Michael Conrad Scott Archer

Born Rochdale 24 March 1924 (Grandparents ' home)

First home Plas Ifan nr Bryn Hywel 1924 -7. Father, an English graduate of Bangor University and taught English at Ruabon Grammar School throughout period 1920 to1947. Mother was a graduate in Latin and English and taught until marriage on 17^th February 1922. My first memory is of being in the bath when candle fell in - age about 1½. We moved to Bronheulog cottage behind Bronheulog Hall about 1927.Photographed with dogs outside cottage. By 1928 we had moved into Bronheulog Hall where my mother opened a small private school which had about five or six local children of 4 or 5 years age.

I have a few vivid memories of the three years here. Climbing onto the bedroom mantelpiece behind the bedhead (the bedroom fire place was not used), hiding under a rhododendron just beside the front door while parents and maid searched everywhere, dropping a brick onto the porcelain loo after being scolded for some misdemeanour. I had family walks or trips which were memorable. The great spring frost of 1929 is remembered for the maid taking me half a mile along the hillside and down the lane to the canal at Sunbank where I saw the boatman breaking the ice for the limestone barge horse to have a drink. There was an incline from the Eglwyseg quarries down to Sunbank which brought the limestone. The maid persuaded the quarryman to give us a ride back up the incline in the empty limestone wagon.

In the following summer my mother walked with me up the lane to the road called Panorama Walk below the quarries and from there to the top of Castell Dinas Brân. On the top there was a Camera Obscura which showed an enlarged view of the countryside on a flat table inside the conical building. The lady rotated the Camera to show our home, Brynheulog, and my mother exclaimed' look - there's Gwladys putting the washing out!'. The quarries were probably then in their last years; I remember seeing the wagons coming along the tramway by the Panorama Walk and then the contents being transferred at the top of the incline.

Another occasion was when my parents saw smoke arising from a fire at the Hughes Parry house Llangollen Fechan. This was directly across the Dee valley from us – I clearly remember being got up and dressed at 3 in the morning and walking down to a pedestrian bridge across the river (long since demolished) and arriving to see the firemen tackling a chimney fire. In those days both Dad and Mother played golf and this bridge enabled them get to the club near the Fechan easily.

Directly below Bronheulog was Wenffrwd on the main road, where the regular Crosville bus between Wrexham and Llangollen stopped. We had no car, though Dad had had a motorbike for a while, so our transport was by bus or train - there was a station at Sunbank Halt - a request stop on the GWR line Barmouth to Birkenhead. Dad was a railway enthusiast - and I remember one day out in August 1929. We set off by taking the 9 something bus to Llangollen, which in those days stopped and turned at the foot of Wharf Hill, walked across town and up and over the mountain road to Glynceiriog. We went to a cottage in the street where the wife of a quarryman served us lunch. The good lady asked us if we minded her drawing the curtain as a mark of respect as it was the day of the funeral of a boy working in the local slate quarry who had been killed in a tram road accident. After lunch we went to the Glyn Valley Tramroad station to travel on the steam hauled tram road to Chirk. The track was narrow gauge, partly overhung by trees I recall leaning out and grabbing a branch before being firmly pulled in! - and the train was very slow. Nearly thirty-five years afterwards I travelled in the same railway coach on the Talyllyn Railway from Tywyn, Gwynedd, where we were living! It had been used as a henhouse after the Glyn Valley had closed and rescued by the Talyllyn Preservation Society in 1958.

At Chirk the line terminated parallel to the GWR line and, a short distance away, was the Shropshire Union Canal. Here we boarded one of Isaac Roberts horse drawn boats which occasionally did the lengthy trip from Llangollen to Chirk and back. This was quite a trip in itself; first a short tunnel under the A5 and then, just past Vroncyssyllte, we crossed Telford's famous aqueduct. The height of the iron duct carrying the canal on the NW side was lower than the side of the boat and looking out one could see over a hundred feet down to the Bont cricket ground and the river Dee - my parents kept a FIRM GRIP ON ME!

On the north end of the aqueduct there was a spur of the Canal which led to the old brickworks and Graesser Monsanto factory. Because the towpath over the aqueduct had been on the east side the horse had to be detached and taken over two bridges and then to be reconnected to the other side of the boat as the towpath was now on the other bank of the canal. ¾ of mile further on the canal passes above the historic house Plas-yn-Pentre with its Priests' Hide and from where one of my fellow pupils, Harold, came to mother's school.

Shortly beyond the Plas the canal goes under the road to Bryn Howel and comes to a section where the bank gave way some forty years later - I remember seeing the men repairing the break when travelling along the A5 across the valley. After Bryn Howel the canal goes under the railway and my dad pointed out a spur on the railway which was a short-lived siding for loading limestone from the most easterly of the Eglwyseg quarries above Plas Ifan. We disembarked at about 6pm at Sunbank after a most memorable day.

