Open Again

After our seasonal January closure we are now open again – only Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays, and Mondays during February and March. This was our first week-end and it was good to meet some new people as well as catch up with old friends. During the break one of our close friends Clare, having come up to help us get familiar with our new chainsaw, sent me the poem below. It was partly inspired by Tom who encouraged Clare to write it but probably more importantly it is based on a family who lived in the terraced cottages adjacent to the Thomas Shop. The cottages on both sides of the road were built by the Thomas family to house people working for them and to also encourage trades to develop in the village. Clare has been short-listed for one prize and given second place by another. She says:

I’ve just heard I’ve come second in The Plough poetry competition, judged by Andrew Motion, for the poem Tom prodded me into writing.  Exciting!  And thank you, Tom!  (It was also shortlisted for the Bridport Prize, which I think I told you, then I put it in for this one.)

“This poem was developed from a memory an elderly visitor passed on to Tom. As a child, she used to love visiting her aunt, who lived in the terrace of houses next to the Thomas shop. This is something that happened in that terrace.”

The Poem is as follows:

Tŷ bach

She remembers the last time he was home,

how she watched him in tousled sleep,

how his hand grasped the rumpled blankets,

knuckles white against her neat stitched edges.

 

She turns her head sharply to catch him

walking past the window in his work jacket,

though she knows it still hangs on the door.

She breathes him in, her brow to its rough wool.

 

The neighbours say she’s not been right

since the telegram; she sees their nets move

as she pulls the door to and walks down the path,

the candle flame cupped by her hand.

 

The small light casts backward shadows.

In the tŷ bach, he winks from a scrap of mirror

his chin covered in shaving soap,

before shrugging on khaki and sinking in mud.

 

Wind blows his name through the lost knots.

The candle reaches out to a square of newspaper

threaded on a string from the nail he put up.

She sees how the flames embroider the door.

 

 

Clare Diprose

 

Happy New Year 2012

We are currently considering our options for the New Year. For those people who use the Thomas Shop regularly it will be important to retain the elements that give reassurance, for people who come from time to time there is a need to give fresh energy to their visits, and for people who have not yet been we will need consider what will make the Thomas Shop more attractive to a wider audience. Reconciling these three positions will be our mission through January when we are closed to the public.

Life Changes at the Thomas Shop

Since Edward Price made that dramatic move in 1730 to move from the town of Cefn Llys to Penybont there have been other similar life changes that have become a feature of the Thomas Shop as it is now known. The Thomas family were were farmers in Llandewi about five miles away. In 1799 William Thomas moved with his family, initially renting and managing the shop, and subsequently purchasing it in 1804. William rebuilt the shop and opened it, more or less as it can now be seen, in 1805. Three generations of William Thomas then developed and ran the business until 1958, when the shop closed, before it was sold in 1987 to another family in the village. Another dramatic change of lifestyle occurred when we purchased the property in 2000, moved from Tytherington, in South Gloucestershire, to renovate the buildings and to start a business routed in the social history of the Thomas Shop and Penybont.

Thomas Shop Interior

Entrepreneurial Flair

Lord Sugar eloquently praised the young apprentices leaving the process last night and wished them well in their future business enterprises. Like himself they have started young, but not as young as John Price who took over an embryonic shop, at the age of eleven, from his recently deceased father in 1734. It was an unprepossessing start for the young John as his father had established the business to trade with the Drovers in a remote rural location, not even in a village. Under his guidance the shop flourished and the village of Penybont grew up around it. By the 1750s he extended his interests by building the first Inn/Coaching House and subsequently became one of the first bankers in Wales, predating banks in Aberystwyth, Tregaron and Swansea. Penybont is reputed to have its own currency before any of the aforementioned centres. Banking built upon his father’s interest in servicing the needs of the Drovers passing through Radnorshire. In fact the banking system was initially developed in the countryside to stop the Drovers being victim to highwaymen. Spotting the needs of others and developing appropriate services was key to his entrepreneurial success as, no doubt, it will be for the young apprentices of tomorrow.

View from Shop across River Ithon to Llandegley Rocks

Thomas Shop in 1905

Alfred Thomas and his wife Sarah at either end, the last of the shop-keepers

Thomas Shop 1805

The Thomas Shop museum is a reconstruction of the original shop dating back to 1730 in the village of Penybont. Edward Price moved from Cefn Llys to Penybont to trade with the Drovers in 1730 but died by 1734. His son John took over and developed the shop at the age of eleven. His entrepreneurial flair took him on to build and run the first pub/coaching house in the new village and to become one of the very first bankers in Wales. Shortly after he died in 1798 the Thomas family rented the shop and subsequently bought it in 1804. The shop served Penybont and surrounds for three generations until it closed in 1958. The Thomas family developed an extensive tailoring business, traded in tea and grain, ran the grocery store alongside the tailoring, and uniquely had a Gentleman’s Outfitters. The restoration has taken 10 years and is well worth a visit.

Sharing information with Drug Companies

As someone who has worked in the field of mental health for the last 30 years I feel we should be very concerned by the Government’s proposals to share information from NHS medical records with drug companies. The collaboration, or should I say collusion, between the NHS and the drug companies over the years has only served to entrap people within a mental health system that is entrapped itself. It is complete nonsense to say confidentiality can be preserved when we know that the power of computers is now such that the small needles in a haystack can be located instantly.