Mr. Frank Bevan had died in 1947, but after the war ended, the practice’s work pattern began to change. By 1949, when the basis of assessment to Income Tax changed from Schedule A to Schedule B for the farming community, we were enjoying an increase in clientele, mainly of farmers but also through the diversification of business following the nationalisation of coal and later of road haulage. There were also some company liquidations, as mentioned. A further influx of work occurred when several tenant farmers in Gower could buy their farms from the Penrice Estate.

A vital client already on the firm’s books when I joined was Earl Cawdor. Our connection comprised the two Welsh Estates, Carmarthenshire, based in the mansion Gelli Aur (Golden Grove) and covering quite a large part of the county and Pembrokeshire, based in Stackpole Court and covering a considerable area in South Pembrokeshire. George Gibbs masterminded the audits in the case of Carmarthenshire and then Harold Bangham in the case of Pembrokeshire. Mr Gibbs would go, with an articled clerk, to the Estate Office, which was on Spilman Street in Carmarthen, and stay week by week until the job was finished. In the case of Pembrokeshire, the books would come to Swansea by rail in a wooden box, heavily padlocked, and the audit would involve most of the office staff for a couple of weeks. When this was all completed, my job was to arrange with Swansea High Street (GWR) Goods office to collect and carry by passenger train back to the Estate Office at Stackpole, Pembrokeshire.

Lord Cawdor was the fifth Earl who had inherited the title as a minor on the death of his father, the fourth Earl, who had lived only a short time after inheriting the title on his father’s death, the third Earl. The Estate of the Third Earl was in Trust, and even after the Fifth Earl came of age, the Trustees (Col. Campbell, the Fourth Earl’s brother and Co. B. W. Drummond) continued to manage the considerable investments and lands still under their control. The accountancy of this Trust was the domain of Mr. Bevan himself, with whom I was involved, and Mr. Bevan’s grasp of the intricacies of these Trusts amazed me. I used to take down his dictation of letters to the Bankers, Coutts & Co. and the Solicitors, Farrer & Co. Eventually, the whole business was resolved.

Col. L. W. Drummond was the Agent of the Carmarthenshire Estate and the Edwinsford Estate in Carmarthenshire, the incumbent of which was his nephew, Sir James Hamlyn Williams Drummond. We also acquired the audit of this Estate but not of the Scottish Estate of Auchmlech, which formed part of the entailed inheritance and of which one of the earlier incumbents was William Drummond, the Scottish poet.

Over the years after World War I, our firm acquired some notability as landed estate accountants and became an accountant for several of these. After the Cawdor Estates, the first big one was Sir Griffith Thomas of Cwrt Herbert, Neath, who appointed Executors but never directed the disposition of his residuary EstateEstate. The matter went to Court, which decided the residue belonged to the four Executors, who themselves decided to dispose of it charitably. One beneficiary was Swansea Corporation, which had the organ in the newly built Guildhall and a park between Cockett Road and Townhill Road.

Other Estates that came to us were the Sketty Park Estate of the late Sir Robert Armine Morris Bart (whose name was taken into the Swansea suburb of Morriston). It covered lands and properties in Sketty, Penclawdd, Killay, and Morriston itself. As accountants, we also benefited from acquiring the Gorseinon Estates of William Lewis and William Rufus Lewis and the taxation work of their beneficiaries, the late Miss Kitty Glasbrook, Miss Elizabeth Lewis, and the others of that family.
Yet another client with an estate connection was Admiral Algernon Walker-Heneage Vivian, tenant for life of the Clyne Castle Estate. The “Vivian” in his name was required to inherit his life interests.

At this time, the articled clerks were brought up to full strength – two for each partner – and more female staff were employed as mechanisation began. I would like to have said something (a great deal, in fact) about the long list (but alas, in a few sad cases, short lives) of the Articled Clerks. I would like to work in the fashionable word “subsidiarity” if I knew quite what it meant because it sounds as if it could apply to them. The title has now passed into history to become the current “trainee accountant”, which has a chill, slightly inhuman sound that does not fit the breed of lively young men I have known. Except for the first three I have named, they were all my juniors and have been my friends. A few years ago, I made a list of upwards of forty, but in our several removals, the list had been lost, and try as I will, I cannot now name more than a modest number, but as far as I can remember, those who qualified were: –

