Footnotes to Former diamond factory, Bangor
FOOTNOTES: Personal recollections
The image on this page shows the top half of an invoice, dated 9 July 1945, to Gerrit Wins (pictured below) at Llys Gwynedd, Liberal Club, Bangor. This was where diamond polishing continued after it moved from the Burton’s shop in High Street. The invoice is from the Diamond Trading Company Ltd (incorporated in the Union of South Africa) of Holborn Viaduct, London, and is for diamonds to the value of almost £10,000 in total.
Hans Wins, Gerrit’s son, recalls how his family fled from Belgium in 1940, as the Nazis invaded. Hans, then aged 10, and brother Leo travelled with their parents to Bordeaux, France, to board a ship to Britain. “We had arrived too late to board the ship at the dock, so my father, clutching his 
‘goods’, hired a motor launch to chase the ship out of the harbour as it headed for the sea. I have vivid memories of being hauled up a rope ladder aboard the ship. After many adventures, the family settled in North Wales.”
The goods were a substantial amount of diamonds, carried in a briefcase. Gerrit Wins (1890-1961) became the only Welsh agent of the Central Selling Organisation, the grouping of the different arms of the De Beers diamond companies. Through the Diamond Trading Co, the CSO allocated (and still does) rough diamonds to a select group of diamond-cutting companies and traders, at diamond sales which were held monthly in the 1940s.