Memoir of Julia Loxley

Julia Thomas was born in Llandeilo in a house called Preswylfa on the A40 north of the town. She was born in 1893 and died in 1985; her recollections were recorded by her daughter in 1980 and cover her childhood and early years in Llandeilo up until she went to London for work around the start of the First World War and her life in the city during the war.

My name is Julia Thomas Loxley. I was born in Rhosmaen, Llandeilo, Carmarthenshire, South Wales, on 28 January 1893. Queen Victoria was then seventy-three years old and in the fifty-sixth year of her sixty-three year reign. I was the sixth child in a family of nine children and my parents and older siblings were Victorians. I was almost eight years old when the Queen died and the new Edwardian era was ushered in. I remember the parties that were given for all the children of the town on Victoria’s birthday and also the soldiers in their bright red uniforms going off to the Boer War, but very little of the Queen’s death and the new King’s coronation. London seemed far away from Llandeilo when I was small; however I spent many years there later on.

Llandeilo is a hilly town set on the north bank of the River Towy. The meadows on its banks are wide and are bounded by steep wooded hills. One approaches from the south over a single-span stone bridge. At the top and centre of the town is the 13th century church of St Teilo for whom the town is named. He was a popular saint of the 6th century and there are legends concerning him and an old town on this site. Written record of Llandeilo goes back to the 13th century. Some of our old Thomas family graves are in the churchyard, with the inscriptions still legible, but more recent graves are in a newer Methodist chapel closer to the family home.

In its early stages the town depended on the good or bad luck of the House of Dynevor. There are ruins of an ancient Dynevor Castle and a more recent one stands in Penlan Park on the west side of town that belongs to the Rhys family. Llandeilo had a definite social structure and I remember that we were expected to curtsy whenever the Dynevors would drive by in their carriage. However much we might not like to curtsy we did enjoy the generosity of Lady Dynevor, for she organised the Children’s Friendly Society where we had lots of fun on Saturday afternoons.

There are other castles in the area that were planned as a system of defence for Dynevor. Carreg Cennen is five miles south of the town, reputed to be one of the most dramatically situated in all of Britain. Even today it is in a remote spot and off the beaten track. In talking of Llandeilo and life there it is essential to mention its history, for it was there to be seen in the old buildings, churches, castles and abbeys, and traces of ancient Roman roads. Even as children we were conscious of it being a special place, for we walked all over and revelled in it.

Llandeilo was, and still is to some extent, a prosperous, central market town in a fertile agricultural area. The population was around 1,500 people, much of them landed gentry, many were farmers and business people and there were many tradesmen. There were breweries, black smiths, tinsmiths, bootmakers, a small-scale stocking and glove factory, and weavers and woollen mills all employing local people but basically it was a rural agricultural centre. There was a large cattle and sheep market nearby on Saturdays and a bustling produce – meat dairy and fish – market in town with farm people coming from all over the region. Twice a year there would also be a pleasure fair that was a great treat for all and an older sister of mine remembered the hiring fair held each November. Local youths and girls would go to be hired as labourers or maids by the gentry or farmers.

Home life: chores and recreation

The town itself has a sturdy look for it has many rather plain stone houses on its hilly streets. Our family home was on the main London road between Llandeilo and the village of Rhosmaen, where my father was born. Father’s name was Walter Allen Thomas and he was born in 1860. My mother, Jane Davies, was born in 1857, and had come from a small village called Tycroes. She and Father were married in 1879. Their first home was at Redstone Villa in Rhosmaen, but when I was three months old we moved to Preswylfa Terrace, the two-family dwelling that Father built for us and for his brother Herbert, who had a large family also. When I was born, I was told, Father had to dash out in the deep snow with his sled to fetch the doctor, for in January the weather can be bitterly cold in Wales. Ours were the first two houses built in that area but later there were nine, plus a Sunday School that Father was instrumental in having built there for the local people. He was a stonemason and building contractor as was his father and one of his sons, my brother Alfred. Grandfather had worked on the bridge, so Father said. It was opened to traffic in 1851 and replaced a dangerous old wooden trestle bridge over the Towy. I never knew any of my grandparents, for although they came from the region, they had all died by the time I was born; but we had lots of relatives in town and it seemed as if all the Thomases were related to us. Our ancestors were Welsh, though we had an English grandmother, and we spoke both Welsh and English.

