Life in the Camp
We know that conditions were hard- even by Irish navies standard and it was difficult even from the start to retain labour.
Despite the bleak conditions of camp life there was evidently time for romance, as in February 1915 Williams Clemmens, who was a mason resident in the ‘Small Hut Waterworks Llanddeusant’ married Isobel Overman, of the same address. The happy event is recorded in the marriage register of the Parish Church at Llanddeusant.
We learn a little more about William Clemmens when later that year he was up before the magistrates charged with selling liquors without a licence at the small hut. In October 1915 a local policeman had peered through the windows of the zinc building, and observed fifteen people, some of them very drunk, playing cards and ordering beers, which they then paid for. On returning the following day with a warrant, he found the men drinking and brawling and a quantity of cash which he took to be the illicit earnings. On summing up the case the defendant was described as a respectable man working as a mason on public works, previously working for 10 years at Rhayader, and before that at Derwent Waterworks and the Naval Base at Rosyth – his good reputation helped mitigate his financial penalty.
Clearly the conditions at the waterworks at Llanddeusant were so bad that retaining labourers became a pressing issue. The minutes of the Llanelli Rural District Council record an application to both the War Office and the Home Office for the employment of German prisoners of war or interned aliens to provide the necessary labour, which was declined on the grounds that the site was too inaccessible.
