Kerfies, Cleggies and all that.
The Storehouse
Storehouse or Store House was a farm on the North East side of Rhyl. The area is all built on now but in the late 1700s and early 1800 it was all fields, marshes and dunes. Roberts family members owned the leases on The Storehouse and the adjacent Tre Llewelen farm and probably some land at the mouth of the estuary near the ferry (there was no bridge in those days). It seems that the farms around Rhyl were made up of a patchwork of fields and pastures and didn't have neatly defined boundaries. It's likely individual fields were given up or taken on as particular farms prospered or not. The Storehouse farm buildings were just to the north of where the Vale Road bridge is now. You can faintly see them marked on the Tythe maps of 1838.
In the first few decades of the 19th century Rhyl was no more than a single high street with a few hotels catering for the newly arrived tourist trade. As the town expanded so land became more sought after. The Chester and Holyhead Railway arrived in 1848 bisecting the Storehouse estate but giving it greater value. It now had a coalyard with its own sidings, a slate yard, and The Dudley Arms Hotel (now called the Cob and Pen) in a prime position next to the station building which opened on 1 May 1848. The estate also had a brickworks which, given the amount of building going on at the time, must have been a very profitable venture.
Storehouse wasn't just the name given to the farm, in true welsh fashion John Roberts was also known as Storehouse. His name is suffixed with "Storehouse" both in parish registers and in his capacity as one of the original "Improvement Commissioners" for Rhyl.
Given that the leases for individual fields and pastures were sold from time to time, I'm not sure of the extent of Storehouse farm at the time it was sold. We have newspaper adverts for the sale in 1859 and it includes "the whole of the farm and land called the Storehouse including the "Dudley Arms" and other lands in close poximity to the railway station in Rhyl" including the slate and coal yards.
John "Storehouse" Roberts is later recorded as living at 42 High Street, Rhyl; Shipley Street, Rhyl (which is pretty much where the farm buildings stood); and Brighton Road (which I think Shipley Street was renamed as).
