Gwenllian celebrating three score years and 50!

WALES’S oldest person Gwenllian Davies is 110 on Sunday. (Oct 4)

Remarkably, Gwenllian has three fellow supercentenarians sharing her Carmarthenshire council Fairfach Awel Twyi care home. They are retired nurse 103-year-old Mary Kier 103, former farmer Winston Peregrine aged 102 and Nancy James 101.

Acting home manager Louise Thomas said: “To have three supercentenarians among 38 residents is quite exceptional. People have asked us what we put in the tea? It is nothing but love and attention and a really happy environment.”

All are getting together for a special celebratory tea party at the home on Monday afternoon and the home have created a pub out of the spare space so those whose medication will be able to say Cheers to Gwenllian with a celebratory tot.

The home staff and Gwenllian’s family have collected memorabilia from 110 years ago to make an exhibition of items from Gwenllian’s Day to highlight the occasion including butter patters and Wright Brothers first flight pictures.

County health and social care executive board member, Cllr Jane Tremlett, has visited Gwenllian over the last year said: “ Gwenllian was a wise, well read and witty person who had led a fulsome and incredible life spanning an amazing century of great changes.”

Confessing to be a little deaf and sometime forgetful, Gwenllian, who herself worked had as a farmer’s daughter and then farmer’s wife in Pontardawe most of her life still walks unaided and will even serve tea for her visitors.

The remarkable Gwenllian was born on the day in October, 1905, when the first aeroplane flight lasting half an hour by the Wright brothers was made and the year Albert Eistein published his papers for his theory of relativity.

The era of fight might have been in its infancy but by the time she was 36 in 1941, Gwenllian can remember being horrified watching from her hilltop valley farm home above Swansea the destruction by the Luftwaffe in a three-day blitz.

The First World War still rankles with her because her pocket money was reduced from 1d a week to a halfpenny. “The war wasn’t my fault” she said, “why should I be penalised.”

Gwenllian remembers the horror of seeing Swansea “lighting up and ablaze with explosions day and night.”

Widow of Arthur, who died in 1970. Gwenllian has no children but her farm Lletty Philip was often open house to children from the Pontardawe community and nephews and nieces who called her Aunty Gwennie.

Her great nephew and wife Martin and Eleri recall as many as a dozen children at a time calling on the farm on Saturday mornings and and many would sleep over.

Eleri says all the children worked hard helping with the milking, herding and the sheep and all would look forward to the legendary big breakfasts cooked up by Gwenllian. She would have as many as 24 eggs sizzling in the pan and against all health advice eat only the white fatty bits of bacon herself.

Gwenllian cut and gathered hay on the farm for many years before the advent of combine harvesters and was also known for being able to sow and collect potatos in furrows over hundreds of yards while bent double without raising her head.

Before she went to the care home five years ago Gwenllian would often be seen outside her Llandeilo home weeding the garden until the light faded each day never losing her farming instincts.

Eleri says: “Gwenllian is a remarkably intelligent woman who has worked hard all her life. She has never smoked or had anything other than the odd celebratory drink

“She is remarkably well read and startled the mobile librarian who when calling at her home when she was 95 was asked for books by Russian writer Dostoevesky. ‘That was a first for me‘ said the librarian.

“Gwenllian’s main aim in life has been to help and support others. She has always been well known for her kindness.”

Caption: Gwenllian looking foward to her tenth centenarian birthday card from the Queen. Pic Jeff Connell