Memorial to snooker player Agnes Davies, Saron, near Ammanford
The purple plaque at Saron Welfare Hall was unveiled in June 2025 to honour women's snooker champion Agnes Davies (1920-2011). She beat men and women as an amateur and professional player – once with a wrist in plaster!
She started playing snooker as a teenager after her father bought a snooker table with his miner’s pension. The table was in the family’s shop, a corrugated iron building next to their home.
Agnes was Welsh Ladies Amateur Champion for three years from 1937 to 1939 before turning professional in 1940. After the war she won the British Ladies Professional Snooker Championship in 1949 at Leicester Square, London, where all the players wore long gowns. The trophy was presented by actress Valerie Hobson (who later married notorious politician John Profumo).
After a gap in her career due to family commitments, Agnes returned to snooker in the 1970s and won the Women's Billiards Association snooker title in 1978. In 1980 she reached the final of the Women's World Open Championship but was beaten by an Australian player. She won the Pontin's Ladies Bowl at Prestatyn in 1982. In 1985 she was elected president of the World Ladies Billiards and Snooker Association, a title she retained for life.
She continued to play in her local league for the Welfare Hall in Ammanford and then at Snooker World, Ammanford, until she was 82. Her friends from the snooker circuit included Welsh snooker champions Terry Griffiths, Ray Reardon and Dominic Dale.
In 2025 her son Eiddon recalled how he was taught the game by both his father and mother. “My father would sometimes leave a ball on the edge of the pocket for me to pot, to encourage me, I suppose. My mother never did. And I never beat her until she was in her 80s. She didn't like losing even then. She said: ‘You try playing with cataracts.’"
The photo of Agnes at the snooker table is shown here courtesy of Dr Eiddon Davies.
Postcode: SA18 3LN View Location Map
Purple Plaques website – celebrating remarkable women in Wales