Ancestry popped up a birthday reminder the other day for my paternal great-grandmother, Rachel, which prompted me to collate the slightly sparse story I’ve been able to collate for her. She was born in Pontefract to Harriet and Peter Heptinstall on 2 September 1846, their eldest daughter.
The family shows up in Back George St, Bradford for the 1851 census, otherwise Rachel’s childhood and youth are spent in Pontefract.
Rachel married James Normington Mills at Ebenezer Chapel, Pontefract, on 2 December 1865.
James, a plumber, and Rachel settled together in Halifax after their marriage; in 1871 they are living in Launceston Street (off Hanson Lane) with Polly, Helena and one-year-old Harriet, named after Rachel’s mother who had died in February 1869.
Launceston Street, Halifax
Rachel bore 12 children over the next 22 years or so; the eldest, Mary Hannah, known as Polly, was born in 1866 and the last being my grandmother, Amy Florence (known as Flossie), born in 1888. Thomas, born in 1871, sadly died aged only 6 weeks. Edgar was the only other son among the 11 surviving children. My grandma would speak fondly of Beattie, Martha, Clara and all her other siblings, but did note that her mother, when calling for her youngest, would run through all the other names before getting to Flossie!
Our next reference to the family in official records pops up on 16 May 1875 when 5 of the children are baptised: Mary Hannah, “Eleanor” (which will be Helena, presumably said with a good Yorkshire accent and a missing H), Harriet (at least she got her H!), Edgar and my namesake, Ruth. (James is also listed as James Normanton Mills, one of many name variants in the records.)
By 1881 They have moved to 36 Gibbet Street and James is listed in the census as a Master Plumber. No. 36 is now a modern business building but looking at no. 38, it looks as if this was perhaps a move up in the world from Launceston Street, which appears to be small back-to-back terrace houses.
The family is at 63 North Parade by 1891, an area with few old buildings left for comparison. This is just round the corner from Akroyd Place where Amy Florence started school aged 5, on 18 Sept. 1893. 9 Pollard Street is listed as the home address, also 63 North Parade and 8 Villiers Street.
1901 sees Rachel and James in 14 Villiers Street with 6 children still at home. Polly left for America and son Edgar went ther with his new wife Sarah Ann in 1903. The rest of the family mostly remained in the Halifax area.
14 Villiers Street, Halifax
Rachel died in 1906 at the age of 59 when their youngest, Flossie, was not quite 18. Rachel’s grave is at Illingworth where she lies at rest with her son-in-law Herbert Hellewell, Helena’s first husband who died young, and joined in 1927 by husband James.
Amy named her daughter (my lovely late aunt) Rachel Joyce.
Not that I do, actually. Remember Lily, that is. She was one of my lovely great-aunts and she died suddenly, aged 62, when I was just 3.
Lily was born 128 years ago today to Sarah (née Helliwell) and Frank Marsden, both aged 24 and living then in Cowper Street, off Claremount Road in Northowram ward, Halifax.
Baptism record, St John the Baptist parish church (now Halifax Minster)
Working out where that is, I realise we would have passed just beneath the site of Cowper Street when I occasionally succeeded in pestering my dad to divert from the main road as we were driving back from Halifax, up on to New Bank and down the narrow lane called The Incline – just because it was steep and fun for a small child! (Not so much fun for dad rejoining the busy main road by Shibden Hall!).
By 1901 the family is at 62 Lister Lane and Lily has a nicely rhyming little brother, Willie. In the following year they have a family photograph taken along with the Foster family – thanks to my great-aunt Dora for labelling the picture in the album! Dora is the camera-shy baby on Sarah’s knee mid-front row, so the date will be ca 1902. Lily is standing behind Sarah and Willie looking direly cute in a sailor suit in front of Frank and next to the euphonously named Lister Foster.
Marsden and Foster families, 1902. (Dated from Dora’s birthdate. )
I did a bit of hunting and discovered that John Foster was a fruiterer/greengrocer, like Frank. Whether they were partners at some point or rivals, I don’t know! In 1901 John, Eveline (Evelyn), Lister and Doris May are shown living at 38 King Cross Street.
