The Lost City of Z explorer bought a Welsh hill farm
Family recall the Amazon adventurer who never struck gold, but lived a remarkable life. Andrew Forgrave reports
ON APRIL 6, 1932, Paul Rycote de Shorediche Churchward placed an advert in The Times. It read: “Exploring and sporting expedition, under experienced guidance, leaving England June, to explore rivers central Brazil, if possible ascertain fate of Colonel Fawcett.”
Col Percy Fawcett was the lost explorer immortalised by Hollywood who, in 1925, set off in search of the Lost City of Z, a legendary jungle city said to be “covered in gold”. The 1932 expedition aimed to find out what happened to him by travelling into the Amazon rainforest where “no white man has been”.
Among the applicants was Peter Fleming, brother of Ian, author of the James Bond novels. Another was a former farm labourer who would later flee to north Wales to escape the Nazis and buy a hill farm sitting on eight gold mines.
This was father-of-five Arthur “Alf” Humphries, then aged 30, who was born in Gloucestershire and moved to Birmingham to find work after leaving school at 14. Buying a hill farm in the Wnion valley, Gwynedd, he stayed there for 21 years before moving to Wrexham county, where he ran a garage and haulage business.
According to granddaughter Joyce Gibbard, Alf began thinking about a move to Wales because he feared the consequences of staying in the English Midlands. “He started purchasing negotiations earlier than 1944 because he was afraid the UK would be defeated in WWII,” she said. “He wanted to be as far away as possible should that happen – and to be selfsufficient as far as possible.”
What happened to Alf is a curious tale of endeavour and fortitude. His five children were schooled in Gwynedd and some descendants remain in the region. Last month several braved a return trip to Alf’s farm for the first time in 59 years.
“The weather hadn’t changed much!” said Joyce after arriving in a downpour. “The granite house still stood solid and settled in the landscape but it seemed so much smaller.”
The organiser of the 1932 expedition went by the abbreviated name of Robert Churchward. A year earlier, he went to Brazil. While travelling in the Mato Grosso, his curiosity had been aroused about the disappearance of Col Fawcett.
He was the accomplished but eccentric British explorer central to the 2017 Hollywood film, The Lost City of Z. Convinced by evidence suggesting the existence of an undiscovered jungle city ‘covered in gold and full of people,’ in 1925 Col Fawcett set off in search of a place he called ‘Z.’ Despite later sightings of a white man claiming to be Col Fawcett ‘dressed in skins and wearing a long beard,’ his party was never seen again.
Robert’s expedition hoped to shed light on what happened to him. By this time, Alf had found work as a chauffeur and gardener for Robert’s father, Brigadier General Paul Rycote Stanbury Churchward, at Ridware Hall, Staffordshire. Among the eightstrong group of toffs and adventurers assembled for the 1932 expedition, Alf stood out.
In his book, A Wilderness of Fools, Robert explained that Alf was to be chief mechanic and fixer.
The party, including eight native Indians, were away for five months and achieved very little. They shot all the wildlife they saw, but sightings of Col Fawcett proved elusive, he was believed to have been killed by the natives.
On their trip up the Tapirapi River, all suffered hunger, thirst and injury. They returned exhausted, though not without souvenirs: in his case, Alf brought back several native spears, shields and a shrunken head.
All were placed on the landing at the farmhouse he later bought in Gwynedd. “They always had a sinister air about them,” said Joyce with a shudder.
After returning from Brazil, Alf bought a smallholding in Birmingham, and settled down to life as a trader with wife Daisy and their five children. When the war arrived he signed up for the Home Guard and suspected an invasion.
Not wanting to hang around in the line of fire, he sold his smallholding to Birmingham Corporation to fund his Welsh hideaway, and in 1944 the family moved to Caegwernog, a 300-acre farm near Llanelltyd.
Joyce said: “The plan was to have his two sons work on the farmland and stock while his wife, Daisy, and daughters concentrated on the dairy products for the local Salesian Dolgellau. They also planned to offer postwar ‘farmstay’ holidays and camping.
“A modicum of success was achieved, but in 1947 his two daughters married and moved to smallholdings, which rather reduced his staffing levels.”
Life on a hill farm was tough. Sheep had to be hand-sheared and pastures cut for hay.
Winter was worse – the great snowfall in 1947 was the worst of the 20th century, when half of all the sheep in Wales froze or starved to death.
Neither could Alf rely on the mineral rights he held for the land. A few miles away, a mine would supply the gold for the Queen’s wedding ring. But Caegwernog’s eight gold mines had all been abandoned by 1905.
In 1965, Boy Scout campers from London managed to sift an ounce of gold from the farm, but despite sitting on the Clogau Shales, Alf was convinced gold mining was a non-starter.
Instead, he hit on a venture that was to prove almost as lucrative. He began rearing turkeys, selling some locally, but sending most to Birmingham, where he had butchers’ contacts via his brothers-in-law.
“It was quite a successful venture,” said Joyce, recalling days plucking turkeys with distaste. “At Christmastime,
those family members living locally were drafted in to prepare for market the birds for the Christmas table.”
Besides the farm’s tractor and car, most things were done by hand. Dayto-day life was rudimentary. Even by 1965 the property lacked mains electricity supply. In the early 1960s Alf bought a generator.
“It gave us the chance to have a TV,” said Joyce.
“On Saturday evenings, close-by family would descend to watch programmes. It all depended on the quality of the signal, which in that part of the world was very weatherand atmospheric-dependent!”
In the winter of 1963-64 Alf fell ill. Subsequently, he became one of the first patients to receive a heart bypass at Liverpool’s new cardiothoracic facility, now the Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital.
While recovering, he feared his consultant would force him to stop driving. Pre-empting the decision, he opted to move to a flatter environment where the walking would be easier.
Besides, at the time the Welsh clearances were under way: using powers of compulsory purchase, the Forestry Commission was buying up swathes of upland Wales and displacing families from holdings that had been farmed for generations.
In the summer of 1965, Caegwernog was sold. The Forestry Commission bought the mountain area. A local farmer acquired the land and descendants of a former owner bought the farmhouse.
Alf, now aged 63, opted for entirely new ventures. With Daisy, he bought a garage and petrol station in Overton-on-Dee, Wrexham, and launched a small haulage business. Father and son ran both ventures until Alf died in 1978. Hubert kept the garage going until he retired and then sold it on.
By now, many of the five children and their families had dispersed around Britain. Joyce married a vet and in March they celebrated their 45th wedding anniversary. A chance discovery led them back to Caegwernog.
“I was trawling the web when I came across a reference to the farm on a website called Landscape Matters,” said Joyce. “As it was available to let, I mentioned it to my brother, Norman, and his wife, Sally, who thought it would be nice to host an anniversary celebration there.”
The aim was to gather together Joyce’s four siblings, their mother, Lily, being one of Alf and Daisy’s five children. Not all could make it, and in the driving rain it was a challenge to get to the farm for those who could.
They posed for a group photo at a spot behind the house where, when they lived there, all family-gathering photos were traditionally taken.
“Alf was quite a character, and his exploits were many,” said Joyce. “He was inclined to be curmudgeonly but he was intrepid, to say the least!”