Category Archives: Heritage

Vintage Postcard #19: The Battery, Aberdovey

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An unused postcard showing a row of cannons facing the slipway and the wharf beyond.  I had never seen a photograph of these before.  It took me a minute to realize exactly where they were located, but it was obviously the Literary Institute, which was established in 1882.  There is a photo on a stock library website taken in 1901 and showing a similar view from the Francis Frith collection.

In 1900 an article in the Welsh Gazette stated that the ultimate origins of the cannons was unknown but they had been presented to the Institute by the Urban District Council who had presented them to the Institute, and the letters G.R. on the barrels showed that they had once belonged to the Crown.

Henry Birch’s 1982 booklet about the Literary Institute (A Brief History of The Aberdovey Literary Institute 1882-1982) makes reference to the cannons in connection with celebrations for Queen Victoria’s Jubilee in 1897, when they were rusty and badly neglected after standing outside the Institute “for some years” and it was proposed that they should be restored and mounted.  There was an unverified local story amongst older residents that the cannons were fired to celebrate the end of the siege Mafeking, and that a ship at anchor in the estuary was dismasted in the process.  The booklet says that in later years the cannons were used by boats alongside the wall as mooring posts.  By 1940 the Institute’s committee had decided that they should be scrapped to help the war effort but they were unable to find a scrap dealer who was interested.  In 1941 a letter to the Committee indicates that two were to be retained and restored “for sentimental reasons” and the others were to be “sold to the local salvage depot for 6d each.”  There is no mention of what happened to the final two.

This is a Wrench postcard, number 73082.  Evelyn Wrench, who set up Wrench Postcards in 1902 when he was in his early 20s, was celebrated as a business success story, a model for other young entrepreneurs, and several newspaper articles were written about him.  There is more about him at the end of an earlier post.

Vintage postcards #17: A special train on the Cambrian Coast Line

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This must have been a wonderful sight – a steam-hauled special train on the way into Aberdovey along the side of the estuary on the Cambrian Coast Line.  The reverse of the postcard says that it was sold in aid of the Talyllyn Railway in Tywyn.  The Aberdovey stretch of the railway was established in 1864, connecting via Machynlleth to the south in 1867 (the subject of an earlier post) and the last steam engine run along the route was in 2017, marking the 150th anniversary of the Grade 2 listed Pont Y Bermo (Barmouth Bridge), that carries the line over the Mawwdach estuary.

I naively thought that it would be easy to find a date for what I thought must be an unusual event, but my assumption was wrong.   Thanks, therefore, to Sierd Jan Tuistra, via RMWeb member Martin McCowgill, who provided the information that this is one of the annual AGM weekend specials from Paddington to Towyn, 24th September 1960.  It was a double-headed special, with two engines pulling the carriages from Shrewsbury to Towyn, each pulling a coal truck before the passenger carriages. The engine at the front is 9017, otherwise known as the Dukedog class, which was the nickname for the Great Western Railway Earl Class.  Behind it is engine 7330 in the Mogul (GWR 4300) class.

Steam was not an uncommon sight on the Cambrian coast, a lot of regular services were steam hauled until 1966. Double headed train were less common, but quite a number of Cambrian Coast express summer Saturday specials were double headed because of the number of passengers & carriages.

Apparently there also used to be occasional summer steam trips on a Sunday from Aberystwyth to Pwllheli, so although this was a fabulous sight, it was not actually as rare as one might have expected.  Halliday, the photographer, specialized in vintage train photographs in the 1950s, mainly black and white.

Produced by Judges, about whom more on an earlier post.

Vintage postcards #14 – Penhelig from a boat or Ynyslas

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Penhelig, possibly 1923

Penhelig seen from Ynyslas in February 2019

It is almost peculiar how little has changed between these two dates, 1923 and 2019.  Immediately in front of the houses on the left the memorial park has been developed, a small shelter has been added, and there is now a sea wall in front of it, and the trees behind the houses seem to have grown and spread, but little else has changed.  The postcard was unsent.  It is another produced by “Gwilym Williams, Aberdovey” about whom I have been unable to find anything, but there is an additional piece of information on the picture side of the card – a series number:  88213 JV.  The initials JV usually stand for James Valentine, so perhaps Gwilym Williams occasionally worked as a local agent of Valentine’s.  According to the Valentine’s postcard dating page, this number falls in a series that date to 1923.

