The White House
ARTICLES of GENERAL INTEREST
THE WHITE HOUSE
I was born in Wenvoe back in 1958 and went to the local school. I had a bunch of friends in the village who I used to hang around with. We used to run around the village and thought we knew every building and house around.
At the end of Walston Road going west towards the woods, there was a road that led to the Quarry and was big enough for vehicles to go through. I think I was about seven when my friends and I found a house that we had never noticed before. It was about two hundred yards into the lane and was situated on the left going towards the quarry.
It was a big White House with grass on both sides of the house. It had two windows at the bottom and top of the house, so I presumed it was the same at the back. The house looked spotless from top to bottom, like somebody had just placed it there. We never saw anybody go into the house or come out.
In September, when the school year started again, we went to our new seats in the village school classroom. Mrs Pritchard, the new schoolteacher, greeted us as we came into the class.
Then Mrs Pritchard brought a small girl into the classroom. “Class” she said “this is Gwenllian, she has moved down to Wenvoe from a place called Corwen in North Wales and doesn’t speak much English. Her Dad works for the BBC and has come down to work at the Llandaff studios for a while.”
A little girl appeared in the classroom, she had long black hair and wore a black dress with white stockings, she looked very ethereal with what looked like translucent skin. “Say hello to the class Gwenllian”, said Mrs Pitchard. “Hello” said Gwenllian in a very guttural Welsh voice.
Over the next few months Gwenllian made friends with our little gang as we toured the lanes and fields of Wenvoe village.
We found out that Gwenllian had moved into the White House, but we never got an invite to look around. As Gwenllian got better at speaking English, she told us about how her mother had passed away when she was little and that her dad had bought her up.
She told us that she was an ancestor of Owain Glyndwr a famous Welsh leader and military commander of Wales in the thirteenth to fourteenth centuries. He was the last self-proclaimed Welsh Prince of Wales. One day Gwenllian came to our group to say she would be leaving soon. She said her Dad who was a Druid, had been called back to Corwen and they would have to leave soon as his business with the BBC had come to an end.
Gwenllian said “Our Draig would take care of our house.” We never saw Gwenllian at our school again and as the days went on towards winter, our parents told us of a fire up by the quarry. Our little gang went up to where the fire was. It was Gwenllian’s house; the White House had gone up in flames. The Fire Chief shook his head and said to one of his Firemen
“I don’t get it. It’s like someone has sprayed fire onto the house from above, the way it’s burned.”
When the flames had died down and people had gone away, the gang and I looked around the remains of the White House. We went around the back of the house towards the garden. There seemed to be a big indent on the grass like a very large animal had been lying there.
Up in the sky I could hear a flapping sound like large wings flying off. As we grew older, we forgot about Gwenllian; the White House fell into ruins and eventually the trees and bushes covered whatever traces were left of it.