Our Dad Thomas was a very proud Welshman as well as a proud Canadian.
He wrote this about his early memories of living in Wales.
The newspapers of 14th. of July 1922 recorded that it was a fine day at Llanuwchlyn, and the births column failed to record the arrival of Thomas John, a second son for John and Catherine Rowlands, who was born in their home, Dol Fach.
Owen Tudor, their first born, had arrived some 16 months earlier on the
19th March l92l and like his new brother, he had been baptized in the home by the Rev. R. G. Owen who was the Congregational Minister in the village then. The new arrival would be christened Thomas John.
The old village where this great unreported event took place is in the heart of North Wales and its inhabitants had held on to the Welsh language and culture over hundreds of years of occupation by the English. The only language used in the area was Welsh. It is a very ancient Celtic Language and all of our family was submerged in it, my Father having very little English, and I would not hear him speak it until we moved in 1928 to live near Rhyl, a seaside resort on the coast of Liverpool Bay. It has a rich Celtic and Roman history, having an old Welsh Castle called Carn Dochan and a Roman Fort named Caer Gai, which has evolved into a still occupied farmhouse. Dol Fach, the farm where the birth took place, was first occupied at the beginning of the I9h century by members of the Gaer Cai family, probably as an overflow, as more and more children were added. The position of the Castle and the Roman Fort testifies to the strategic importance of the village, which is at the confluence of four valleys and near to "Llyn Tegid", the Welsh name of Bala Lake. Literally translated, the name of the village is “Church above the Lake". The most northern valley is the valley of the River Lliw, meaning the river of color and called Nant Lliw in Welsh. My mother was born in a farm, Ty Mawr, at the lower end of the valley and many of her family lived on several of the farms in this vale. When she was young, the river teemed with trout and when her father reached old age, he would be carried in a chair to the edge of the river in the late afternoon, where he would settle down to take a guaranteed goodly catch of fish. A narrow and steep road climbs through the valley leading through gates to upland sheep grazing and on to a small village Trawsfynnydd. An artillery range was established here in the First World War and was also used in WW11. Maurice, my sister Morfydd's husband, served here. Occasional shells went astray and landed near to Llanuwchllyn and also annoyed the farmers, by occasionally killing their sheep.
The next valley to the south is the main valley and took the railway and main road westwards through Dolgellau, a small and ancient town, and westward to Barmouth and the Cambrian Bay Coast. The eastward flowing river Dee rises in this valley, some five miles from Llanuwchllyn on the land of a farm called Pantgwyn, which was the home of the Rowlands', as traced back to about 1760. Pantgwyn is near to the watershed, on the other side of which the river Wnion rises and flows westward through Dolgellau and then merges with the Mawddach River, which empties into Cardigan Bay at Barmouth. The Great Western Railway, which (now closed) connected Chester/Shrewsbury to the coast, was built around 1865 and changed the village life quite dramatically in two main ways, providing work for the locals and bringing to an end the droving of cattle to the markets of England. The droving industry had gone on for centuries and had earned a bad reputation for the Welsh Drovers in England, and had given rise to this verse:-
"Taffy was a Welshman,
Taffy was a thief,
Taffy came to my house
And stole a piece of beef!"
One of the local railway employees was Uncle Martin, who was a good sport and would let us kids spend time in his signal box by Pantgwyn named Garneddwen, when holidaying with my cousins at Pantgwyn.
Another pastime was skinny dipping in a mountain pool on the River Dee, which on its eastward route is joined by the Lliw and passes within a quarter of a mile of Dol Fach, on its way to Bala Lake. It is said the Dee water passes through the lake without mixing and exits the Lake going on to Llangollen and Chester, emptying into the lrish Sea at the Dee Estuary, quite close to the town of Rhyl, where we lived from l928 onwards. Further to the South still, is the Valley called Cynllwyd which is some eight miles long and carries a very narrow single track road, climbing all the way past Nant y Barcud (vale of the kites) and on past Ty'n y Fron, now the home of cousin Gwynwth, with a high mountain called Aran Benllyn on the right to the height of land where one turns right or left, or goes over the top, a drop of several hundred feet. Turn right into "Bwlch y Groes," translated to "Pass of the Cross", a very steep one lane road, with a big drop on the left and turn right and drop down to Lake Vernwy. It was over this road, that my to be wedded parents, drove their horse and buggy in 1920, to get married at Llwydiarth, just beyond Lake Vyrnwy , where my Mother's brother Gruffydd and his wife Annie lived.
The river in the Cynllwyd valley is the Twrch, which is the Welsh for "mole". There is a sharp drop in the river near the village of Llanuwchllyn and the river was harnessed in the nineteenth century to generate electricity, which was distributed through the village, making Llanuwchllyn the first community in Wales to have an electricity supply.
The engineer who built a turbine and electrical generator, Gwylym
Edwards, was a member of the family who earned fame for his Electrical Engineering. The river was also harnessed for a grist mill, called Penygeulan, probably the birthplace of my mother's grandmother. The miller in the mid 1850's, was Owen Edwards and his mill supplied farms over a large area. He had lived at a small farm nearby, called "Coedy Pry", which translates to “Wormy Woods”. It was at this farm that a cousin of my mother's grandmother, Owen M Edwards was born in 1858. He became Member of Parliament for the county of Meirionydd and Minister of Education for Wales, in the government of Prime Minister Gladstone. The primary industry in Llanuwchllyn, through the I7th and 18th centuries was based on sheep, and more important than the lamb and mutton, for which they were rightly famous, was the gathering and processing of wool. Even to this day, there are the remains of Fulling and other mills and there was a vibrant cottage industry based on spinning, weaving and knitting. There are records of the thousands of mittens and Balaclava helmets, which were provided for the troops in the Crimea War in the 1850's. Although Dol Fach was only some forty acres, it like it's neighbors could support large families, largely because most of the farms shared common upland pastures, which could support thousands of sheep. And these also provided sheep shearing and sheep dipping get togethers, some of which I enjoyed when very young. These uplands were also a plentiful source of peat, which provided warmth in the winters. The peat would be dug out in the spring and stacked to dry out through the summer and then brought down off the mountain on horse drawn skids in the fall. Peat only provides a low grade smoldering heat and was used to pack up coal fires in kitchen grates, so that they would keep burning all night.
