Heritage Hub's Pryce Jones Film

Ann Evans, Heritage Hub 4 Mid Wales

I recently met Ann Evans in Evans café in Newtown, we sat by the window with a coffee and cake while we talked about the Heritage Hub’s project to create a short film and exhibition celebration Sir Pryce Pryce-Jones’ connection to the Cambrian Railways. Heritage Hub 4 Mid Wales were awarded £500 from our Railway 200 Community Grant Fund to support this project.

Ann has deep local roots as the secretary of the Newtown Local History Group for ten years, director of Heritage Hub 4 Mid Wales, and twenty years experience at Laura Ashley managing and developing the mail-order operation. She’s a remarkable source of local knowledge.

Ann told me a little about Heritage Hub 4 Mid Wales:

“Heritage Hub’s aim is to digitally preserve the legacies of local pioneers, business and social entrepreneurs who helped shape Mid Wales. The four pioneers they focus on in Newtown are Pryce Jones, Laura Ashley, Robert Owen, and David Davies.”

Ann continued to explain more about Pryce Jones and his story which started as a humble draper’s apprentice who turned innovation into a global mail-order business. He built the Royal Welsh Warehouse beside Newtown’s Cambrian railway station and planned a shopping emporium that still dominates the townscape.

The film will show how pivotal the Cambrian Railway was to his success. Pryce Jones and his family were also generous local benefactors through the Royal Welsh Warehouse Recreational Society and charitable clothing initiatives.

In 2029 the Royal Welsh Warehouse will reach 150 years, a great milestone for the town. I had a tour round the building when I met Andrew Davies who works for Robert Owen and saw the Cambrian Railway plaque by the front door. See previous blog.

Coincidentally my working base with PAVO is in Pryce Jones’ family home. The house was built in 1826 for magistrate William Lutener, who died in 1868. Pryce Jones bought it in 1879 and made some alterations, adding his initials and the date 1882 to some carvings. Dolerw was an officers’ mess in the Second World War. From 1949 it was used as a Roman Catholic school until a new school was built. The nuns who taught there remained at Dolerw until the late 1990s. The house and its wooded grounds were acquired in 2000 by the Montgomeryshire Community Regeneration Association and opened as a centre for charities, community groups and conferences. The mansion retains many original fittings, including wood panelling with carved birds and flowers. It does feel that you are living in someone’s home.

I left the café moved by the stories. I was meeting with Jon Gower, Transport for Wales’ writer in residence, the following week and suggested that he had a chat with Ann — a connection that felt obvious after our conversation. Look out for more on Jon’s ‘Making Tracks’ features in Nation Cymru.