Joan was born on 2nd October 1924 at 28 Llangyfelach Road in Swansea. Her father was a colliery surface worker, David Edward Locke, and her mother, Sarah, a piano teacher. Joan was their third child: John Kenneth had been born in 1913 and Olive Ena in 1915, so Joan was the baby of the family, nine years younger than Ena.
When Joan was nine years old her mother died. She remembered her mother playing the piano with her beautiful hands, and once she also talked about learning to play herself. Joan described her mother as having had a terrible breakdown, she was lovely, but had become very thin and depressed. This death was a huge blow to Joan. In her last year, when Den was ill upstairs, and she was suffering from early dementia, she would call upstairs, “Are you all right mum?” Sometimes she would realise what she had said, and correct it. Was she remembering caring for her mother seventy years earlier?
Joan would recount memories of her father’s family, the Lockes and Harrises.
On her father’s side of the family were many professional people. She used to say that working in the mines was beneath her father, who was an educated man. Her father’s brother, Uncle Percy, who at 19 years old is listed as being a bookkeeper and clerk to a coal merchant, Joan described as a solicitor and “the black sheep of the family” . He was sent to Canada when he was young and came back having made a fortune. He was now immensely fat, “he had a huge round belly”. Each time he came to visit he brought her a new dress. “They were horrible. I used to think ‘I don’t want to be like you’!” One of her father’s sisters, Auntie Olive was a nursing sister in Swansea Hospital. She was married with children, and Joan played with these “naughty” cousins, they were “like normal children”. Her best friend was her cousin Mollie. Her father’s other sister, Aunt Myfanwy was a Head Mistress. One of Joan’s vivid memories was of her Aunt Myfanwy. She owned a car and would sometimes take Joan for a ride. On one occasion she asked Joan to look under the cushion, and there Joan found what she described as a huge bar of chocolate! What luxury!
Auntie Myfanwy died of dropsy when she was 34 years old.
Her grandfather, John Locke, who died before she was born, had been an accountant. Joan believed that he had been a vicar, but we now know, from census data, that it was her great grandfather, Charles Locke, who was a local Methodist preacher. Her grandfather married into a wealthy family, the Harrises. Her grandmother, Elizabeth Ann was one of ten children. Three great aunts were school mistresses and Joan remembered two uncles, actually her great uncles Tom and Ted, who were solicitors.
Joan often talked about her grandmother, who would invite her to tea and teach her how to speak and behave correctly. Joan would quote her as saying: “You don’t say, ‘I’ve had enough’, you say, ’I have had sufficient, thank you’”; “close the door quietly!”; “sit up straight”. She was very strict. It was she who had described the cousins as “naughty” and compared Joan favourably with them, saying that she was better at shutting doors than her cousins. This training from grandmother stayed with Joan all her life.
Joan had no memories to share about her mother’s family. They lived close by in the area called Mynydd Bach. Did she know them? Her mother was six months pregnant when they married. Did this cause a rift with the Rees family? In fact Joan had very few memories of her childhood years. Den said that she had never talked to him about her early life and thought that she had had a very deprived childhood.
Her father was a colliery worker when Joan was born. He must have been working at the Mynydd Newydd colliery, Ravenshill, the last mine still open in Swansea in 1924. This mine closed in 1933, and employment was hard to find. Times must have been very hard. She said that her father would walk along the canal path to his mother’s house to ask for help with food and money. It was at this time that her mother was very ill, she died in 1934.
Joan went to Brynhyfred School. After leaving school, presumably when she reached 14 years old, she worked in a wallpaper and paint shop, in the work shop cutting up rolls of paper. “I really managed that shop in the end”. She always enjoyed organising things.
In 1939 she wanted to join up as soon as she could, but was only 15 years old when war started. Was this eagerness to join up only to do with the wish to help her country or was it more to do with the poverty, emotional and physical, that she experienced at home? Three important women in her life, her mother, grandmother and Aunt Myfanwy had all died in the preceding 5 years. Her father had married again in 1937 and Joan did not get on at all well with her step mother. She said that her brother Ken made a complete break with the family because of his father’s new wife, who, she said, threw away all reference to Sarah, Joan’s mother, including all her sheet music and photographs. This was a hurt that Joan carried always.
When Joan was old enough she joined the WRAF and trained to be a nurse. The shoe brush that she had been issued with when she joined up was found by us in their shoe-cleaning box after her death. She worked at the RAF medical centre, Credon Hall near Hereford, working in the theatre with the doctors. “You had to close your mind to what you were seeing, torn flesh and body parts, limbs missing”. It was here that she nursed a young cadet who had pneumonia. His name was Dennis Waghorn. When he was well he went back to his training in Madely, which was also near Hereford, so they were able to go out together and romance bloomed. They would go out to local beauty spots when off duty. On one famous occasion they visited Ross on Wye and hired a boat to row on the river. Den stepped out of the boat, perhaps showing off to Joan, but it began to drift away and he found himself missing the bank and in the river! He had to sit on the bank to dry off. Forty years later, whist looking at lots in a local auction sale in Clunderwen, Pembrokeshire, Den and Joan saw, and bought, a photograph of the Wye at Ross showing the boat hire location and boats beside the pontoon. The photograph was mounted. It was a railway photograph that would have been fixed in a carriage to illustrate the local area. What a find!
