I came here as an evacuee from Liverpool when I was seven. We came to Bontnewydd because my father had died in 1937. All six of us, including my mother, came to North Wales.

When everyone else went home in 1945, I stayed behind. They wouldn't let me go back to Liverpool because they said they wanted somewhere for a summer holiday!

I've still got a bit of a Liverpudlian accent though. My mother was with us, and we had English teachers. I only learnt Welsh when I married my husband, Rheinallt. We called him Reni for short or we would have got lock jaw!

But between my husband and my children, I've learnt how to pronounce things properly and I understand Welsh quite well now.

My husband worked at the Dorothea quarry. He was what they called a rock man. After blasting and before it's sent up to be dressed, it's called rock - only after being dressed is it called slate.

One day, my husband had gone to work in his green overalls. He wore a clean one every Monday, but came home tea time with a big brown stain on it. I said 'Reni Davies what have you done, where did you get the paint from?' He said 'it's not paint Jean, it's blood.'

His partner Ifan Gors got up to blast, as they did every hour, on the hour. As he was going up, there was a fall of rock. He was thrown down and hit his head. My husband held him, which is how the blood got on his clothes. Ifan was taken to hospital, but five days later he died from his injuries.

We had Lloyd George's nephew, the solicitor William Lloyd George, in our house all the time for about six months, questioning my husband. 'He didn't have his helmet on' - 'But you wouldn't have your helmet on if you'd been knocked upside down'.

It went to court and his wife was given only £1,500 for the loss of her husband.

The quarrymen's pay was never great. They just used to get paid a sub each week. They'd have an enforced day of rest on harvest day, first Monday in August. But they wouldn't get paid for it.

When the snow came, they were laid off - if you didn't have any money put by for such occasions you'd be in queer street. Then when the snows went, the quarry owners would weed out the ones they didn't want back.

My youngest son used to walk round Dorothea, and say 'I'm going to go down there with those little men mammi'. 'Over my dead body', I said. But he does work in a quarry; he's an engineer in Llanberis.

Dorothea quarry closed in 1969. It's half a mile deep and it took seven years for it to fill with water after they stopped pumping. It's now reached a level where the water runs between the quarries and down to the river in Llanllyfni.

Dorothea is a very spooky place now. A young lad went missing a while back. The police came with a camera and still couldn't find him, so they sent down a yellow submarine. They found him in the end, on a ledge. There are little caverns where the rock's been taken away. What happened was the cables down there had got caught round his aqualungs. He was only 21 and his girlfriend who was 20, was on the banks waiting for him to come up. It was so sad.