Our house was called Preswylfa, which in Welsh means Resting Place. It was built in 1893 for a growing family and was to remain the family home for over seventy years. It was large and solid, made of stone, plain outside but roomy and comfortable within. There was a large kitchen, pantry, wash-house, big dining-room and parlour downstairs, and four bedrooms upstairs. We had oil lamps or candles for light and coal fires for cooking or warmth in most of the rooms. There was a large garden by the side of the house where the family grew vegetables and flowers and fruit trees. We kept two pigs most of the time and bought dairy products from the farms close by. There was plenty of work to do and we all had our chores. I especially remember helping Father plant the potatoes. He would make the lines of holes in the earth and I followed along with the seeds.

Such large families as ours learned to be industrious and our mother taught us girls to sew, crochet and knit, and mother herself always had a quilt on the go. I can see her now, sitting in her rocking chair with perhaps a child on her lap and a baby in the cradle, that she would rock with her foot, and sing delightful little songs or lullabies as she rocked. She might be knitting the socks and gloves that were always made at home. We would have a dressmaker who would come to stay at the house for perhaps four days at a time, and our boots were made by a man in the town. There was so much material in those dresses and so much ironing to do when our clothes were laundered!

Our dining room was large and besides the big family meals we enjoyed there, it was used for other things. The big table was where we did our homework, or play games such as Ludo or Snakes and Ladders when it was too cold or wet to be outdoors. There was the piano and the table harp in that room, and that is where we sang. The big bookcase stood in there, full with old favourites like Tom Brown’s Schooldays, books by Sir Walter Scott or my special books of poems. The grandfather clock stood tall and ticked away, making a clear sound as it stood on the slate-tiled floor. Father wound the clock faithfully every night; it was a ritual which Tom did later on. The clock was new when father bought it, and I have it still.

The view from the upstairs windows showed the green fields and farmlands that rolled down to the River Towy just two fields away, and also the town. In fine weather when the chores were done, we would gather with the other children from the locality. Sometimes we would play on the swings and see-saws that father made for us in the building yard, or we would play in the road with hoops, skipping ropes, tops or marbles. The fields across the road were wonderful for racing around and often on Saturdays we would walk across the field to the River Towy for a picnic and bathing. The banks were sandy and sloping just there, but some parts of the Towy were rocky and fast-moving, and it is an excellent river for salmon fishing.

Paper-chasing was a favourite game. One of the bigger boys usually would set off across the fields, with a pocket full of paper scraps, and after he was well out of sight, the gang of youngsters would try to follow his trail. We would go for miles, through the fields and over the stiles. Hiking to Carreg Cennen Castle was always a treat, it would take all day for the outing and we would take our food along. It was more than five miles from our house and we passed farms and little villages on the way. It is a magic place, high on a hill. There are dungeons to explore, arrow slits to peer through at the valley below and only the sheep for company. To us children it was both scary and beautiful. There were traces of Roman roads in the area and as we walked about we saw very little traffic, perhaps the ponies and traps of the farmers and local business people.

We had a pony, Bessy, for a while, and Father had a bicycle with very hard tyres. This type of bicycle was referred to as a ‘bone-shaker’ and we all learned to ride on it. The postman and delivery men and many local people had bicycle. The railway came to Llandeilo and was close to us and to town, so we were well able to travel about and the fares were reasonable. Although we lived in a small town we had many connections with the larger cities through business and trade, and many families had relatives who emigrated, and they would return home to visit or retire. We had relatives in South Africa, Australia and the United States. We also had uncles in the ministry in Wales who travelled and would visit.

Holiday traditions and rituals were always an important part of our lives. Christmastime was jolly with goose and plum pudding being especial favourites. The plum pudding would have a silver threepenny piece inside for some lucky person, and such things were always exciting, somehow. We hung up our woollen stockings at the foot of the bed for Father Christmas to fill, and generally had the same things: an apple, an orange, some candy and nuts, and a toy. Birthdays were remembered and we could ask a friend in to tea. I once had a waxen doll and took her to bed as I cherished her so, but her face melted. It was devastating, and oh, how I cried!

