Children were invited to speak to an older family member or neighbour and ask them to share one of their memories.

Susie Grindley spoke to her poppy- Billy Grindley.

After the war a children’s choir from Germany came to sing at the Llangollen Eisteddfod. They did not know what sort of welcome they would get, but they had a lovely welcome. They sand a song which became world famous called "I love to go a wandering. To show their appreciation they sang outside Llangollen Cottage Hospital to the patients. They won the Children’s Choir Competition.

The Queen came to Llangollen in 1953 in the coronation year, arriving on the Royal train. She visited the Eisteddfod.

There used to be a lot more jobs in Llangollen. There were lots of factories, like the skin yards, egg packing station, Dobson and Crowthers, Mile-end, the Mill and the Seed Factory.

Tim Norman drew us a picture depicting his nain’s memories.

Sofia and Ben Read spoke to their Nain Anne de Genaro and talks about the flood and the snow

1963 pan oedd Nain yn 10 oed, Cawson un o’r gaeafau gwaethaf o’r ganrif diwethaf.Ar ol ysgol Sul yng Nghapel Bethesda, Pentredwr. Yn lle cerdded adre yn ool i’r ffern, daeth Taid yn y car i fynd a Naina’i chiver i Llangolleni weld y llifgydd. Roedd y Dwr bron, ben bua y bont, ac roedd y gamlas a’r afon wrth y Cahin Bridge yn yn y gaeaf yna roedd yr eira wedi cau y ffordd i’r fferm. Am wythnosau, o wrych i wrych , ond am un llwbr bach a bu rhaid cerdded ar ben yr eira i’r ysgol ym Mhentredwr bob dydd.

Ffion Hughes asked her Taid about the farming. She asked her dad about the schools and knew the rest of the information.

*Everybody had milking cows. A lorry came to the farms every Monday to buy/collect the milk and take it to the creamery in Corwen (closed now) Now only four people have milking cows in Llangollen.

*Tractors and the farms themselves were much smaller then: now they are bigger.

*Lots more men worked on farms then

*Sheep and pigs were other animals they had on farms; now very few pigs. Still lots of sheep.

*Everybody made small bales of hay; whereas now machines are used to make big bales. Lots done by hand in those days-now everybody relys on machines.

*Used to be a cattle market in the main car park, where you would but and sell your sheep, pigs and cows. This market was on every Tuesday on Market Street.

Llangollen Pre 1070

Meat- butchers or home-reared

Fish- fishmongers or self caught

Milk=delivered

Fruit and vegetables-grocers store

Eggs-home collected

Sweets- sweet shop

Flowers-florist or hand-picked

Pubs- there were lots of pubs. Bridge Street and Church Street were full of pubs in those days.

Junior and infant

*Dr’s surgery (on Regent Street)-the National School

*The back of Ectarc (Parade street/ Princess street)-The board School-built and opened 1874

High Schools:

Ysgol Dinas Bran (on Dinbren Road) still running now as an English and welsh popular school.

? who spoke to Malcolm Lewis

A long time ago, 50 years ago, I set off to school, which is where the Doctors in Regent Street are now just after dinner time. There was a huge bang outside my school. We all ran out of school, thinking it was a bomb.

When we got outside the school door, there was lots of smoke and flames, because a wagon was on fire, with dangerous chemicals.

The police closed the road and our school.

So we were very pleased because we all went home to play. No School Ha Ha!

My Grandpa told me a story about the infant school he went to in Llangollen. The infant school he went to is where Ectarc is now, the junior school was in the doctors. There were separate entrances, one for girls and one for boys. Their playground was across the road and at braktime they used to play hopscotch and war games, because there was a war when he was at school. To get there, my Grandpa cycled a mile and a half by himself since he was four. It was safe on the roads then, because there were few cars.

My Grandpa and his parents didn’t have a car, but they had a horse and cart, like lots of people then.

In school he used a slate to write on with a metal spike.

The firsy time he saw a banana was at the end of the war and he took it into school and everyone crowded round him to see one banana.

After he cycled home from school, he had to feed the ducks, turkeys, geese, lambs, calves and hens as well as collecting their eggs.

When he was a child there was no electric or hot water from the tap.

When my grandad was a little boy he lived in the Llangollen Corn Mill, which has now become the Cornmill Restaurant. He was born in the mill house in 1932 and lived there for 16 years with his family. My great grandad was the foreman miller and, when it was a working mill, they mixed cattle food, flour, wheat and corn, which was then bagged up and taken by the mill lorry to the farmers.

The River Dee was once very good for catching salmon and my granddad used to go on the river with his dad’s boss’s son in his coracle, which is a little square craft, to try and fish for salmon.

My grandad went to school in Parade Street and this was the board school, which is now Ectarc. Also opposite the mill was the Llangollen Electric Company, which generated all the electricity for Llangollen. This is no longer there.

My grandad remembers a Spitfire crashing on the castle in 1944 and sadly the pilot was killed. When the 2nd World War ended in 1945, on VE night my great grandparents had their stable decorated in the mill and had a party for all the employees to celebrate.

