Small Place So Much Drama

A Memory of Llansilin.

Llansilin should be the setting for a film or TV serial given the dramatic events that have occured there in relatively recent history. My mother was born in Llansilin in the 1920s and regales me with stories of sad deaths - especially of small children - mysterious travellers, the war time plane crash and various romances and liaisons.

Village life nearly a century ago revolved around the magnificent St Silin Church. My grandfather - Edward Allen Hughes - was the parish clerk, the undertaker and bell ringer. He found time to be father to 16 children too, although one died in infancy. His son Bell carried on the family tradition and moved into Bryn Aber after my grandfather died in 1957. After a life-time of devotion to church life and work my grandfather fell out with the church a few years before his death and never recovered from the upset.

The family home was sold on the death of my uncle in 1997 and its new owners made considerable improvements to modernise the property which stands by the village fountain.

It is a lovely village to go back to - which we do on a regular basis to tend graves - but all practical connection is now gone and it appears a much changed community. Llansilin has an historical society but this has no web site which is a shame.

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