Nevern In Wales Mid 1950s.

A Memory of Salford.

In the mid 1950s when I was about six or seven years of age my parents took me on a holiday to a farmhouse just outside Nevern, the farm was owned by a couple named Thomas.
They were then from photos I have, probably in their late sixties or so.
I found out many years later that my father had been married before he met my mother and his son from that marriage was evacuated to the Thomas's farm during the second World war and my parents had kept in touch with the couple.
The farm was arable and cattle and I well recall the lovely smell of the mostly green coloured farm machinery that was kept in a hay barn.
I also recall helping to stack stooks of corn in the fields as an old combine harvester cut it and the lovely yellow and black caterpillars on the weeds at the side of the field.
I sometimes went in the barn to look for chickens eggs and it was even then a thrill to find one, they also kept some what I realise now were very unusual ducks, mostly white but the feathers looked like strips of white ribbon and had what resembled cut off ends, these ducks looked very untidy waddling about over the farmyard.
I also recall going on the tractor and trailer taking milk churns up the drive to a road where there was a "churn table" where we left the churns of milk to be collected.
Mr Thomas had what I now realise was a 1940/50s Fordson tractor with the oval section tank over the engine, even now I love the site of one of these beautiful beasts at an agricultural show.
The Thomas's were thinking of moving to a smaller property, I remember going with Mr Thomas on the tractor which had a long trailer down the hill to the village where they were refurbishing a lovely old house that I believe if I remember correctly had a horse mounting stone at the front.
The house had no floor to the upper rooms and we took timber and other things down to the site.

There was a church in Nevern that had a very old yew tree in the churchyard, I well remember seeing the red sap that exuded from the trunk and being told at the time that a monk sat under the tree and told a lie so the tree started to bleed.
This is just one of the stories about that tree which I believe is mentioned on the internet elsewhere.

There was a gymkhana held at a field in Nevern and although I don't recall too much about it I do remember all the colour of the scene and the happy people there.

On the farm a visitor used to come in and his name was Noel as he was born on Christmas day, he helped the Thomas's on the farm, I imagine he was a teenager or thereabouts.

We visited St David's cathedral while we were down that way, the Thomas's took us in their small black car the make of which I don't recall, we also went to a beach that had silver looking sand, it was a holiday that even now I remember with great fondness.
I often think of going back down that way for a visit but most people say not to as the changes and the way things are now would spoil the child memories of a very happy time with the Thomas's and my late parents.
Derek Stocker.
July 2015

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