Summer Holidays

A Memory of Penrhyndeudraeth.

1960 - I was only seven then, but I spent every summer until I was eighteen at my grandmother's house in School Street - 'number nine' - strange name for a house but that's what everyone called it.
Every Wednesday (or was it Thursday) afternoon - early closing and Stryd Fawr (High Street) was always this deserted!
The width of Stryd Fawr is staggering - planners had carefully laid out the lower area of the town (probably at the end of the 19th century) in marked contrast to the higgledy collection of homes clinging to the hillside in the upper area (see photo with level crossing gate).
Look at the same photo from 1935; hardly anything had changed. The Royal Oak Hotel - not pub! - is still there, behind the car on the left. My mother (now 90) tells me women never went in there! On the same side of the street, I remember a shoe shop, Canton Bakery and the bank. Every morning (apart from Sunday!) I would wake to the smell of warm fresh bread on its way from oven to shop.
The first shop you can see on the right had become (and still is) a SPAR. Beyond that were the butcher, Pierce's garage, complete with single petrol pump, Mr Paul's newspaper shop and others that I struggle to name.