My life at Llanuwchllyn was to last only six years. On the 17th. of April
1928, we moved to live at a farm called "Rhydorddwy Goch", which is on the outskirts of Rhyl, on the way to a small village Dyserth. This move divided my life into two parts, the earlier part being totally Welsh and the later part being about eighty percent English and twenty percent Welsh.
Those first six years, had however imprinted the culture of Wales very deeply on me and that experience and the family connections, which were retained after the move, meant that most of my rare vacations were spent in the old places of Llanuwchllyn and each visit reignited the "hiraeth" (nostalgia) for the past.
I suppose that the central quality of life in Llanuwchllyn, was the freedom to get out and roam and now and again to tickle trout in the nearby rivers. My parents probably suffered anxieties and one of the few incidents I can recall clearly, is the telling off my mother gave me when I fell into a nearby pond and returned home looking like a drowned rat. She made me strip and just when all my clothes were off, the Bread man arrived, so she sent me into the "dairy," a cold milk and butter storage room. There I shivered, wondering if this was the end of my life. When she came at last, she was not very friendly and delivered a few hard smacks across my naked bottom.
Around 1926, unbeknown to us kids, my mother was pregnant and ultimately took to her bed to give birth. Compared to these days, the event was a dark secret, which my brother and I had no knowledge of and because our mother was confined, we were not allowed to go and see her. We probably became a bit irritable about her absence. Surprise, surprise, we were told that we had a new sister, Catherine and were allowed to take the one and only look at her in the nurse's arms, outside the bedroom door. We were not informed that she passed away soon afterwards.
A few days later Owen and I were farmed off to relatives who gave us a lunch, during which I became curious to know why we were not at home, only to find out a few days later, that it was the day of our sister Catherine's funeral.
Like nearly all of the other houses, there was no electricity or running water in the house. Illumination in the evenings was by candle or by oil lamp. The latest invention in oil lamps was the "Alladin" lamp, which had a mantle that fluoresced and gave off a much brighter light. These lamps had to be filled with "paraffin," kerosene here in North America, every day and pumped with air, every hour or two. One took a candle to the bedroom or any other unilluminated part of the house. The privy was out of doors, so a dark journey was avoided as much as possible, particularly on windy nights. The only warmth was provided by the kitchen grate and if one wanted to use the parlor or some other room, a fire would be laid and started a few hours before beginning to use it. In our house, the parlor was used only at Christmas.
A few highlights remain of those very happy early years, such as going fishing in the swollen River Dee, with my father, who pulled in half a dozen trout. The smell of the a wooden, locally made wheelbarrow, delivered by Santa Claus. Setting traps for moles and harvesting the trapped animals and skinning them for their beautiful soft skins, which were turned into gloves.
Another recollection, is of the village butcher shop, Pennontlliw, which my father had inherited from my maternal grandfather, Thomas Roberts of Ty Mawr.
It was only open about two or three mornings in the week and would more likely than not have a sheep and pig carcass, as well as a large piece of beef hanging and the customer took his choice of cut from whatever was available.
The family entertained itself in the evenings, playing games and being taught to recite poetry, to sing Welsh songs and to learn Biblical verses for recitation at the next Sunday service.
The only Grandparent still alive was Mr. Owen Rowlands and he lived about three miles away at a farm called "Cerrig Llwydion". I have two recollections of him, one when my father Owen and I walked to Cerig Llwydion to pay him a visit. He was bed ridden, suffering from pernicious anemia, which was incurable at that time. Just as we entered his room, my father gave Owen and I a small package of tobacco to pass on to him. The next time I saw him he was in his coffin draped in white satin and looking very peaceful.
All of the family had lived in the area for centuries and it was only much later that I was able to trace the roots and the places where they had lived. I started school when I was three years old, walking with my brother to the village school. The headmistress was Miss Bowen, who always looked a bit stern to me. However, before I graduated from the juniors, we were all whisked away from all these familiar places, to a place in a “new universe”, called Rhyl.
We kids had no say in this move and it all happened so suddenly. All of the farm animals were sent by train and all of our household goods were packed on the first large lorry (truck), which had solid rubber tyres that I had ever seen. We were shoved into a car for my first car ride. We were to follow the lorry to our new home, Rhydorddwy Goch, which was on the outskirts of a seaside resort on the North Wales
Coast, called Rhyl.
The only excitement on the journey occurred near to Corwen, when the truck went under a railway bridge and the legs of a table, which had been loaded legs up, had all four legs amputated!!. On arrival, there was general chaos and my first recollection of the house, was meeting with a Mrs. Hughes, who was washing the stone floor of the kitchen and my new sister, Morfydd, was laid down on a bench in an otherwise empty room. We boys then took off to explore our new farm and by the time we reappeared, the big truck had been unloaded and most of the furniture had been delivered to the appropriate rooms.
