Dad With Bella

This is a scrapbook page of my father, William Arthur Belton, more usually known as Bill, as a young man. He is photographed sitting in a deck chair and making a fuss of his dog, Bella, in the garden of the family home at 17 Wesley Road, Bwlchgwyn.



The original photo, inset, shows them sitting at the bottom of the garden; beyond the garden wall the land fell quite sharply down to the main road opposite the Hwntw public house before falling even further to the beautiful Nant-y-Ffrith valley and rising again to form the Penllyn mountain. In those days (probably c1939) there were very few trees in Bwlchgwyn and the summit of Penllyn mountain was carpeted in purple heathers in the summer.

To create the main picture I added a more recent photograph of the view from their garden but, because it was taken from the War Memorial on the hairpin bend, the angle is slightly different. The Penllyn (that was how we used to say it and spell it) was then carpeted in trees, the work of the forestry commission.
Hilary Belton 2010