Madam,

The response to the proposal for a museum in Tywyn has been very encouraging. The headline of the report in the Cambrian News (‘Calls for a military museum to be built’, 28 December) highlights one key aspect of the town’s modern history. I would only wish to say that no-one’s talking about building anything yet! However, that there may be a strong case for a dedicated Museum of the Second World War in north Wales based in Tywyn is a point I will return to.

However, just as worthwhile is the medium-term project to create a museum showcasing the totality of the town’s history and fine old buildings, like its wonderfully restored cinema. For a small town Tywyn has a big history and can boast a number of ‘firsts’. The Talyllyn Railway museum, an enduring tourist draw, celebrates the line’s importance as the first preserved railway in the world. Three winters ago Tywyn beach looked like a museum exhibit itself, storms revealing our share of the submerged forest also seen at Ynyslas and Borth. St Cadfan’s church was once an early medieval monastery and the ‘mother church’ for the cantref of Meirionnydd; St Cadfan’s Cross is the earliest example of written Welsh in the country. That theme of serving a wider area comes up again and again. With links to both the Cambrian and Talyllyn railways from the 1860s, Abergynolwyn slates reached England and Ireland via Tywyn and Aberdyfi, while tourists could now come from further afield on the ‘iron road’. These are just some of the aspects that the museum would cover, others being: the nonconformist chapels, entertainments, farming, the battle to keep the sea in Cardigan Bay and, last but not least, the individual stories of the “ordinary” people who live here today.

Museums about war come in all shapes and sizes, from those looking at the military side alone, others about the Home Front alone, to those that rightly point to the horrors of war. Several military establishments were set up in and around Tywyn in the Second World War, most headquartered in the town: marine, artillery and amphibian bases, an airfield, a military hospital, a secretive POW camp at Pennal and an even more secretive base to train Jewish resistance fighters at Aberdyfi. Evacuees from Merseyside and no less than 10,000 servicemen and women were present around Tywyn, a culture shock for a small, largely Welsh-speaking town. The area’s role was crucial in testing equipment and training for D Day. After the war, two very large camps remained, one until 1999. There are so many stories to tell and a big history to be shared, yet no museum to illustrate this story within 100 miles. Such is the case for a wide-ranging, non-militaristic war museum here at the heart of where it was all happening.

Yours etc,

Cllr Quentin Deakin, Corbett Avenue, Tywyn.

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