16. Gwyneth Williams

Gwyneth Williams came to work in Cardiff Castle as a kitchen maid in 1938, aged 14. Her father was a woodman on the Bute family estate at Castell Coch.

Gwyneth’s bedroom was actually in the Clock Tower…

“I can visualize it when I go through the door, they’ve put an extra door – and that was not there of course. The whole place then where the toilets are was my room. That sink was my sink as well.”

As Gwyneth discovered on her very first night, living in the Clock Tower had its drawbacks!

“Well I couldn’t get to sleep for… oh it must have been an hour I should think. Because this clock was going… my alarm clock was ticking in my ear, that clock over there was ticking over here. And not only that, cos we had trams in those days, and they were ‘ding ding’ every 10 minutes. And it happened to be the stop just outside. And I thought ‘will I ever go to sleep here?’ and I said to my mum ‘will I ever go to sleep there properly?’ But I did in the end. I got used to it you know”.