Author Topic: Great Orme Gunsite Memoirs  (Read 93238 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline tonyf

  • Member
  • Posts: 37
Re: Quigg's Great Orme Gunsite Memoirs
« Reply #60 on: April 01, 2011, 10:59:41 am »
Thanks Fester. To elaborate on the Hotpoint party. It involved walking to either the Victorian bus shelter on the West Shore or, if memory serves me, down to the junction with Trinity Ave to catch the bus that used to start from Trinity Church to Llandudno Junction, attend the party while the parents did their own thing. On completion of the party, get the bus back  to town and then walk home. We slept well in those days! That's how it was, either that or no party and worst of all, no present!

Offline Quiggs

  • Ad Free Member
  • *
  • Posts: 497
Re: Quigg's Great Orme Gunsite Memoirs
« Reply #61 on: April 01, 2011, 04:57:31 pm »
Wandering about the area above the large concrete area one day, just below the Marine Drive, I dislodged a large roundish stone, about 2ft. In dia. It gathered speed as it crashed it’s way through the gorse, suddenly it deviated to the right, heading straight for the home of the Suttcliff’s, I was petrified, but just at the last minute it turned to the left and disappeared over the wall onto the concrete. The Suttcliffs had some cages at the rear of their home, where they kept/bred white Mice, the boulder would have demolished them and anyone who walked out of the door. What a fright! I quietly slunk home.

      Christmas time had mixed emotions, as on the one hand we were isolated from any events down in the Town, but on the other there was a community spirit amongst the residents, that I have not experienced since. One Christmas, Mrs Barr, who lived in the Nissen Hut below our house, invited all the children to a party, where we played games such as ducking for apples in a bucket, trying to take a bite out of a home made toffee apple hanging on a piece of string and seeking sweets hidden around, outside and in.
        We spent ages making Christmas decoration from crepe paper and tinsel prior to Christmas eve.  My father made toys for us and they tried to make Christmas as special as they could.

   Frank Tyldsley, a local builder who lived on Llys Helig Drive, just before the Gunsite, invited all the children off the site to his daughters birthday party. She normally wore her hair in a long plaited  pigtail, which came way below her waist, but on the party night it was loose and flowing, right down to her ankles. I thought that it was amazing.     His generosity was much appreciated.  ( For Festers benefit, I found out years later, that he was a Freemason. )    he put on a spread that like that none we had ever seen before.      We played hide and seek around his large house, I found myself in one of the bedrooms and hid in a wardrobe. I must have been in there for ages, because they all came looking for me. Finally Frank himself found me, just as I was about to step out, the base of the wardrobe collapsed.  I don’t suppose he was too impressed, but he said  nothing and sent me back downstairs. We all left the party with a Gift.  Brilliant.


   One day I returned home to find my mother all excited, she had a letter which she kept looking at. When the time came for father to return home from work, she kept looking out of the window for his arrival. When he did arrive there was tears all round.
   We had finally been allocated a new Council House, on the Tre Creuddyn Estate.
An estate that coincidently had been built by Frank Tyldsley.    We went to view it on the Saturday, it was not quite ready, shortly later we moved in. The pavement had not been completed, but one morning two workmen arrived and started laying flagstones. They looked like Laurel and Hardy, one a large bloke and the other small and  slim, but boy could they lay flagstones.  They worked their way down the street and back up the other side, you could roller skate along the pavement and hardly feel the joins. Brilliant.      A while later some workmen arrived with a truck full of lamp standards, yep! You guessed it, they dug up the pavement to lay cables and erect the lamp posts. The pavements were never the same again. I think it’s called Council Planning!

       My carefree life changed after that,      I started working as a carry out boy for the Co-Op butchers shop, which is the little shop next to the Computer shop, by the traffic lights on Trinity Ave. It’s currently an Antique Shop.
     Later that year I started in John Bright’s Grammar School, time to get my head down and get stuck in.

   
   I don’t regret my time on the Gunsite, they were happy care free times for me,       I think my parents probably saw it in a different light. But it taught me to appreciate what you’ve got and to be self sufficient.
      I’ve always seen my father as a good provider, he taught me many things as a child on the Gunsite, such as how to ’fish’ and gut the catch, rake Crabs from under the rocks, to shoot a Rifle and 12 Bore Shotgun, to shoot  or snare rabbits, then gut and skin them. Stalk Duck up the Conway River, then pluck and prepare them. 
   I often wonder if some Major Disaster strikes the Earth, how many people would cope with having to catch their food, instead of going to a supermarket, or if the squeamish could skin and butcher a Goat ?  A rabbit even.
      
