Mum’s Story (In her own words) I was born on 29th December 1932 at 169 Glanllyn, Bradley. I had three brothers, George, John and Les and three sisters Elsie, Nell and Hilda. The house we lived in was a small council house. I remembered the front room with a high wooden pew and table and chairs. It had a large garden at the back of the house and a lawn at the front. My very first memory was of running down the path with a glass dish in my hand, shouting Mum who was hanging out clothes. I tripped and fell and badly cut my right wrist and was taken on the back of Mam’s bike to the doctors. I still have the scar today. Soon after that we moved across the road to another bigger council house No 140, both houses are privately owned today. I started school then and had to walk up to Gwersyllt Church School by the Church now a housing estate. I wasn’t keen on school at first, and my brother Les had to come and sit by me to stop me crying. I was very good at lessons as I grew older and especially Maths and English, and I won many prizes for my work. It was very hard work though. I was walking to school when I was about 5, I became very ill with Diptheria. The doctor sent me to hospital. I can remember the bell ringing on the ambulance and nothing more for many weeks. Mum and Dad would come to see me through the window, no one was allowed in as it was an isolation unit. Dad was saving his pennies to buy me a special chair. I cried and cried to go home. Every day the nurse would say ‘eat your breakfast and you will be able to go home’. But by this time my legs had wasted, I had infantile paralysis. The nurse, I will never forget would say ‘If you want to go home you will have to crawl’. I tried to walk a few times but couldn’t. She took my bed one day into the boys room because I was crying. So when she asked me what I wanted off the Xmas tree I said ‘the fairy off the top’ to spite her, so the porter had to get it down. As my health was getting worse, and I was fretting for my mum and dad, brothers and sisters they sent me home in an ambulance with a black cot, which was put on top of the stairs. I would have nightmares every time the doctor came in case he sent me back to hospital. The neighbours collected some clothes and toys for me because of the disease all mine had to be burned. Mum used to take me out in a pushchair. After a while I started to walk around the furniture and then I had special shoes. I started back to school and did very well. I was in the school choir. I joined Chums’ Corner in the Wrexham Leader and won lots of prizes books, vouchers, gifts. In school I was presented with a special prize off the bishop of St Asaph for an essay on the Bible ‘Isiah was very proud’. When we came home from school we had to do chores, washing, ironing, help stack the coal into the shed and at the weekend we had to black-lead the grate, polish the brasses, scrub the floors and make peg rugs. But we also did have fun too. We made home-made toffee, played cards. Played music on the piano and had pretend concerts, went by the river/Barrats. I used to dress up as ‘Carmen Miranda’ who used to sing and dance with fruit on her head. I also went to tap and ballet classes at Kathy Dougall’s in Wrexham, and was in the Pantomine at Wrexham. I had piano lessons and was quite good. Christmas was a nice time we always had a holly tree, and made white sugar mice. We also made our own paper chains and helped to make mince pies. We had a small present each and a stocking with fruit and a new penny. Every Friday when Dad was paid (he was a coal miner at Llay Main Colliery) he would give us all a ½ penny and we would go to Miss Dod’s shop for sweets. When I was 11, I sat the Grammer School examination, and passed with distinction, however my mother couldn’t afford the uniform so I had to go back to the Church school. I was very sad as I was desperate to go to college and longed to be a teacher. Soon everything changed, the second world war had started. Nothing was the same as it was for many years, and what little food there was had to be rationed. They were hard times. Two of my brothers went into the RAF, and one down the colliery with dad. My sisters also went into the RAF, WAFFS and the Land Army. We had to take Gas Masks with us to school, and go to the Air Raid shelters if there was a raid on. Once a plane came down by the school and a German was captured hiding up a tree. We used to knit Kaki scarfs and socks for the War effort. My friend Cissie and I held a rummage sale in the garden and sent the money for the London orphans. We received a certificate from a Royal Duchess. When the Air Raids were on, Mum and me would sleep under the stairs or in the Air Raid Shelter in the garden. It was very frightening listening to the drone of the planes. 