Father carried out a unique local custom on New Year’s Day. In order to have luck for the coming year it was necessary for a dark-haired man to be the ‘first-footer’. Father was dark, and he would get up early and go to the neighbours’ front doors, knock and be invited in; he would be the ‘first-footer’, the first person over the threshold in the New Year, thus ensuring a good start for the household. Did we have one, I wonder?

Father was active and involved in the community, but Mother stayed home and took good care of us all. She remained at home partly because she was often not well, but her nature was that of just being Mother. She loved the potted plants she kept in the parlour window. Fuchsias and geraniums were pampered, and they did not grow easily out of doors, although many flowers did well. The daffodil is the national flower and grows profusely everywhere in springtime. Mother had Staffordshire china dogs in the parlour, and lustreware jugs. There were many small pieces of china and some of them were the souvenir gifts that might have been brought from seaside outings or holidays, and many would be inscribed, such as the delicate little goid and white china teacup and saucer that said a gift from Aberystwyth’. The sampler made in 1849 by Jane Thomas, an aunt of Father’s, and done when she was 14, was typical of family treasures that hung in parlours and bedrooms of the day:

From Year to Year while I increase
In stature may I grow in Grace
In Learning and Obedience too
May I thy blessed path pursue
By day and night my steps direct
And soul and body LORD protect
From everything that grieveth thee
Or might unto me hurtful be.

Religious life

Learning verses, especially biblical ones, was a familiar routine to us all, for we were a chapel-going family. Father and his brother were deacons in the Calvinistic Methodist Chapel in town. On Sunday mornings Father walked us all into town for services, dressed in our Sunday best. We went back home for Sunday dinner, perhaps the one meal when we would all sit down together. Mother had been busy getting it ready while we were gone, and it was usually hearty with meat, vegetables and apple pie for dessert. We had no wine or spirits, and tea was the usual drink. In the afternoon the children all went back for Sunday School, and then we came home again for tea, which might be bread and jam, or salads and Welsh cakes. They are delicious little griddle cakes made with currants in them, and quite traditional. Mother made all her bread and cakes and jams, and it was a sizeable amount for all those young appetites. After tea we would go back for choir practice, which we loved, and then came evening service with the grownups. Father sat with the deacons near the minister on the main floor of the chapel. The young people would sit upstairs, and we sat where Father could see us. However, if he dozed off, it was the most thrilling sport to drop little pieces of paper onto the very large hats of the matrons in the congregation below. There always seemed to be a mischievous streak in all of us, and this stands out so well in my memory. Life was orderly and we had discipline, but we were saucy and full of life too. Then after evening service, home again; it was three-quarters of a mile to walk and we went, rain or shine. It did not seem any hardship, we just did it; it was the way of life for most people we knew.

There were wonderful Sunday School outings in the summer. The favourite ones were trips to the seaside, perhaps Tenby, Swansea or Aberystwyth. We would go on the train with Father, armed with a big picnic that Mother had packed, and there would be a goodly crowd of children and some parents and Sunday School teachers. Singing competitions were a stimulating experience for us, and our Sunday School choirs would go off to other towns or villages, or they would come to our chapel to compete. There we sang hymns but we also belonged to another choir that was run by a Mr Davies and his sister from Ffairfach, a village across the bridge. ‘Sweet and Low’ was one of our best songs and we won many competitions with that children’s group. The chapel choirs had an annual competition called Gymanfa Ganu, which is the Assembly or Festival of Sacred Song.

Nobody in our family had an exceptional voice but we participated and gained much from the experience. In later years only Margaret remained really close to the chapel, but Father was very involved in it. The main work of his contracting business was the building of chapels and schools in the area and Capel Newydd, or New Chapel, is the one we are most familiar with as it is the town. It is also a memorial to us, for it is from that roof that Father fell. Bethel is the Sunday School that was built close to our house so that the local children would not have to walk so far and there were enough of us to fill it to the brim. In later years it became the memorial chapel to the adjoining burial ground and that is where our immediate family graves are located. It is a small cemetery, close to where we and Father’s family had been born and were brought up.

As our parents were strict chapel-goers, we were expected to live by the Golden Rule, but there was plenty of room for fun and play in our lives, and we lived in a perfect place for outdoor activity.