   Later, when I was 14. I exchanged a small steam train, an electric train and some tracks for a B.S.A. three wheeler car, that required renovating. It was from a guy down the Rd. and with help from friends pushed it home. I returned for the engine, only to find it in bits in an old tin bath.
   I dragged it home and showed it to dad.  He told me to clean and lightly oil all the parts. That done he showed me which parts to start putting together, that done, the next parts and so on. I eventually I completed the build, one or two small errors on the way, but HEY! I did it.    I’ve built many others since. 

   I trust that I’ve given the reader a taste of life, during the war and my times as a Squatter on the Gunsite, with all it’s trials and tribulations.       The incidents described do not follow a strict chronological sequence but they all happened.         There must have been many other incidents during my five years there, but sixty-one years on, the memory is not what it was.


      On reviewing my times there, I’ve amazed myself at the difference between my youth and to-days cotton wool protected, scared of litigation society.
    Hey, you have to take responsibility for your own actions, to watch for dangers and problems, then deal with them. If it goes wrong it’s maybe your fault, not always someone else’s


               FIN.
Dictum Meum Pactum


Offline DaveR

  • Administrator
  • Posts: 13712
Re: Quigg's Great Orme Gunsite Memoirs
« Reply #62 on: April 01, 2011, 05:14:58 pm »
They were very interesting to read, Quiggs, thank you for taking the time to put them on the Forum.  $thanx$

Offline suepp

  • Ad Free Member
  • *
  • Posts: 720
Re: Quigg's Great Orme Gunsite Memoirs
« Reply #63 on: April 01, 2011, 05:22:41 pm »
yes thank you, both Quiggs and Tonyf really enjoyed reading them $thanx$

Yorkie

  • Guest
Re: Quigg's Great Orme Gunsite Memoirs
« Reply #64 on: April 01, 2011, 05:27:54 pm »
Thanks for an interesting story.  It brought back lots of memories for me from wartime and the years after.   Maybe I will put my memories down in writing sometime.   Thanks. &well&  and  $thanx$ a 1,000,000

Offline Hugo

  • Management board member
  • *
  • Posts: 13885
Re: Quigg's Great Orme Gunsite Memoirs
« Reply #65 on: April 01, 2011, 06:03:13 pm »
I've really enjoyed reading about life on the Gunsite, if any more memories come to light please jot them down.   Life was so very different in those days, we all had nothing but it makes you appreciate what you do have now.
I was driving on the Marine Drive today and took these photos of how it looks now. I can recognise where my cousin Peggy Whittle and Uncle Bobby Sam and Aunty Mary lived because I have memories of going to visit them when I was very young.  I think that I can recognise where Tonyf lived too.
Quiggs, when you moved from the gunsite, did you move to Ffordd Dwyfor?

Offline tonyf

  • Member
  • Posts: 37
Re: Quigg's Great Orme Gunsite Memoirs
« Reply #66 on: April 01, 2011, 06:48:14 pm »
Thanks Hugo, my house was further to the left and now has a millionaires house on it, a fact that will come out in my next instalment when I came across the bloke that lived in it. Meanwhile I'm going to attempt to upload a photo of my house being built by the army 1940/41 so stay tuned!
 And Quiggs, sorry to see you finish, it's like losing an old friend. We're in touch and we've promised to meet up some time soon when I'm next home for a beer and a reminisce

Offline Fester

  • Ad Free Member.
  • *
  • Posts: 6660
  • El Baldito
Re: Quigg's Great Orme Gunsite Memoirs
« Reply #67 on: April 01, 2011, 07:08:25 pm »
I like beer too Tony F?  Can I come?
Also... if it was imperative that all historical accounts had to match exactly, then there would only be one history book in the library.

Mr Quiggs, don't let those brain cells relax just yet.. I reckon those memory banks are not fully exhausted.

After all, the gypsy incident triggered of another tale didn't it? (another evocative one too) ..so who knows whats lurking in that grey matter.
Fester...
- Semper in Excretum, Sole Profundum Variat -

Offline tonyf

  • Member
  • Posts: 37
Re: Quigg's Great Orme Gunsite Memoirs
« Reply #68 on: April 01, 2011, 07:26:05 pm »
Not a problem Hugo as long as you forgive me for my Mother throwing water at you!

