Held at: | Private Collection |
Reference: | RS |
Source: | Individual Interview |
Title: | Oral History: Edited Transcript of Recollections of Eddie Thomas |
Place name: | Newton, Bacton, Golden Valley |
Date: | 1940 -1958 |
Description:
Transcription of an interview with Edward [Eddie] Gunther Thomas on 21st August 2026.
I was born in Croydon Feb 1940 and immediately evacuated with my German mother Paula to an aunt Nellie Jones who owned a small farm called Bush-llwn in Bacton, Herefordshire. Shortly after my brother was born in 1943 we moved to a rented wooden annex in The Villa, Newton owned by Tom Gwillam who ran a wood yard, saw mill and very well-equipped carpenter’s shop. In 1944 I attended the Methodist Sunday School under a Mr Powell. I then attended Newton School mainly under a Miss Powell and headmaster Mr Bosley until about 1948 when we left for Croydon to be housed by the council.
Recollections include the German prisoners of war (POW's) who regularly visited us at the Villa in about 1946 to meet my mother and entertain us children with their model steam engines etc. My father Edward (who was in the Army) joined us more permanently in late 1946, initially working as a woodman at the Dulas estate and later selling tractor oil in SW Herefordshire and Monmouthshire.
From 1948 we regularly returned as a family to Bacton for summer holidays until my aunt died in about 1958.
I've been into the [History of Ewyas Lacy] website before and I realised that one of the photographs of Newton school there has got me in it. My name is down there, but there are a few questions marks as to who the other people are and that sort of thing.
So what do you remember about the school?
Well first of all, I really went to the Sunday school when I was probably about four. So that would be about early 1944. It's still there; it's been modernised, hasn't it? In fact, we met the man modernising it at one stage.
I remember Percy Powell who was I think a very dedicated Sunday school teacher and basically at Newton all the children went to the Percy Powell chapel, and all the adults, went to Newton church, or I suppose Saint Margarets in some cases. He was an absolutely devoted man.
We used to have the Newton Eisteddfods there; I've still got a sort of program which I can certainly send to you if you like. We all had to do recitations and the recitations were chosen by our parents. And my mother being German, having researched exactly what was required she chose this one which was:
We worry over trifles.
Stupid fears destroy our bliss.
When tomorrow. we shall have
A different cause for gloom than this
Very dour, that.
I think I used to have a little money bag put around my neck with a sixpence in or something like that to give them when I went there.
So that was Percy Powell.
And then I know I joined Newton school when I was the age of four, I think I must have been at the tail end of four, and luckily for me most of the children I knew because they came to Sunday school so it wasn't too traumatic. But it was quite a busy school at that stage because it had these children which I discovered from your website had been evacuees from Bootle, though I didn't know that then. And there were these older boys, and some of them would have been locals, but some of them would have been these Bootle boys. They were sort of separate from us. They had a wooden classroom round the back of Newton school, which was largely woodworking and that sort of thing. I think they must have had a woodwork Master.
I was in the infants’ section I think with a Miss Powell; it shows on the photograph of me that it is Miss Powell that was there as my infants’ teacher - very nice.
And then at some time later I think the Bootle boys all went and a new Headmaster was appointed, Mr. Bosley. We were scared to death of him. There were some rumours that went round that he had been a school teacher in a Borstal institution and he actually acted like that, you know, for his first year, we were absolutely terrorised by him.
So, that was quite a sort of unhappy period. Well, I went up to Junior's in Mr. Bosley’s class. He never caned girls, but I would say every Wednesday he used go through our books and if If things were not quite right you’d get a double whack on the hand. And at first, of course, he hadn't got his canes, but he used an Ash stick. And so, there was one of my friends. his father must have seen this and actually reported it to Hereford County Council. And I think that Mister Bosley got a bit of a warning but he was obviously very keen right from the very first day on getting canes because he said that he actually wrote away for them and they were on display on the classroom ledge for quite some time.
