Memories and Anecdotes Tales and stories of people and events past from local raconteurs and researched material Dorothy Hill's Tale Robin Whitchurch's Tale Elijah Price The Grove Fire Boy Scouts in London Pat Summer's Tale Accident at Brynyrhydd The Incomers Tale Steve Jones's Tale Janet Robinson's Tale Christine Forbes Tale   Pat Summers ( nee Williams )  Wartime Memories. I was born in January 1941 at Mill Stores, Three Cocks in Breconshire. so my early years were spent during the Second World War. I was delivered in the middle bedroom by the local Nurse and on a very cold day. I know this because whenever I complained of feeling cold in later years, my Mother would say...'Well .........you were born with cold feet !' My Mother was the shopkeeper at Mill Stores and the family lived above the Shop . My father was away a lot working as an engineer building runways for aeroplanes. Mill Stores was the local village shop, selling groceries. Food rationing played a very important role in feeding families then and Ration books were essential when shopping. My older sister ( by 2 years ) and I were very interested in the shop so Mum used to make up for us our own little, almost miniature, ration packs. I remember eating a small bag of raw bacon and dried prunes. .........delicious! I also remember dried egg in tins, but we always kept chickens so we must have had fresh eggs as well. The road leading to Tregoyd past the Three Cocks Hotel was sealed off with huge bundles of barbed wire and was called the Closed Road ,and this name stuck long after the end of the war. I clearly remember a convoy of American soldiers driving through Three Cocks village The trucks were enormous and there was a lot of shouting and cheering from the locals. The soldiers were throwing things out to us. I remember having chewing gum! It was in long thin strips , unlike the sugar coated tablets we were used to. . After the war we moved from the shop to the Gamekeepers lodge belonging to New Gwernyfed. With about 200 acres of parkland this became Caeronen Farm and is where I spent the rest of my childhood and youth. I remember the very cold winter of 1947 and the enormous snow drifts much taller than us children Gwernyfed was occupied during the war and I think a lot of Ammunition was stored there. Turning parkland into a mixed arable and livestock farm was a huge change. The first crops of corn were amazing. Many strange things were 'dug up' at this time - these being remnants of the war years. . In the farmhouse kitchen we had an Aga cooker set into an old fireplace with a mantel piece about 6 feet high. Some of the findings 'dug up' were proudly displayed with shining brass containers on this shelf. It was a ritual that the brass was regularly polished. It was many years later that my parents were told that they were possibly live shells, ammunition left over from the war !! The mantel piece was never the same without them !