The first youth club was held in Penycae school we had first aid classes tennis lessons and best of all ballroom dancing lessons Neil Davies of Penycae taught us to dance we learned the lot from Waltz Quickstep Tango & Jive we had a gramophone that played one record at a time but Noel was a terrific dancer and, we benefited from his lessons as we could go to any Youth Club and Dance Hall and do all the dances thanks to our great teacher Noel lived in Penycae he had 2 brothers that I remember Benny & Eddie wonder were Noel went to I remember him working in a shoe shop in Wrexham happy memories!!
By the way this was in the 50s, shame that with all this modernisation there’s no more youth club.
We had a Youth Leader first time ever it was done voluntarily before, his name was Mr. Calvert he decided we would build our own Youth Club as Mr. Kendrick had given ground to Penycae youth he said we could build one on the ground nearby were the football club car park is now.
We had experts to help us but lads did all the labouring most of them had apprenticeships e.g. joiners builders etc. if course some had to do National service but helped when they were on leave I don’t remember how long it took but we did it in-between one if the things we use to do was collect 6pence (old money ) from people in the village and with carol singing we use to put on a Xmas lunch in the Church School next to the church for pensioners That school room started many a romance with the dances they held there especially New Year’s Eve also a live band no records then !!
I feel so sorry for the youth of today we always had somewhere to go Youth Club 3 times a week “Pictures” in Rhos, Dances at the weekend never enough time in the week we didn’t drink alcohol actually never thought about it as we couldn’t go into pubs until we were 21 and shops certainly didn’t sell it except in Wrexham. One was called RAINBOW stores can’t remember name of the other one any way people usually drunk Port or Sherry at Xmas oh dear once I start going back with memories I can’t stop maybe others have good memories to share when they grew up in the village see which era was best mine took place in the 50s
Source: Gaynor Davies, Penycae. 2015. Pic (c) Local Bygones.
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