Memories of a 'Wild West' family at Capodolwyn
Roddy Williams says "I had an Italian friend named Fernando Greco and also his brother Pasqual, they lived in a little cottage [ Church Cottage] obviously by the church, two cottages semidetached. Fernando and his family came to the UK some time around 1956/57 I would say and the father was cowman at Eckley's farm. Fernando and myself were friends with a family called Lawrence who lived at Capodolwyn [ the abandoned white house on the Cusop hillside ]
The Lawrences lived very poorly but the old brother was a good looking lad, they seemed to me to have been at home in the Wild West. I remember all of us in the snow and bright moonlight one evening looking for rabbits to shoot. They had an old shotgun bound up with bailer twine. This older Lawrence lad I can see him now, we in our coats with scarves and he with his bare chest to the frosty night and wide brim hat standing on a rock in the frosty moonlight with stars shining bright. It would have made a wonderful camera shot. We never saw one rabbit but contented ourselves 'sledging' on our bottoms down the slopes, then we found a piece of zinc corrugated iron and bent up the front to sledge on this. How we never cut ourselves I don't know. I was probably about 14 or 15 then.Great times. The Lawrence family had no electric, sanitation minimal. wood fires I suppose. Yet they were a good bunch but have no memory of a father figure and a vague one of their mother without any sisters. We learned how to net rabbits as they had ferrets and probably a small dog. I could dispatch a rabbit but could never eat one as many had the 'mixy' as we called it. We used to go and explore Mouse Castle wood and the mound in the top of the wood. I saw flint there so I presumed it may have had an older origin. I found a lovelt leaf shaped arrow head on top of a mole tump in the Brickyards when I was a teenager. Sadly it has gone, think it went when my father moved house. Fernando had a' flint knife' he found near Capeldolwyn. Took it to school but he never ever got it back." [Extract from Roddy Williams' memories of Cusop]
