Recording of the Week: England-Wales border dialect from 1950s

Talk of village horse fairs in an accent that I would have heard in my childhood just 9 miles away. Llanymynech straddles the Shrophire (England) / Montgomeryshire (Wales) border and before the 1969(?) Sunday drinking referendum in Montgomeryshire had the distinction that the Welsh part of the local pub was roped off from the English part, being forbidden to sell alcohol on a Sunday.

http://sounds.bl.uk/View.aspx?item=021M-C0908X0012XX-0500V0.xml

Recording of the Week highlights gems from the Archival Sound Recordings website, selected by British Library experts or recommended by listeners. This week's item was selected from the Survey of English Dialects collection by Antony Gordon, senior cataloguer and systems administrator at the British Library Sound Archive. It is an interview of John Edward Humphreys (d.o.b. 1894), made by Michael Barry in 1955 for the University of Leeds.

Comments

[Richard Ranft]

UK pubs cannot sell alcohol whenever they wish, as opening times are governed by licensing laws. Parts of Wales once had different licensing regulations from England including a ban on Sunday opening: see http://www.culture.gov.uk/reference_library/media_releases/2726.aspx/

[Avik]

I was wondering why the welsh part of the local pub was prohibited to sell alcohol.It is an universal fact that alcohols are sold at pubs,where else.