http://www.homefrontmuseum.co.uk/

Home Front Museum, New Street, Llandudno (2026)

18/06/2026

Today 1940, David Low’s famous cartoon of a defiant British ‘Tommy’ shaking his fist at Luftwaffe planes with the caption “Very well, alone” appeared in the Evening Standard.

Meanwhile Winston Churchill delivered one of his most famous speeches to Parliament today 1940 when he said "If the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say: This was their finest hour ".

18/06/2026

Remembering Ordinary Seaman Jonathan Gatley of Mowbray Road, Llandudno who died today 1942. In his formative years, Jon attended Ysgol Dyffryn Road and represented the school many times at both football and athletics. After leaving Central School, Jonathan was employed by a local butcher and aged seventeen volunteered for the local battalion of the Home Guard. On turning eighteen, he joined the Royal Navy and had only been in uniform for four months when he died of pneumonia at Plymouth Naval Hospital. His body was repatriated back to his home town and he is buried on the Great Orme.
Jon’s uncle, Harold, died in October 1916 while serving with the Royal Welsh Fusiliers and is buried at Essex Farm Cemetery near Ypres where Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae of the Canadian Army Medical Corps wrote the poem ' In Flanders Fields' in May 1915.
“In Flanders fields the poppies blow, Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly. Scarce heard amid the guns below.”
We Will Remember Them

17/06/2026

Today 1940, the Cunard White Star liner RMS Lancastria, which was being used as a troopship to evacuate British troops, civilians, refugees and nurses, was attacked by German aircraft off St Nazaire, France.
A number of local men were aboard the Lancastria that fateful day. Goronwy Roberts of Llanllyfni was the acting First Officer of the RMS Lancastria and was killed. He had previously been awarded the King's Commendation for Brave Conduct. After the loss of her husband, his wife Kate moved to Llandudno and lived on Vaughan Street.
Another regular crew member of the RMS Lancastria was Purser, Edward Thomas of Old Colwyn. He was fortunate to survive as did Colwyn Bay soldier, Private H G Griffiths. Harold, a former railway clerk of Hillside Road, was serving with the Army Service Corps in Brittany when the order came to evacuate to the port of St Nazaire and await ships to transfer them back to Blighty. As the Lancastria left the French port, Harold Griffiths was on the top deck and saw the Luftwaffe planes approach. He was ordered below decks as the aircraft started to strafe the liner with machine gun rounds and drop high explosive bombs. He recalled that the bomb that hit the ship did so with a “terrific explosion”.
Griffiths went on to describe how he made his escape: “It was a case of every man for himself. I was wearing tennis shoes and was able to negotiate three flights of stairs quickly. When I reached the slanting deck I grabbed a life-belt and jumped into the sea - a drop of about 30 feet. The ship disappeared in less than 30 minutes. As it sank, I saw a group of men on the hull. They were singing ‘Roll out the Barrel’”.
Private Griffiths explained that the German planes continued to circle the stricken ship, repeatedly diving towards the sea and machine gunning those who were struggling for their lives. The Colwyn Bay man was in the sea for three and a half hours before being rescued by a Royal Navy warship. He was covered in oil and had suffered burns to his body.
To this day, it is unclear how many people died when the Lancastria sank, but is thought to be around 4000 souls. It is the greatest disaster in British maritime history. At the time, Winston Churchill ordered the media not to report the terrible loss of life and even now papers relating to the sinking have not been released.
On our memory board at the museum, is a note written by the granddaughter of the ‘Lone Bren Gunner’ – Private W Dean who fired short futile bursts of his light machine gun towards enemy planes from the deck of the Lancastria as she sank.
Photo: © IWM (HU 3323)

16/06/2026

Remembering Able Seaman Edgar Oliver of Clarence Road who died today 1942.
After attending Central School, Edgar joined the Royal Navy and by 1942 was serving aboard the light-cruiser, HMS Hermione. She was torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine in the Mediterranean with eighty-eight hands lost including the Llandudno lad. One of the survivors was Dennis Williams who owned the Cumberland Hotel in Llandudno and was a stalwart of the local Royal Naval Association. He recalled that after the two torpedoes had hit talking on the phone to the main Signals and Wireless Office, many decks below. It was one of the worst moments of his life knowing there was no hope of them being saved as the ship listed more and more. Dennis was in the water for four hours before being picked up and landed in Malta.
We Will Remember Them