In the autumn of 1930 we moved to Bryn Derwen in Abbey Road. This three-storey semi-detached house, just above the road and the canal, had a substantial garden which extended up the hillside and along behind the neighbours' half of the semi. Below the canal was the single line railway to Barmouth and a long siding which extended from the railway goods yard up to the slate workshops at Pentrefelin, there were also several additional sidings which were in demand when every Bank Holiday several excursion trains would arrive in Llangollen. My school friend, Peter Hawkes, and I would sit on the corrugated garage roof at the foot of the garden and count the trains as well as gaze at the many motor-bike & sidecar families (mum on pillion and two or more kids in the sidecar!) driving past on their day out. In between we would see a fully laden canal boat of trippers from the Potteries or Birkenhead on their way to the Horseshoe Falls, while the more energetic visitors walked along the towpath or family cyclists - tandem with a carriage tagged on for baby - pedalled up the road to the Abbey and the Horse-shoe Pass.

I remember my first bicycle - learning to cycle up Tu Ddu hill and flying down! Peter lived with his parents and brothers, Bill and John, at Abbey Grange and for much of the next five years we played together at our homes or explored the country between, swimming in the river or canal, making dens and so on. The bicycle was an essential. There was a level crossing directly opposite Bryn Derwen and if we 3 were going swimming it was a useful route to the river across the field, sometimes on the way back we would put a halfpenny on the rail and wait for the four o'clock train to flatten it out to a penny - it never worked well enough! There was a small market garden just over Tu Ddu hill on the left and just before the bridge over the canal down to the Pentrefelin factory. One day, pre-bicycle, I was given a two shilling piece to go to Mrs Dodd's for mint. Half way up the hill I managed to drop it and it rolled down into the water culvert: tragedy. Two doors down towards Llangollen lived Miss Avery - on New Years Day I was sent to wish her a Happy New Year and returned with a new penny!.

At Easter the March Fair was in Llangollen - we walked there despite a couple of inches of snow. I enjoyed the roundabouts and rolling coins down a chute - but unluckily! For the first two years at Bryn Derwen mother taught me at home, then, in September 1932, I started at Llangollen Council School in Parade Street. I walked there and back each day. On my first day Wynn Hugh Jones and I were first out at break, across the road to the playground (now the car park) and raced down full pelt from the top entrance, tripped just short of the railings and banged my head - I am sure there is a dint to this day in the fifth upright from the right. My teacher was, I think, Miss Smith - who ministered to me most sympathetically. On my walk to school I would go down Mill Lane to watch the blacksmith at work behind Jacky Go's ironmongery shop or see if Frank One-arm was down the iron ladder to the river bank between the cafe and Deryn's father's Mill, hooking and gaffing salmon, or perhaps see sacks of milled grain being loaded onto a wagon. Then we would go up the steep lane by the corrugated shed to where one of Laddie Jones' Bryn Melyn bus drivers was servicing a bus. Tegid, the lame one, was one of the most friendly, he often drove the bus to Rhewl and sometimes the Pentredwr one. One day a surly man we did not know was tinkering with the engine - Wynn and I dragged our satchels along the side of the bus before realising he was there: he chased us and spannered us on the bottom, to add insult to injury the headmaster Mr Parry Morgan caned us as well!

If at the end of the week there had been no absences on the register in Miss Smith's class we were given a treat: last lesson on a Friday was a walk along the riverside gardens. Pupils in their tenth year could try the scholarship to the County School for a free place, parents whose son or daughter reached a minimum standard could pay a fee. In the summer of 1933 five us tried the special examination and passed, Peter Hawkes, Jimmy Drinkwater, Wynn Hugh Jones, myself and one other. Also in that summer we moved again, this time to a less expensive property in Bryntirion Terrace. We had always rented, but Dad felt he would like us to own our own home so this move enabled them to save with this in mind.

My journey to the County School was quite a long walk, from the end of the terrace there were a steep path and steps down to the foot of Birch Hill and then to the A5. On the left going into town was Penrallt Terrace and facing it was Cowards field between the A5 and the river. On it Coward stored timber to mature before cutting up in the timber yard further into town, Council Houses were soon to built on Cowards field. This walk, past the toll house, the tannery pool and the half timbered tannery offices, between the dwellings of various ages in Church St and Bridge St over the C13 Dee Bridge, up Wharf Hill with the wheel near the top on the right (it was, I assumed, for a cable controlling wagons of goods from the canal to the town) inspired me to want to follow up the history of wherever I happened to be in later years.

Memories of the 2½ years at No 7 were being next door to the Chemistry master Trevor Roberts ('Bobs') in No 8 - ragged mercilessly by some pupils, going to the Dorothy Cinema and to regular cub and then scout meetings in the scout hut at the far end of Market St, cycling to Abbey Grange to play at the Hawkes' , exploring the woods behind the house on Birch Hill and Sunday morning family walks round Pengwern or up the Gwernant, Allt y Bady or Stabl y Pugh. Sometimes I played after school on the school playing fields having had a quick 6d tea first in the wooden cafe adjacent the path up to Canal Wharf. In November 1934 I remember a cold snowy week - the playground was soon crossed by icy slides and on Friday evening we went sledging - by Saturday it thawed. My bedroom in 1933 faced across town and, lying in bed I could see the newly installed traffic lights at the top of Castle St changing. Also from the front of the house we could see up Abbey Rd., this was to be useful on occasions. My parents played tennis on the grass courts which, in the early 1930's, were at the east end of the cricket field. They or perhaps all of us cycled there but were never sure that there would be others to play so there was an arrangement with the Darlingtons who lived in the first house in Abbey Rd. after the lane up to the field, that, if there was tennis, they would hang a white sheet out of the landing window which we could see from Bryntirion Terrace. Few people had telephones then!