So that was Mr. Bosley and he had a car; well, you did need to have a car if you were Headmaster there.
Other things about the school; I do remember, and this must have been 1946, we had a school radio apparatus set up. I don't know whether all the schools in Hereford were getting a school radio at the time. I can't remember It being used very much but I'm sure it was and it must have worked on accumulators because we had no electricity.
I noticed one of your other people that you interviewed mentioned the heating - the pot
boiler heaters that used to occasionally, get so red hot. And one exploded on one occasion and knocked out a big piece of steel that stuck in the ceiling. I think maybe it was cooled down too quickly or that sort of thing.
So yes, Mr. Bosley, he had a few perks. He had the children every Wednesday sweeping the large playground and school drive but we did spend time doing his garden too; I suppose he claimed it was gardening practice or that sort of thing, He was strict but mellowed with time and undoubtedly gave us a good education - for the record I later received two very nice reports from him
After about a year, Mr. Bosley became less frightening, I think after his warning, though I'm only guessing that. And in fact, oh yes that's right, my father, came back to live with us at that stage and my father found one day that I'd had my penknife thrown into the school heating system by the Headmaster. He was really quite incensed by that. So, he came up to the school. My father had quite a plummy voice and that sort of manner, so I think he got on all right with Mr. Bosley in the end. But to be fair, I had been sharpening my penknife on the school floor because that's how we sharpened our knives at our home.
The water in the school, that was always from a pump, which I can still point out just near the school entrance.
I think the final thing on the school was the school dentist. And I don't think you've ever had anyone report on the school dentist. I remember she came once a year. She usually came in a small open-top car. The drill was actually in the back of it, and then her extraction cup and, you know, her Dettol cup and her pliers were taken out. We used to have to help with that. And it was set up there in one of the classrooms. And she did the whole school in the day in alphabetical order. I being T for Thomas and rather frightened of dentistry I always hoped that I could escape home before she came to me, but invariably, we all had the school dentist. Most people had at least some sort of drilling, and it was a treadle drill, so it sounded it sounded pretty terrible.
The next thing on my list to talk about is The Villa at Newton
Before we move on from the school, I'd be very interested to know more about the day-to-day routine. For example, how did you get there? What did you get to eat? The general way of life there.
Well, I think there was a one-and-a-half-mile rule, though I don't know whether it was exactly that. So, if you lived within one and a half miles of the school, you had to make your own way to there. It may have been two miles. I don't know; we were somewhere sort of on the edge so I had to walk to school. I remember my first day at school my mother took me up to the top of the road on the ridge – I’ve forgotten the name of the road that basically goes from Bob’s Shop to the to the school - and then some other children would come I think from one of the Maescoeds a little further along so she put me in their hands and I knew some of the children anyway, so that was no problem.
So I walked to school and I suppose this must have been about one and a half miles. It wasn't at all onerous and occasionally, we would take the Abergavenny bus on a Tuesday from just outside my house, which would go past the school, and then walk back. So, most children would be walking to school. Though not very far from us was a chap called Eddie Smith who ran a car and was paid by Hereford County Council to taxi in other children from further away, but they were very much the minority.
So, getting to school despite rain, wind and snow was no problem at all?
I don't ever remember being getting particularly wet or anything like that. But I do remember the winter, it was quite cold but then there were various perks, you know, we would whip out our pen knives and cut out the turnips in the field. Icy turnips, that was really quite nice. So that was getting to school,
Just remind me what other things you wanted to know?
Well, simple things like, what did you eat, where did you play.
Yes, this was quite interesting. I think in the very early days, I mean, 1944, 1945. I must have taken sandwiches or something to school in a sort of tin, strung around my neck. But very soon after that Newton school got a school meal service from Longtown. They built on a sort of dining room. If you look at Newton school today, you can see there's a little annexe on the side. That was built from precast large concrete blocks that had been lying around the playground in the late 1940s and they were made into this little house. According to the lady I spoke to the other day who actually lives in part of that she says it's now been cladded over, but it is still there underneath. And then there was a lady employed to actually warm up food that I think was transported every day from somewhere in Longtown, a central kitchen.