15/06/2026

Remembering Serjeant John Evan Williams of Llandudno who was killed in action today 1917. Born in Conwy, the family moved to Lancashire before settling in Llandudno at the turn of the 20th century. John was an upholsterer by trade and a talented footballer, described as “one of the most skilful players in North Wales”. In 1910, John married Edith Davies at Llanrhos Parish Church.
John enlisted into the 14th Battalion of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers in November 1914 and was killed by shrapnel from an exploding shell while in a trench near Ypres, Belgium. The 35-year-old is buried at Bard Cottage Cemetery.
We Will Remember Them

14/06/2026

This morning, drove a minibus of veterans to the National Memorial Arboretum for a wonderful day out. Always something new to see and poignant favourites to re-visit.

14/06/2026

Egg rationing was introduced in 1941 with an allocation of one shelled egg per person per week. To overcome the shortages, people were encouraged to keep chickens in their gardens or backyards and produce their own eggs. Egg preserving pails were popular at the time as part of the ‘Preserve for Victory’ campaign and used to keep eggs fresher for longer. The eggs were placed in the wire basket within the bucket which was then filled with a liquid mixture of sodium silicate and sterilised water to seal the pores in the shells. These egg preserving pails are on display in the museum.
Later in the war, powdered eggs became available through the American Lease-Lend scheme. One tin was equivalent to a dozen fresh eggs and could be reconstituted by adding water or milk and were available for a fixed price of 1/9. The dried egg tins in the photograph are on display at the museum and are still sealed, containing dried eggs from c. 80 years ago. Anyone fancy an omelette?
Spivs did a roaring trade selling eggs on the black market with country folk often having a surplus of fresh eggs that were sought after by townspeople. Locally, a well-known taxi firm proprietor was prosecuted when Ministry of Food officials stopped his car and found eleven dozen eggs under the floorboards of the vehicle. He was fined £20 and ordered to pay 10 guineas in costs.

13/06/2026

Nice to lead a slightly different walk this week around Pant y wennol and Penrhynside. The latter was nicknamed the ‘Holy City’ on account of the five places of worship within the village. All have now closed along with the village shops and post office, although there are still two pubs.
📷Christine Jones

13/06/2026

Anyone for tea?
From the museum collection is this patriotically decorated wartime Crown Ducal teapot. They were mass produced by Dyson & Horsfall of Preston to replace metal teapots that were collected in the early years of the war purportedly to turn into aircraft.

12/06/2026

Remembering Llandudno military policeman Lance Corporal Fred Reading who died today 1945.
The Reading family were well known in Llandudno having owned a jewellery shop on Mostyn Street since 1883. Fred attended John Bright school before leaving for Jamaica where he worked for six years. He returned to Britain and married Mair Jones in 1938. Fred joined the Corps of Royal Military Police and was sent to France and Belgium as part of the British Expeditionary Force. He was later deployed to the Far East and was captured by the Japanese on the island of Java in March 1942. He was transferred to the notorious Changi Camp on Singapore and then in 1943 sent to a work camp on Borneo which housed many Dutch and British civilian internees as well as allied servicemen.
Conditions were horrific and the Japanese guards barbaric. Prisoners were starved and beaten and medical supplies in the camp hospital were virtually non-existent where surgery was carried out with a stainless steel pen-knife and a pair of blunt scissors. It was to that medical facility that Fred Reading was admitted in May 1945, two days after the war had ended in Europe, with malaria and beriberi. He died just over a month later, a few weeks after his 34th birthday. When the camp was liberated in August 1945 it was discovered that the Japanese had enough drugs, including quinine, to have saved the lives of many of the internees, had they chosen to. Fred is buried at Labuan War Cemetery in East Malaysia. Fred’s twenty-year-old cousin, John, was killed while serving with the RAF in 1941.
As well as being commemorated on Llandudno war memorial, Fred is also listed on Porthmadog war memorial along with his wife Mair. This must be one of the few, if not only, war memorial in Wales commemorating a husband and wife who both died on active service in the Second World War. Mair died while serving with the Auxiliary Territorial Service in Norfolk in 1943 while Fred was incarcerated in the prisoner of war camp. Would he even have known about his wife’s passing?
The epitaph on Fred’s grave, which I was fortunate enough to visit off Borneo, 7000 miles away from north Wales, reads: ‘Your memory hallowed in the land you loved’.
We Will Remember Them

Home Front Museum

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