A Picture from Australia

We all know that the internet has made the world a smaller place. The Society’s website is now visited by many people but imagine our amazement when we received an email from a former Llanishen resident now living in Tasmania!

She is now Betty Charles but her name was previously Betty Galpin.

Betty writes:  “I attended Llanishen Church School in the 1930s and 1940s and went on to Cathays High School. I remember so well the school and teachers and the village. The glorious coal fires in the kindergarten room were very welcome and our wet outdoor garments were put near it to dry by the time we went home. That room was used as the local library after school hours. I lived in Thornhill Road and used to take a short cut to school across the fields through Wride’s farm (Blue House Farm) on to Ty Glas Road and we worked out where we could shelter if there was an air raid during the journey”.

“I remember lots of trips we made to The Dingle, now Parc Cefn Onn, and also the packets of stale cakes we got for a penny each day at the cake shop opposite the church after school, near a chemist’s, I believe. We used to swim in Roath Park lake and come out with bites all over us”.

“I remember the air raids in Llanishen. A German plane came down close to the school at one point. It’s a very hazy memory but I recall that it was in the fields behind the school but we as children were kept well away.  It crashed there after a night air raid no doubt and was soon dismantled and removed. We wore coloured tabs and those of a certain colour were those who lived near the school and could run home when the siren rang and the rest of us remained at school in the shelter.”

To our great surprise Betty said she had a photograph of the children in the school wearing gasmasks but she pointed out that it was impossible to identify the children behind the masks! Although we too have such a photograph in our own collection, to our delight we saw that they weren’t identical. In ours the children were about to put the masks on and so it must have been taken just a few minutes earlier. Betty herself is on the left in the front row and her brother Roy is in the middle. The headmaster is Mr Morgan and she thinks among the children will be Rita Reyland and possibly Denzil and Mansel Horrel. She remarks: “I suppose we’re a better looking bunch with our masks on”. We also include the small photo of Betty, minus the mask, in the hope that she may still be recognisable!

Betty is active in the Welsh Society of Southern Tasmania  and describes how on St David’s Day they go up the mountain overlooking Hobart to a stone hut where they build a log fire and, cosily, after coffee and cakes, they sit around it to read Under Milk Wood.