The Thomas family

Our family consisted of Mother, Father and nine children, but our little brother Trevor died in 1901 at the age of three. Ethel Mary, the eldest, was born in 1880. When she was five years old she went to Miss McArthur’s Academy for Young Ladies with our cousins Hannah and Margaret Williams. Besides learning ‘the three Rs’, they were taught fine sewing and embroidery, painting and singing, and not least, deportment. Father had great aspirations for his family. Education was considered important and the two children were expected to do well. Ethel went on to be apprenticed to the millinery trade in Llandeilo, then went to Cardiff to work in the trade. She married well, went to live in Ogmore Vale, and had one son, Jack. We loved Ethel, she would come to visit at holiday times, and always bring presents for all the children.

Margaret Jane was the second child, born in 1882, but by the time she went to school there were four children. She went to the National Church School with many of the local children; they all walked the mile together. They had to take a penny every Monday to pay, probably, for school supplies. Margaret stayed home after she was through school; she helped mother in the home and with the children. She was engaged to a career soldier who was posted to India. I remember the material for her wedding dress so well; it was white satin with beads and sequins that were to go on the bodice. Jack, her sweetheart, came home for the wedding, but it was not to be. Mother died of a stroke in 1912 at the age of 55, and Margaret gave up everything to stay at home with Father and the two youngest girls, Louisa, aged 17, and Winfred who was 12. Jack returned to India and eventually did marry, but Margaret never did.

Father died two years later. He had a bad fall from the roof of the chapel he was building, and his recovery was slow. But everyone said he lost heart after Mother died. He was buried on my twenty-first birthday.

Between Margaret and me there were three boys: David, Alfred and Thomas. David did well in school and went to Llandovery College. Father fully expected him to go into teaching. But he dropped out of college, which was a defiant thing to do, and went to work in the engineering rooms of a coal mine not too far from home. It was a bitter blow to Father.

Alfred was born in 1887 and in due course joined Father in the family construction business. He married and had a family of four, and as they lived in Rhosmaen we saw them often. When Alfred and the next brother were in their teens they joined the Territorial Reserves with many others in Llandeilo, mostly for the fellowship, as there was not much to do locally. When the First World War came, they were the first to be called up, even though Alfred had a family with three young children and a baby yet to be born. He was with the 4th Welch Regiment, and was reported missing in action at the Dardanelles in 1915, never to be heard of again, or his fate determined. He was 27 years old.

Thomas had been transferred to the Warwickshire Regiment, and although he was not as unlucky as Alfred, he was badly wounded at Ypres and never fully recovered. He returned to Llandeilo, remained a bachelor and shared the family home with Margaret Jane. Both lived long lives: Tom died in his seventies and Margaret at 84.

Ethel died in 1918, in her thirties, a victim of the influenza epidemic that raged through Britain. Her son Jack Williams lived with his father but came often to our home, although by that time things were very changed for us all. Six members of our family had died, including our parents.

Margaret became our mother and our father, and the house was always open to us all. She took in many people throughout the years: a young couple getting started in life, and a single lady who was left in rather poor circumstances although her family had once been comfortably off. She came to stay just for a short time but the stay turned into years. There were evacuee children from the East End of London during the Second World War, who came to love Margaret and the countryside. Ethel had been very elegant, but Margaret was different: she had been self-sacrificing, but never seemed a martyr. She worked tirelessly at the chapel and Sunday School and I think everyone in town knew Miss Thomas of Preswylfa, or ‘Auntie Mag’, as she was known to so many, both family and friends.

School and apprenticeship

By the time I was ready to go to school there was a new Board School built, closer to our house than the National School that the older children attended. I had thought I would like to be a nurse and Father arranged for me to work in a doctor’s office on Saturdays. One of the things we had to do that I hated, was to help the doctor when he pulled teeth. The farmers would come in for such dental work when they came to market. I remember well having to hold some of the fellows down as there was no anaesthetic.

I also used to help take care of the doctor’s baby and take her out in the pram for walks. I changed my mind before too long and after Board School went as an apprentice to Bradford House which was a haberdashery and women’s outfitting store. Llandeilo had quite a number of similar fine shops and it was the custom for young people not going on to university, into business or service, to be apprentices for three years to learn their trades. Our parents paid a fee for this and we were not paid at all during the three years, so it meant that we lived at home. Ethel was a milliner, and Thomas in the men’s outfitting business at London House. Louisa and I were both at Bradford House.