I remember swimming in the Canal opposite Jones' petrol station at Pentrfelin - Mr Jones was bedridden after being torpedoed in 1917. Frequently we would swim in the river below the weir for the upper flannel mill - to get there we cycled up Abbey Rd to the steep lane down past the Signal Box and under the railway. The flannel mill took water from the river (it was still working then), and at the end of the day, when they closed the sluices, I remember watching the river rise over the pebbles. Fifty yards further down there was an island and the river deepened to form Sandy Pool ideal for swimming. On our way home we would wave to the signalman Mr Hall – his son Haydn was to be an early wartime casualty. Further up Abbey Rd., the last of the Ruabon red brick houses, lived the three Hogg siblings. The two ladies played tennis and did good works' in the town. Their brother Agnew was reclusive - he came out to play the chapel organ on Sunday, always with raincoat and umbrella and always walking down the very middle of the road!

Dad had spent many hours designing the new house. By 1936 he had bought a plot opposite the Recreation Ground on Tower Rd and contracted DB Davies and Sons of Abbey Rd. to build it. In the Easter of 1937 we moved in; it had been designed to make good use of the steeply sloping site down to the fields adjacent to the canal. I remember how sad Dad was when the elderly lady and her daughter's house next door failed to do the same. Their architect designed it for a flat site and then they spent hundreds of pounds on an enormous wall and backfill to provide a flat platform. We called our house Gamelin because of the view we had of the highest mountain visible, Moe1 y Gamelin. This was a cause of some embarrassment in 1940 when the French General Gamelin went over to Hitler and newcomers assumed we were connected! The house had a coke fired boiler for central heating, coke from the town gasworks, with radiators throughout. My bedroom faced south-east, I liked a cool room so never put the radiator below the window on and the window was always open. In January 1940 on one very cold morning there was a small snowdrift on the radiator, when the thaw came it was found to be split with frost. The back bedroom was a guest room with taps and washbowl, wartime also meant 5 evacuees in the basement and a Monsanto Company Secretary in the guest room. Mrs Vann came down one morning looking most uncomfortable and announced 'my waist is frozen' -visions of a medical emergency flashed through our minds until it dawned on us that the pipe from the washbowl waste was the culprit, Very soon after we discovered that we had no running water - the water supply came up Wharf Hill and the pipe was set in the road where the bridge crossed the canal and the thickness there was insufficient insulation to prevent the main from freezing. To keep our heating going we went down the garden, across the field to the canal basin, broke the ice and carried buckets of water back up three flights of stairs to the tank in the roof. Coming back to 1939 when war was declared Dad and I had the major task of providing blackout screens for what had been until then an ideal home with lots of windows. Soon we were asked to billet an army wife and two young children from Liverpool. We had a large cellar room and adjacent to it a washroom and toilet - the former was easily altered to include a cooker so there was a self contained flat. After being there for about two months she received the tragic news of her husbands death in Greece and she decided to return to her mothers' back in Liverpool. The two years before the war were enjoyable for me, I continued to cycle to the Hawkes' at Abbey Grange where we played tennis, skated on a frozen field pond, climbed up to the slate quarries at Clogiau or Moel Faen and, sometimes on a Sunday afternoon several of us cycled on to a cottage at Hen Bandy below Pentredwr where an elderly postman named Mr Stevens lived. He was great story teller - we would cut logs for him and then go in for tea with condensed milk and biscuits and hear about first world war adventures in 'Mespot' in 1916 or 1917. He was a descendant of the tea merchants Stevens of Chester. It would be dusk when we sped down the road from the Brittannia Inn with only one acetylene lamp on the first bike and possibly a rear light for the last one.

Cricket was a regular summer activity for both Dad and me - we would cycle over Wharf Bridge and along the towing path to the cricket field - on Bank Holidays crowds would be coming up the footpath from their coaches in the Smithfield to board the canal boats to Berwyn. I remember one very large Potteries lady struggling over the side of the boat saying" ere's me head and me arse is coming'! By now tennis had transferred from the grass courts on the cricket field to the canalside hard courts. William Henry Jones had made three courts but a semi-bungalow was built on the west end one just before the war and we used the other two, the bungalow features in later reminiscences The courts continued in use throughout the war and until the 1970's.

Llangollen County School was just down the road and in those days consisted of just two buildings - the original red-brick mostly single story unit of some six or so classrooms, one partitioned to extend the hall, a kitchen and smaller rooms with two staff rooms pushed into the eaves and liberally crusted with tobacco staining, dating from the 1890's, and the 'new' building on two floors with labs and woodwork and cookery, still there today. Most of the 1930's staff seemed to date from the first world war - many would spend their entire teaching lives there, like Harold Potter (maths and sport) who came there as a pupil from Chirk about 1923 and after Higher School Certificates took a degree at Bangor University, he came back to teach me maths in 1933 and continued there until retirement in the 1970's. The headmaster Mr Hugh Jones died in office in about 1937 and was succeeded by a dashing young Cambridge Classics Graduate Gareth Crwys Williams. He was an inspiring 29 year old who encouraged sixth formers to look beyond the Welsh or Midlands Universities. Several of us were to go to Cambridge, mostly to his old college, Downing. These included Raymond Minton from Acrefair and Colin Smith, whom I still meet at Downing College reunions each September. Our scout leaders pre-war were Mr and Mrs Jones, and Akela succeeded by Norman Harris in about 1935 who also taught geography. With him we went to scout camps 1937 at Criccieth: on the Sunday we sat behind Lloyd George in the Baptist Chapel at Llanystumdwy, in 1938 at Saundersfoot near Tenby and 1939 to the Isle of Wight.

