Gwendolen Morfydd Morgan-Owen (1887 - 1978)
Gwendolen Morfydd Morgan-Owen was the youngest child of Timothy Morgan Owen and Emma. She was born on 18 May 1887 and lived in the shadow of her sister Nesta. They were both educated at Cheltenham College. She came out in 1905 with a ball at Penbryn but after the disastrous marriage of her older sister she was not a profitable catch. She stayed to look after her parents in their old age and was with them when they died. She never married. She lived simply at "Llwynderw", Landinam, a rather ugly, yellow-brick house that, together with its furniture and livestock, her father bequeathed to her; she was living there in 1921 when she set sail on 16 August, aboard the Scimia, from Liverpool to Bombay, presumably to visit her brother, Gethin.
I am told she had to sell up all the other family properties, partly to finally settle her brother-in-law’s debts and also to establish a trust for herself. The enforced sale in 1925 was at a time when prices were low - the carriage fetched £5. She kept the furniture, which eventually went into Hugh’s house at Repton.
She then moved to London as a companion, where she was treated very badly; she ended up in a flower shop in Hampstead where happily she made a life-long friend. She was living at 'Heathside', East Heath Road, Hamstead, when she sailed to India, to join her brother, Gethin, leaving Liverpool aboard the Assyria on 15 February 1927. The manifest states that she intended to live in India but she became ill and had to leave the country in August that year, sailing from Bombay aboard the Circassia and returning to the same Hampstead address.
She became housekeeper for Hugh in the late 1920s. At that time she calculated £200 a year would enable her to live
comfortably with a cook, a maid and a car. She did ARP work in WWII. She used to drive a huge old Riley and with wobbly lights and latterly a large,
black Wolsey – all you could see above the steering wheel was a 1920’s felt hat and a pair of hands. Even in her eighties
she was still driving. She drove up to Anglesey to stay with John and his family and announced on arrival, I think I’ve
driven to the end of the world!
She was quite a character.