I did enjoy the experience and made good friends there, particularly Sally Watkins, a farmer’s daughter. We worked six days a week, from nine in the morning until six in the evening. Thursday afternoons the shop was closed, but it was open from nine until eleven on Saturdays in order to catch the farming trade. We had a dress and millinery showroom and were expected to give excellent service. Victorian and Edwardian ladies had elaborate clothes and we sold all manner of trimmings and accessories.

They bought large amounts of materials of all sorts, including the fine Welsh woollens, both for home sewing and for the dressmakers that would visit their homes. When we were through on Saturday nights at eleven it seemed a long walk home to Preswylfa Terrace – it was a mile, but it seemed longer. There were gaslights in town but none as we got closer to home. One night I fell over a drunken farm worker who had stayed to long at the pub, and I was almost scared to death!

After serving the apprenticeship, most of the young people would go to large cities to work, such as Swansea or Cardiff in Wales, or to London, which I did. Mother died in 1912, and it was then that I set off for London with Sally and my cousin Bella.

Julia in London

We went on the train to Paddington Station and then off to lodgings in South Kensington that we had heard about. Armed with references from our employer at Bradford House, we went looking for jobs, or as it was called, ‘cribbing’. I was fortunate and found work in a large department store, Bourne and Hollingsworth on Oxford Street. Sally and Bella were not as lucky and they took jobs in smaller places in Battersea. But Bella gave up and went home – she was too homesick. I joined the Welsh Chapel in Walham Green with Louisa when she came to London later, and we made friends there. Being in London was so interesting. Walking about the city, one could always find fascinating bits of history tucked away on small streets besides the well-known sights. There was entertainment and plenty of good places for meals, but of course our funds were limited.

The department stores in London in the early 1900s often had hostels to accommodate their female employees. Bourne and Hollingsworth had a large hostel in Gower Street called Warwickshire House, that housed up to six hundred women. It had an excellent reputation. I shared a room with another girl from Wales. We had our meals in a large dining room at the store itself, and the food was good. This gave us a chance to make friends and not feel quite so lonely and cut off from home. Of course the room and board was part of our earnings. We had a sitting room at the hostel with a piano and so there was the chance for singing and other recreation. I made friends with a young group interested in going into the slum areas of the east end of London at Wapping, to bring Sunday School classes to the really poor youngsters there. We made tea and served buns and it was really rewarding for the children were remarkably well-behaved and of course they loved having tea with us. The group also went into the dock area to a mission house for dock workers, but I was just not as hardy as the rest. The men were rough and the place was a destitute area, but my companions were dedicated and carried out their good works. They were earnestly trying to bring some hope to people caught in a web of poverty and ill-health through lack of work skills and opportunity. I was impressed with the courage of my young friends although I gave up going with them. I met all sorts of people at that store.

I left it for a while to return to Wales to be with my sister Ethel when Jack was born, but returned to London and worked at another large department store, D. H. Evans. It was also on Oxford Street. This shop was built in 1909 and was quite impressive, for the façade was gleaming white marble and quite ornate. There were the same living arrangements, with a dormitory on Chapel place just around the corner from the store premises, and we ate in the company dining room. A strict dress code was enforced; we had to wear long black dresses with high necklines and long sleeves. Most of us had long hair that was coiled and pinned high on the head. Dressed in coat-tails, the floorwalker was an authority figure who walked around the various departments, watching our every move, it seemed. Service to the customer was the watchword, and if we did not have exactly what was wanted, the floor-walker had to be called. He would then try to order what the customer wished to buy, or make alternative suggestions. It was a men’s and women’s outfitting store mainly, with a fine line of clothing and millinery, but it was also a haberdasher selling all kinds of trimmings and materials. We had all sorts of customers of course in London, and among them were many rich and titled people. All in all it was an interesting world in which to work in those days, when employment opportunities were still limited for girls and women. There was an eleven o’clock curfew at the hostel, and one evening I had been visiting Louisa, who worked at Owles and Beaumont, a department store on Brompton Road, and missed the last bus home. I had to stay at the YWCA that night and give my explanation the following day. It was all very regulated and we were expected to conform, but we were young and enjoyed our free time in London.