Schools as well as families were evacuated in the early years of the war – Childwall Valley School came from the Liverpool area in the autumn of 1939 and shared use of the school - I vaguely remember our pupils being in class half the day and the Childwall for the second half - but I do not think the exercise continued for very long. After the bitterly cold winter spring brought the German invasions of Norway and then France. In school we had Societies one of which was the Radio Society run by physics teacher Jack Rhys Roberts. By now I was in the sixth form, studying Maths, Physics and Chemistry so thiswas a very relevant activity. We built a simple radio to receive short wave transmissions, the aerial ideally had to be of a comparable length, a matter of metres. For some reason there was a tall ladder against the back of the 'new building' which had a level channel between the roofs. We were able to rig up a lengthy aerial on the roof and feed the signal down to our receiver in the physics lab below. Health and Safety never came into our roof exploits! The reward was picking up signals from various stations in Europe, even as far afield as Helsinki during the German occupation of Finland: most countries had some English language broadcasts.

During 1940 other evacuee pupils came to the school, two were sons of the Spanish Ambassador in London, the three Pyke daughters with their mother moved in Bryndedwydd, home of Sarah Pugh Jones, and one time home of her nephew Albert Jones later to be AA Motorbike Patrolman. Father Pyke was a high ranking naval man based in Gibralter. Margaret, the eldest, joined us in the sixth form she was an attractive tall willowy blonde - Jean the next left school to marry a forestry manager from Pentredwr, Beryl was the youngest. I remember taking Margaret to theNew Year's Eve dance, only to lose her halfway through the evening to John Hawkes who was back after his first term at Bangor University! My subsequent misery was somewhat mollified next day: Peter and I met John and Margaret walking his father's terrier; in the course of conversation the terrier decided to wee on John's trouser leg! He was not amused, we were.

Another incomer was Philip Thearle. I remember one very wet February day being asked by George Northing, the history master and ATC commander, to collect properties for a play to be put on by the Church Players in which I had a small part. Philip came with me to help carry things. His lodgings were near Rhewl and when the Germans dropped a stick of bombs nearby his window was blown in. He was in the D-Day landings and later read history at, Pembroke College when I was in Downing .

Early in the summer of 1940 the Local Defence Volunteers were set up. Dad was asked to be the local commander with three platoons under him. Bill Hawkes had charge of one consisting of men living Pentredwr way. Dad's Sgt Major was a first world war veteran John 'MM' Roberts. Sixth form pupils over 16 (I think) could join. Rifle practice took place on the old rifle range above the abbey. Grenade training was carried out in an old limestone quarry behind Plas Ifan. A small dugout was constructed on the upper side of the quarry and each member, supervised by John MM, in turn came there to remove a pin from a live grenade and lob it into the depths of the quarry. The inevitable happened one hapless recruit hit his throwing arm on the back of the dugout and the primed grenade fell at his feet - quick as a flash John bent down, grabbed the live grenade and lobbed it out just before it exploded!

In May and June I took my 'Highers' - the Chemistry practical was a disaster - my pipette jammed and just as I was recovering it the Head came in to remind me that after the exam there was transport to the Bont (the cricket ground below the aqueduct) where we were to play Monsanto at cricket, distracted I did not complete the practical. However we won the cricket and Crwys Williams got a century! In the summer holidays I got a couple of jobs - one as a temporary postman while the regulars were on leave and the other couple of weeks as an assistant milkman. Iwas with a lady driving a van for Williams the Wern (Issa). At 6.30 I joined the van on Wharf Bridge and we delivered round the town. She had a churn for those who wanted milk loose and a couple of crates of pint bottles. One place up the Vron Bache smelt so horrible I could not face going through the back door to pour milk into occupant's jug. One Monday we ran out of bottled milk but the milk lady knew a woman who was doing her weekly wash at the side of her cottage near the Vron Cemetery so we took all the used bottles we had collected, washed them in her wash tub, rinsed them and filled them from the churn! I got 12/6d a week for two weeks on the milk van.

