Bill

Bill Edwards 1922-1998

Richard William Edwards, or Bill to his friends.  He lived in number 3 Prospect Place, Tylorstown in the Rhondda Valley. His father was a collier.

Along with many men of his age, he took an active part in World War Two.

Bill was the son of William Edwards. Brought up in Tylorstown. He started work as a collier but only survived for one week. He hated it. He went to work  at the Morgans’ Brothers grocery shop. Shortly after the outbreak of war, he signed up for the R.A.F. hoping to make air-crew. Thankfully, he had poor eye sight. and became a truck driver. He served in North-Africa through the war.  Afterwards, he returned to the shop, after a brief spell working as a bus conductor. He was involved in a terrible bus accident.

He was working as a bus conductor. One day, his bus was returning home along the road that runs from Quaker's Yard towards Pontypridd. The driver approached the corner at Fiddler's Elbow too fast. He tipped the bus over. At the time, my father was sitting on the long back seat of the bus. The bus fell over a ravine. My father flew through the air, straight through the opposite window of the bus. When the bus came to rest, he found that his legs were trapped with his body half way through the bus window. As if that wasn't bad enough, the seat that he had been sitting on housed the bus's battery, which was now leaking acid onto him. Thankfully, the next vehicle travelling on the road that day was carrying a bus full of colliers. They quickly dug him out.

He spent quite a few weeks in hospital after that. Thankfully, no serious damage but for some huge scars running the length of his legs.

After that incident, he returned to work for Mr. And Mrs Morgan at their shop at 181 East Rd. He worked as their assistant for many years, but around 1964 he decided to try to better himself. Now, during his war service, he had picked up two strange but useful skills. He could fix watches and clocks and he could fix radios. Later on, he discovered that the early televisions were very similar to radios. Consequently, our house often had clocks radios and watches in pieces. He applied for a job fixing T.V.s with a local company and got the job. The next day, he handed in his notice at the shop.

Mr. and Mrs. Morgan were really upset as by now, Bill was virtually running the shop. They then told him something very strange. They had decided some time ago to sell the shop to Bill. Bill couldn't understand this as he had so little money. They ignored this and told him that they would loan him enough money to buy the shop. This was simply an offer too good to refuse. The Morgans retired the next April. The day Bill took over he had just a small handful of change to put into the till to provide change to the customers.

He made a tremendous success of the shop and managed to repay the loan in just three years.

As time went by, things got harder and harder for small shops as supermarkets took over. As a result, Bill always worried about the business. He worried about retiring and what he would do with the shop. One day, when he was about 55 a complete stranger came into the shop and offered to buy it from him. When he examined the figures he realised that the offer was so good, he could buy another house outright, take the cruise that he had long dreamed of and still have enough money to finance themselves until his pensions started. Soon after that, Bill and May retired and moved to Penrhys Avenue. Well, they didn't quite retire as soon after, I moved house and then started my own family. For many years Bill painted and decorated my new home and together with May often covered baby-sitting duties.

Bill's birthday cake. (70 I think)

Bill died in 1998.

Two pound weight from Bill and May's shop.

Bill's Kodak Hawkeye camera.

Apparently this was a free gift from a magazine called 'John Bull'

You had to save coupons then send them off for the camera.

That camera sailed with him to Egypt.

One of Bill's wartime photographs.

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May Edwards nee Davies.

May was the last in the line of the Davies family. It consisted of six daughters and one son. They had all been brought up in a tiny, two-up, two-down miners' cottage at 16 Club Row, Blaenllechau.

May

16 Club Row

Admittance Register from Blaenllechau Infants.

Before the war, she had worked 'in service' for a couple living in Cardiff. She had also worked in a grocery store in Ferndale. During the war, she moved to Bristol, where I believe she lived with some of her sisters. I don't know whether they all lived together, but they were very close. At the time, they had a cat which they called Monty, after Field Marshal Montgomery, hero of the battle of El Alamein. They had that cat for years, believing that it was male, then suddenly, one day, it had a kitten. They continued to call the cat Monty though.

She married Bill in January 1946 after his return from Egypt. Friends and family took a collection around Blaenllechau for small quantities of cake ingredients, as the makings of a wedding cake were all still on ration. Afterwards, I believe they lived in London for a while, where Bill worked on demolition sites. They also lived together  for a while in Bristol.
She had met Bill at a dance hall in Ferndale. They continued to love dancing through their lives.

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The Edwards Family

For a few months, I've been taking more of an interest in my family history. This followed being asked to make a presentation to my computer group on how to trace your family tree using the Internet. I'll be honest, at the time, I wasn't that interested, but it appears to have fired a spark. To be quite honest, if I don't write this stuff down, then nobody will. So, here are my findings, the rough with the smooth and the black with the white.

Bill  and May Edwards were married on January 25th, 1946. He had just returned from North Africa. He'd served there as a leading aircraftsman. Most of his duties involved driving trucks. Strange, because when he arrived in Africa, he couldn't drive. He was simply told to get into the truck and drive it.

He drove ammunitions to the planes at dispersal. He also drove the squadron ambulance or as he called it, 'the blood wagon'.

He told many tales, Quite honestly, it sounded like he'd had a great time, and for a boy from the valleys, with no other options than to work in the coal mines, it probably was quite an experience. He told me how he'd stay awake on guard duty by fixing his bayonet to his rifle, then standing with the point just under his chin. That would stop him from falling asleep. He told me of driving in endlessly long convoys, driving very slowly, but not permitted to stop. Then he'd cook himself dinner by placing a tin of corned beef onto the engine cowling of the truck.

He'd met May in a dance-hall in Ferndale just before the war. The two of them were really good dancers. Waltz, quick-step and tango were the dances of their generation. They wrote to each other throughout the war. My father once told me that during a guard duty at night, he'd often look up at the moon and wonder whether May was looking at the very same moon at the same time.

He always wanted to take May back to North Africa to see the sights that he'd seen....but although the opportunity did arise, he never did.

You can find out more about Bill here.

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