Last week, I wrote about the River Rally which was organised by the West Wales Maritime Heritage Society and Pembroke Town Council.

To celebrate this and our maritime past we decorated the window in 'Pretty Woman' next to the famous Brown's Fish and Chip café, and am pleased to report that we won a 'highly commended' certificate from the festival for our efforts.

'Pretty Woman' is owned by the Brown family and we thank them for allowing us to use the shop window for our displays - last month we decorated it for the Diamond Jubilee and we will be putting in a new display soon. Take a look next time you buy your chips!

I had a 'phone call the other day from Mr. Colwyn Walters who began telling me some of his memories of old Pembroke, I am sure you will enjoy reading them.

Pembroke Memories by Colwyn Walters

Cold cure: The York Tavern was kept by two old spinsters, one was called Maudie and I don't know the name of the other one. I had a terrible cold; I 'd been training in Pembroke with the Pembroke Rugby Club and my father said to me 'on your way home call into the York and get Maudie to produce a mulled beer for you'.

So I called in, told her who I was and she took out an ordinary pint glass into which she poured a pint of beer. Into another pint glass she put a heaped teaspoon of ginger and a heaped teaspoon of brown sugar and eventually poured that into the beer. Then from under the counter she produced a container which she called a devil which was about five inches across the handle on the top, conical in shape and about 15 inches deep, all made of copper and she poured the mixture into that, took the lid off the old slow burning combustion stove and screwed the devil down into the coal. Every now and again, she would come out from behind the bar, stick her finger into the beer to see if it was hot enough and when it was hot enough she then poured it into a conventional pint glass and said to me "drink that up, don't stop until you've finished" and I did. I had a bike with me at the time and by the time I got to Bush Hill I was in an absolute bath of perspiration - but the next day the cold had gone! It worked!

All the fun of the fair: One of the things I remember about the fair in those days was that it was run by two main families - the Studts and Danters. Studts can be seen pictured here. Danter I believe is still going. Studt had a son called Henry and rather than have him move about from place to place he thought he'd be better off staying in one place for his education. He lived with the greengrocers, Billy Howells, opposite the chain back where I suppose the HSBC is now. He stayed with them and went to the East End Boy's School. What happened to him then I don't know as I left and went to Lamphey School.

One of the other things about the fair you wouldn't know was that they used to have what we called teasers - aluminium tubes with a little nozzle filled with water. There used to be all kinds of people in the town making these and filling them. And the intention was that, as lads, you went around squirting them at the girl's legs. You had five for 2d - but when they were empty, if you took them back, they would straighten them out on a machine and refill them for you - then you'd have five for 1d.

Another feature of the fair was that they always used to sell barrels of grapes from Portugal. The grapes were in a wooden barrel, about two-foot six in diameter, all in sawdust and they had a long pole and attached to that was an open flame burning in paraffin to show you what was in the barrel. You dug in there for what you wanted and the chap would charge you, put them in a bag and away you'd go.

The fair then (in the early thirties) went from Saturday to Saturday, but on Wednesday all the proceeds went into the Cottage Hospital up on the East Back. So the fair was good on Saturday quiet on Sunday, picked up a bit in the week, but very popular on the Wednesday because we would all support the hospital.

All the boys in the town used to go out to meet the fair beyond Penny Bridge as all the steam engines would stop there so as to get up enough steam to get up that hill. It was on the Friday that the fair would arrive - it was a real treat for us to go out and follow the fair in. The steam engines were beautiful, absolutely beautiful, all polished - I remember one of them was called 'King Edward' and another, the 'Prince of Wales'. They were parked up the top of Goose's Lane mainly and they were used then to generate power for the lights and the rides. The big horses were also there in the Square.

Schoolboy smokers: In the East End School, there was a big thing about smoking. Woodbines were sold in a packets of five then (paper packets then not cardboard, and they were open at the top) and everybody used to call them coffin nails. The packet of five was tuppence, but the message got around that if you went up to the little shop under the bridge at the East End, which was I suppose a confectionery shop, the owner of the shop would give you two cigarettes out of the packet and five matches for a penny and that was your penny worth of smoking.

The alternative was the little confectionery shop on the Square, where Robinsons is now, run by two spinsters, the Misses Hopla, and if you went in there you could get, instead of spending your penny on cigarettes, 40 aniseed balls or 40 red Indian's eyes. If you spoke nicely to Miss Hopla she would give you 20 of each - so I never went for the smoking, I went for the sweets.

Thank you so much Colwyn for sharing your memories. Colwyn has promised me more stories so I look forward to that. And if anyone else has memories they would like to contribute, I should be only too pleased to hear from them.

Contact

If you have any stories or photographs for this column, please contact me, Linda Asman, on 01646 622428, email [email protected]">[email protected] and visit our website http://www.pembrokeandmonktonhistory.org.uk">www.pembrokeandmonktonhistory.org.uk