Across the road from the grocer there was a chemist. He offered a service which is not needed today. In those days not every house had electricity laid on. The people in these houses would have a wireless set that ran off batteries – not the kind of batteries in use today – but large batteries (which we called accumulators) which were made of glass and in which you could see the plates and the acid which they contained. These accumulators would be brought to the chemist’s shop where he would (for a fee) recharge them. I can remember seeing people walking along the road carrying these accumulators very carefully.
Another shop which we visited regularly was the bakers. Here we would buy freshly made bread, still warm from the oven. It was not surprising that my sister and I used to break off small pieces of this delicious, warm bread as we walked home. My grandmother was very tolerant and would say “It looks as though the mice have been nibbling the bread again”.
During our times at Prestatyn we worshipped regularly at 3 different churches. The largest was Trinity Methodist Church (where my parents were married).
We also used to walk to the Methodist Church in Meliden. Here they had a service in Welsh first, followed after an interval of 15 minutes by a service in English. We only ever attended the English service as none of us spoke Welsh.
The third church where we worshipped on occasions was Dyserth Congregational Church. My grandfather was one of the founders of this church. It was here that I had been christened before the war. It was a bus ride away from Rhosmor and there was a conveniently timed bus to get us to church on time, but we had to walk home along the hill paths as the buses only ran every 2 or 3 hours and the church service went on long enough so that we just missed one of the buses.
