People of Conwy: Peter and Liz Lawton
People of Conwy: Peter and Liz Lawton
Peter is a native of Colwyn Bay and Liz has lived there most of her life. Peter, a window cleaner, still cleans windows locally at the age of 81. The business was started by his father and grandfather over 100 years ago. Peter and Liz reminisce about the Colwyn Bay of their youth – its hotels, cinemas and shops, and the old fun fair!
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Transcript – Liz in italics:
… When I was born first of January 38 (1938), I was born at home because Nant y Glyn maternity home wasn’t built then …
… yeah my dad was Sid Lawton, got a job with Duff’s Dairies at West End. So he used to pull the horse round to take the milk …
… then my grandfather and him bought this window cleaning round, and they used to push a hand cart up Bryn y Maen …
… Miss Terry had a house up there, ‘Terry’s Chocolates’; Mr Ditchburn, he bought the rights for … jukeboxes … Yeah … He lived up there … There was lots of wealthy people up there …
… and then there was Mr Hacking, we went to his house … and the window was full of wet batteries all being charged … he had a radio shop up town … where Gilbert Emery’s was, it’s the Clown Around shop I think now …
… next door to there it was LTM butchers after that I think …
… Daniel Allen’s shop … Oh it was a beautiful shop … Sell you a bed, sell you a glass, anything … Peter often says that people came from Chester shopping here … Well yeah, to Woods and places like that …
… Station Road, Glen Charles used to sell his papers from there in a little hand cart … There was Neville’s as well wasn’t there? Neville’s down the bottom … Oh there was Bill Jones the jewellers, Jones the Jewellers that was a posh place … And there were two fur shops … Star … There’s the Maypole … Yeah … which sold butters and cheese, and all that sort of thing … there was the fish shop at the top, Arundales … Arundales, yeah … and then there was Woods, which is now Peacocks/which is Peacocks …
… When we had the window cleaning round, we used to do the Queens Hotel, Old Colwyn; Colwyn Bay Hotel; Mount Stewart; Rhos Abbey … I used to work there
… Colwyn Bay Hotel, they had a little cocktail bar. Mum and Dad, and Charlie Hill, the outfitters, and Ken Neil and his wife, they all used to go there on a Saturday night …
… You know we had the fairground and everywhere to go to didn’t we? ... You know where the station is? Walk down from the station as if you’re going to the beach, well on the right was the fairground … Where the road is now …
… Dodgems, boats … it was, it was a huge pond with electric boats in it, do you remember that? No I don’t remember that. At the far end was where all the dodgem cars were …
… Danny’s slots … Roundabout ... there was a big roundabout … oh the Bobby Horses weren’t it … Yeah … you liked to go on the Bobby Horses didn’t you …
… The Odeon was, was a hell of a cinema that … Oh it was huge, it was a beautiful building … Art Deco … I’m amazed that they were allowed to knock it down …
… Some guy decided to do a protest about something, when they knocked it down, I can’t remember now what it was about … Yeah, it was up on the crane … and he climbed up the crane and he sat on the end and he wouldn’t come off … and of course we could see it from the loft window so we were … we were taking pictures of him [laughter from both].