So, we had our meals, But we still retained our tins, I think, because we still used to be able to have our elevenses from the tins, and we were allowed to take any waste food back home with us, you know to feed the pets and that sort of thing.
So, that was that. Oh, we played in the playground but largely played over the wall and around the pond that, the lady the other day told me, they now own, but she said it's been filled in. We spent a lot of time there. I do remember on one occasion being taken out there by the teacher, which was a fine day like today and she thought, it would be nice to have the class out there. But one time - it must have been in the infants’ period - we went in there and we saw sheep that had been severely savaged by a dog, you know? I do remember those sheep, with their gaping holes and entrails and still alive, and that's something that probably was a bit formative at the time. We also used to spend hours to make sort of bracken huts and things, you know, in in that area as well. And when the school bell rang, we would have to shoot in there pretty quickly and particularly when it came to Mr. Bosley's time when he put the fear of God into us all. So that's that.
I I kept up with some of the pupils for short while but as I probably left for Croydon at about the age of 10 before the eleven pluses and all that sort of thing, I largely lost touch with everyone. You know, except one particular person who actually won a scholarship to Monmouth High School. I kept up with him for a number of years, by the name of Bufton. I mention the Buftons because they were a middle-class sort of family. I think probably from Hereford. They didn’t speak particularly posh or anything like that, but they weren't really true locals. But they were the only ones who actually knew Welsh. Or the children did; they had four children so at an early stage I knew the Welsh numbers up to 10 and lots of things like that. But although most of the farms in the area seem to have a Welsh name, I never visited them to actually hear where the Welsh was spoken. But I don't remember any other boys even attempting to speak Welsh at school, which is interesting. Of course, you know, you don't have to go very far back when Welsh was forbidden to be used in schools. Otherwise, you really did get the cane every time for that.
Then there was The Villa at Newton. I think I said in my message, when I was originally evacuated out with my mother we stayed with my aunt in Bacton, and that is outside your area so I won’t go on too much about that.
Well, it is actually interesting because we do cover the Golden Valley on our website.
Well, I can tell you about that right at the end. Anyway, we moved from Bacton to The Villa, Newton, which was the big house about 100 metres north west of the Primitive Methodist Chapel in Newton (Middle Maescoed). The front steps and garden gate (immediately next to main road) are unchanged from 1950's but it doesn't actually have a name on it now, I don't know why they've renamed it something else. But the house is exactly the same except the wooden annexe that we lived in. We had two of the rooms upstairs and one downstairs in the main house that we used as a lounge, which had its own access from the rest of the house where the owner, Uncle Tom, used to live and then we lived in this sort of wooden Annexe. I don't know why it had been put up there, but I think it had been put up for living in purposes with a stone floor and the fireplace and cooking range and two bedrooms for my brother and I. But Uncle Tom or Mr Gwillam - and I see he's mentioned by some of your other correspondents - he was an amazing man. Really, he wasn't a farmer but he came from that area. He was basically a Jack of All Trades, He produced everything. He had a sawmill with engines, big oil engines. There were at least two over this sort of size, [waist high] - it was like an industrial premises. Big trees were offered to a large circular saw to be to be cut into planks.
He and his wife May were childless, although they adopted one of the many children of a close farming relative and brought her up as a favoured daughter. I was treated very much as a younger member of the family and occasionally Uncle Tom used to take me out into the fields to look for a fallen tree, which I think now could have been allocated to him. Sometimes it was too big for him to pull in his car or behind his car and had to be reduced in size and we split it up by using black powder explosives. He used to drill into the tree and then he and I would pack in black powder - this is at the age of six or seven I think - with the fuse. And then I would be allowed to pack in the clay or whatever it was around the fuse and then told to run, sort of 50 yards or whatever it was; not very far anyway, while he lit the fuse and the tree would be split into smaller pieces. It makes a very good story when I've been telling some of my friends about the early age I was introduced to Black Powder.