This was followed by the more demanding holiday task as relief postman. One round I did was 6am sorting in the PO, then on the Holyhead Road, on foot to Dr Morris Jones at Minffordd then up theWern to Wern Uchaf and Panorama rd to Tan-y-Castell, back down to Llandyn Hall, Wenffrwdd and then up again to myoid home Bronheulog Hall and cottages up to BrynMelyn down again to the Inn and cottages at Sun Bank, up again to an isolated cottageabove the quarries, down to Plas Ifan and the main road where I hoped to get a bus to Woodlands for deliveries in Mill St and back to Dr Benjamin's Surgery oppositeMinffordd. Dr. Morris Jones apparently had made a case for delivery of mail at the startof the round (7 am) but Dr. Benjamin had not - so got his nearer 11 or 12 am! Anotherround, using an ancient bicycle, was Birch Hill, Golf Club and Abercregan, and, on rare occasions, to Cwm Alis where a cup of tea with condensed milk, on a newspaper coveredkitchen table, was my reward, before returning back via Tyndwr, Tyn-y-Celyn, Tan-y-Graig, Pengwern Hall. But the most demanding and rewarding was the Vivod one. I had to cycle to Berwyn PO, the postmistress was Mrs Davies a postman's widow whose son, Ben, had often come to Hawkes' home, I walked up via Vivod Hall, down to the cottage on the AS half a mile before the Toll Gate, back up the mountain to Bryn Newydd and TyCerrig and round the valley to Matthews' the 'Keepers' at Bwlch. I was in school with Victor, their son, and from Mrs Matthews in a homely kitchen my lot was bacon and eggs beneath the maturing hams hanging above! I ran back down to the PO at Berwyn picking any outgoing mail to take to the Llangollen Sorting Office.

In 1942, before going up to University, I got a job in the forestry - they were clearing an area below Ffynnon Las and we were taken on the back of an open lorry up via Vivod. My first job was to help a 70year-old retired roadman strengthen the track to the felling area. Mter a week I got a transfer to the felling and loading team. These were almost all refugees from central Europe, billeted in the town, most were men, just a few women. I remember a well-built Hungarian, who, when the August sun got too hot, stripped off to bare his torso - the process involved removing several layers of jersey - he explained that he had learned never to leave possessions behind when he went out: they disappeared before he got back! The man in charge was Carl Prakel who had come from Norway to settle in Llangollen. Sunday was normally a day off but one Saturday Charlie (Carl) asked me to help load timber next day in Llangollen Goods Yard. I was there at 6am to join a crane driver in the Yard. There was a long railway wagon next to the full timber lorry and my job was to climb on the lorry, put the crane rope claws on to the top 20 ft larch and as it was lifted steer it into the centre of the wagon. I survived the experience and we finished, so I was told, in good time for lunch. Health and safety officials would throw up their hands in horror to see an untrained 18-year old doing this today!

One young refugee from Prague, Hanna Oplatka, was Charlie's clerk. Hanna had escaped from her home to England but her parents (her father was a banker) had managed to getto Palestine. I got to know her quite well and she came to eat with us once or twice: but Dad, as Home Guard Commander, had to be very discreet as we were never sure that refugees might not include German agents. Five years later I was invited to Hanna's wedding in Haifa where I met her parents and her new husband, an oil company employee based in East Africa. I was then based, April 1946, in Ramat David RAF Station. Sadly the marriage did not flourish and after bearing two children Hanna returned briefly to Llangollen in about 1954 - she stayed for a few days in Tower Farm, by then suffering from acute rheumatic pain and my wife, Phyllis, and I spent time with her and her children.

When the Germans invaded they often dropped men by parachute ahead of the attack. It  was important for the LDV to be able to man key locations to intercept potential saboteurs. One Saturday in August three of us who knew the countryside well were transported to a remote location with instructions to try to get to HQ unspotted. At that time HQ was in the unoccupied bank building in Castle St, opposite the end of Parade St. I was taken by car early in the morning to the vicinity of Moel Faen slate quarry. I had a good idea where LDV sentries would be posted or patrolling so I started off by crossing the old Horse-shoe pass, skirting through the woods above Pentredwr and down to Hen Bandy. From there I contoured above the track known as the Sheepwalk, above the rifle range. I spotted a patrol in time to hide in the bracken while they passed and I managed to get as far as the County School grounds before being caught.

After the London blitz a Mr Charles Nissen evacuated his home and business as a stamp dealer to Branas in Abbey Rd. - but as Philatelic Adviser to King George V he was a very eminent person in that field. His son, Harry, later became another platoon commander in the LDV - by now called the Home Guard. As a keen boyhood collector I was fortunate to be invited to Branas to see some of the great British stamp rarities in Charles Nissen's stock and subsequently to learn how to sort bundles of stamps.

From 1941 onwards Air Training Corps (ATC) Squadrons were set up. Llangollen had George Northing as commander (he taught history in the school). Older people acted as Air Raid Wardens and as aircraft spotters in Observer Corps, the latter were trained to identify enemy and friendly aircraft and to report by phone enemy ones from Observation Posts concealed on the hillside. Llangollen was on a flight path for enemy bombers coming up the Irish Sea and bound for Liverpool so it was vital to report their passage. Occasionally one would jettison a stick of bombs - this happened on the Geraint hillside and on the hillside near Rhewl, fortunately harmlessly. But another stick ignited moorland heather above the Eglwyseg and the ensuing blaze was targeted by subsequent enemy craft, sadly one farm was hit and its occupants died. Llangollen was blanketed in smoke for some days while the mountain burned.

The winters in the first three years of the war each had more severe spells than most pre-war ones. I particularly recall the severe and persistent frosts of January/February 1940. The river was largely ice-covered and the canal frozen enough for skating over much of its length. One lunch time early in January, just before afternoon school, we were watching from Tower road the son of the local solicitor, Dudley Richards, skating down the canal from the basin towards the wharf in great style, that is until he reached the part under the trees, when he went through! Fortunately it was not deep and he got out safely. Later that month a thaw with heavy rain brought ice floes down the river, they piled up against the bridge, the water level behind them was sufficient to cross the railway retaining wall and onto the track. Just as the level was reaching the top of the arches the ice gave way and the flood which was threatened never materialised.