My grandad told me that, when the railway was still running, people from Merseyside could get a train called the day excursion for half a crown (twelve and a half pence), and if the children fell in the river they would go to the mill house and ask my great grandmother to dry their clothes before they had to go home.

Finally my grandad told me about a lorry that was heading for Monsanto carrying chemicals. The driver had missed the turning for the factory at Whitehurst, so he was going to go through Llangollen instead. In Froncysyllte the lorry had caught fire, but the driver didn’t know and carried on to Llangollen. When he got to the traffic lights on Castle Street, the lorry burst into flames, damaging the windows on the Chapel and the shops opposite, but luckily no-one was killed. This happened during the 1950’s.

As a kid in Llangollen, he was always playing cowboys and indians and going bareback riding. With his friends he used to climb Dinas Brân Castle and go down to the corner shop and buy sweets for two pence from the shop, and go biking round the lanes for hours on end. He didn’t like school very much because his teachers were very strict, and he went on holidays to the seaside.

Seeds used to be loaded onto trains at the station from Unwin’s seeds up the Horseshoe Pass.

Bridge Street, where my dad has his office used to be the main road to London. It is called Bridge Street because the bridge is at the end of the street. Castle Street was only built after Thomas Telford straightened the main road by the traffic lights and Castle Street was built to connect to the station.

Water for the canal comes off the River Dee and supplies water for Liverpool. It is the only canal with flowing water (2 mph).

The old post office is in Chapel Street.

The old prison is at the foot of Hill Street.

I have interviewed my dad (Simon Denton) about his early years in Llangollen School and this is what he told me.

I used to go to the junior school in Regent Street, where the Health Centre is now.

The chemist across from the Health Centre was a general grocery store run by a man called Tom Owen. There was a lollypop lady called Grace, who would see you safely across the road. The headmaster was Isaac Thomas, who lived in Abbey Road, opposite the Vicarage. His wife was also a teacher and there was another teacher called Mr John.

In my last year at junior school, Mr Williams, the old headmaster from Bryn Collen, was my form teacher. Every Friday afternoon, he held a general knowledge quiz.

To play football matches, we would have to walk up Willow Hill to play on the youth centre fields. When I walked home, I would pass Coward’s wood yard, where the Coop is situated now. I can also remember, at the top of Church Street the smell coming from the skin yard.It was also worst when it was very warm.

I used to ride my horse in the field where Bryn Collen School is. We called it "our practice field".

In town, where the card shop is on the bridge, was a large ironmongers shop called Jacky Goers. He moved from where Kenrick’s garage is situated to open his shop on the bridge.

At the back of Barclays Bank courtyard was a farm shop, run by David Glynne Jones, the chemist. The "Spar" shop was once a "Mace" shop, and then it became the "Lo-cost" store. There was a Spar shop at the side of the Star inn in front of the fire Station.

Before the war, during the 1930’s I worked at the skin yard. They collected dead animals from all over North Wales to treat to make leather. They made flying jackets that pilots wore. My job was to carry the skins up to the top floors-3 flights of stairs, where girls scraped the flesh from the skins to make leather. I was paid 1p for each skin I carried.

My other job was to call at houses in Llangollen to collect wee. People weed into pots they kept under the bed. The wee was mixed with tannin (made from oak trees) to make the chemicals. People were paid 1d for two full pots.

In 1963, when I was at the age of 13 years my father made me a box cart. The box was from the seed factory. The wheels were off an old pram, and the handles were from Coward’s timber yard. After school on Saturdays,i would buy a truck full of logs for 2/6d (half a crown) 25p in todays money. I would get two sacks of logs from one truck and sell them for 2/6d each-half a crown for the next truckfull and half a crown profit. Some of the logs, i would split into sticks and tie them into bundles and sell them for 3 old pennies a bundle.

In the 1950s and 1960s all the local children got excited when the marquee was put up-this meant that the Eisteddfod was near. The Eisteddfod had begun in 1947 and thousands of people came from all over the world to take part and watch. Seeing them in their national costumes was very exciting.

Two weeks before the Eisteddfod started, flags of many nations were put up in town and on the bridge (like they are now). The bridge-end cafe (at the end of the bridge, facing the town) had a huge Draig Goch flag on its roof with the message "Croeso i Gymru" (Welcome to Wales) on it.

Every Saturday night, people gathered around bridge street, outside the Royal Hotel, where there was community singing (mostly welsh hymns).

In my house, my uncles and aunties came to stay for the week. They went to the Eisteddfod field to the marquee, first thing in the morning and didn’t come home until late at night, after the concert had finished. There was lots of singing and dancing in the streets both during the day and at night.

We are all very sad when the Eisteddfod finished and everyone had to go home.

Harry Clubbe drew a picture of how he thought the castle would have looked.

She drew a picture of the paddling pool.

He remembered coming to Llangollen as a little boy (late 1960s) from his home in Wrexham.

Things he remembers that are no longer here were;

*Boots, the Chemist on the corner of Market and Castle street. (now the fruit and veg shop)

*A rodeo on Llandyn straight field every summer.

*A sweet shop in the courtyard of the old Jenny Jones pub.

*Trains from Llangollen to Wrexham.

*Paddling pool in the park by the river.

*A wood yard, where the coop is now