Wade Family - Penarth, Barry

Life at 3 Cwrt-y-Vil Road, Penarth. Here lived surgeon Larry Wade [James Stanley Hilary Wade], his wife Joan and their children – twins James and Peter (who wear jumpers bearing their names) and baby Robert (a fourth boy, Andrew, was to follow). A hammock, a swing seat, a tricycle and the seaside (The Knap, Barry) provide fun in summer and snow provides a diversion in winter. Friends and family visit, including Joan’s parents from Scotland.

Larry Wade (1916-1992), awarded a Military Cross for action in the Middle East in 1942 when he was a captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps, became a consultant surgeon at Cardiff’s University Hospital of Wales, his speciality the thyroid. He was one of the four sons of Jimmy Wade [James Owen David Wade, 1885-1952] of Llanelli who was consulting surgeon to many miners’ hospitals in the south Wales valleys. Plaques in his honour can still be seen at the miners' hospitals in Mountain Ash and Caerphilly. A short film, part of the Wade family’s collection, shows his surgeon’s hands at work, swiftly removing an appendix. All four of his sons followed him into medicine, three becoming surgeons, one a physician.