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Since 1939 Liverpool schoolchildren have been packing their bags, clambering on to buses and travelling out to North Wales to visit Colomendy.

Often referred to as Liverpool’s ‘Jewel in the Crown’ Colomendy was originally designed as a safe haven for wartime Liverpool evacuees. In the years after the war the camp was opened up to Liverpool school’s as an outdoor education centre and since then over 350,000 children have stayed at the camp.

Colomendy, built in 1939 by the National Camps Corporation, was split in two with an upper and lower camp. For a time one camp was used as a dormitory school and another as a visiting school.

The Colomendy dormitories

In 1969 a new development the Glyn Alyn Secondary Education School was opened, this became the residential school and both camps became available for visiting schools. . In later years the camp was repeatedly threatened with closure. In 2006 the first stage of a new Colomendy opened as part of a £10million redevelopment.

Wartime refuge

Built in 1939 by the National Camps Corporation the first children at Colomendy arrived in April 1940 from Dingle. The camp has not been without its troubles in 1951 a riot by 150 boys, in a protest over food, resulted in much smashed crockery.

In 1990 Glyn Alyn closed and its residential blocks became part of the main Colomendy camp.

Children at Colomendy

Liverpool children who visited Colomendy have many happy memories of what for many was their first taste of the countryside and their first time away from their parents. Favourite activities included climbing the local mountain Moel Famau, walking along a rock ledge known as the catwalk and visiting the camps farm.