During her time in the WRAF, she remembered, there was a lot of fruit available and she would fill bags with apples and pears before going home on leave. We do not know when Joan was de-mobbed, but she must have gone home when she left the WRAF. She and Den were married in Swansea on 22nd April 1946. The wedding photo shows Den still in uniform and also shows a group of bridesmaids, one of whom must have been Mollie. Immediately after the wedding the happy couple moved to London, back to Den’s family home. They were given a little kitchen, “at the top of the stairs”, and presumably a room to call their own. In the house lived Den’s mother, Florence, and grandmother, Annie. Den continued to work as a Physical Training Instructor at RAF Hednesford, commuting home at weekends. This carried on for a few months, but was over in early 1947.
Their first child, David, was born in December 1947.
In late 1948 Joan’s father died. Den remembers the family sitting in the front room, “very respectable people”.
Her second child, Josephine, was born in April 1951. It was around this time that Den and Joan agreed to change their surname to Conroy. Joan had never liked the possibly Germanic name Waghorn, although what the reason was they never said.
Joan had now completely cut her ties with Swansea. Her sister, Ena, was now married and living in Staines, London, and she had lost contact with her brother. John Kenneth, known to the family as Ken became a chemist and was known to have visited Germany on business before the outbreak of the war. Joan presumed that he had been killed in the conflict, but we now believe that he survived, possibly married and certainly lived and worked in Scunthorpe, Humberside, where there are many industries needing chemists. He is registered as dying in 1983.
Her home and life was now in London as Mrs Conroy.
The arrangement with the kitchen and a bedsit upstairs did not last long. Annie had died in1949, and with two babies in the family and Florence working full-time, Joan became the home maker. She learnt to cook, and developed a life long delight in cooking a good Sunday roast. She would slow-cook the bird, basting often whilst she prepared a large variety of vegetables. She made Christmas puddings, enough for Jo and Dave’s families each and every year, they were delicious and remarked on by all people at the feast. Her prowess with pastry cooking was recognised by all who tasted her Christmas mince pies. They were admired by family and friends and, to please her grandchildren, she made a few each year even in her eighties. Her other piece de resistance was crumble, apple, rhubarb, plum, always delicious. Joan was always a patient cook, with a great sense of fun, and was delighted to allow the grandchildren to “help” her to make the crumble, never mind the time it took or the quantities of flour that ended up on the floor!
Joan and Den were well-matched in their enjoyment of physical activity. Joan learnt to swim well and went swimming each Sunday morning to Tottenham Municipal baths, where the children also learnt to swim, and were coached within the club and by Den to a high standard. Joan and Den also learnt ballroom dancing, taking lessons each week. Joan loved dancing, she and Den would often put on some music and dance around the living room.
Whilst the children were still small, she and Den would go the theatre to watch the musicals. She loved this, and in later years when they had more time they joined The Torch Theatre in Milford Haven and enjoyed the occasional outing.
In the early 1950s Den bought a car, an Austin 7, and in this the family would ride out to Leigh on Sea and indulge a love of shellfish. When Joan lived in Pembrokeshire she liked nothing better than picking mussels off the rocks and cooking them in the evening for supper. They also visited Ena who had married John Cole in Cardiff in 1945. He was an aeronautical engineer and they lived very close to Heathrow Airport in Stanwell. They were a devoted couple. In January 1958 Ena died. John could not bear to continue living in England and emigrated to Australia. Ena’s death severed Joan’s last link to her past.
After the Austin 7 came a larger car, capable of taking the family, including Florence of course, for holidays in Porthtowan, Cornwall. Joan was an enthusiastic body boarder and sea swimmer. Once they went north to Ullapool, where there were no Atlantic rollers, and the loch water was bitterly cold! By the early 1960s the youngsters were doing so well with the swimming that they could compete in the National Championships, held in Blackpool each August. It was therefore in Blackpool that the family spent their summer holidays after this.
Although they now owned a car there was not enough time in their lives for Joan to learn to drive. During the day the housekeeping took up all her time, with towels to wash daily from the swimming sessions and meals to be cooked and organised for five people who were rarely in the house at the same time. Den was often out in the evenings in his role as an insurance agent and Dave and Jo each went to their own training
sessions. The house must have taken a lot of cleaning, and Joan was very house proud all her life. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s Den was always doing alterations to the house, inevitably creating dust and mess!
In the late 1960s Dave and Jo each left home and at the same time the house in Somerset Road was compulsorily purchased to make way for new developments. They managed to buy a beautiful house on Alexandra Park Road, and finally Joan found she had time on her hands. With her nursing background she was encouraged to apply for a post as a dental assistant, a job she enjoyed. She also had time to learn to drive. The surgery was in Enfield and each evening she would drive the car home. Joan tended to be a worrier and a little timid, but she was beginning to enjoy driving and looking forward to getting her licence.
