My Memories of Grandpa Maslen
by Joyce Ellis (nee Maslen)
My Grandfather, Frederick Joseph Maslen of Arcadian Cottage, West Cross, was a carpenter, undertaker and boat builder.
The smells of his workshop remain in my memory still. They were a combination of the tar with which he lined the coffins, wood shavings and his strong tobacco, which he grew himself and which he soaked in rum and wrapped in sailcloth. He smoked for most of his life from the age of fourteen until he died in his early nineties. He had a row of pipes ranging in size from small to a large churchwarden pipe and he was in the habit of smoking a different one each day.
The Maslen Family, from back left: Cyril, Ivor, Cleve, Nora, front row from front left: Lizzie, ?, Grandpa Fred. Percy was born later in 1918.
He had an old washing boiler in his workshop and when he put it on to boil, we all knew he was going out shrimping. He would use my Dad’s old army kit bag and a large shrimping net about 5 feet width by 4 feet deep. He would wade out and following the tide, would scoop up the shrimps. He would then return and put them on to boil. While he waited, he would erect trestles, over which he laid chicken wire and threw the shrimps on them to cool and all the local children would come to have some. Oh! the memories of sitting on the sea wall eating freshly cooked shrimps, while seagulls flew around seeking morsels.
He was well-read, could hold a conversation with anyone and was a gifted carpenter. He made his own oars and some of his wooden gates lasted so well that they have only recently been removed. He once designed a punt, which would not capsize as most others did on occasion. He made several for different people, but did not patent his design, consequently he did not make any money from this expertise.
He was active well into his eighties, when once he could be seen at the top of an extension ladder clearing out the shoots on the roof.
If a stranger wanted to find him, they were told to look out for a little man, with a flat cap and a large pipe surrounded by a cloud of smoke.
My Seventeenth Birthday
by Joyce Ellis (nee Maslen)
On Friday 10th October 1941, my Mother and I were watching a film in the local cinema, the Tiv, when I became conscious that a man had come to sit next to me. I looked and to my amazement saw that it was my Father, ‘Cleve’ Maslen, who had come home on a surprise leave for the weekend, although he would not be able to stay until my birthday on the following Monday.
We all had a good ‘leave’ together at home at Arcadian House, West Cross. Then on the Saturday, we went to the ‘Mackworth’ in High Street, Swansea for lunch and my parents bought me a watch. But unbeknown to me then, the last sight I was ever to have of my father, was when he waved his hat out of the train window as he left High Street Station to go back to his ship at Milford Haven on the Sunday evening, for he was killed the next day on my seventeenth birthday, 13th October.
Cleve & Ivor Maslen, WW1 picture,
He had been on a mine-sweeper, the H.M. Trawler Andre Monique, which had been attacked by a German plane. We knew he had been serving in the Royal Navy in Pembrokeshire and had recently been promoted to Chief Petty Officer, but because he was in Wales, we had not thought he was in any particular danger. He had volunteered in January but had not told us he was on a Minesweeper. He was the only one on his ship killed in that action.
He had served out the Great War in the Royal Naval Division, spending Christmas 1916 on the coast of France in a village called Le Crotoy near the Somme Estuary, a little way from Abbeville. He was wounded for the second time in August 1918, but was rescued from ‘no mans’ land’ by a young German Soldier, who then gave himself up and was taken to the British trenches. Without that help, I would not be here to tell this tale.
My Father had a wonderful nature and a terrific sense of humour and was my best friend as well as my father.
On the register kept by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, his entry reads-
Alfred Cleveland MASLEN
Enginmean, LT/KX125092, H.M. Trawler Andre Monique.,
Royal Naval Patrol Service
who died age 43 on Friday 10 October 1941 [sic].
Son of Frederick Joseph and Lizzie Maslen;
husband of Dinah Grace Maslen, of West Cross, Swansea.
Remembered with honour
SWANSEA (OYSTERMOUTH) CEMETERY