My Memories of Llandaff are from my childhood.  I was raised in Belle Vue Crescent, and to me, Llandaff North will always be my family home even these many years since I long since moved away.  I was one of 4 children, Angela, Christine, me (Pamela) and the only boy, John.  My parents were Ron and Rosemary Dungey.  We had a wonderful childhood.  Llandaff North had so many characters that I look back on fondly.      We lived next door to Mr and Mrs Brann, they were an elderly couple who kept their garden immaculately, they didn't appreciate 4 rowdy children throwing their ball over their garden several times a day be-heading their glorious rose bushes!  Mr and Mrs Hewitt lived next door to them, a lovely couple, Mrs Hewitt always gave me a cuddle!  Mr and Mrs Harris, they were lovely too,  Mr and Mrs Medford, lived a few doors down the other way, Mr Medford would always give us apples from his allotment and vegetables. A few doors down from them were Mr and Mrs Marshall, their daughter Sally was our friend, she had an older brother Dean who we always thought was a bit of a hunk! Across from us was Hawthorn Junior School, so we only had to fall out of bed in the morning to go to school, as we got older we went to Glantaff High, or at least, my sisters did,  we had great days at Glantaff, the teachers were lovely, some stricter than others, but on the whole they were great, Christine, Ann Baldwin and I often used to sing together in assembly because we had our own group back then! but after 2 years of me attending Glantaff, it turned into a Welsh School so I was moved to Whitchurch High School which I hated!

    Our house backed onto a lane, it connected us to Hazelhurst Road, our best friend Ann Baldwin lived there along with many of her family members, who became our surrogate aunties too!  Her mum and dad were wonderful, her mum was the most amazing cook, the smells that came from her kitchen were fabulous and we always tried to arrive at Annie's when we knew her mum was baking!  This was the best thing about Llandaff North, it was a real community, everybody knew everybody else, there was Auntie Dolly, a tiny little white haired old lady who cooked lovely welsh cakes, Auntie Ruth and Uncle Elwin, he used to balance all us kids on his hands, we spent so many summers on the top of his garden shed, we would come down at the end of the day black from the dirt, but my mum never complained, she just piled us all one by one into the bath!  I can remember that we were so many, that dad converted a room downstairs into a bathroom so the bathroom upstairs could be converted into a bedroom for my older sister.  There were Don and Pat Marsh, they had a daughter Judith and son David, I had a secret crush on David when I was about 8! And the Parker family lived next to them, I can remember them being burgled because it had been snowing and the burglar dropped things across our garden in the snow.   Along by them were the Chard family and just around the corner were the Mr and Mrs Rockey with daughters Karen and Jane, we were always in and out of each others homes.   We all knew each other so well, everybody knew everybody.

    Every Saturday morning at 10:30 I would go and meet my gran who caught the train from Radyr down to the station, I loved meeting her, we would always go to Cartrights the newsagents, gran would buy me a bag of sweets from there, and then go to Lynne's fruit bowl for some fruit and veg.  I loved meeting gran off the train, the smell of the station was great, and I can remember the excitement I always felt when I would run hell for leather into her arms.

    Every Sunday morning my we would all go to Christchurch United Reformed Church at the end of Belle Vue Crescent, it was run by Mr and Mrs Simmonds.  These were the most inspirational couple that you could ever wish to meet, and to this day I continue to respect them, sadly Derek passed away some years ago, but Joan still runs Christchurch.   At Christchurch Mrs Simmonds got together a group of girls, there were 6 of us in all, Sally Marshall, Judith Marlowe, Alison Hembury, Ann Baldwin, Christine my sister and myself and we sang together for years.  Without fail, every Christmas we would put of a Nativity play for the community and one year we even joined with Whitchurch Methodist for their production of Peter Pan and sang in the interval.   We loved our days at Christchurch, and each one of us had our grounding for our faith in God instilled in us by Mr and Mrs Simmonds.   Recently there was a tribute evening to Joan, and we girls reformed one last time to sing for Joan, it was weird that after not singing together for 30 years, we seemed to pick up where we left off, and remembered all our parts like it was yesterday, I think that this was because we loved it so much.

    I loved the shops in Llandaff North, I loved to go and buy paraffin with my father from Gardners the Bicycle shop, it always smelt lovely in there, a mixture of wonderful new things.  Then there was Basil Hughes the Chemist, he always knew what to give you if you were ill.   The Doctors surgery was on the end of Belle Vue and was run by Dr Cann Jones, he always seemed to be a huge man to me and scared me a lot!  My mother worked for a few years in George Masons, this was great because if at Easter time any eggs got broken, she was allowed to bring home broken chocolate!  I can remember having a nasty accident in school once too, and I was taken to the shop by the Head master, they sat me in a chair in the shop whilst I waited for my mother to finish her shift to take me home, the other women in the shop just went to the sweet counter and surrounded me with sweets.........it was great!  On a Saturday morning we would take our 2p pocket money and go to Harris's which was down Ty Mawr Road, the gentleman there had the patience of Job, he would wait whilst we prevaricated over how to spend our tuppences! They made home made ice lollies there.

    Llandaff North was a real community, everybody knew everybody else, and when your back was against the wall we all helped each other.  Bereavment in small communities are felt particularly hard, and the hardest time for me and I believe for the community when I was a child was when my friend Ann and her sister Jane lost their both of their parents within an incredibly short space of time.  To this day that time has stayed with me.  The community were shaken to its core when this happened and I think that it touched everybody's lives at that time.

    Hailey Park played a huge role in my life, I spent so many hours over the park, mum never worried about us kids, she always knew that we were in the park, and those days you didn't have to worry like you do now. We did things that I would never let my own children do now, we had a rope swing that went out over a set of rocks that we called the Monkey rocks, we spent hours swinging on that swing, right out over the river Taff!  I would spend hours watching Llandaff North Rugby Club practising their games.  I can remember when Phil Bennett came to talent scout, everybody was so excited, I got his autograph but I don't have it anymore. We would love it in May when the blossom would cover the trees by the tennis courts, we would go and swing hard on the branches so the blossom would fall onto us, we would pretend that we were brides walking down the aisle and that it was confetti........how simple those days were.   We were the kids who picked rose petals and put it into bottles of water and tried to sell it as perfume door to door! 

    Every christmas we would go carol singing with Mrs Simmonds around Llandaff North and Whitchurch, but sometimes on our own just to raise money so that we could buy mum and dad something nice, they worked so hard to give us what they could, it was our way of showing them how much we loved them.  We didn't have much back then, but what we had made us happy.

    Last summer I took my own daughter back to Llandaff North, I went back down that back lane, and it looked so much smaller than I remembered, everything looked so much smaller, but the memories were still there, number 8 Belle Vue Crescent looked so much the same, with the same holly tree in the garden, the one that we stripped all the lower branches off because the holly pricked us when we ran past it as children! The red wall outside still bares the signs of hours of being sat on, I would sit for hours just watching the world go by on the front step, giving next doors dog a hug (Tiger he was called)!

    So you see, many happy memories of Llandaff North. I loved it there, the people, the community, the schools, the park, the church, the shops..............everything.