At various times in the past the river in spate had flooded the riverside path and on a few occasions flowed onto the railway, but this 1940 event was probably the most spectacular. Houses on the river's edge were always at risk, shortly before the war the back end of one in Bridge St collapsed into the river. The removal of the Lower Dee Mills weir opposite the Royal Hotel in later years reduced the flood risk considerably.

The slump of the 1929-30' s and the war years changed considerably the job structure of the area: gone were the limestone quarries, brewery, flannel manufacture and the tannery to be followed by reduction in slate working; in their place came grinding of sandstone for optical glass at Pentrefelin in place of slate workshops, a Motor Parts business from London in the old flannel mill towards Berwyn, a seed factory in Mill St. flannel mill with growing grounds at Pentrefelin and a brand new printing works just beyond the riverside gardens. That the first and third of these sites later became a Motor Museum and partly a Dr Who Museum is another story!

In the context of history something should be written about two men who published from Llangollen - Ralph Darlington whose ca1900 handbooks of holiday locations in Britain and abroad were widely read and W.S. Gwynn Williams who published music. Both lived in Abbey Rd.

Tiger Moth biplanes were regularly flown up the Dee valley to provide trainee Observer Corps recruits with practice - these planes were based on Borras airfield just east of Wrexham. As Flight Sergeant of Llangollen ATC Squadron I was given a trip up the valley as far as Bala and back in the co-pilot's seat - quite an experience for a 17-year old. In the summer of 1942 the ATC squadron were taken by train to an airfield near Harlech where we camped in spare billets and spent the days seeing how maintenance was carried out.

That October I was awarded a place at Downing College to read mathematics and in the following year, after a short Radio Bursary course, was sent to work in a Croydon Radio Factory repairing RAF instruments. At the end of the war this was followed by 21'2years in the RAF abroad, and then two more years in Cambridge gaining a physics degree, so it was not unti11950 that I returned to live in Llangollen - which forms Part II of my memoirs.

Part II 1950 - 1962.

In brief trips home between 1942 and 1950 a few events call for comment. Wartime visits included going to the ATC Club behind the Dorothy Cinema and New Year's Eve dances run by the Home Guard in the Town Hall with Jack Langford's Band In 1946 Dad sold Gamelin and bought the tennis court bungalow, Gwynant. I was, by then, in the RAF in Palestine and then Cyprus. In April 1947 Dad died, it had been a severe spring with heavy snow in February and early March and daily travel to Ruabon had taken its toll. I came home on leave for six weeks, I remember walking up to huge snow drifts on the lee slopes of the Eglwyseg Rocks in early May. Dad had been one of the movers behind the International Eistedddfod and also the founder of the XX Club Amateur Dramatic Players, after his death Billy Lowe took over his role. He had stood for the Town Council with nominated support from one or two local shopkeepers until they realised he supported the Labour Party and they then withdrew their backing. He had been active in the Operatic Society pre-war - he had even written an opera! So he continued to support them afterwards.

After demobilisation in April 1948 I returned to Llangollen, working as a laboratory technician at Monsanto until I went back to Cambridge to study for my degree. By now the XX Club was flourishing, the Youth Club had been set up in BridgeSt. and the Canal side Tennis Club was making good use of the courts which Dad had bought along with Gwynant. The Eisteddfod was still on the Recreation Ground, the Cricket Club and Football Club shared use of the Penddol and behind the Jenny Jones Inn. I renewed acquaintenance with many pre-war and wartime contemporaries - Peter and John Hawkes now respectively in Sales and Research in Monsanto - long walks and tennis with Pat Marwood, now ex-WAAF. Her parents had died in the flu epidemic at the end of the first war and she lived with her grandparents. For a short time in 1939 my paternal grandmother and Aunt Muriel had the house next door to Elwy House, Pat's home, in Market St., but they soon returned home to Huddersfield.

Another good friend was Joyce Wilkinson, who was on Monsanto's administrative staff, she was later to marry a fellow researcher and tennis partner of mine, Brian Budd, who rose to a high executive level in the Company before dying relatively young. Joyce's father, a master baker, had moved here from Cumbria after the war. After completing my degree I gainied a research post in Monsanto' s Nickell Laboratories at Cefn. This was a chance to settle in Llangollen and participate in the lively community it embraced. The XX Club was flourishing, competing in the Wrexham Drama Festival on several occasions and putting on two or three productions a year.

The Cricket Club was going well, as was the Town's Football Club and the Canal Side Tennis Club had regular matches. Llangollen had a well-attended WEA Class. The Operatic Society continued to flourish. But, above all, the International Eisteddfod was the making of the Town. I was co-opted onto the Grounds Committee, under the Chairmanship of Noel Bowen, and in the 1950 Eisteddfod was provided with a booth from which I was to sound record all the events and competitors except professionals, nearby was a caravan available to guest performers and I remember one afternoon, when I was off duty, spending a couple of hours chatting to a young artiste called Sian Phillips. Some 50 years later I met up with her when she was doing a Fringe Performance in Parade St. - she remembered the first occasion, too!