Anyway, then he was the undertaker. He was the killer of pigs. He was the coffin maker. I think he was a general builder as well, but I didn't actually know that; I never remember going out with him to do that. He produced cars; the few cars that there were at the time. including his own, had wooden bodies. He had a lot of old Model T Fords, or at least the basic frame of two or three of them and I think his idea was to make them into lorries or trucks and I think some of them he did that. But I certainly remember him making cartwheels. And I do remember it was not only the woodwork side. He would also be doing the metal work bending the rims. And of course, painting; he had a very big paint shop with beautiful red paints and all that sort of thing that fascinated young children. This was all at the back of the Villa.
I haven't been back there; I've never found anyone there to actually chat up and speak to and go round the back to see whether any evidence of it is still there, but it was like a sort of small industrial area. And I was allocated a part of the wood yard for my brother and I to grow potatoes and things; he was very caring like that.
So What was the carpenter’s shop like?
Oh, he had absolutely everything. You know, the whole range of saws, bow saws, everything that you would require. Then he had a forge as well, I can't remember much about that, but he certainly had a forge there for heating up the steel bits and pieces and that sort of thing.
Did he have engines driving machinery in there?
Well, the only engine-driven machinery were these circular saws, I think if he did any drilling, he probably did them by hand. I do remember lots and lots of hand drilling and things. It was a wonderful. I think he was one of the people that inspired me to think of engineering as a career, eventually, although I became a civil engineer rather than the mechanical engineer.
Of course, there were very few amenities at The Villa, despite being having this posh address, Our water supply was an open well, which was in the roofed over forecourt of Mr. Gwillam. The toilet was a thunderbox down the end of the garden. He had a separate one for him; his was a little two person one over a stream, a little stream that I think eventually went into the spring next to the Chapel from which we used to drink, but that's another story.
But one of the things you might be interested in is the winter of 1947. You know, there was this terrible winter and Mr Gwillam or Uncle, Tom said to my mother, how do you make skis and how do you make snowshoes? And so he made snowshoes and skis, I don't know whatever happened to them. I did see him on his on the snowshoes, at different times but I don’t know about the skis. My mother had been going skiing but she didn't actually know how skis were designed, you know, the fact that they had to be bent and hollow and all that sort of thing, so I don't think they were ever terribly successful. But he was such an innovator, really.
He had an accumulator for his radio, but instead of the accumulators having to be charged down at Ewyas Harold or Pontrilas regularly, I think by the two shops down there, he made his own wind generator, to charge his accumulator.
And I think the last thing I would say about Newton is that from time to time, they used to entertain gentlemen of the road. I suppose they were always valuable to farmers in the summertime for helping with the crops free of charge or relatively free of charge and most of them lived in the in the hay ricks or in person's houses. I always remember a man called Bandy Jack. And he would come, a gentleman of the road, very proud, and he would always be sat outside on a white chair. White. because if there were fleas on him then they would be able to see them before taking the chair back into the house. Bandy Jack was one of them here. And there were others as well,
Then there were the German prisoners of War that other people on your website have mentioned. They must have come in somewhere around about 1946 to 1947. I do remember when they first arrived because a Jeep which I thought was manned by Americans came to the school one lunch time and they all started playing the piano. There probably was an American doing the distribution of prisoners of war, but I think the other people were actually prisoners, though I don't think they were all in uniform. Anyway, the prisoners of war as far as I know, all came from the camp at Dorstone, though I can't be 100% sure about that. I think most of them were actually posted to individual farms and that sort of thing. There were at least six of them I remember. My father hadn't come back to Newton by that stage so, they were like, my sort of father figures, if you like. They were all privates of some kind or NCOs, I think.
