The Liverpool Welsh ( A happy thread )

[julieoapw]

My father was born in North Wales and so was my grandfather. The latter used to preach in Wales all over Liverpool, Manchester and North Wales every Sunday. Of course, many of the welsh speaking churches have gone now. Like the Irish, the Welsh played a major part in C19 and early C20 Liverpool but sadly, there's no Welsh heritage trail yet, just the Irish one. I'm currently reading a lot about the Welsh in Liverpool as I'm going to do a guided walk on the Scouse Welsh (the Squelch?) on St David's Day.
Julie

[pasha]

llanfairpwllgwyngeggwyndroprllantisiliogogogoch

with a scouse accent

[pasha]

buggedboy is that right?

[Mark R]

There was a large Welsh contingent in Anfield - my family were from there and they had Welsh roots. I believe a lot of the houses were built by Welsh workers.

[taffy]

There was a large Welsh contingent in Anfield - my family were from there and they had Welsh roots. I believe a lot of the houses were built by Welsh workers.

Mark, have a look at the book " Building the Industrial City" edited by Martin Doughty, pub 1986. It has a very interesting chapter on " The Welsh Influence on the Building Industry in Victorian Liverpool". It seems most of the 100,000 houses built in Liverpool in the 19th C were built mainly because of Welsh initiative and enterprise using building materials from North Wales

[Mark R]

Mark, have a look at the book " Building the Industrial City" edited by Martin Doughty, pub 1986. It has a very interesting chapter on " The Welsh Influence on the Building Industry in Victorian Liverpool". It seems most of the 100,000 houses built in Liverpool in the 19th C were built mainly because of Welsh initiative and enterprise using building materials from North Wales

Thanks for that Taffy. I'll have a look for it.

[George]

Mark, have a look at the book " Building the Industrial City" edited by Martin Doughty, pub 1986. It has a very interesting chapter on " The Welsh Influence on the Building Industry in Victorian Liverpool". It seems most of the 100,000 houses built in Liverpool in the 19th C were built mainly because of Welsh initiative and enterprise using building materials from North Wales

Hell! no wonder me house is in a sorry state.

I was under the impression all building materials came from local quarry's in Liverpool,reason being it was cheaper to extract and transport Sandstone from them.

[Howie]

Woman's memories of Second World War impact on North Wales
Sep 1 2009
by Andrew Gilpin, Daily Post

IT was the moment the nation had dreaded: On September 3, 70 years ago, Britain was left with no choice but to declare war on Germany.

Thus began the deadliest military conflict in history in which more than 60 million people were killed. A terrible era which helped shape the modern Britain and Europe of today.

Among the horror came unforgettable tales of courage and stoicism: Dunkirk, the D-Day landings, the Blitz.

When war was declared, its impact on North Wales was immediate. The sky did not fill with enemy planes nor did bombs rain down.

But a pervading sense of fear bordering on panic set in everywhere. And in what proved ? at first ? to be a huge over-reaction, North Wales was swamped with thousands of evacuees pouring in from the Liverpool area.

Most were children, wrenched away from their families, not knowing where they were being sent.

Local people did their bit and helped look after youngsters. Yet many soon went back when the expected bomb attacks on Liverpool failed initially to materialise.

Laurette Danson MBE, a lifelong resident of Colwyn Bay, has good reason to be upset.

?Many evacuees went back to Liverpool. It was very sad because they went back to the bombing,? she says. ?We had five evacuees in our house ? five of the little things. A brother and a sister were taken back by their mother and father and we heard that they were killed by a bomb a fortnight after returning.

?The youngest of the five children was seven, and there was a little girl of five. She looked like butter wouldn?t melt in her mouth but she ran the gang. Bless her, she went back and she was killed.

?The parents, they sent these children so they would be safe but then there are sitting at home and thinking ?I want them back and we will all be together?. They either came or sent for them to go back and back they went.?

Mrs Danson, now in her 80s and still an active member of Colwyn Bay Town Council, can clearly remember the day war broke out.

?My parents and my elder sister and I were sitting in our drawing room listening to the wireless. Mr Chamberlain came on and he said that the country was at war. It was an awful thing to hear this country was at war. My parents, they were even more distressed. I was a teenager at the time.

?This town was inundated with evacuees from Liverpool and the people of Colwyn Bay received them into their homes. It was the law of the land and you had to take them in.

?They sent trainload after trainload of children coming in. My sister and I went along and met the trains and helped take the little ones to people?s houses,? recalls Mrs Danson.

Months later, as the bombs started to fall on Liverpool, she looked across the sea to a city on fire.

Then there were the little things you would notice ? for instance, iron railings around houses taken away to be smelted down for ammunition.

Amid the gloom was a ray of sunshine. Soldier Anthony Danson was stationed nearby and was befriended by her family. She got on well with him and he became her future husband with whom she had four children.

A sense of defiance in the face of evil has never left Mrs Danson.

?This was our land. It was awful, but we were all very patriotic. That was the wonderful part about it, we were as one. Sadly I don?t see it today,? she says.

?We all stood together to protect this land and it meant something to us, Britain. It didn?t matter whether you were Liberal or Labour, you stood together.?

Major Basil Heaton, farmer of the Rhual estate near Mold, played a key role in the Normandy landings on D-Day in 1944.

