Trecco Bay

A Memory of Porthcawl.

In 1958/59 my mother-in-law Elsie Pugh has been cleaning the toilets for several years in Trecco Bay together with her husband Albert. My husband Roy Griffiths also worked on the site. We got married in 1960 and went to live in Trecco Bay in 1961. Leslie Joseph owned it and Major Kelly and Tom Evans were the bosses and Ernie Tanner was the tractor driver. His wife was Beryl. The rest of Roy's family worked on the site, Roy's brother Malcolm and Robert Pugh. Robert is the acclaimed welsh actor. I used to spend my holidays as a child in Trecco and I have a photo of myself and my family with Dai Dower (the boxer) and his wife. Noel Palmer was the site photographer and when Ernie's tractor was stuck in the sand and the tide drowned it, Noel took the photograph and it was in his shop window. When Mr Kelly retired all the staff and their families went to his leaving do in Newton. We had a crowd of men who we used to call 'the boys' who stayed in a caravan and lived on what they caught. They had a boat and Robert Pugh was on the boat was when it sank going out of the harbour. Roy and his friend convinced Elsie that you could have a calor gas TV, you could buy them in the gas shop in John Street. Elsie went up to buy one, you can just imagine what she called Roy and his friend. It was all over the site and made a lot of people laugh - Elsie wasn't amused. She had her own back and took Roy's tank off his motorbike and buried it in the sand. One name I remember working with Roy was Mario, I think him and the others were from Rhondda. Noel's family had the shop on the point, it was Palmers shop. Roy was going to work in Plovers Plain, they were knocking down the toilets and when he got there the wall has collapsed and George Harrison was badly injured. Trecco Bay was flattened at the end of 1961, the workers would walk behind the machines and as they were turning the sand up they found a lot of money. As you know if you dropped money in sand it sank. They were wonderful memories. Roy died in 2001 aged 61. I am nearly 70, but still think of those times. The boy who wound Elsie up was working in Trecco as he was training to be a doctor. If I remember rightly, when he passed his exams he got killed in a car accident, but I can't remember his name. The office worker was Elwyn and his wife was called Rose. Rose worked in the Jubilee Club and they had three children, one was Graham. Elwyn had been a tanker captain.