Andrew Morgan kindly sent us these photos and their descriptions...

Above, Ashwell House in about 1932. David and Amelia Davies and their extensive family left in August 1933 following a compulsory purchase order which they were pretty unhappy about and moved to Newport. David was a builder and I believe sat on the council at one stage. He and other members of the family had helped renovate St Cadocs and built some of the houses in Caerleon.

This is David and Amelia Davies in the back of the garden at Ashwell. The garden was by all accounts pretty big and David found a Roman sword there and donated it to Caerleon museum. David was from St Brides Wentlooge. Amelia worked as a house maid at Tredegar House at some point.

This is their son Jack, somewhere in Caerleon . He started work as a milkman in Caerleon where he would deliver by horse and cart. He later worked at Newport docks repairing warships.

This is another son, Ivor, maybe at St Cadocs church. Ivor worked at the tinworks and was an air raid warden during the war.

This is a picture of another son, David with Jack and the Christchurch football team. They used to walk up the "black ash" path from Ashwell to Christchurch and meet in the Greyhound pub before the game. David would leave Caerleon and join the South Wales Borderers where he served on the Khyber Pass in the 1930s before the war. During the war he was was captured at Tobruk and spent the war in a POW camp in Italy and then Stalag VIIIB in Poland where he was death-marched 800 or so miles before liberation in 1945.

This is another son James. He went to school in Caerleon or maybe Christchurch. I have a lovely letter where he writes of his sadness at having to leave Caerleon and how worried he was at moving to Newport which was seen as really big. He went on to serve with the RAF during the war.

Daughter Gwen under the parasol in the back garden of Ashwell House and later dressed in the fashion of the day. The other picture is earlier with my grandmother Gladys.

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