In late 1915, early 1916 Bala pharmacist H W Lloyd photographed around 500 mostly German prisoners of war at Frongoch camp north of the town. The photos may well have been for postcards for the men to send to their families.
Lloyd’s surprising story is being told on the Imperial War Museum’s (IWM) website.
His images record the men and their entertainments at the defunct Royal Welsh Whisky distillery at Frongoch, later famous as an internment camp following the 1916 Easter Rising in Ireland. It is the latest among 100 daily stories and poems with which the IWM is marking the centenary of the final days of the First World War.
David Mathews, a writer born in Cardiff and living in Bath, has turned the little-known episode into a 100-word tribute to Lloyd.
Born in Bala, trained in Liverpool, H W Lloyd ran his pharmacy in Bala High Street from the late 1890s until his death in 1942. A keen photographer and staunch Calvinistic Methodist, he took family photographs and recorded chapel life.
More than 400 of Lloyd’s glass negatives were given to the National Library of Wales by Kate, Lloyd’s widow.
David said: “Goodness knows who roped him in to photograph the German prisoners when they came to Frongoch, but they look relaxed enough with him in their portraits. My best guess is the camp doctor, Dr Peters.
“All I had when I started were the National Library’s images on-line and what Will Troughton, the photography curator, knew of Lloyd. Now I know more, but that just means I have a dozen further questions.
"More than anything, I would like to find the names of some of these soldiers and sailors, and trace their grandchildren and great-grandchildren in Germany or Alsace or Poland.”
Visit https://www.library.wales/discover/digital-gallery/photographs/h-w-lloyd/ to see more photographs taken by H W Lloyd.
See this week’s edition of the Cambrian News for a free 4-page pullout commemorating the First World War
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