Dewi Waters

Born in Monmouthshire (now Gwent), Dewi Waters came to Turvey in 1947, when he was 16 years old. Dewi stayed with his aunt, Mrs. King, who lived in in the School House, which is now the Village Hall house. Dewi had already been taken on as a mining surveying apprentice in Wales, however, with his fathers’ approval, Dewi successfully obtained and completed a five year apprenticeship with a Bedford electrical firm. After two years undertaking National Service in the Royal Air Force, partly stationed in Germany, Dewi returned and continued working for the same Bedford firm, for a total of 48 years. In 1955 Dewi married local girl, Nancy Dix. Dewi recalls the late 1940s, 1950s and the 1960s living in Turvey and working in Bedford.

Memories of finding a different environment in Turvey.

“Well, coming from Wales, coming from a place where there were slagheaps and dirt and muck everywhere, it was utopia really. There was the river, you know, that was the attraction, because our river was just black! Laughter. And I used to spend a lot of time down at the river in the summer time. And I was friends with a lot of the young people and you know, we sort of enjoyed ourselves playing about really, weekends mostly, down at the river, fishing or swimming or things there.”

Memories of meeting his future wife.

“We didn’t have many churches in Wales with bells, the odd one, and er … because our village church had one single bell, you know, and I thought … I was fascinated by the bells, so I went up to the belfry to have a look. On Friday night they used to practice and they were all in the group and there were quite a lot of them. Young ladies and young boys and there was one young lady which took my fancy, and that was it. So, I became a bell ringer, and that was it!”

Memories of restoring a punt to go out on the river

“… but then Nancy’s brother and myself, we had an old punt and we decided to re-build this punt and put it on the river down at the Mill where we spent weeks doing this punt up. Re-pitching it and re-corking and goodness knows what, because Nancy’s dad had access down at the river from the back of Mill Green. And we took this punt down and we got it ready to launch, put it in the river … let it soak, because apparently you have to let it soak, we’d go back next day and go out for a trip. We went back the next day and all we saw was the rope going down into the river! Laughter! The thing had sank! Laughter!”

Memories of hunting rabbits

“I only went shooting once with Nancy’s brother, and I borrowed her father’s shot gun and we went across the field there. And I think we got one rabbit and it cost us a lot of cartridges, the rabbits, they were much quicker than we were! Laughter!”

A transcript of the full interview with Dewi Waters may be found in the Voices Collection of the Archive.