Biographical Entry

2:426 HUGHES, George Clifton, ‘Shut the Mountain Gate’,TS, pp.141 (c.65,000 words). Brunel University Library. 

Born in the opening decade of the 20th century. No details of parents or family. Educated at infants’ school; Ponciau Junior Boys’ School; by scholarship to Ruabon Grammar School (from 1902); Sunday School. No mention of marriage. Raised in the North Wales mining village of Rhossllanerchrugog. Living in Bristol in 1984. 

No details of occupations.

 Member of the Liberal League Club.

 Detailed, informative and entertaining reminiscences of childhood and adolescent years spent in a small north Wales mining community, with a particularly useful section on schooling. Hughes also records his memoriesof the cinema; churches; chapels and pubs; the temperance movement; illnesses and medical treatment;’penny dreadfuls’; children’s games; wartime rationing; early motor transport; local politics; shops and retailing; provincial newspapers; motor cycles; corporal punishment; amateur football; a visit to the Wembley Cup Final of 1923; school camps.