Thomas Edgar Morris

Twm (second from right) with siblings Noel, Bonnie, Katie and Jack

Thomas Edgar Morris was born at Garregwen, Morfa Bychan, Porthmadog, on the 4^th of December 1921. He was the eldest of the five children of Edward Edgar and Maggie Morris, the others being Jack, Katie, Bonnie and Noel. Edward and Maggie had not long been married and they were living with Maggie’s parents at Garregwen.

Twm’s childhood was mostly spent at his ancestral home, Llain, in Bryncroes on the Lleyn Peninsula. At the time Llain was the home of his grandfather, Hugh Thomas Hughes, but the family had lived there since the late 18^th Century at least; his 3x Gt. Grandfather, Thomas Griffith, is known to have resided at Llain after his marriage in the early 1780s. In the early 1930s the family moved when Edward Morris found work as a gamekeeper for the Vaynol Estate, the job taking him to Rhyd Ddu, a tiny village not far from Beddgelert. It was here, at a large Georgian house called Glanrafon, that the children grew into adulthood.

After his schooling was over Twm went to work with his uncle, Morris Roberts, who was in business as a builder and undertaker at Porthmadog. When war broke out in 1939 Twm was working as a trainee undertaker.

Enlisting as Fusilier 4209140 in the 8^th Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers (City of London Regiment) Twm was eventually posted to Italy and saw action at Monte Cassino. It was during this battle that he lost his life on the 16^th of February 1944, at the age of 22.

He has no known grave, but is commemorated on Panel 5 of the Cassino Memorial at the Cassino War Cemetery.

Still kept by the family are two of his last letters home to Edward and Maggie, as well as the telegram advising them he was missing in action. His medals are also safely in the family’s possession.

A short life, but his memory lives on.

Thomas Edgar Morris 1921-1944

Adams Confectioners Barmouth

This little pot, with its elegant green print, once contained meat paste. This was a popular foodstuff at the seaside resorts of Victorian Britain and later, and many of the larger producers were located at some of these resorts. The town of Southport in Lancashire seems to have been the source of most of the meat paste in the country if the number of their pots is anything to go by.

The largest of these producers were Springfield and G. W. Plumtree, both of Southport, and their pots are to be found all over the country. The popularity of collecting antique bottles and its associated pastime of digging them up from old rubbish dumps has turned up literally thousands of these little pots over the last forty years. The Barmouth pot is comparatively rare in the scheme of things.

The confectionery business was founded by Jane Richards Adams at her home in Llys Meirion, South Avenue, Barmouth, in the early years of the 20^th Century. In 1901 Jane was learning her craft in Cheadle, Cheshire, at the confectionery establishment of the Mallalieu sisters, Mary Ellen and Charlotte, and it would have been soon after that she returned to her home town to begin trading. Helping with the business was her sister Gwenfron, both describing themselves as ‘Confectioners & Pastry Cooks.’

The sisters were the daughters of builder and joiner John Adams and his wife Jane. Jane was born in 1877 while Gwenfron was the youngest child, being born in 1889. In 1912 Gwenfron married grocer Thomas Jones and she died at Melbourne House, Barmouth, on the 18^th of October, 1944, aged 55. Jane never married and passed away at the age of 74 at Hillside Nursing Home in Faversham, Kent, on the 11^th of March, 1951.