There was Gustav, he was the older, man, he was the father figure. There was Ralph who was the youngest man, and he wasn't forthcoming at all. He was just like an adolescent only interested in himself; he definitely lived on a farm between Newton and Bacton. And then there was Alfred who was a joker and absolutely a little man, and then there was Fritz, I think it was Fritz, who was the cook. Every fortnight they used to come to my mother's house on the Sunday I suppose to speak German - somehow, they had caught on to the fact that my mother was German. But they would come with a cake, which I think Fritz produced. I think they all had allocations of eggs and so on from the farm. So, we used to have very rich cakes for food at that time.
Although they were they were prisoners of war I think they were treated extremely well by people in Newton. I don't know who the leading lights in Newton were but the prisoners were given access to that little building just outside Newton church which was sort of their tea place, which I think reading your website was actually the original old Newton school. But they wanted to meet and they were also into making things. The thing that interested me were these sorts of steam engines they used to make from Cocoa tins. They soldered the tins and they had cylinders, which never really worked properly, but they made up the heating arrangements and that sort of thing. They certainly had an influence on me wanting to do engineering.
And then I was reminded by one of my cousins the other day that they had POWs down at Bacton and they used to make these acrobatic toys, you know, the sort of thing where you squeeze something together and figures perform various tricks.
Did I tell you about the bus services? They had an old Bedford bus. I don't know what they were called but they were 25 seaters I think with a very high-sounding engine, I can still hear it now. And then there were the Hereford and Abergavenny buses. They were Morgan Wye Valley Motors in Hereford and they ran to Hereford Market on Wednesdays and Saturdays. They started from Longtown so there must have been a bus depot there, although they may have gone out from Hereford in the morning to Longtown before they came to us, I suppose.
And then the Abergavenny bus was Tuesday and I think that came from Hereford and that was for the Tuesday market in Abergavenny. People would use both for taking their chickens and produce. One thing that I do remember well in the buses was the special events going to the seaside that were organised, I think through Morgan Wye Valley Motors. Every year there were probably at least four trips to various seaside resort places. The most popular one was Barry Island. I must have gone several times to there. You'd be picked up and taken there for the day and dropped back home. Porthcawl was another one.
I do remember going Swansea once and I particularly enjoyed that one because we went via a new territory through Brecon and then over the Brecon Beacons, I suppose that gave me a love for mountains and scenery. It was a beautiful drive across there. I remember all the cars along the road that had been overheating filling up their radiators from the small mountain streams or springs. So that was a happy period. They also did occasionally go to Llandudno. That was a very long one and they also sometimes went to Bristol or some place just outside Bristol.
Another thing about living in the area as well was the doctor, who was a Doctor McMichael. He was stationed in a house just where the Golden Valley Road comes off the Hereford road. If you were seriously ill, then Dr. McMichael would come out in his car. But of course, most people couldn't afford that, and would decide that they would just wait and see how things go. So, I think he must have covered a very large area, including this area here because it wasn’t so far to come into this District. But if you called him out, you had to have the cash. I remember my mother once saying that she always thought that I had had rheumatic fever, but didn't call him out.
For about a year when as I said, my father had this job as a representative in tractor oil, we did have an Austin Seven which he had to buy and we used it to take people to the doctor from time to time. We were one of the few people with a car at that time. So we were sort of privileged in that sense.
One other thing to mention is that there was no electricity. I think it didn’t arrive in the area until 1960 or 1970.
So, how did you manage – did you rely on oil lamps?
Yes, we had the famous sort of Tilley lamp which I recall was one of these little ones, sort of single ones that we were allowed to have in our rooms and weren't too dangerous. And of course, there were the big stand up and beg lamps but they were a nuisance, they had to be cleaned and then they had to be kept out of a draught and otherwise the glass cracked and that sort of thing. And I think we must have had a battery radio of some kind. Though we weren’t cut off from buying things. We had two travelling lorries came up from Ewyas Harold/ Pontrilas. I've forgotten what the names were now, but one was mainly vegetables and one was things like oil and taking your accumulator back there to be charged and that sort of thing. So we weren't really short of things.
