We have all heard of Amlwch, copper capital of the world circa 1800, and its famous people, Tom Chwarae Teg and Roose, Lord Dinorben and the unfortunate Fraziers, to name just a few; and the shipbuilders, the tobacco barons, the sea captains; not much about ordinary folk.

There are books, Bryan Hope's A Curious Place, Eryl Wyn Rowlands' Masts and Shafts and the occasional paper in learned journals like Bedwyr Jones' on Roose, but these are all about the big things, the mines, the porth, the smelting works, the shipbuilding yard, and the big people who owned and ran them. There has been very little written about ordinary folk and their ordinary lives.

And reading these histories you could be forgiven for believing that Amlwch ended in 1900, that what happened over the past 100 years was of no importance, but without the ordinary folk there would never have been an Amlwch.

Can we all get together to write a history of Amlwch, a social history, a history of the ordinary people and how they lived? Not big events that are chronicled anyway in dusty official papers, like the arrival of Ethyl - but did the workers there have lots of social events?

We do not need to document when the police force arrived, but has anybody got stories of what it was like to be the sole policeman? We can read in the Llangefni Archives of all the marriages which took place in St Eleth, but who were the first couple to have a paid photographer?

I took this photo (left) in August 1953. The harvesting took place in what was then known as Barnsley's Field, Mr Barnsley then being a local farmer/smallholder. The Barnsley family was originally English, but had been living in Llaneilian for many years and Mr Barnsley's father had been the Vicar of Llaneilian Church.

Today the field is occupied by about half a dozen small bungalows - I wonder how they find their gardens because in the old days Barnsley's Field was well known for getting water-logged in winter, even though a small stream ran alongside it which eventually empties into Eilian Bay.

Mr Barnsley also farmed land to the west of Eilian Bay and one day in the summer holiday I worked there picking strawberries and my pay for the whole day was one shilling and threepence three farthings; I also got stung by a bee; so much for fond memories... Unfortunately I cannot identify anyone in the photo.

And then there is the Creek, all those swimming regattas, when did they start, which families always won the trophies, and who actually cut the steps in the rockface? Or we could talk about the auction rooms behind the cinema, Charlie Jones imploring a reluctant audience to part with un swllt (a shilling) for a cracked chamberpot.

Who remembers Evans the Garage, a kindly man with hands steeped in oil, opposite the auction, the Afan Goch running alongside? There weren't many private cars in Amlwch then and most of those didn't have tax or insurance either; there was only one policeman and his transport was a pedal cycle, so the chances of being caught were minimal.

Like the licensing hours? The pubs 'closed' at 9pm Monday to Saturday and all day Sunday, but the bar in the Dinorben had a number of secret exits, no doubt other pubs did too. The high point of the summer, of course, was the circus, and the fair, from memory they were in a field behind the station. You could have hours of fun at the fair for an outlay of only sixpence.

Youngsters today talk about the best eating places in Amlwch, but in the war years there were only two places, a 'posh' cafe opposite the cinema, can anyone remember its name? And the ice cream and chip shop, Figoni's, just behind the top end of Wesley Street.

There are hundreds of questions we could ask about the lives of ordinary people, but the answers exist only in the memories of folk who are, let's face it, getting on in years. These answers could, within a decade or so, be lost for ever.

Come on, let is write the real history of Amlwch!

By Hugh Gibbon.