Amgueddfa Syr Henry Jones

At 7.00pm on Friday 24 February Ann Vaughan will talk about the Sir Henry Jones Museum.

The Museum is in the centre of Llangernyw on the main A548 road from Abergele to Llanrwst. The museum was two houses long ago, Henry Jones’s family on the left and his grandparents on the right. On the left is the bootmaker’s workshop and on the right is the kitchen. The Museum was opened in 1934 by the former prime minister David Lloyd George.

Henry Jones was born in 1852 and came from a poor background. His father was a bootmaker and Henry would help him in the workshop. He did not like Llangernyw church school because of the Welsh Not and children being punished. He was given books by Mrs Roxburgh to read and he educated himself. He was a very capable boy, winning the Penny Readings and singing. He went to Pandy Tudur school to John Price the principal and the farmhand. He won a scholarship to go to Normal College, Bangor then he taught in South Wales and lectured in Aberystwyth and Bangor before moving to Glasgow University. Henry Jones secured and established secondary schools in Wales fourteen years ahead of England. A very progressive man in that era.

David Lloyd George and Henry Jones were contemporaries. Both were from poor backgrounds, both worked in the bootmakers’ workshops. Lloyd George then helped Henry Jones when his son Elias Henry Jones was a First World War prisoner in Yozgad, Turkey. Elias used to send postcards home to his father, mother, and wife with hidden messages in them and those were then used to help the soldiers. Also Lloyd George, Henry Jones, and John Williams, Brynsiencyn were friends because they recruited young men to go and fight in the war.

Cwmulus are hosting this on-line talk, which is available both in Welsh and with an English translation. Details and registration at this link.