Ceinwen Thomas

Born Ceinwen Glyn Jones Roberts. Ceinwen after a favourite cousin, Goronwy-Glyn after a Calvinist Methodist chapel founded by my maternal grandparents and Jones as a common given name for all my father's siblings and my siblings too.

Sycamore Farm was a small, 50 acre mixed farm situated across the border between the parishes of Penycae and Cefn. and because of this situation, we had no mains electricity or piped water as both parishes deemed us too far from their centres to spend money on the infrastructure to provide us with these amenities.

Sycamore Farm in my memory was a place where there was always work to be done. We milked some 15 cows, had a flock of about 30 sheep, and kept 10 or 12 pigs as well as hens, ducks and geese. We also had 3 horses and lots of turkeys in the summer, ready to be fattened up for Christmas. That was a time of bloodied fingers and flying feathers as the turkeys and geese were dressed ready for collection on December 23rd.

Sundays were chapel days and chapel played a really major part in our lives. Three services were held: 10.00am, 2.00pm and 6.00pm. In wet weather the wellington boots would be worn to walk to chapel because the farm yard was muddy and messy to walk through before getting to the road. then the road was often running with water with large muddy patches, so the boots were a sensible necessity. But just before getting to the first houses of Penycae village, we would take our boots off and put on the shoes that we carried, so that we had smart footwear for chapel. The wellington boots were hidden deep in a holly hedge to be retrieved and put on again for the walk home.

We were largely self sufficient in foodstuffs - a boring but nutritious menu. We always had home cured ham, always fresh milk, fresh eggs, home grown potatoes and swedes. Spare cockerels and older hens eventually ended up in the pot too. We also churned our own butter. That was quite an effort. We had a wooden churn - a medium sized cask, suspended on a stand so that the handle could be turned to upend the churn, hour after hour (or so it seemed.) Then when little flecks appeared on the small glass "window" in the side of the churn, a little warm water was put in and the churn rocked gently, not turned, so that the butter would "set."

School was Penycae Primary, a red - brick building with a playground on one side labelled "Boys" and a playground the other side labelled " Girls and Infants." The entrance doors were labelled "Boys" and "Girls." The girls had a shed at the end of the playground which contained 3 cubicles - our toilets. Close to the toilets was the Infants building which contained 3 classrooms.

There were 20 or so children in each class as I recall, and in Standard 4 some of us sat the "scholarship" as we called it - since known as the 11+, for entry to the local grammar school in Ruabon. Only 2 of us passed the exam in my year, a boy called Delwyn and me. The other children went to the secondary modern school in Rhos. It was many, many years before I realised the iniquity brought upon girls at that time. The boys grammar school in Ruabon accepted 850 pupils, the girls grammar school next door had room for just 300.

Our music teacher was known as "Lottie". Her real name was Mrs Charlotte Parry and she was a real character. Born and bred in Rhos, the village next door to Penycae, she quickly became the area's main pianist and accompanist and singing teacher. She taught only part - time in the school, teaching the choir, and "O" Level Music. She had a pronounced "gracious" air about her. Stories go down that at various area choir rehearsals where she was the accompanist, she would approach a piano and begin to sit down, expecting someone to put the stool underneath her, (she didn't look behind to check.) And she never wore a coat, she wore a cloak. When presented with a bouquet at concerts, she would pass it backwards, in the full expectation of someone else holding it for her, a bit like royalty.

But I never heard anyone say a bad word about Lottie. She is still revered in Rhos and the area, as a person who gave her all to spreading a love of music. Certainly Rhos and Penycae can boast several people who, thanks to her teaching, became professional musicians. I, like many, many others, owe her an enormous debt.

In the summer of 1956, electricity arrived at Sycamore Farm and piped water arrived soon afterwards. Also in 1956, I left Penycae to go to Aberystwyth University to read Music. And so Ceinwen and Penycae developed along separate paths, though for my part, the principles learned in Sycamore Farm, Penycae and Groes Chapel continue to be the strong stable influences in my life that they always have been.