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Remembered Today:

Criccieth training camp


Derek Tickner

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Hi my Grandad joined the RFA in Caerphilly in March 1915 and im sure he did his training in Criccieth camp in N Wales....does anyone have any maps showing the layout and location of the camp etc.

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Hi Derek,

This OS map of Criccieth was revised in 1913 and published in 1920. I have given it a very hasty Eyeball Mk.I scan but as yet can see nothing. However you may enjoy hunting through it. Bless the National Library of Scotland for digitising these maps and making them interactive. https://maps.nls.uk/view/101607207

It may be that the camp was farther away from Criccieth, in which case you might have to hunt around for a better idea of the location and try maps.nls.uk again.

Best wishes,

seaJane

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Last night I followed the same route as Jane (I might even have been ahead of her) and could see nothing. When looking at old maps of Wiltshire, I've seen some discrepancies between what was on the ground at the time of revision and what was shown on the eventual map.

I guess that the printing of the 1913 revision was delayed by the war. I would also guess that the RFA were on a camping-site, under canvas, rather than at a hutted camp. They might have taken over a farm for stabling. So a map would not show any evidence of military use.

My Googling came up with nothing that would have suggested other units were based at Criccieth.  Possibly local newspapers might provide a clue, but by 1915 Government regulations meant they were very limited in what they could print.

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Many thanks for the replies both,

I also have that OS map and looked all over so i thought good old GWF that someone might know.

I do know they were in tented accommodation 11 to a tent for a few months before going to Winchester, i was just after a plan of where the camp was situated

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I'm away from my sources at present, but will try to identify at least the unit concerned.  The 38th (Welsh) Division's RFA brigades were the 119th, 120th, 121st, and 122nd (Howitzer).  They were located in the Pwllheli - Criccieth - Porthmadog area for training.  I don't recall any specific mention of hutted camps, but I can't rule it out.   

They suffered from a lack of equipment at first, training with telegraph poles mounted on pairs of bus wheels.  I suspect they also didn't have enough horses - it was spring 1915 before the first few arrived - and at a recruiting meeting in Pwllheli in May 1915 a march-past featured 800 dismounted but only 60 mounted artillerymen. 

Since the area had a certain amount of pre-war tourist trade, it's possible that lodging-houses were initially used for accommodation.  Certainly these were being offered to the Welsh Army Corps by the Pwllheli town council in October 1914.  I'd agree with Derek that as summer 1915 dawned they may have been moved out into tented camps, both to reduce the allowances paid to landladies and to get the men used to living in the field, as it were.

 

 

 

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1 hour ago, Moonraker said:

RFA

I do have terrible trouble with the RFA and start wondering what the Royal Fleet Auxiliary were doing ashore 🙄.

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On 04/02/2022 at 11:24, clive_hughes said:

I'm away from my sources at present, but will try to identify at least the unit concerned.  The 38th (Welsh) Division's RFA brigades were the 119th, 120th, 121st, and 122nd (Howitzer).  They were located in the Pwllheli - Criccieth - Porthmadog area for training.  I don't recall any specific mention of hutted camps, but I can't rule it out.   

They suffered from a lack of equipment at first, training with telegraph poles mounted on pairs of bus wheels.  I suspect they also didn't have enough horses - it was spring 1915 before the first few arrived - and at a recruiting meeting in Pwllheli in May 1915 a march-past featured 800 dismounted but only 60 mounted artillerymen. 

Since the area had a certain amount of pre-war tourist trade, it's possible that lodging-houses were initially used for accommodation.  Certainly these were being offered to the Welsh Army Corps by the Pwllheli town council in October 1914.  I'd agree with Derek that as summer 1915 dawned they may have been moved out into tented camps, both to reduce the allowances paid to landladies and to get the men used to living in the field, as it were.

 

 

 

Hi Clive did you manage to find out any info about Criccieth/Pwlleli/Porthmadog training camps

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Sorry Derek,

Still can't access my older source-notes at present but I'll get onto it eventually!   I'll try search-terms in the National Library of Wales' digitised collections of Welsh newspapers for that period.  Not comprehensive coverage, but they've enlightened me many a time.  

There's a reference in a paper of 21.5.15 to an inspection of the artillery units "quartered at Criccieth and Portmadoc", followed by a march-past on the sands between the two towns.  Other mentions include the term "stationed at..." those towns.   In April 1915 there was a Porthmadog court case involving a Cornish recruit for the artillery who had stolen from the landlady of the house he was billeted in, so clearly that sort of guesthouse accommodation was being used in the wider area. 

Better luck just now - a 16.4.1915 newspaper article about the artillery training in the wider area included the reporter asking an RFA officer as to when the men would be moved from billets to tented camps.  He got an evasive response, that the officers were keen to do so because it was hard for the units to train as a brigade when the men were in billets, but otherwise the date (or location) when this would happen wasn't mentioned.

So I'd say that billets were used until at least summer 1915, but at the moment I can't confirm tented camps prior to the units going to the south of England for final range-training then embarkation. 

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Criccieth is somewhere that I spend two separate weeks every year and I shall be looking for the oldest resident on my visit in May/June: there are still relatives of David Lloyd George in town. There was a Free French unit stationed there in in WW2 (a plaque commemorates this on the promenade) and it might be that they used facilities and areas that had been previously used in WW1. Another possibility is that troops were hutted/tented in WW2 (and therefore possibly i the same area in WW1) at the site of Haven Holidays  (previously a Butlins) just outside Pwllheli further west from Criccieth (ie on the opposite side to Porthmadog (Portmadoc in English-speak). think there was also a naval training establishment thereabouts in WW2 - I think that the late Lt Philip Mountbatten RN (aka Duke of Edinburgh) was involved. 

There is certainly no shortage of good campsites though I would have thought parading on the beaches between Criccieth and Porthmadog might have been a bit trisky given the quality of the sand.

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HMS Glendower was a Royal Navy base at Pwllheli in WW2 - online quick check seems to show it was tented in part (or perhaps early in the war).  But I'm sure that I've also read it was housed at the Butlins camp, in a personal account by one of the sailors based there.  

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  • 4 months later...

The Pwllheli/Criccieth area could be confusing for non-locals. Butlins used to be a naval training camp and remained so until the late 1940s until sold to Billy Butlin the holiday tycoon! Take the road from Pwllheli towards Llanaelhaearn and you pass by the old camp which became Welsh Lady confections back in the 60s. During WW2 it was a German prison of war camp in which an uncle of mine who had done his bit in the first bash was a Home Guard  at the Welsh Lady! Prior to that, my father who comes from Pwllheli, assured me that it was a "depot camp" (meaning ordnance?) during WW1. Located more towards Y For than Llanaelhaearn. (Y For, also known as Four Crosses or Y Groes Heglog.)

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