The old postcard in my mother’s photograph album intrigued me. It was unused and featured a photograph in black and white of a large stone house. The only clue was on the back, the postcard had been printed in Builth Wells. I remember my mother telling me that as a young mother with twin babies she had been evacuated to Wales from London during the war, there had to be a connection.

The old photograph in my mother’s album

I wondered if this was where we had lived, could this have been my home when I was a toddler? I had a few photographs of my brother and myself in a garden, the background was part of a house. The windows behind us were identical to the ones in the stone house. It seemed fairly certain then that this was indeed the farm house belonging to Mr and Mrs Jones who had received us as evacuees some time around 1941. Not in Builth Wells, however, as I remembered distinctly that my mother had spoken of living in a village called Beulah.

Having solved the mystery I thought no more about it until my Welsh friends, Geraint and Tina, left England and moved to Carmarthen and my husband and I began to visit them fairly often. I understood then why they had driven back to Wales so frequently when they lived in England, it is such a beautiful country with its mountains, running streams and lush vegetation.

One weekend when we were visiting them I began to talk about the photograph I had of the old house and how I would like to try and find it. My mother had died in 1957 and I had no personal memory of those early years. All I knew was the name of the farmer, the village and a little girl called Agnes whom I thought was his daughter. Geraint offered to help, but then we discovered there were two villages called “Beulah”. He managed to make contact with several elderly people in both villages but no-one remembered an evacuee called Dolly with twins or a farmer Jones with a daughter called Agnes. The trail went cold.

Six months later we were again in Wales and driving through the countryside when I saw a sign saying “Beulah”. I wanted to stop and investigate. Always willing to be of help and being just a little curious themselves, our friends went into the local post office and were directed to the retired local undertaker. It transpired that we had spoken to him before on the telephone, he had been unable to help us then and neither could he now. He knew of a Mr. Jones and an Agnes but they were not related. A dead end again.