Those were the days – welcome to Rhyl, 1954!

Sam Hewitt

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23rd August 2017

I recognised the photo on the front page of last month’s OBM as my old stomping ground of Rhyl promenade straightaway – not that I was lucky enough to have seen it in its heyday of the 1950s, because I didn’t come onto the scene until the early 1970s.

It seemed a shame to use a Mortons Archive photo as magnificent as this – showing bikes and sidecar outfits National Rally of 1954 – small enough for last month’s cover, so here it is blown up to its full glory.

We had a good go at keeping that kind of attendance going, but not with such noble machines – and what about the characters who also used to line up regularly opposite the cafe, The Boys are Back in Town-style (Thin Lizzie)?

Sadly those days are now long gone, and anyone who was there in 1954 would struggle to recognise the place – certainly since the county council took a sackful of EU grants to ‘redevelop’ (read knock down and tear up) the once-grand Victorian-era seafront and replace it with Toy Town USA.