Lliw gan Hannah Evans

Until 1965 the Tryweryn Valley was a beautiful valley in North Wales. The river Tryweryn flowed through it.

In the valley was a village called Cwm Celyn

In the village of Capel Celyn was a school and a chapel and a graveyard and a post office and some houses and everyone spoke Welsh and that was their language they spoke everyday.

There were 12 farms in the valley as well and some land belonging to 4 other farms

Then the outsiders came

In 1955 Liverpool did not have enough water so they decided they could get more if they dammed Tryweryn valley and made a reservoir and drowned everything in it.

No one in Wales wanted them to do this. They did not ask anyone and they did not have to go to the local council in charge of Capel Celyn. There were lots of protests and marches.

In 1957 Liverpool City Council asked the English parlament if they could drown Tryweryn and they said yes. The prime minister in charge of the government was called Harold MacMillan.

None of the Welsh MPs voted for but the English MPs said it was alright for Liverpool to drown Tryweryn.

The worse person was Henry Brooke. He was the Minister for Welsh Affairs so he should have been looking after Welsh people but he was English and made a speech and said we were being selfish because 600,000 people in Liverpool would not have enough water to drink.This was a lie because they had plenty of water for ordinary people. The reason they wanted more was so that businesses could build more factories to make money.

It said this on the website http://members.fortunecity.com/mike_mcnally/welshreservoirs.htm

The English government go to war against countries who invade other countries because they want their land or oil but they did it when they invaded us to take our water.

And they go to war against countries which are not democratic where the government don’t listen to what people want and don’t take any notice of the people that the people elect to say what they think.

So they started building their dam

Moving out of Capel Celyn

Leaving Capel Celyn for the last time.

They started building the dam. Three times people tried to blow it up and someone was sent to prison.It was the biggest dam in Wales. .

There was an opening ceremony in 1965 and the Mayor of Liverpool was there and the Free Wales Army went and a few years later their leader was sent to prison as well. He was called Cayo Evans.

They told the Mayor he could not go to the Eisteddfod which was the first time they stopped him because the mayors of Liverpool always went because there are a lot of Welsh people in Liverpool and once the Eisteddfod was there

This is how Tryweryn looks today. The photographer dafadddal (Mabon Llyr) has put Cofiwch Tryweryn 48 times for the homes that got drowned.

This is people today having a good time on the reservoir

We think they should know what is underneath them

In 2005 the Liverpool council said they were sorry for drowning Tryweryn to get drinking water so they were lying because it was to build more factories and industry that needed water and they sold it to the factories and made money from the water they took from us.

A lot of people and politicians said they should pay money for a memorial as well.We think this is wrong because we have already got a memorial chapel we built ourselves without their money

We think it would be better if they made all the children in Liverpool schools know about Tryweryn and all the other dams Liverpool have built in Wales. They drowned another village as well called Llanwddyn when they built the dam to make lake Vyrnwy reservoir. You can see a film about it if you click here

They do this in schools in other countries so that children know what their countries did in the past.

And if you think that is all in the past they are still doing it. The English government are going to build big windfarms and gas pipelines and electric cables all across Wales but that is

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Many of the photographs in this story are from the People’s Collection and the Museum and Library Archive licensed under the Creative Archive Licence and we would like to thank them for allowing us to use them.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/creativearchive/licence/index.shtml