Henry Pochin
Many of the people who helped to develop Meliden and Prestatyn now lie in St. Melyd’s churchyard but there is a notable exception—Henry Davis Pochin because he lies in the family vault at Bodnant Gardens. Having made his fortune in soap, steel, coal and railways, he semi-retired to Llandudno in 1871 but being only 47 he was still full of energy! In 1874 he bought the Bodnant Estate in the Conwy Valley. He and his daughter Laura were great gardeners and as it turned out, they spent the rest of their lives tending Prestatyn as though it was a garden. These days the only local evidence that he existed is the brown marble fountain on Prestatyn High Street, just outside the old vicarage. Truthfully, have you ever given it a second thought?
In 1875 a law was passed requiring every council to employ a Medical Officer and as a result, Dr. J. Lloyd Roberts, M.B., was appointed as the Medical Officer to the St. Asaph Union which oversaw Meliden and Prestatyn. He was told to report on the local water supply and his findings were really shocking. In the Meliden section of the report he describes and outbreak of typhoid fever which effected four families in the Tai Cochion cottages that once stood where the Red Lion car park is now. They had, without realising it, been drinking their own sewage.
Dr. Lloyd Roberts proposed a scheme to improve the supply by making use of the old lead mine aqueducts and the laying of additional pipes to convey water from Marian Mills to Meliden and Prestatyn. It was a relatively inexpensive scheme and the St. Asaph Rural Sanitary Authority did discuss it but took no action. Henry Pochin was no slowcoach—it suited him and he did act.
What happened next was like a game of real-life Monopoly. In 1877 he bought the Golden Grove Estate above Prestatyn and nobody gave it much thought—after all, he was just an industrialist playing at being a country squire. Then in 1879 he bought the loss-making Prestatyn Nant Estate and a 200-yard strip of the beach all the way from Prestatyn as far as the Ffrith. In a few pincer-like manoeuvres he had become the King of Prestatyn! Just think of what he had taken possession of—the first nice place on the north Wales coast which had a railway station with mountain scenery and a good sandy beach—which he owned.
Prestatyn was ripe for development but Henry Pochin knew that it was not simply a matter of building roads and houses. His reason for buying the Golden Grove Estate became apparent—it included the Ffynnon Asaph spring—better known as Marian Mills. The water from Marian Mills would be the only practicable way to supply water to an future Urban District of Prestatyn. Like the Romans, he knew that with a supply of clean water, the town would grow.
In 1880 he applied to the Board of Trade for a Provisional Order which would enable him to build his waterworks at Marian Mills. He knew that there would be objections and he would need the authority to enter and cross other people’s land and dig up roads. Most of all, he needed the power to charge everyone who wanted to be connected. It all went according to plan and the work was completed by June 1883—a year that should be commemorated as the beginning of modern Prestatyn.
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