In 1948 or 1949 a private boarding school was set up in Bryntisilio Hall, where my Mother had returned to teaching after Dad's death. The school took on foreign student teachers, one was Kerstin from the Swedish town of Orebro who came to us for a social visit on occasions. One day in June 1950 Tom? from Abbey Square, a fisherman, offered Kerstin and me a trip in his coracle - I think we got down to the river bank by going over the railway bridge by the Goods Yard and past the site of the new cemetery. He then took us under Llangollen bridge to the large pool opposite the Royal Hotel - in those days the weir for Lower Dee Mills was still intact and most of the rocks below the bridge were covered. I believe this was one of the last occasions a Dee coracle was on the river at Llangollen.

A few years later Llangollen had a new sewage scheme set up. This involved major excavations including a trench in the A5 a few hundred yards east of the fire station. Graham Fawcett, the town surveyor, knowing of my interest in roads, asked me to come and look. The excavation, which was then photographed, showed clearly layers of road foundation laid down in the late 18th century by Thomas Telford's engineers. This good surface helped the Holyhead Road carry the heavy new mail coaches, which in those days, went down Church St to the Hand Hotel and to the post office, which was then in the house on the corner of Bridge St. and Chapel St.; the post office window is still in the wall facing the side of the Hand Hotel. The mail coach would then continue up Chapel St. behind the Armoury and along Hall St. towards Corwen.

Early in the 1950' s it was apparent that the International Eisteddfod was outgrowing the facilities of the recreation ground and County School buildings. In due course it was moved down to the Cricket and Football Fields. The Cricket Club tried to manage for a year or two by vacating the pitch for the first weeks of July but it could not work. Sadly the Club had to seek a new venue after some eighty or more years on the ground, and the Football Club re-established itself on Tower Field. Until this happened the Cricket Club benefited from the expansion of local industry, and in particular Monsanto at Ruabon, Les Appleby and Frank Long brought batting and bowling skills to join locals such as Eric Jones (Penddol), Arthur and Gethin Davies, Henry Thomas, Bobby Burns, John Evans, Harvey Rawles from Glyndyfrdwy.

But it was not just sport that welcomed newcomers - the Twenty Club and Operatic Society were strengthened, too, by enthusiasts such as Brian Budd, Dick Baxter, Ernest and Phyllis McCall. The Eisteddfod's Committees gained members from businesses such as the Seed Factory on Mill St. or the Motor Parts business in the converted Mile End Mill building. David (James) Attenburrow and, later, Bob Attenburrow from the newly built printing works just off the A5 played major roles in the Twenty Club.

In 1951 I married Phyllis Davies, daughter of David and Margaret Davies of Gwenallt in Abbey Rd. D.B. Davies & Son were the firm who built Dad's house, Gamelin. Phyllis' uncle was Arthur Pugh who lived at Penybryn above the Brittania Inn. After he gave up farming the land was taken over by another farmer but the ownership lay with Henry Robertson who had shooting rights. Arthur was not averse to the odd pheasant - his method was to put out grain well soaked in whisky when the birds were nearby and soon after he would acquire a fine bird too drunk to fly. He would walk down via the canal to call in at Gwynant with tail feathers visible below his raincoat - I can recommend flesh soaked in whisky.

D.B.Davies' workshops opposite the Cottage Hospital in Abbey Rd. were fascinating, tools dating back 50 years and stocks of old timber from demolished buildings from which DB turned beautiful bowls or lamp standards. He was descended from a line of builders and undertakers originating in Llandderfel and there were at least three sets of undertakers to which he was related working in the area. Before joining his father in Abbey Rd. he was sent to work for a few years around 1900 in Vivod Hall under Captain Best as a kind of apprenticeship. Gwenallt was originally in the Middleton estate and in 1932 he bought it and modernised it, keeping the back kitchen and parlour and rooms above of the original 1730's structure. It stayed in the family until my sister in law Joan Edwards moved into Abbey Dingle some seventy years later.

Joan was Llangollen Post Office counter clerk from about 1933 until retirement. She and her mother were staunch Pentredwr WI members, Joan married, late on, Frank Edwards, who was DB's foreman in the builders and whose wife had recently died. Frank had maintained a hillside garden in Geufron of which he was immensely proud. When he moved down to Gwenallt he tackled the garden there with equal enthusiasm. In 1959 the local Town Council elections were to be held. I was one of the seven who stood, the exact number required, so there was no election. Councillors included Eddie Miller who was also a County Councillor, Bill (Cleator) Smith, Frank Bell who lived in the Toll Gate Cottage on the A5, and the Clerk to the Council was E. Ellis Roberts. I was nominated to serve as a governor of my old school - now Dinas Brân School. We had the usual assortment of representatives on the governors - including one or two who seemed to be more interested in the tea and cakes provided by the excellent domestic science department than the detail of school governance.

On one occasion there were several candidates for a post, inevitably there were one or two local candidates and clearly one was favoured by a small coterie of governors from her locality, irrespective of her teaching quality. I noticed one governor seemed to be dozing during the various interviews and the Head's summing up. The voting outcome was an excellent candidate appointed by just one vote ahead of the local favourite. As we were leaving I heard an angry exchange - ' ..you bloody fool, you voted for the wrong one and see what happened by just one vote!'. Another of my nominations was to serve as a representative to attend the regional meeting of a trade union at Colwyn Bay: I was impressed by the highly professional way meeting procedure was handled by the chairman.