Very few people had telephones. I think even the school didn't have a telephone but I couldn't be absolutely sure of that. But there was a post office then just by the Saint Margarets turning at the lower part of the village. I'm not sure there's not a red box there now and that was the only communication with the outside world.
So, how did you manage for food shopping and general needs like clothes and shoes?
Well, it would be going into Hereford I think for shoes and things like that., but for general shopping we relied on the travelling shops, basically, plus a lot was provided locally. For example, there was never any shortage of rabbit. To this day, you know, I love my rabbit. They were shot, to excess really because their furs were kept. During the war and after the war they could be sold in Hereford; people would go on the bus with their rabbit pelts, 20 rabbit pelts or so at a time and sell them somewhere in in Hereford.
Regarding food, we did get a certain amount from the United States. We occasionally used to get boxes of egg powder, and also cheese, which I particularly liked, to supplement ourselves. But we didn't actually go short of food. I don't think anyone was short of food.
I suppose a lot came from the local farms rather than through ration coupons?
Yes, some. But I don't think very many people were growing vegetables. Or if they were it was just for their own use. I was growing tomatoes and potatoes. But there were apple orchards around. I don't think there were particular good apple trees on the top there, but you could get apples in in season and that sort of thing so no one went short.
But there was Bob’s shop, too. I never personally went there but I used to pass it, and I think you could get some basics at Bob’s shop just up the road from you but it was quite a walk for us to get there.
So that's the Newton area, But Bacton was slightly different.
There, you're almost in England as opposed to Wales. And it is pretty much a sort of English area; the farms along the Dore Valley are primarily English named.
And my aunt inherited through marriage 15 acres of a much larger farm, which extended from the valley and into the woods at the back and included, another property up there. But the man she married became an invalid after she married him, and so he had to be looked after. She was an excellent cook and all that sort of thing. So that's how Uncle Will survived and my aunt had the house for life.
But then we had relations from Eastern Herefordshire who were involved with one of the farms called The Stud which had another name in the old days that was very grand. It's still, I think a very grand house. You can see that on the internet. I did go over there once and there were Tiger Skin Heads on the floor and that sort of thing.
Where exactly was that?
As you go down the hill from Newton into Bacton past Bacton church and then down the hill and around the first railings, and then you meet the B Road. You turn right onto the B road and almost immediately on your left is Bacton Stud, I think it's called now. I’ll remember in a moment, but it was called something else different then. They were definitely part of the local hierarchy if you like but they were very nice people. But one of my uncles was actually the farm manager then, so he had one or two other people in farms and that sort of thing. That side of the family is still in Herefordshire now.
I've never been back to the house there. Since it was sold for a song, I sort of regret that that my brother and I didn't buy it. And one stage my brother was into coming into this area quite a lot. He would have been able to look after it. But you know, we wouldn't have wanted the second house, really, because I’ve been such a long time overseas and my wife hasn't got connections really with the area.
I got quite interested in Archaeology when a Roman coin was found in her garden by one of my cousins, who was digging it. I inherited it, I in fact presented to the Hereford Museum a couple of years ago. But reading some of your articles about the Roman roads of this part of the area, I realised that find was exactly on the crossroads between the road that goes from Hereford to Abergavenny via Abbey Dore and the alternative one that goes from Hereford to Longtown and then I suppose down to Pandy from there. So, I thought it was pretty important that the coin wasn't put in the waste bin.
I wrote something for them and must follow that up sometime to make sure they haven't lost it. But she had it valued by the Woolhope Society and I still have the little docket which contained it. It's recorded on the map of Hereford Roman finds. I think there were other Roman finds in the area but they're all noted and I think I know where one of the others is. There was a so-called Roman well on one little side roads that comes off by Bacton church to a place called Paradise Farm. And on the right-hand side, it was pointed out to me by one of my cousins 60 years ago. That was also a find and so probably somewhere in the Woolhope Collections there's reference there.
