21 - Leaving Ireland, Meeting Snowdonia: 18 September 2024

I finally left Ireland on the 8.00 am ferry this morning and arrived in Wales just before 11.00.

I never thought I would be glad to say a final goodbye to such a beautiful country with some of the most decent and kind people anyone could ever want to meet – but I most certainly am glad to be gone from Ireland.

The Dublin taxi to the ferry terminal took me through miles of bleak industrial waste land.  Here the earth itself has apparently been blasted to the Moon so it could be replaced by the ugliness of industrial warehouses and the facilities that enable busy ports to function.  I was surprised that no one asked to see my passport or asked any questions either when I left Dublin or when I arrived in Holyhead.  Holyhead was a mirror image of the Dublin Port industrial wasteland, but on a much smaller scale.

Then, almost as if a magical switch had been clicked, I was surrounded by the overwhelming beauty of Wales.  I spend the next two nights in Snowdonia, surrounded by mountains, including the astonishing Mount Snowdon. 

In Wales, I am looking for traces of Richard Reece Roberts.  Richard was the husband of Eleanor Edwards and Eleanor was the founder and owner of Newlands School in Hoylake.  The Postcard signed by Alfred Pearson was mailed to Eliza Hankin at “Newlands” in Hoylake.  In August 1914, Eliza worked at Newlands as a domestic servant.

When I first started trying to unravel the histories of Richard Roberts and Eleanor Edwards, I wondered why I was bothering.  Surely there would be nothing of interest to unearth about the school – but of course, I was completely wrong.  I soon discovered that the stories of Richard Roberts and his wife Eleanor Edwards were more than worth the effort to uncover.

Richard Reece Roberts was the son of a labourer in a slate quarry at a place called Cwm Penmachno.  Cwm Penamchno is about 10 minutes’ drive away from a tiny Welsh village called Penmachno.  The hamlet of Cwm Penmachno was created to provide a home for workers in a slate quarry located further up the mountain from Cwm Penmachno.  The quarry continued to operate until the 1970s.  Penmachno and Cwm Penmachno are surrounded by the mountains of north Wales.

As the son of a labourer in a slate quarry, the future prospects for Richard Reece Roberts were probably bleak.  How could the son of a quarry labourer ever become anything more than just another quarry labourer?

As I had been so often when I was researching and writing the Postcard Book, I was stunned by what I discovered.

Somehow, Richard Roberts acquired an education and moved to Liverpool.  In Liverpool, he became an accountant, a lay preacher and a real estate agent.  In Liverpool, Richard met and married Eleanor Edwards and his prosperity improved with every year he knew her.  Richard and Eleanor then moved to the southern side of the River Mersey and lived in Birkenhead.  As their material wealth increased, they moved to Hoylake and established Newlands School.

When I dug into Eleanor’s story, yet more astonishing facts emerged.

Eleanor’s father was a labourer on the railways in Liverpool.  He had nothing to offer his family except love and a determination to ensure they always had the necessities of life.  Like Richard Roberts, Eleanor had an intelligent mind and used it to get a scholarship to train as a teacher.  After she married Richard, she used her training to establish her own school.  Eleanor was also a suffragette and she was enrolled to vote many years before women were legally allowed to vote in national elections in the United Kingdom.  She achieved this because women with the necessary level of prosperity were permitted to vote in local elections even though they were banned from voting in national elections. I found many records of Eleanor being listed on the electoral roll for the Hoylake local elections – and I found these records long before women were allowed to vote nationally.

So I am in Wales looking for traces of Richrd Reece Roberts, son of a labourer in a now disused slate quarry located amid the beauty of Snowdonia.  And I wonder at the magnificence of the human spirit and how a man who was seemingly doomed to a life of poverty and unrelenting hard, physical labour, was able to use his talent and intelligence to do the impossible – and in his spare time, preach the values of love and compassion that imbue the New Testament.

As I look for traces of Richrd, I am surrounded by the grandeur of Snowdonia and the singing of the waters in its many streams.  If I am patient and if I have eyes to see and ears to hear, perhaps the beauty surrounding me will even help me to heal.  I have every reason to believe it will help me, because the very same beauty helped Richard Reece Roberts, son of a humble, hard working quarry labourer, achieve material success that no one would have ever seen s possible hen he was young.