Life during wartime

Louisa became ill in 1914 and I took care of her as best I could, but decided she should go back to Wales, where first Ethel took her home as she was on the most direct railway connection, and then later Margaret fetched her from Ethel’s and nursed her at Preswylfa. As Louisa and I went to Paddington Station, she gasped when she saw a newspaper placard announcing the outbreak of war.

Louisa caught pneumonia and died in the family home in 1915 at the age of 20. It was a terrible blow; she was so young and somehow had hardly begun to live. It almost broke Margaret’s heart, especially as Mother and Father had died so recently, within the past three years.

Winifred was still at home, she was fifteen at this time. She was an excellent student and had gone to the County School, which was the new secondary school in Llandeilo. She had done so well that our older brother David had given her a nickname. She had only one Christian name but for effect liked the signature ‘Winifred M. Thomas’, so David dubbed her Winifred Marvel’, and the name stuck. Unfortunately resources were limited with our parents gone, and so she did not get the further education that she merited. This was partly also due of course to the times she lived in. At the age of 17 she also came up to London and was able to get a job in the accounting offices of D.H. Evans, so I was able to watch out for her. She was born in 1900 and was of a newer generation. Her hair was bobbed when she was small, although later she grew it longer again, but she was a modern girl compared to the rest of us, and always thought and acted accordingly. At the age of 18 she married a young Canadian Army officer and went to live in Canada. This of course was at the war’s end.

By this time, besides little Trevor, Mother, Father, Alfred, Ethel and Louisa had died. Margaret and Thomas were living as unmarried brother and sister at Preswylfa, and did so until the 1960s. David lived near Llandeilo with his family, as did Alfred’s widow and their four children. I lived in London throughout the war, and afterwards, but went home as often as I could manage the rail fare.

Life in the city during the war was often frightening, and one experience stands out vividly in my mind. I had gone to Watchnight services on Christmas Eve at St Paul’s Cathedral with some of my colleagues, as we were excuse curfew that night. It was a long walk back to our rooms off Oxford Street. Suddenly a German Zeppelin was overhead. We were terrified, and ran as fast as we could back to Chapel Place.

Life of course went on routinely for us at the shop, but many of us young women worked in canteens for servicemen whenever we could. I worked for British and overseas canteens, serving tea and buns endlessly. I met my future fiancé, Reginald Loxley, in London. He was a member of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders regiment, but was killed at Cambrai in France in 1917. Later I met my future husband, Harry Loxley, Reginald’s brother. Harry had gone to Canada as a young man and enlisted in the Canadian Cavalry when war broke out. He was captured and had been a prisoner-of-war in Germany. He returned as a very sick young man. I met him through the family, and we were engaged, but did not marry until he had recovered, which was in April 1923. I was then 30 years old, and Harry was 32.

In many ways it had been a long 30 years for me, since I had been born into that Victorian family in a small town in South Wales. Life was full of hope in the early days, and we were a close and loving family. Mother was a truly compassionate and warm human being, beloved by her children, husband, and many who knew her. Father was a relatively successful man, active in the community and the chapel, and with high expectations for his large family. Gradually the rays of hope diminished. But in retrospect we appear to have been stereotypes of our time and society. Many people died in their fifties at the turn of the century, as did our parents. Many families lost at least one infant child, as we did. War took its toll, as it always had – disease also. We had unmarried children living at home, as so many Victorian and Edwardian families did. There were nine of us children, but only four produced children of their own. David had two sons and two daughters, Alfred had one son and three daughters, Ethel had a son, and I have one daughter and one son. Only three of these children carried on the Thomas name. There are none of us left in Llandeilo at all now, and the descendants are widely scattered and few in number.

Winifred and I survive; she is 80 years old and lives in Canada, and I am 87 and live in California. We came from the same beginnings but of different generations; I have memories of a Victorian childhood, but Winifred was born an Edwardian. How is it that we are the survivors? So many of us died too soon. Looking into the past can be painful, but joyous memories are sustaining. We should think of our fellow-countryman and namesake, the poet Dylan Thomas, when he bids us:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Interviews recorded by Audrey Loxley Oling.

With thanks to Julia's grandson Simon Loxley for sending us her recollections and photograph.