After leaving the Guildhall School of Music and Drama early to join the Royal Shakespeare Company, Evans built a dual career as a performer and director. His Olivier Award-winning turn in 'Merrily We Roll Along' and earlier nomination for 'Candide' established him as a leading interpreter of Sondheim and musical theatre repertoire, while his tenures leading Sheffield Theatres and Chichester Festival Theatre marked him out as one of Britain's most respected artistic directors before his appointment at the RSC.

The same Rhondda ancestry is also the basis for the existing famouswelsh.com entry on Dave's brother and Kinks bandmate, Ray Davies. Both brothers' connection to Wales is through their shared paternal grandfather rather than through birth or upbringing.

After their mother's early death, Donald and Glyn Houston were brought up by their grandmother in Tonypandy while their father, a footballer, moved away for work; the brothers' shared Rhondda upbringing later gave rise to two parallel and celebrated acting careers.

Donald's early work in colliery labour before the war gave way to stage experience with the Pilgrim Players, and by the early 1950s he was a well-established leading man, moving comfortably between drama, war films and comedy across a screen career of more than three decades.

Contest records list Richards conducting Upper Rhondda Workmen's Band, Aber-Blaengwynfi Workmen's Silver Band, Treherbert & District Silver Band and the British Steel Corporation (Port Talbot) band across Welsh Area, National Mineworkers, Welsh Miners' Gala and National Championship of Great Britain contests between 1953 and 1992 — a sustained career at the grassroots of Welsh colliery-band music.

Glyn's route into acting was far less direct than his brother Donald's, taking in wartime service with the Fleet Air Arm and the Royal Signals in Singapore, labouring work on the Cardiff docks, and touring India with ENSA before Basil Dearden wrote him into 'The Blue Lamp' (1950).

Though often described as overshadowed by his more famous brother, Glyn built one of British television's longest character-acting careers, working steadily from the 1950s into the 1990s and being honoured with a BAFTA Cymru special award in 2008 for his contribution to Welsh and British film and television.

Davies was also a noted local historian and frequent eisteddfod adjudicator. In 1960 he was admitted to the Gorsedd of Bards at the National Eisteddfod in Cardiff, taking the bardic name Gwion after a stream at the head of the Rhondda valley.

Contest records show Rich competing with Tewit Youth Band (Harrogate, Yorkshire) from 1978, reaching National Youth Brass Band Championships and European Youth Championship finals through the late 1980s, then moving to Hampshire County Youth Band and Ocean Brass in the 1990s and 2000s, competing at SCABA, West of England Area and National Championship of Great Britain (Second Section) level. No Welsh band ever appears in this record.

Williams left school at ten and worked as a farm labourer before his family's move to the south Wales coalfield, first to Abertridwr's Senghennydd colliery and later to the Abergorci pit at Treorchy, put him among the chapel choirs and amateur drama societies that would shape his career. His break came through the 1928 National Eisteddfod in Treorchy and an invitation from Thomas Rowland Hughes in 1936, launching thirty years as one of the best-known voices on Welsh radio and television.

Away from broadcasting he appeared on stage at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin and the Globe Theatre in London, and took character roles in a small number of films including Jill Craigie's Blue Scar (1949). He married Margaret Mary Walters in 1917, and the couple had two daughters; he died at Treherbert, in the Rhondda Valley he had made his home, on 13 October 1967.

A site visitor has recalled meeting Davies after a Kinks gig in Newtown, Powys, in 1969, where he reportedly said his family originated from South and Mid Wales. This is an anecdotal recollection rather than a documented source, but it sits alongside the better-evidenced grandfather connection from the Rhondda.