He was the first off his landing craft on Gold Beach amid sniping and machine gun fire from defending Germans. It was the start of a long, exhausting but successful day in which his men helped secure the beachhead.

But five years earlier, Major Heaton, now 85, was a schoolboy in his mid teens. He was back home from boarding school enjoying a summer holiday on September 3.

?I remember it quite clearly. It was a lovely, sunny day. We heard the announcement in the library. We all said good Lord, we were frightened the bombs would come straight down.

?That afternoon, my father and mother started packing. My father went back to the Royal Navy in Liverpool, from which he had retired.

?My mother went to Prestatyn to command a company of the Woman?s Auxiliary Territorial Service and my brother and I were rather left on our own. We were at home because it was the summer holidays but we then returned to boarding school.

?Within a few days or weeks around eight to 10 evacuees arrived from Liverpool, although I think they went back after a few weeks. They didn?t like it at all. They weren?t country people, they wanted to go back.?

But the Heatons? large farmhouse wasn?t left alone for long. It soon become a land army hostel with Army girls living there for the rest of the war ?taking over half the house,? recalls Major Heaton.

?I had no doubt I would follow them. When I left school I joined up straightaway. I felt positive about it. It had to be done. The country pulled together. Whether it would pull together now I don?t know. There was a terrific feeling of comradeship.?

Derrick Pratt, a North Wales historian now living in Welsh Frankton, grew up in Wrexham.

His first memory of the war as a youngster of 12 is that of his father leaving and going off to fight.

His dad was wounded in the arm during the D-day landings, but at least he survived, many school pupils were to lose their father in the fighting.

The Wrexham area was relatively unscathed but the fear was still strong, and Mr Pratt recalls how some would leave their homes to go out into open countryside to sleep under the hedgerows at night, where they believed they would be safer.

?I became the man of the household and had to cope with official instructions ? stuff that came through the letterbox on how to make your house gas proof, and how to strengthen bedroom ceilings.

?It was completely unrealistic. There was great joy when we got our own gas masks, but we had a lot of problems with the baby gas mask for my younger brother.

?I learned to dig for victory in the school gardens, and everybody had allotments. The back gardens were dug up and I remember planting out our back garden.?

Mr Pratt helped out building an air raid shelter near his home. We didn?t have a wheelbarrow of our own so I sawed my sister?s pram into half and used it to move the bricks from a cottage demolished in Market Street, Wrexham. In the end we only used it a couple of times.?

Looking back on a conflict which began 70 years ago now, Derrick Pratt expresses some surprise that we managed to win.

?We had a First World War mentality,? he says. ?It took a long time to get our act together.?

Perhaps it was, in the words of Roosevelt?s secretary of state Cordell Hull, the British ?indomitable spirit? which ultimately ensured our victory.

Source: Daily Post North Wales

[taffy]

Hell! no wonder me house is in a sorry state.

I was under the impression all building materials came from local quarry's in Liverpool,reason being it was cheaper to extract and transport Sandstone from them.

Most 19th C property in Liverpool was of course largely built in brick with the odd bit of sandstone for windows and lintels. Much of this brick came from Ruabon.

[kevin]

Much of this brick came from Ruabon.

Poland?
;-)

[az_gila]

Poland?
;-)

This BBC Liverpool Welsh story response says Buckley, near Mold -

In Liverpool a lot of the older buildings are made from
Welsh bricks and tiles. Mainly from Buckley. The Bricks were made in Buckley,
then shipped to Liverpool, in some cases sent by rail. You can tell by the red
brick and the print on bricks. As a proud Buckley mon, it's always nice to see
where my hometown bricks went.

[taffy]

My father was born in North Wales and so was my grandfather. The latter used to preach in Wales all over Liverpool, Manchester and North Wales every Sunday. Of course, many of the welsh speaking churches have gone now. Like the Irish, the Welsh played a major part in C19 and early C20 Liverpool but sadly, there's no Welsh heritage trail yet, just the Irish one. I'm currently reading a lot about the Welsh in Liverpool as I'm going to do a guided walk on the Scouse Welsh (the Squelch?) on St David's Day.
Julie

Julie have you read the books by Prof D Ben Rees on the Welsh of Merseyside. Worth a read if you haven't

[julieoapw]

Yes, I have one and have borrowed another one from the library. I've also heard him speak a couple of times and he's very interesting. Turns out he know my grandfather well. That book that you mentioned about Industrial Cities is also good although so far have only been able to read it in the reference library. Thanks for the tips.

Julie have you read the books by Prof D Ben Rees on the Welsh of Merseyside. Worth a read if you haven't

[Waterways]

My father was born in North Wales and so was my grandfather. The latter used to preach in Wales all over Liverpool, Manchester and North Wales every Sunday. Of course, many of the welsh speaking churches have gone now. Like the Irish, the Welsh played a major part in C19 and early C20 Liverpool but sadly, there's no Welsh heritage trail yet, just the Irish one. I'm currently reading a lot about the Welsh in Liverpool as I'm going to do a guided walk on the Scouse Welsh (the Squelch?) on St David's Day.
Julie

1/3 of the churches in Toxteth were Welsh of some kind. Look at this big beauty. "Toxteth Cathedral". Rotting away:





http://www.toxteth.net/places/liverp...terian%202.htm

[Howie]

www.liverpool-welsh.com