Vintage postcards #13 – Aberdovey shopping centre

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The idea of Aberdovey as a shopping centre is a somewhat staggering notion, given the modern sense of the term, which usually involves ugly custom-built malls and airfield-sized car parks, but it must have been a very busy high street, an important source of all sorts of goods in a period when people shopped close to home.  Although today most of the frontages along the promenade are businesses that rely on supplying the tourist industry, shops like the butcher and pharmacy both have dates over their doors today (1861 and1863 respectively, see photographs below) demonstrating that village stores were very important as Aberdovey continued to grow.  In this picture there is a dairy too, which today is an excellent ice cream shop.  The cars have real charm but the bicycles lined up against the wharf fence tell the real story about how most people got around.  Over the fence is one of the rail trucks that ran on tracks along the wharf and jetty for loading and unloading ships.

This turns out to be a photograph of a postcard, rather than the original postcard itself, so the reverse side is completely blank. A shame, as a huge part of the story is missing.

Vintage Postcards #12: The Tennis Courts

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The tennis courts were located in front of the approach to Aberdovey railway station.  Now, it’s a bowling green, with a small section fenced off to the left that still has a tennis court.  The little tennis pavilion has now been replaced by two slightly larger structures.  It is possible that the blue X marks the house where the visitors were staying.  My excellent uncle occasionally does the same thing in the postcards he sends.  The houses in the postcard and my photographs below shows how foliage can change aspects of a scene.  The house at top left now has a tree in front of its central gable, and the one immediately above the tennis pavilion previously had Virginia creeper or similar clinging to the walls, which has now been stripped off.  There are a couple of new buildings in the picture below, but on the whole that stretch of Aberdovey retains most of its character.

The same view in November 2019

The bowling club was established in 1921.  The postcard was sent to Solihull in 1934, with an Aberdovey Merioneth postmark.  The stamp is a George V 1d red that was issued between January 1st 1912 and 1934.  I’ve seen an identical postcard with the postmark dated 1926, so this postcard had obviously been in circulation for some time.

Vintage Postcards #11: Along the promenade towards the old jetty

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A quiet day in Aberdovey.  The history of the wharf and Jetty are described in Hugh M. Lewis’s booklet A Riverside Story, and in C.C. Green’s excellent The Coast Lines of the Cambrian Railways, volume 2 (1996).  Today’s jetty dates to 1970, but Aberdovey’s original pier and jetty were built with double railway tracks and turnable and completed in 1885 at the same time as the new wharf and storage buildings, enabling the unloading and loading of steamers directly from and into railway trucks.  Slate was the primary export, whilst coal, limestone, livestock (cattle, pigs and horses), wheat and potatoes were major imports.  During the First World War the wharf was used as a coal dump and the jetty went out of use.  Both continued to deteriorate after the war.  Beginning in 1962 British Rail entered negotiations to surrender the wharf and jetty to the Crown Estate Commissioners and Tywyn Urban District Council, together with a sum to enable the Council to carry out repairs, but there were numerous delays.  In 1965 Mr James Griffiths, the Secretary of State for Wales, intervened and the Council at last acquired the property and began to initiate a number of improvement schemes.  The first work was completed in 1968 and included a new sewage station, underground holding tanks, a sea outfall and public toilets.  The wharf was resurrected with new steel pilings and a wall with concrete coping with ladders and bollards.  A new slipway was added at the western end of the wharf area.  The jetty was found to have been attacked by Teredo worm, the bane of sea-going ships for centuries, and was riddled with holes, meaning that the existing jetty could not be repaired and had to be replaced with a shorter and narrower structure.  Funding was a difficulty, but the Outward Bound Sea School, for whom the jetty was of considerable value, provided 47% of the total cost.  The balance was paid by British Rail Board and the Aberdovey Advertising and Improvements Committee. At the same time the buildings that they used on the wharf were renovated.   The big seafront car park replaced the old rail track that led in to the wharf and on to the jetty, and was completed in 1970.  In 1971 the information centre for the Snowdonia National Park was built on the wharf, paid for by a grant from the National Parks Commission and a new clubhouse was built for the Dovey Sailing Club , which also opened in 1971.