So that's what gave me a interest in archaeology for a while. And then when I retired, I started trying to research the Roman roads of Hereford. I didn't get very far, but in Swindon we actually have the historic records department. So actually, when I pushed them, they were quite forthcoming and they came up with a route to Longtown as well, which I'd always suspected.
I’d be very interested to see any documentation of that.
There is an article about the road. I'm not quite sure how it came about but they actually gave me six-inch Maps with it. I think it's actually the one on your website; it more or less follows the same route. You're welcome to see it; I could send all my stuff is in a file if you like
That would be great. One last thing before we finish; you mentioned, an Eisteddfod at Newton school. What form did it take?
Well, it was actually held in the Chapel, but it would have been for the whole village. I don't know who organised it. I'll send you the details but I think from what you've got in your system already, there was a choir. I don't remember at Newton school that there was an adult choir singing, but basically it was recitations, you know, by all the children and it went on for quite some time. We all had to sit around on the gallery on the side and do all this. It was really quite a big day. Yes, I think we probably sang as well. But it was the recitation which was the big thing.
I'm just reminded when it came to school singing. All schools around here used to go down to Abbey Dore and sing in Abbey Dore Church. Well, I don't know, maybe in Longtown you may have gone somewhere else, but certainly Newton school children did and Bacton, so it may just have been that side but that was an annual event as far as I remember at Christmas time. It was one of the few places which were large enough to accommodate everyone. I don't know how we got there. We must have had a bus for that particular occasion I suppose.
I remember the railway, too. I was on the last train, I think I was here on holiday, which I think was probably about 1950. We all met up at Bacton station in my case because that's where my Aunt’s Farm was and we went off and I think we went to Barry Island. I do remember crossing the river at Newport where the river bridge was being rebuilt. I think it might have been bombed partly during the war. Everybody from the whole valley went for the final trip.
Where did the train actually came from that day?
Well, it came down from Peterchurch. I didn't know whether they came all the way from Hay, but I think it probably did, through very, very slowly down to Pontrilas. It took a bit of time before we were linked into the main line there and then it became a bit more serious after that. I don't remember who came on that occasion but the Mannerleys and Captain Partridge were local big wigs. I'm sure they were sort of represented at least because they'd been shareholders in it [the Golden Valley Railway] at some stage. Of course, it never really made much money. It's interesting during the war at Bacton station and maybe Abbey Dore as well, but I'm sure there was a yard at Bacton for assembling tractors and things. Not that I saw anyone assembling tractors but, you know, there was a sort of semblance of industrialisation.
The other thing about the railway of course was It was tied up with Gilbert Hill [near Pontrilas] and the storage of explosives and everything which was a really big thing. That's where the SAS train now. I was hardly aware that it actually existed until about 1947 when for three or four days the skies over Newton were blood red as all the explosives or the excess explosives were burned off on Ewyas Harold Common which wasn't very far away. But I don't know anything much. I've never discovered whether Gilbert Hill was underground or on the surface. I assumed until two days ago when I spoke to my cousin that it was all on the surface and there is a book on the railways within the compound that only show the surface. But my cousin seems to think it was also underground as well, which surprised me. And my older cousin, she died two or three years ago, Desiree, I used to facetiously say she was the SAS tea lady because I think she was a secretary there. So, Desiree would have known. Of course, she had to be very careful because of our German connections, you know, she probably got security vetted, my mother didn't just come from West Germany. She came from the old East Germany, so she had come clean. And people were very careful weren't they about security back then but it's much more laid back these days.
That train trip you were on was a sort of day Excursion down to Barry Island or something, was it?
I never usually went by train to Barry; it was always by buses except for that final day special train which was put on that was going to Barry Island. Well, I think Barry Island or could have been Porthcawl; it certainly went via Newport.
Well, thank you so much for sharing your recollections; it has been a fascinating insight into local life in the mid-20th century and the history of the area. I am very grateful for your time and for the pleasure of your company.
Observations:
Recorded at Michaelchurch Escley by Bob Steele, Ewyas Lacy Study Group, 22nd August 2026
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