Ann -"My first night in Craig-y-nos -March 1950"

Ann on the farm
Only hours before I had left the farm and my warm bedroom with its piles of quilts, flannel blankets and a coal fire in the corner.

Now as night falls the chattering girls sleep and the silence of the night is broken by a low but insistent cacophony of sounds in Ward 2.
For the March wind plays its own vicious tune with the castle fittings rattling through barred windows and doors never designed to be left open in such conditions.
It hurtles through the ward like some invisible demented demon and out through the open French windows to the balcony and mountains beyond.


Craig-y-nos Castle from the courtyard

The cavernous room with its crowded beds , so close you can touch the girl in the next one, acts as an auditorium to this unexpected duet: the wind howling its own wild tunes accompanied by the choir of endless coughing.

My sobbing has stopped for now I have a new and more immediate fear: I am cold, very, very cold...

I am 9 years of age and four months. Mother promised I would be here for only three days.