Offline Fester

  • Ad Free Member.
  • *
  • Posts: 6660
  • El Baldito
Re: Quigg's Great Orme Gunsite Memoirs
« Reply #69 on: April 01, 2011, 07:30:09 pm »
???
Fester...
- Semper in Excretum, Sole Profundum Variat -

Offline DaveR

  • Administrator
  • Posts: 13712
Re: Quigg's Great Orme Gunsite Memoirs
« Reply #70 on: April 01, 2011, 07:34:36 pm »
TonyF has kindly emailed me a pic to show everyone. You can click on the pic to see a larger version:

[smg id=2396]

"This is my house the 'Nook' being built 1940/41. The OP at the far left was the Gordon's place with the metal covers over the windows as remembered by Quiggs."

Offline Ian

  • Administrator
  • Posts: 8949
Re: Great Orme Gunsite Memoirs
« Reply #71 on: April 02, 2011, 08:54:12 am »
This topic seems to have struck a chord with everyone.  The idea of others contributing memories in the same way about Llandudno and the area seems an excellent suggestion. and I might rename this topic to make it more general and inclusive.  Thanks to both of you for such a great addition to the forum.
Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.  ― Michel de Montaigne

Si hoc legere scis, nimis eruditionis habes.

Offline white rabbit

  • Member
  • Posts: 611
  • I'm late, I'm late!
Re: Great Orme Gunsite Memoirs
« Reply #72 on: April 02, 2011, 11:05:07 am »
I've really enjoyed reading these stories - please keep it up

Offline tonyf

  • Member
  • Posts: 37
Re: Great Orme Gunsite Memoirs
« Reply #73 on: April 02, 2011, 01:53:31 pm »
I think what Ian has suggested is a great idea, to have other peoples experiences and especially us older ones would give the younger members of the forum an insight to how we lived and really speaking 'managed' All I can say is 'I had a happy childhood' that I believe has shaped me as I am today. On that note I will submit my final instalment and hope that others will take up the baton and give us their experiences of life in Llandudno. Here goes:
Eventually at age around 4 I got a large 3 wheeler bike which I used to ride into town following my mother to work. Thinking about it now, it was a heck of a way for a young boy on a 3 wheeler with no gears; this must have been where I got my riding bug and determination. I remember one day cycling home head down struggling against the wind (which as anyone from Llandudno would know, is always windy!) along Abbey road shouting at my mother to ‘wait for me’ when I ran into the back of a parked car and went headlong into the boot. My mother of course, had to stop for me when the owners came out to comfort me! Never mind, I survived to cycle another day which I’m still doing to this day an average of 15 miles a day to and from work in the Dockyard at Portsmouth! If we walked, I’d always pester my mother to let me go into the grounds of Loretta College as it was then, and stare up at the at the statue of Mary. For some reason I was fascinated by this. Is it still there? 
I have wondered in the past about a boy of similar age to me who lived in the last house on what they now call millionaires row before the new ones were built post 1960s. Their garden butted up to the field behind the Nook. He used to come down and I’d meet him at the fence but for some reason our respective mothers used to call us back, there must have been some sort of prejudice even then, they were rich, we were poor and I suppose they thought we were rough being  squatters! Well you would these days too wouldn’t you? Finally, when I was 6, a man from the Council came and offered us a flat on the Council estate in Llandudno, I remember it well, I didn’t want to go but I believe we all had to. We ended up at 14 Ffordd Penrhyn, luxury, hot water, bath, flushing toilet etc…After a while we swapped with the people upstairs in the top floor flat No 18 for some reason, though thinking about it the woman upstairs in the middle flat, Mrs Jones had a son who was a bit odd and sang loudly in the bath that got on my mother’s nerves. Our new flat was number 18, not a good move as far as I was concerned because I had to fetch the coal from the shed up three stories of stone steps! Again, I suppose it did me good in the long run.
The End

Offline Hugo

  • Management board member
  • *
  • Posts: 13885
Re: Great Orme Gunsite Memoirs
« Reply #74 on: April 05, 2011, 03:06:52 pm »
Is this the area where you lived on the Gunsite Tony?     I remember buildings being on the Gunsite but cannot remember what most of them looked like apart from my Uncle Bob's and cousin Peggy Whittle as I did go inside them a few times.