They lived in Pennar, a suburb of Pembroke Dock - now in the Carmarthen West & South Pembrokeshire constituency, held by the Conservatives by just over 3,000 votes in 2017. Across the Milford Haven waterway, you could see what is now the southernmost tip of the Preseli Pembrokeshire seat, last claimed by the Tories with a wafer-thin majority of 317 over Labour.

There wasn’t much to do in Pennar, Clare recalls. “It’s rows and rows of housing, there’s no shops.” But there were always plenty of chores to keep her occupied. The children had to light the fire, clean up, help keep the household running. It was tough but it instilled in Clare and her siblings a fierce work ethic.

Clare would watch her grandmother make clothes for the entire family on an old Singer sewing machine. It inspired Clare to do what she could with spare materials too. She didn’t enjoy school much, but a fashion textiles course at the local college changed everything. She loved being surrounded by creative people. Her tutor suggested she go to London to study for a fashion degree, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. “As much as I love going to London, it was just too much of a jump for me,” she says. “I just felt I wasn’t confident enough to do that.”

Instead she took her fashion degree at the University of South Wales in Newport. By the time she graduated she was pregnant, and she married her husband, Owain, a few months later. It was a budget ceremony - Clare made her own wedding dress as well as dresses for her mum and the bridesmaids.

Then Clare’s husband was offered a job at a farm attached to a school in Pembroke, teaching vocational skills to children with behavioural and learning difficulties. Clare ended up teaching there too, and helping to run the farm. She was learning agricultural skills for herself - and there was the horse she’d always dreamed of. But she was also seeing a very different side of Pembrokeshire from the one on display to the four million tourists who pour in to the county each year.

Many of the teenagers the school was looking after came from deeply troubled backgrounds. Clare recalls comforting one 15-year-old boy who was crying his eyes out “because he needed his fix”. His parents were addicts too. Other pupils relied on handouts for food and clothing. Some had been lured into working for drug dealers at the age of 12.

It was against this grim backdrop that Clare took the surprising decision to launch her own luxury woollen collection.

She’d kept up her garment-making skills - working as a seamstress, doing basic repairs, making the odd bridesmaid’s dress, selling her own designs at markets. She’d tried to start her own bridalwear company “but I didn’t enjoy it - bridezillas and everything”. Then she met a weaver who suggested working with tweed. She ordered 50m and made up a small collection of her own designs - jackets, skirts, blankets. She had some angora goats on the farm so there were sweaters, too.