A Kent-born woman is returning to her Tywyn roots in an attempt to trace her family ties to the Gwynedd town.

Whilst working in Chester for the summer, Portia Griffey, who now lives in Norwich, will be travelling down to Tywyn in July in the hope of getting back in touch with her family history, potentially paying a visit to the library archives there.

She predicts that the trip will be an “interesting journey”.

While she expressed that “perhaps for me it is enough just to visit Tywyn”, she added that the town could potentially greet her with some familial faces: “My grandfather was one of six children, so there may even be some relatives in the area”.

After finding out about her family’s roots in Tywyn and piecing together fragments of information from various documents, Portia was able to combine them to create a snapshot of her family history there, beginning with her great grandmother Elizabeth Wynne Jones, who had five children – including Portia’s grandfather, Rev John T Williams, born on Church Street, Tywyn in 1883.

Portia discovered these documents upon receiving a box of belongings from the family of her grandfather’s housekeeper, acquired after his death in 1965, containing photographs, certificates of birth, death and marriage, wartime mementos and even a stack of articles he had written for the Cambrian News, entitled ‘Guests of the Kaiser: Towyn Man’s Thrilling Story’.

Portia explained that she had never met this side of her family – the separation of her grandparents in the 1930s left her grandmother with sole custody of Portia’s mother, Elizabeth, who was born in Africa and never lived in Wales.

She said: “I never knew my family as my mother died when I was three and she was already estranged from her father, who died a year later.”

But she added that she has long felt a connection to the area, despite living only in England and France throughout her life. “I guess I’ve always felt Welsh, even though I have never visited before,” she said.