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Denbighshire / Re: Abergele Old Police Station 1849.
« on: Monday 14 January 19 21:09 GMT (UK) »
I will try to send a private message - I am not too familiar with the facility.
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Denbighshire / Re: Abergele Old Police Station 1849.
« on: Saturday 12 January 19 12:02 GMT (UK) »
I see that there is an aerial photo at https://britainfromabove.org.uk/en/image/WPW040129 (probably the one you mentioned). The one I have in mind was taken from the other direction and shows, albeit too small to be ideal, the police station, and courthouse. The house was part of the same building. If I can track a copy down I will let you have it.
The photo on the internet confirms what my father once told me, namely that the stone retaining wall (which extended somewhat higher than it does now) actually enclosed the prisoners' "exercise yard". It must have been a very small affair but 1849 was not a landmark period for prisoners' rights! The stone steps, which still remain, led directly up to the front door of the house. Access to the police station and court was from the other side, from the sloping access road leading off Chapel Street. At that side there was a yard between the buildings and the public cemetery wall.
I do remember that the living room of the house had a heavy studded wooden door, normally covered by a curtain, at the bottom of the stairs, and this was an access to the cell (or at least the cell block)! On two occasions I remember that we had to move out of the room because a prisoner was being taken in or out. I am sure there must have been some "main" access route to the cell/cells and this was some kind of occasional secondary route, otherwise we would have constantly been moved out of our living room!
The courthouse continued to be used after the police station closed in 1955. It was in 1960 that a new courthouse opened, alongside the new police station. My father retired, still in Abergele, in 1964. But that was not quite the end of our involvement with the Abergele magistrates' court - between 1987 and 1999 I was the magistrates' clerk at several North Wales courts, including Abergele. Sadly it closed, despite being only 40 years old, in 2000, though it is now used by the Abergele Town Council. The police station still operates and after 1961 it was a "Chief Inspector's station" but in the early 1990s things were reorganised and it became a sergeant's station again (there may have been an initial short period when an inspector was in charge), and later (and still now) it became just an "outpost" with mainly a few civilian employees working there.
The houses built on the site of the old police station/courthouse were built by the police authority of the day to house two police families (who were not, under the rules of the time, allowed to live in their own houses, only in houses provided by the police). When the rules changed, all the police force's houses were sold off.
It is good that you managed to trace John Lewis to Caernarfonshire after he retired. Is he the John Lewis, retired police officer, of Penywern, Llanfair Isgaer, who died 21 April 1898? (National Probate Calendar).)
If I can locate the other photograph I will let you have a copy or scan of it.
I hope your winter is not too bleak!
Alan
The photo on the internet confirms what my father once told me, namely that the stone retaining wall (which extended somewhat higher than it does now) actually enclosed the prisoners' "exercise yard". It must have been a very small affair but 1849 was not a landmark period for prisoners' rights! The stone steps, which still remain, led directly up to the front door of the house. Access to the police station and court was from the other side, from the sloping access road leading off Chapel Street. At that side there was a yard between the buildings and the public cemetery wall.
I do remember that the living room of the house had a heavy studded wooden door, normally covered by a curtain, at the bottom of the stairs, and this was an access to the cell (or at least the cell block)! On two occasions I remember that we had to move out of the room because a prisoner was being taken in or out. I am sure there must have been some "main" access route to the cell/cells and this was some kind of occasional secondary route, otherwise we would have constantly been moved out of our living room!
The courthouse continued to be used after the police station closed in 1955. It was in 1960 that a new courthouse opened, alongside the new police station. My father retired, still in Abergele, in 1964. But that was not quite the end of our involvement with the Abergele magistrates' court - between 1987 and 1999 I was the magistrates' clerk at several North Wales courts, including Abergele. Sadly it closed, despite being only 40 years old, in 2000, though it is now used by the Abergele Town Council. The police station still operates and after 1961 it was a "Chief Inspector's station" but in the early 1990s things were reorganised and it became a sergeant's station again (there may have been an initial short period when an inspector was in charge), and later (and still now) it became just an "outpost" with mainly a few civilian employees working there.
The houses built on the site of the old police station/courthouse were built by the police authority of the day to house two police families (who were not, under the rules of the time, allowed to live in their own houses, only in houses provided by the police). When the rules changed, all the police force's houses were sold off.
It is good that you managed to trace John Lewis to Caernarfonshire after he retired. Is he the John Lewis, retired police officer, of Penywern, Llanfair Isgaer, who died 21 April 1898? (National Probate Calendar).)
If I can locate the other photograph I will let you have a copy or scan of it.
I hope your winter is not too bleak!
Alan
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Denbighshire / Re: Abergele Old Police Station 1849.
« on: Friday 11 January 19 22:06 GMT (UK) »
Like your husband I have a "connection" to the old building. My family lived in the house between 1953 and 1955 (my father had moved there from Wrexham to be the first Inspector in Abergele for many years) and then it was replaced by a new building in the town with two adjacent inspector's and sergeant's houses. The old house was then occupied by a police constable until about 1964, when everything was demolished and replaced by two rather uninteresting "police houses". I hardly remember living there (I was only 3 when we left) and I have never been able to find a photo of the building, but I have seen an aerial photograph of that part of the town taken in (probably) the 1930s and showing the house/police station and adjoining courthouse (as well as the public cemetery, and the Mynydd Seion chapel and other buildings). I will see if I can track it down. It will take a few days. Alan
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Denbighshire / Re: Abergele Old Police Station 1849.
« on: Friday 11 January 19 11:35 GMT (UK) »
I realise this is an old post but I wonder if Penny ever managed to find a photograph.
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Anglesey / Re: Thomas & Pritchard family early 1800's
« on: Sunday 15 July 12 12:06 BST (UK) »
I don't know how this Thomas family "fits in" to the Melin Bodowyr family but Ann Thomas, born 1823, daughter of John Thomas (wheelwright) and Ellen (Edwards) of Brynsiencyn, married John Owens (born Llanrug) about 1845 and they emigrated to USA in 1855 and settled in Dodgeville, Wisconsin, where Ann died in 1859. I can't find the family in 1841 but they had another daughter Margaret, born 1832, and in 1841 and 1851 she was with Robert Thomas and his wife Jane at Bodowyr and in 1851 she was described as his niece. It looks like John and Ellen had died. They obviously cannot have been the John R. Thomas and Eleanor Pritchard mentioned in this thread last year, so who were they? Perhaps the connection is via Robert's wife Jane Edwards - a sister of Ellen, maybe? Is there a gravestone for John Thomas and Ellen in Llanidan?
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