2 or 3 planes crashed in our village, but we were lucky no serious casualties. We were on food rations and I would have to go to Wrexham with Mam and Dad and wait in long queues for bread, cake, and things we needed. Sometimes we got a food parcel from America, which was full of things that we couldn’t get, such as fruit and sweets which was great. Mam and I used to go to Liverpool on the train, to buy clothes, shoes etc they would be salvaged from the bombings and sold off cheaply, it depended on which shops had been bombed during the Air Raid, as to what you could get. Many many children were evacuated from Liverpool to our area during the War and some stayed at Oak Alyn Hall, Cefnybedd (now an old peoples home) and attended our school. I was friends with a boy and girl Maureen, and used to go to the hall for tea with them sometimes. I don’t really know what happened to them after the War, but expect that they went back to what was left of their own homes. The POW prisoners were working in the fields on the Park Wall, we passed them when we walked to school and felt sorry for them. Mam had to work in the factory where they made the bombs at Marchweil. She also worked in the fields at Bellis’s Holt on days out and would bring home strawberries and vegetables. I stayed in school until I was 14 and then I had to leave and go to work in a pen factory in Wrexham by the Parish Church now a Solicitors. While I was in my last two years in school your Dad was in the Army in the Middle East. It would be a few more years before we actually meet. When I started work the War was still on and things were still rationed. Then it was VE day, Europe had won the War against the Germans. In the middle of the night, it was on the wireless. Everyone was marching around the villages, singing dancing, lighting bonfires, fireworks, hugging and kissing each other, it was victory in Europe. The War was finally over with Germany. Peace at last. Now we could start to get back to normal. Soon after my brothers and sisters came home safely. Everytime one of them arrived it was a ‘Welcome home party’. We started to get happy again, but were still short of food. I stayed in the factory for two and a half years and when it was VE (Victory in Japan) was declared there were more celebrations. Things were getting back to normal, but everyone was still on rations. When I was 16 ½ my friends and I got jobs as Nursing Assistants at Emergency Hospital Wrexham now the Maelor. I was on the Childrens ward where I had my tonsils and adenoids out. There were soldiers there at the time, and my friend Mair (my bridesmaid) met and eventually married one of them. Wrexham Hospital wasn’t a training Hospital then. We left and I got a job in Kings Cafe Wrexham. After a while my friend Mavis and I decided to train as RGM Nurses at The Deva Hospital, Chester. I got paid £10 a month and had to give my Mam£8 and I had £2. While working at Kings Cafe I had met your Dad. I would be about seventeen and a half and your dad about 22. When I began my training I Iived in the Nurses Home at the time, your Dad would have to get two buses Hope to Wrexham, then Wrexham to Chester, so we could meet in Chester. We had actually met first in the Milk Bar Caergwrle, now Carlton House, I had a puncture on my bike by Abermorddu crossroads. I was with my friend Mair, her uncle who lived nearby mended the puncture, then went to the Milk Bar. Dad and his friends followed us home to Bradley where our life together began. Had first drink in a pub and were seen by a neighbour. We got engaged in a pub called ‘The Old English Gentleman’ (now demolished). Bought the ring from Samuels in Chester and got a free set of teaspoons. We had spent the day around the Walls in Chester, the Park, the River and had tea at a lovely little cafe on the Walls. We went to Chester on a double-decker bus from LLay. We celebrated our engagement with Dad’s brother Percy and sister in law Betty. Your dad was lodging in Kiln Lane Hope at the time so he would have to cycle to Bradley to meet me. I still kept friends with Cissie Davies, Mair Trevor and Mavis Grimes. We could cycle to Wrexham to the Pictures and Park and meet up in a Coffee House in Chester Road. I stayed in the Deva Hospital training for a while and Dad moved to lodgings in Gwersyllt at Rosebine Farm. When I had days off I would stay at the farm too. When I was 19 and Dad was 25 we wanted to get married (or at least Dad did) but we had no money, nowhere to live, and I was underage in those days. One day on my day off, I came to the farm, Dad and his landlady had put a plan into action. He decided that we were getting married on October the 4th 1952. In fact he told me that, we are getting married in three weeks time at 12 o’clock at Gwersyllt Church. I spent the night before the wedding at home at Mam’s. Although he hadn’t actually proposed properly, all the arrangements had been made with the help of his landlady, Mrs Jones but with no hen night or stag night. The Church was booked, the car, flowers, the Reception and the cake. Dad took me to Wrexham and bought my coat, hat and shoes and Mrs Jones provided a dressing gown and nightdress. We had the Reception at the Farm where we were to live. We had to get permission off my parents because I was under 21 years, the legal age was 21 in those days. On my wedding day my three sisters loaned me a white dress, veil and headdress, shoes and jewellery, and they did my hair and make-up and the dress for my friend Mair and Matron of Honour. There were a few hitches. Dad lost his buttonhole and had to borrow one, I got locked out of the Church and everyone thought I had fainted, your Dad fell over the Inner Alter, when we were being blessed. But despite all that it was a lovely wedding and the sun shone, in the evening we all went to a pub, the Horshoe, Gwersyllt which has since been knocked down (where Aldi Supermarket is). The wedding ring of course was from Samuals in Chester and we had another set of teaspoons.