During the 1950-60 decade the Arts Council for Wales provided support for both local productions and for touring companies. For some years I was the local Arts Council Organiser responsible for making sure that all went smoothly when a touring company came to the Town Hall. I still have the programme for 'Look Back in Anger' which toured Wales in 1957, with Colin Jeavons playing Jimmy Porter, Patricia Healey as Alison Porter and Patrick O'Connell as Colonel Redfem, afterwards Phyllis and I joined the company for supper at the Bridge End Hotel. Llangollen in the 1950's was well supplied with local shops - we had our particular favourites but there was always a good choice. John Evans for groceries: top of Castle St. had several competitors, for meat it was Rogers butchers in Market St. versus Hywel Williams in Oak St. and Hywel Edwards' Castle St. outlets - the pre-war Canterbury Lamb Shop became, when wartime ended refrigerator ships from New Zealand, Gabriels fish shop and to where Jack Rhys Roberts my physics teacher would send me for ice for physics experiments in 1940-42 (no fridge's then) and Edward's impressive place near to Jonathan Davies' outfitters.

Parry's outfitters had been a favourite of my Dad's ( I still have his dress suit from there ca 1930) near to the very long established newsagents Hugh Jones with the printing works for the Llangollen Chronicle, still being hand set by Eddie Miller in 1950. Eddie had very poor eyesight but a photographic memory. He was a very astute and intelligent county councillor who could memorise a document after one, albeit very slow, reading; woe betide any councillor who tried to misrepresent the contents of any such document. Eddie served throughout the brief life of the original Council for Wales and Monmouth. I had great respect for him.

Newsagents were plentiful, one in Chapel St., Franklins in Abbey Rd, Cleators in Castle Square, one below the men's hairdressers at the corner of Oak St and Castle St. and, post-war, Arthur ran one at the bridge end of the Royal Hotel. However Sunday opening was still unusual and I still have a recollection of going across town to the Waterloo Inn beyond the old brewery to buy the Sunday Observer for a short time. On the other Oak St. Castle St. corner was long established grocers, and Humphrey Jones, Chemists and Caesar Hughes, jewellers were near the corners of Market and Castle Streets. The other Chemists was adjacent to and part of Jonathan Davies, run by the Glynne Jones family. There were two saddlers shops, Bob Owen on the corner of East St and Market St. and Tom Hughes in Oak St. opposite Evans Ironmongers, later to be named Zan, so the manager now became Di Zan while his long time paraffin deliverer had always been Joe Paraffin. The other ironmonger by the bridge was run by Jacky Go, with a blacksmith next door.

Bakeries were, at various times, in Hall St., top of Church St. and Castle St., I recall in the 1930's a war-disabled man, unkindly called 'Stump', who wheeled a 'three floor' trolley with baker's delicacies round town. He seemed to appear outside Bryn Derwen in Abbey Rd. in time for afternoon tea at weekends, with a supply of flaky almond/jam pastries. Other itinerant workers I remember pre-war were knife grinders and peg selling gypsies and I was deeply moved by the case of a man seeking any sort of labouring work to pay for the doctor to treat his son for rheumatic fever: at Bryn Derwen we had a rectangular brick enclosure into which ashes and other heavy waste had always been thrown so dad paid him to empty it - his relief in having some money was palpable. I knew of a few local men who had done time - Ned Sugar who lived in the converted quarry tramroad steam engine shed at Pentrefelin and a rather plump man who helped out at one of the butchers.

There were some, often large, families which struggled to get by. The Alexander family, who, in the 1930's I think, had lived in a tall semi-derelict house below the A5 in the gloomiest of locations across the river from the Woodlands, the house was duly demolished and they went to another in, I think, Hall St. before the war. The eldest was daughter Betty, and a younger one of my age, Horace, turned up on the same RAF station as me in Palestine. There were some slums, too, behind the tannery, off Hall St. and below the Wrexham road over the level crossing - alleviated by pre-war council housing on Coed Mon and, of an earlier date, nicely built semi's off the Corwen Rd., later on the Pengwern Estate was built. WS Gwyn Williams, who was noted for music publishing, inherited from his father Pencerdd Williams local housing off Hall St., some of it pretty down market! In 1969 I moved from Monsanto to become a lecturer in maths and physics at the then Denbighshire technical College, Wrexham. In those days I had not got a car but the train service to Wrexham was convenient. Sometimes I returned on the afternoon train with Dilwyn Ffaulkes Jones who was a solicitor in Wrexham as well as Llangollen. He was not the best dressed solicitor in town - he had a vintage trilby of which he was proud - age had led to a hole in the peak at the front. One stormy day walking back across the bridge from the station he hoisted the hat on his walking stick via the hole, waved it, and a sudden gust of wind swept it into the Dee! He was bereft! Dilwyn was excellent company - one of his favourite pubs was the Jenny Jones by the Cottage Hospital. Some years later he was in that hospital with waterworks problems - as was inevitable he was on a strictly controlled diet, and he received sympathetic visits from Jenny Jones' regulars with consolation presents. Next day after one such visit Matron tackled Dilwyn, your liquid output is in excess of your liquid input, Mr Ffaulkes Jones, can you explain this?' Dilwyn's reply 'Sweating inwardly, Matron!'