I stumbled across the People’s Voices project on an archive chat (I’m an Archivist by profession) and it immediately sparked my interest. I recall my Nain and great Auntie’s stories of Aberystwyth when they were children, including the Second World War period. My Nain and great auntie are Gwenno and Cara, daughters to Ernest and Rhiannon Jones. They are in their 90s now (born in 1927 and 1931) but they both well recall their time in Aberystwyth and Cara relayed several memories to me recently.
As a bit of context, Ernest’s family originated in Caernarvonshire but his father was a builder who moved to Manchester to ‘seek his fortune’ and it was there, in Moss Side, where Ernest grew up. Ernest studied chemistry and was on the gas mask team in the First World War, which involved testing in gas chambers. Admirable as this was, it was not so good for the lungs, and so Ernest returned to his seaside roots to gain the benefits of fresh sea air. I believe it was then that he met Rhiannon, who was working at the National Library on the medieval Welsh manuscripts (clearly archives are in the blood). Ernest went on to become a doctor and later Medical Officer for Caernarfonshire.
Rhiannon’s family were from Llanfair PG on Anglesey. Her father, my great great grandfather, was the Welsh Professor Sir John Morris Jones (JMJ). She and her three sisters went to university to study Welsh, unusual for women of that time but no doubt inspired by JMJ. I presume this is why Rhiannon ended up in the library’s Welsh manuscript’s department.
So fate, or whatever you choose to call it, brought Ernest and Rhiannon to Aberystwyth before the Second World War, more specifically to Ysallt, St David’s Road, where Gwenno and Cara grew up.
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| Gwenno and Cara c. 1933 |
Cara was eight when war broke out so remembers much of it, for example rationing. The meat was made to last three days: a roast on Sunday, cold leftovers on Monday and cottage pie with leftovers on Tuesday. They would then have sausages on Wednesday. Everyone only had a very small amount of meat for each meal, not like nowadays, she said. Vegetables were easy to come by as they were grown locally. As luck would have it, the Jones’s did not do so badly for meat: Rhiannon had given the boy at the butchers 100 cigarettes when he was called up but he was sent back for medical reasons and thereafter he always gave Rhiannon the best meat. She said it was the best 100 cigarettes she ever bought!
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| Gwenno and friends on North Beach, Aberystwyth, pre war |
Ernest and Rhiannon didn’t have evacuees but their friends had some from Liverpool, a couple of whom stayed the whole war. The evacuees supposedly came in rags and the family bought them new clothes. When the evacuees returned to Liverpool to see their parents, their new clothes were sold and they returned to Aber in rags. Who can blame the parents really?! The family so loved the evacuees that they remembered them in their wills. Another evacuee from Liverpool, a 14 year old girl, didn’t stay long as she was so homesick. It must have been a hard choice given how badly bombed Liverpool was: you could supposedly see Liverpool burning across the sea. The university departments also came over from Liverpool and set up at Aberystwyth University.
A family friend had a land girl even though the friend only had an acre. The land girl had been a waitress in Lyon’s Cornerhouse in London. She met a “RAF boy” and got married and Cara remembers going to their wedding. It would be lovely to find out who this land girl was.
Cara has a memory of her parents counting Lancashire bombers flying over the sea. Twelve went out but only ten came back. When sirens sounded the family went into the cellar but bombs were only dropped if there were any left after a raid on Liverpool. Unfortunately Cara also remembers three of the young local men who lost their lives in the war, including the sons of the solicitor and dentist.
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| Gwenno, Cara and friends sometime after the war |
Cara went to the convent school in the town during the war, and later the grammar school. Both Cara and Gwenno went to Aberystwyth University after, still unusual for women in the 1950s. Gwenno first studied medicine at Manchester University but later transferred to economics at Aberystwyth, and Cara qualified in law.
Neither Cara nor Gwenno settled in the town but it is clear from their recollections that they both enjoyed their time there, despite part of it coinciding with the war and all the hardships that brought. I think of them as extraordinary women, living in extraordinary times…but then I am the granddaughter/great niece!
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| Cara (centre) and her brother in laws and friends on the occasion of Gwenno and Clwyd Williams’ marriage, Aber prom, 1952 |
Blog by Lorna Williams
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