High Street, Fishguard

This view of High Street was taken around the early 1880s.

Peter Lewis was the local registrar of births, marriages and deaths and his office can be seen in the first office on the right hand side.  Part way down High Street there is very impressive topiary bush!

This photo is part of an album of images recently placed on loan in Ein Hanes on Fishguard Square. It is likely that they were the work of Henry Jackson who was a photographer in business in Fishguard at that time.

There is a notation underneath the image in the album which names the children as Willie and Tommy Eynon. It is believed that the notations were not written by the original photographer but were added later by someone who acquired the album. There appears to be some error in the names in that Willie and Tommy Eynon (who were related to Eynon’s ironmongers), were ten years apart in age and clearly the young lads in the image are within a few years of each other. It is more likely that they were Willie and Tommy Lewis, the sons of the Registrar, outside whose office they were photographed.

In the 1950s, from about 1951 to 1957, Mr B.R Lewis (a retired Chemist) wrote a series of articles which appeared in the County Echo, called “Turning Back the Clock”. These articles were his reminiscences of Fishguard and of the people of a bygone age. In one of the articles, he talks of the Topiary tree which can be seen in the above old photograph of High Street…….

“Opposite Lower Mount Pleasant used to be a garden in the lower corner of which was a very fine example of Topiary, this can be seen as a prominent feature in photos of High Street. In a cottage next to the “Trimmed Tree” lived an old sailor, James James, who was fond of telling sea stories and was the owner of a very fine tabby cat!

Nearby was the cottage of two sisters, Peggy Havard and Mary Richards, who ran the “Laundry of Fishguard” from their cottage. They used old fashioned wooden rollers (mangles) which were worked by a druke attached to a big wheel; the length of the rollers almost filled the width of the room. The local inhabitants would wash their own clothes then take them to these old ladies to be mangled and dried.

In the cottage next door to the laundry lived for many years Mr Stuart, a barber by trade. He was a bit of a bird fancier too and was seldom without a thrush! The cage was hung on the wall by the front door, and on fine days one could hear the bird singing from the Market Square, such was the quietness of the street in those days.”