Thanks to Sierd Jan Tuistra for the information that the photograph, as opposed to the postcard, probably dates to before 1923.  He points out that the low wagon on the wharf has the livery of the Cambrian Railways: CAM [logo] RYS and that Cambrian Railways was acquired by the Great Western Railway in 1923, after which all rolling stock was quickly painted over in GWR livery.

The promenade looks brand new in this photograph, but I have been unable to find out when it was actually created.  The road is empty except for three men with bicycles and a couple of pedestrians.  The road was metalled sometime during or after 1895, when the Council Surveyor purchased a cargo of broken limestone for metalling the streets.   Up against the jetty are sailing boats together with a steamer with smoke issuing from its funnel, giving the peaceful village scene a slightly industrial air.  Beneath the Pen Y Bryn shelter, erected in 1897, a large building looms over the houses of Seaview Terrace, just visible at far right of my recent photograph.  This was a school, the subject of vintage postcard #24, now converted to residential use.

The above photograph shows the view from a similar viewpoint on November 29th 2019.  The most obvious difference is the presence of parked vehicles, and lots of them.  On the day I took the photo there were fishing vessels in the bay, but of a very different order from the ones in the postcard:

Fishing boats in the bay at Aberdovey

The postcard, numbered A0105 was produced by E.T.W. Dennis and Sons Ltd of Scarborough and is unused.  The printing and publishing company was established in 1870 and began to mass-produce postcards in 1894.  Sadly, the company’s pre-war records were destroyed in a bombing raid in 1941.  From 1955 all postcards beginning with the letter A and the number 01 had Aberdovey as their subject matter, but many of the images used predate this time, and this particular photograph certainly predates the 1950s. The firm closed in 2000.

Vintage Postcard #10: Aberdovey from the Island

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Although the postcard is entitled Aberdovey from the Island, I assume that this was taken from Ynyslas rather than a sandbank, because the tide is pretty high. Ynys means island, so perhaps that is the source of the postcard’s title.  It’s another gorgeous photograph. That single sail Aberdovey to Ynyslas ferry boat is a think of real beauty, and the placement of fractionally off-centre is sheer genius.

The following two were taken in February 2019 from the beach at Ynyslas.  Although today there are some more buildings visible on the hill, it is actually surprising how few new additions have been built.  The 1960s developments at the top of Copper Hill Street were a commercial decision and were probably good for Aberdovey’s future, as was the car park on the sea front, but it is notable that development has, for the most part, been kept under control.

 

Aberdovey from Ynyslas

The postmark is dated 26th August 1915, and was sent from Aberdovey.  The stamp shows George V (who reigned 1911 – 1936) and is known as a “½d Green,” first issued on 1st January 1912.  A frustration is that the postcard manufacturer is Gwilym Williams, and I have been unable to find out anything about him.  Do let me know if you have any information.

Another frustration is that the handwriting is, for me, almost completely undecipherable.  In the address, the first line appears to be Chetwynd but the town/village took me ages to work out (it’s West Malvern) and the message eludes me completely.  I suppose that as I (and presumably others) have become more dependent upon email and word processors, deciphering handwriting is much less of an everyday task.

This appears to be the house to which the postcard was sent:

Vintage Postcards #9: A busy Sea View Terrace

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Sea View Terrace

An exceptionally engaging view of Aberdovey.  It has much more of an intimate and lively feel to it than most vintage postcards, which are usually unnaturally empty of any signs of life. It is surprising how few vintage postcards show busy scenes with lots of people, apart from later beach scenes.  I always wonder how the photographers managed to persuade people to stay out of camera shot.  The Marie Celeste approach to postcard photography. This example, with women and children in the foreground, is particularly novel.

The building on the far left is the Dovey Inn, which was first built in 1729 by Athelstan Owen, of the Ynysymanegwyn estate in Tywyn (about which I have posted here), and will have been there throughout the lives of all these women.  What I particularly like about this photograph is not only the impression of very focused activity, but the sense that these are confident women who are heading firmly towards, or from, a particular location.   Given the smartly dressed children in the background and the men in the distance, I initially wondered if they were not heading away from church attendance.  Still, if that were the case it seems odd that they were not in family units.  Another postcard mystery!