The next phase of her life was about to begin. She and Den had always longed to live in the country in a house with a big garden where they could grow their own food. They decided to sell up in London and move to Pembrokeshire. There they would aim to buy a house and run a Bed and Breakfast business. Their first place was a farmhouse deep in the country north of Carmarthen. Joan was always willing to do her share of the work, pushing wheelbarrows and moving materials. Unfortunately this project took far too long and ate up their savings so much so that Den got a job as a swimming instructor in the school at St Davids, 45 minutes away. Joan was on her own a lot and developed shingles with the stress. This was a low point for them, but they did not give up. As soon as the farmhouse was converted they sold it and decided to move to a new dormer bungalow being built on a plot next to the school in St David’s.
Joan was now able to join in town life. She acted in the local pantomime at Christmas and started her own yoga class. This was a great success and she worked hard to develop her skills. Joan continued to do a daily yoga workout at home until her health prevented it. She remained supple and well-coordinated throughout her life. She delighted in inviting family and friends to St Davids, it was a lovely house. After a few years she still had a yearning to run a B&B business and persuaded Den to give it a try. They extended the house and were very successful at attracting guests. It was, however, much more tying than they had expected, especially as Joan set herself such high standards.
They decided to try to earn money by buying up and selling property. Their next house was Dinas y Fran, near Solva, with a large garden and a 2 acre field. The renovations took quite a while, all completed by Den. The finished cottage was loved by all, but with a mortgage still to pay they moved on. Next was a bungalow they had built on a plot in Solva. Again they did not stay here long, but long enough for Joan to join the WRVS and help with the weekly lunches for the elderly.
Their final home was Aros Yma, a new house designed by Den and an architect and of timber frame construction, so the bare house appeared very quickly! Again they did much of the building work, Joan helping as
much as possible to support Den, and when completed it was such a pleasant house to be in, with a large garden which offered endless potential, that they decided to stay put. Its name was chosen by Joan: Aros Yma, it means rest here.
Unknown to us Joan had grown up in a bilingual house, her mother’s first language was Welsh, and her father was bilingual. It should not have been a surprise, therefore, that she was comfortable with Welsh and could name their house Aros Yma. She had always insisted that the Harrises were “the Harrises of Clasemont”. It is only recently that we have discovered that the wealthy, self-made man her great grandfather Thomas Harris had had a large ten-room house built in Morriston, called Clasemont. This was the Harris’s family house where she would go to visit her great aunt Mary and perhaps her grandmother too. No wonder then that when Den and she bought the ten-room house on Alexandra Park Road she called it ‘Clasemont’.
In Aros Yma they settled and made a delightful home, visiting local auctions to buy furniture and furnishings. The garden was a constant pleasure, plants to be bought and nurtured and of course weeding to do. She had always enjoyed walking, and now they lived in a spot ideal for walking, and within a short drive of Milford Haven and the coast. For many years they continued to go swimming once a week and visited the library in Haverfordwest when doing their Saturday shopping.
Joan always loved the thought of travelling and would remember with great fondness their camping trip to the Brecon Beacons in 1972 and a lovely visit to Derbyshire. She and Den took classes in French and visited France twice. They thoroughly enjoyed those holidays and kept in contact with the owners of a B&B they had stayed in throughout their lives.
She loved having visitors. Ken and Babs would come once a year. They were friends from London and would spend a very happy week with much laughter and chatting.
Her family was very precious to her. By the time she was becoming frail and somewhat forgetful she had two children, both married, six grandchildren and four great grandchildren. She would delight in visiting North Wales to spend time with Jo and her family and travelling to Cardiff to be with Dave and his family. On two occasions she and Den spent time in France on board La Gioconda going through the Canals of Brittany, enjoying the slow pace of canal life. On one memorable occasion, having had a good meal onboard, we took our plastic boules kit to the quayside boules court and played a hilarious game, as the sun set and locals who were there giving us advice on playing the game! Much laughter and silliness!
Gradually, in her early eighties she began to be more forgetful and Den became her carer. She was still able to do many of the things she always had, and walking became an important therapy. They made sure they took a walk around the lanes every other day. In this way Joan remained physically strong and content. In 2010 Den was diagnosed with terminal duodenal cancer. He coped well for eight months, then gradually got more frail, dying at the end of March 2011. Joan could understand what was happening and was very concerned for him. After his death she had no wish to continue to live. He had been the love of her life. With him she was able to forget the difficult past and to have a happy family life.
She was taken, when very weak, to a caring nursing home in Llanberis where she could be near Jo and all the family. She was not talking by this stage but it became obvious that she was listening to and understanding the Welsh that was spoken among the staff in the home. She had truly come back home.
She died quietly in her sleep on 3rd June 2011, eight weeks after Den.
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