Jerry had spent much of his childhood in Colwyn Bay, and he remembers it as a genteel spinster aunt of a town - which of course describes pretty much every seaside town of that era.
We were aware that the Glasfryn in Mold was pulling in people from quite a way along the North Wales coast, because in all honesty there weren't that many nice places to go between Anglesey and Chester. So when Taylor's pub, as it was then, came on the market, our ears pricked up. Taylor's had been built in the seventies by David Taylor, the manager of the Royal Hotel in the middle of Colwyn Bay, who had decided that he wanted to build his own pub.
Martin McHale, one of our locals, told us that the plot of land that the pub and grounds sits on was up for grabs in the early eighties and both David and a local house builder were after the site. Fortunately David was successful in acquiring the site and he and the builder never spoke to each other again! All of the bricks in the external walls of the properties, and various other construction materials, were acquired by David following the demolition of a substantial number of properties between Old Colwyn and the West End of Colwyn Bay to make way for the new A55 dual carriageway in the early eighties. The pub opened for business as Taylors in late 1983. David sold the pub to Ray Perry in 1998 and we bought it from him.
We liked the location, just far enough out of town to avoid the drinking circuit; we liked the views out over the sea and the headlands; we liked the dimensions of the building, which could support a busy operation; we liked the substantial car park, and we liked being in the heart of an extensive local community.
We bought the pub as a going concern but one of the difficulties was that the 'going concern' bit included a substantial youth trade, centred around Karaoke nights, which wasn't
our bag at all.
We opened in June 2001 after a substantial refit, and had to do quite a bit of jigging and tweaking the edges to get the right amount of 'pubiness', but it now fits like a comfortable shoe, with its old furniture, open fires, oak floors, rugs and newspapers.