• Harold Lawrence Bangham (subsequently a partner)
• Robert Anthony Morgan
• Arthur Burton Isaac (who died soon after qualifying)
• William Ewart Lovell Geraint
• Morrig Aldwyn Davies
• John Frederic Roberts
• Gordon Greaves (who died after a motorcycling accident)
• Thomas H. Jones (killed in a plane crash)
• Maurice Ablett
• Elfed G Phillips
• Martin Smart
• Hugh Dudley Morgan
• Frank Langford
• Evan Goronwy Davies
• John Travers Perkins
• Peter Rice Muxworthy (subsequently a partner)
• Charles James Clewett (subsequently a partner)
• Alan Tonkin
• Dudley Roberts
• Kimberley Darlington Thomas
• Stuart Gerald Thomas

“In addition, a number of clerks under articles failed to stay the course – I can only recall six by name at this moment. The accommodation in Exchange Buildings began to expand as Government wartime departments ceased operating and more office space became available.

One minor but significant easing of the burden of auditing came with the advent of the Biro—the first ballpoint pen, which saw the end of coloured inks—though not without a struggle. As I now look back, the first of the mechanical aids seems to have been the comptometer. A number of clients had them installed, and the staff were specially trained to operate them.
Several local accountancy firms, which had existed from the early days of Frank C. Bevan & Co., were still in operation. However, some had amalgamated or been absorbed into large national organisations. A few, however, had retained their original identity and were in a close and happy relationship with us.

In the post-war years, quite a number of new firms had come into existence, and there was plenty of work for all of us. Our own firm experienced changes over the same period.
Mr. Peter Rice Muxworthy was the second articled clerk after Mr. Harold Bangham, who was to be taken into partnership. This was in 1963. In 1967, Mr. Bangham had a stroke, which left him partially paralysed and without speech. In 1968, he died. Not long afterwards, Mr Charles James Clewett finished his articles, qualified, and was taken into partnership.

In 1973, Mr. George Gibbs died after a year-long illness, and shortly afterwards, the first takeover of another accountancy practice took place. The firm’s owner of J. T. Rees & Co. had died, and Frank C. Bevan & Co. bought the practice from his Executors. The removal of furniture and files from Walter Road to Exchange Buildings took place one evening after five o’clock through the good services of one of our clients who had a furniture van. After this work was finished, those of us involved, Messrs, Muxworthy and Clewett (partners), Mr. Hugh Rees (the son of the founder of the firm but not a participant in the ownership), our own Martyn Jenkins, Richard Pothecary, and myself, walked back into town to a fish and chip spread at the Burlington Tavern.

The following change was when Mr. Adrian John Richards joined the firm. He had qualified while with Tribe Clarke Owen & Montgomery Williams – our good friends – but had left that firm to work for a substantial local transport company. Having put that concern to rights and wishing to return to private practice, he joined Frank C. Bevan & Co. as the third partner in 1974.

The staff had increased, as did the mechanisation, and had the electronic ancillaries. With the admission of a fourth partner, Mr David Martyn Jenkins, it became necessary to move to larger premises. The lease of Albion Chambers, next door to Exchange Buildings, was acquired, and the gigantic move was undertaken. Mr. Haydn Powell, A.C.A., joined the firm from Touche Ross & Co., who had absorbed the firm of Tribe Clark Owen & Montgomery Williams some years ago.

The expansion continued when the Swansea practice of Hubert & Winston Jones, Certified Accountants, was bought, and some of the staff of that firm joined our staff. A grievous blow was suffered when Mr. D. Martyn Jenkins, who had fought illness for a year or more, succumbed to kidney failure and died in 1985.

The following change came when the long-established firm of Sidney H. Buckland & Son, Chartered Accountants, was amalgamated with Frank C. Bevan & Co. as Frank C. Bevan & Buckland. Partners Messrs. Wilfred H. Jones, John D. S. Jeremy, and staff moved into Albion Chambers. Yet another move was made to the large steel and glass building at 31 Russell Street, Swansea—at long last away from the docks area into the city environment in 1987.

After a few more years, I made the final move on September 5, 1991, into retirement after 70 memorable years. In that time, I have had contact in the office with very many, and of those, an abiding friendship with a significant number – including partners and staff from the earliest years up to the present, young and old, and some among clients.”