Sue and Kevin Burke

Su and Kev Burke live at Pontygafel in Glandwr. The farm house and outbuildings were built over the last 200 years and the land used to extend down to the river Taf and over the Gafel to include smaller holdings.  Su came to live here in 1986. She was living in a council flat with two children, Alexandra, now 27, and Jez, and prayed for a house with a study, bedrooms each, lawns, fruit trees, walled veggie garden, a beech tree.

Just over a year later, in 1986, five of us moved into Pontygafel from Surrey. I lasted an entire year there not fitting into suburban society having lived on a houseboat on the Thames, a micro–holding on a greek island [yasu, πe∂ia] goats and everything.  I have always cared about housing people and worked for Shelter while studying architecture at the Architectural Association in London.  I decided there that what you believe may be more important than the style of your house, during the first year assignment “Design a City” [only first years could do that] so went to S.India looking for “a new prophet”.
I finally found God in the visa-queue at the American Embassy in London.  After all, He is everywhere. [Please debate the pronoun by e-mail ffynnondeg@hotmail.com anytime]. 

My current passion is hands-on land reform and I want to help as much as I can to change the way people use land. Kev joined the fray two years ago, also from council- house land and now is a full time song- writer, theologian, philosopher and bottle- washer for the spring water that is bottled here.  Jez [24], Toby [19] and Theo [17] live here and write protest ethno-metal, build houses, fix computers, sing, drum, play as a band at local gigs and do A-level history, french, and sociology. Jemima [20]lives up the road in a caravan with her big- machine driver boyfriend, also Kevin, who is building a bungalow and is to be seen around the place in a JCB.  Alexandra now trains fitness in Loughborough leisure centre. The household is 20% fluent in welsh, french and greek.  We live with far too many cats [please see Lammas management plan] and three welsh cobs, Henry, a Shetland pony and a singing sufi dog.   

We are looking at various management plans for the rest of the Pontygafel site besides spring water already being sold to London [approx 14 tons a week] and the fishing lake of about an acre.  Options include tourist housing , training, retreats, fitness/life- coaching, a spa, because of the accommodation afforded by the courtyard of currently redundent stone and slate farm-buildings. Suggestions to ffynnondeg@hotmail.com.
I pray that the local community embraces the changes that Lammas will bring as creative and enhancing to the local family mixture.

We are currently renting out the farmhouse as holiday accomodation:

visit www.pontygafel.com