View from the Dyfi Inn along Sea View Terrace, November 2019

The postcard was unused, so I don’t have a date, but in his book Picturesque Dyfi Valley, Gwyn Briwnant Jones shows the same photograph and it is post-marked 1921. I’m not an expert on early 20th Century fashion but that date is consistent with these outfits, a style popular in the pre-First World War years, probably in the 1910s. Skirts are long, but above the ankle, and hats are favoured.

The back of the card credits the postcard producer simply as “Gwilym Williams, Aberdovey.”  If anyone knows something about him, please let me know because he is responsible for quite a few Aberdovey postcards and I have been unable to discover anything at all about him.

 

Vintage Postcards #8: Penhelig

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A crisp, sharp photograph of Penhelig Terrace and the row of houses beyond, a postcard produced by Judges Ltd of Hastings (postcard no.14818).  The memorial park, about which I have posted, had not been established and the ground that it now occupies looks curiously empty and rather desolate.  The roofs and gardens of Penhelig Terrace are shown in the foreground.  The 1864 railway runs past Penhelig Terrace, which was built on spoil from the excavation of the tunnels, one of which is clearly visible here.  A footpath appears to run over the top of the hill, over the tunnel entrance.  Everything looks so crisp and manicured.

The card is unusued and unmarked, so there is no stamp or postmark data to help with a date.  Even though Judge’s is still going in the guise of  Judge Sampson, and this postcard is in their archive, there is no information listed about it.  Judge’s Ltd was established in 1902 in Hastings by photographer Fred Judge, who bought an existing photography business to enter the poscard trade when postcards were accepted by the Post Office in the same year.  His business evolved from a focus on photographic comissions to  the publication of postcards the following year.  This strand of the business was so successful that in 1910 they moved into wholsesale postcard production, appointing agents all over Britain  to sell postcards. In 1927 new premises were built to enable the expansion of the company, with additonal branches established at Ludgate Hill, the West Country and the Lake District in order to facilitiate the distribution of a wide range postcards featuring new resorts and rural areas.  The EdinPhoto website says that postcards began to be numbered after 1906, starting with 50 and going up to 31782.   A history of Judge’s by Judge Sampson is available on the Wayback Machine website.

The row of houses behind the memorial park to the right of Penhelig Terrace on the main road through Aberdovey has not changed much since the above postcard.

The row of houses behind the memorial park to the right of Penhelig Terrace on the A493.

Penherlig Terrace seen from Penhelig beach:

Vintage Postcards #7: Aberdovey Parade in 1905

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This scene shows the stretch of Aberdovey that runs in front of St Peter’s Church and beyond.  There is a handwritten note that reads “Sept 15 1905” that was presumably written by whoever purchased it, although it was not used for a message and was never posted.  Perhaps it was a souvenir for a postcard album. Small boats are pulled up on the beach or floating in the estuary, and nets are hung out to dry on structures embedded in the sand.  The church had been standing for 63 years. The mature trees in the churchyard have been removed, but the church is flanked by earlier buildings that still stand.  Two large buildings shown above the village in the postcard are now painted white.  All are visible in the two present-day photographs below, which show the same stretch of houses.  The first is seen from a very similar point on the wharf at Aberdovey, taken in November 2019, the other from the beach at Ynyslas in February 2019.

This is the same view in 1902:

In this scene taken from the same viewpoint, the foreshore is dominated by the schooner Sarah Davies, 1902. Source: Gwyn Briwnant Jones, Picturesque Aberdovey: A Collection of 20th Century Postcard Views. Gomer 2000.

The card was printed using the autochrom technique, more properly Autochrome Luimière, patented in 1903 and used screen plates to produce layers of colour to create naturalistic results.  There’s a good description of how it works, with some excellent examples, on the National Science and Media Museum blog. It was an expensive method of printing, and this postcard will have cost more than the more usual monochrome pictures of the period.

The postcard was published by the Peacock Brand, with its superbly exuberant logo, itself owned by the Pictorial Stationary Co. Ltd..  The Pictorial Stationary Co. Ltd. was established in 1897 in London and started publishing postcards in 1902, the year in which postcards were given the go-ahead by the Post Office.  A helpful guideline for stamp  values (inland and international) is printed where the stamp was to be placed.