The War Years In Llanfechain

For many who remained in the village the war years are remembered for the community spirit that war time strictures caused.  The loss of manpower meant that women had to step in to the breach; the Women’s Land Army was formed and a number of them were deployed to the farms around the village. Later, Italian prisoners of war were provided; on one occasion they are remembered throwing their boots at an apple tree in Tynllan to dislodge apples. They also made rings from silver coins and gave them to villagers.

And the village ladies ‘sewed and knitted for victory’ posing below at The Rectory.

Back: Mrs Edward’s housekeeper, Miss Cissie Jones - Tirionfa.  Mrs Ellis – Bodynfoel,  Mrs E W Humphreys - Caenant, Mrs D. C. Jones – Rectory,  Mrs Jones – Gwynfryn, Un-named person, Mrs David Wesley Jones – Bodhyfryd,  The Minister’s wife,  Mrs Davies.

In 1939, shortly after the outbreak of war, children from St Francis Xavier’s School Liverpool arrived in Llanfechain causing the school to introduce “double shifts”; the village children started at 9 a.m. and the evacuees at 1.30 p.m. Coming for a city, many found it difficult to live in the countryside and so some returned and others replaced them including, as remembered by one boy, a batch of rather attractive girls. Gas masks were issued and instruction given. Gardens were turned into vegetable plots; grassland ploughed; mechanised tractors appeared.  In 1944 additional children evacuees from Tollemache Road School, Birkenhead arrived, adding to the child population. James Hanley, a writer lived at the Bodynfoel lodge. Reginald and Elizabeth Moore, also writers, lived in the village and encouraged cricket; Lord Beaverbrook, a member of the War Cabinet, was a frequent visitor at the Plas-yn-Dinas.

In response to the threat of invasion, the Home Guard was created. The Home Guard, originally titled the ‘Local Defense Volunteers’ but disparagingly called the LDV ‘Look-Duck-Vanish’, hence the name change, was formed in 1940. The Llanfechain contingent for 1940-41 is pictured below.

Search lights were deployed in the old station yard and sometimes they lit up the sky at night. In 1940, because the area was on the flight path of German bombers attacking Liverpool, bombs were (accidentally) dropped near Widdigoed killing three cattle; the explosions seen from Plas-yn-Dinas causing much excitement. And in 1943-44 a contingent of Grenadier Guards was billeted at Brongain. Dave Wesley Jones (Dai Wes), who lived in the village at this time as a young boy, remembers military training being conducted; he remembers some forces exercising locally; he had the opportunity to hold a rifle; was given chewing gum, a new ‘thing’ in Britain; and was given his first banana by a relative of the Watkins (Tegfan) family, who was on leave from the Navy. To support the war effort some children collected rosehips to make rosehip syrup for which they got a few pence.  It was exciting times for the youth of the village; sometimes too exciting. Eryl Jones, also a young boy of the village, found a munition but unfortunately whilst playing with it, as young boys do, it blew up and he lost some fingers.

Norman Ellis who was 9 in 1949 provides a personal insight of these years.

So much happened that engenders fond (if sometimes unfortunate) memories. At the end of the War, after some celebration including a fancy dress party at the school on VE Day in 1946, life returned to ‘normal’! The population, then about 600, re-engaged in agriculture and other associated village business.  Happy days were here again. But we should not forget those from the village who sacrificed their tomorrow for our today.