NEW BROCHURE FOR 2013

Montessori Centre Wales Brochure2013 from The St Clears Times

St Clears Archives Unite Australian Couple With Lost Link

From the archives - Australian visit. Australian Couple Find Family

COFIO FRANK

Frank Oxenham Willey (Station Master’s Son) With Mrs. Betty Marks and Stella

My father went to St Clears as stationmaster at the end of 1926. We followed in March 1927. We lived in the station house. It had a kitchen a lounge and a pantry, no bathroom. I went to Glasfryn School. I then went to Whitland County School. Living in St Clears is probably the most impressive experience in my life. I had never seen a cow until then living in a terraced house in Port Talbot. By the time I was 10 or eleven I was talking to cows and horses. I loved the feeling of smoothing a cow’s nose. It feels like you are smoothing velvet. We were a long way from the centre of the village at the station. People used to ask, why is the station so far away from the village. The answer is, because it has to be close to the railway. I knew the bus driver Tudor Williams and he used to allow me to ride on the bus down to Pendine or Carmarthen. I have been in the cockle colony to collect money because our lorry driver was too afraid to go there because the women were so tough.

Most of my time was spent in the station. I had friends in the railway hotel and the holly bush. The station had two platforms with oil lamps on posts. As time went on they introduced Tilley lamps. The place was very well lit up with these lamps. One of the signalmen sensed that I wanted to learn about the station. He would always allow me in and let me carry on working the signal box. It isn’t like people imagine you just pull a lever. In the signal box there are bells, there was no gas, no electricity and no water. The bells were worked on wet batteries and a man used to come and fill them every week. Everything was done by code and you had to remember these codes. A certain number of rings controlled traffic to the left and to the right of the station. On one side was the Whitland box and on the other there was Sarnau box. The man in Whitland would ring one; I would tap one to show I was listening. The next ring would be one two three pause one. That was a passenger train stopping at all intermediate stations and could you take it. I had to ring back to accept it.

The station itself took an enormous amount of goods traffic. The horse and dray used to go back and forth from Salmons milk factory all day bringing churns of milk. Some churns even went into passenger trains. I used to wheel two of these seventeen-gallon churns along the platform at the same time. Rabbits, butter even calves used to be sent by passenger train. There were cattle pens on one side of the station and special wagons would be shunted in to take them to Whitland for the mart. My father lived for the railway; he didn’t have time for anything else. One of my jobs was to wheel the coal for the house from the yard. I had to cut old sleepers into kindling sticks.

The station buildings were an artist’s dream. They were small and the shape of them amazed me. It was the view from my window. My father had his own place and there was a booking office and a place for the porters. In the Station area nearly all of the children spoke English. The village was Welsh and what I didn’t like was the fact that the Welsh-speaking children did not speak to me. We used to catch a train to Whitland School every morning and waited with eight or nine boys. They all spoke Welsh and never said a word to me. It put me off the language all together.

Susan my carer told me about your project. Ever since I have known her I have spoken about St. Clears. She likes West Wales because she used to have a caravan down there. She told me that the signal box had been shown on T.V. I thought that the signal box was still there but discovered it had been taken away. I didn’t know that they had a council in St. Clears so I was amazed when I heard that there was a Town Council. I wrote to the clerk Mr. Bowen and now I have a file on St. Clears. I was a clerk and I have a file on all sorts of things including your project.

Comment: Frank heard about our project from his carer after she had seen it broadcast on BBC Wales Today. Frank was the Station Master of St Clears’ son. His childhood at the station has made a lasting impression on him. He eloquently described the station as an artist’s dream and the photographs support this. Frank moved to ‘the countryside’ from a terraced house in Port Talbot and discovered the joys of country life. Frank learned quickly and was soon operating the signal box under the supervision of the signalman. He is still able to remember the codes for signalling. He went on to become a railway clerk himself and travelled all over the U.K. He has kept all of his father’s memorabilia from the G.W.R. railway. Frank is a sprightly 92 years old with an amazing memory. After hearing about his enthusiasm for our project we didn’t hesitate in travelling to his home in Cardiff to interview him. We discovered a man who spends an enormous amount of time on his own save for visits from his carer Susan. He was lively, happy, interesting, extremely down to earth and a pleasure to talk to.

©2010,Alan Evans