Sisters Hilda and Florrie come along in 1904 and 1906 and by 1911, Lily and the enlarged family are living in 38, St Mary St, Halifax, Yorkshire on the census date, 2 April. Aged 15, Lily was a sewing machinist, specialising in underwear – no pretensions to ‘lingerie’, it seems!
By 19 June, 1921 Amy, 8 and Lena, now 4, have completed the family, who now live at 41 Stirling Street. Lily, 25, is still a sewing machinist but we know now that she is still sewing ‘undies’, working at Croft Myl Manufacturing Co. in West Parade, as is her sister Hilda, my grandma, now aged 17. Calderdale Companion has this as a later name for Harella, so perhaps it reverted to a previous name? Another little mystery to track down…
As an aside, Croftmyl/Croft Myl later became the home of fashion firm Harella which moved to Halifax in the 1940s and grew to be a huge exporter of fashions across the world. Harella was the second biggest exporter of ladies’ clothes in the 1960s and was apparently unique in having “live” models for its garments for inspection by the factory’s head passer. Models had to try on coats and lined suit jackets to be inspected – as well as model heavy winter garments in the heat of the summer and lighter clothing in the winter months.
The 1939 register has Lily, Dora and Willie still at Stirling Street but the register itself gives us a clue as to things to come for Lily. No change in the job, but the later change of surname tells us her next big step.
On 23 December 1943, at the age of 48, Lily married Ernest Wilson in Wesley Chapel, Halifax. He was a 61-year-old widower who worked as a shop assistant at a plumbers’ merchant. He lived at 22, Ashbourne Grove, Halifax, which later seemed to inherit the ‘family hub’ status that Stirling Street held for many years. Ernest had been married to Lily Sutcliffe in April 1906; he was then an iron worker and she a worsted weaver but they had later become ‘chapel-keepers’ firstly for Wesley Chapel (they are living at 32 Waterhouse Street next to the chapel below left in the 1911 census) and later moved to 13 Chapel Lane, next to the Salterhebble United Methodist Free Chapel (later Christadelphian, 1965) – below right. Presumably Lily and Ernest were then still caretaking and it was her death in 1931 that led to his move to Ashbourne Grove.
On the marriage certificate ‘our’ Lily was an Overalls machinist, a sign of wartime changes. They lived at Ashbourne Grove and both were, I gather, active members of Wesley Chapel (possibly how they met? I believe Lily played piano for the Boys’ Brigade PE routines as my mum later did at Ebenezer. Lily and Ernest did not have very long to enjoy their marriage, as Ernest sadly died in 1948.
A BB photograph with Bill Buckley (back left) Cyril Wade and Arthur Sykes on either side of Lily (we think!).
Lily continued to live at 22 Ashbourne Grove and Dora came to live with her, as later did Hilary, their niece, for most of the year when her guardians (my parents) were working in West Africa, joining them when they came home on leave, as she was still at secondary school. Hilary recalls the sisters holding chapel ‘Busy Bee’ meetings in the front room, entailing sewing, knitting, tatting or other crafts and no doubt a good bit of gossip that helped earn Dora the family nickname of ‘Eyes and ears of the world’! Hilary would be designated teamaker and server
The one tale I know about Lily and me is from my mum, who had been getting a bit desperate because I wouldn’t stop crying but happily found that her aunt Lily had the knack, despite not having children of her own, and could settle me down pretty well instantly. (I suspect mum was more than tempted to leave me with Lily!)
It was Hilary, still only a teenager, who found Lily on that morning in 1958; Hilary had been cooking a leisurely Saturday morning breakfast of gammon as a treat, and went to fetch Lily but found she had passed away peacefully on the sofa in front of the fire.
As it’s almost no longer the anniversary I will stop and publish this now! I hope to find more personal tales of Lily to add.
I had an email from a cousin a few days ago with the following message about a little discovery he’d made.
“Now we know where our parents were 66 years ago! See attached picture of a signed beer mat from the Black Horse in Gate Helmsley.
Signed by R.J. Fort, J. Dobson, D.J. Dobson, Lord Jack Fort DSO! as well as their friends Pam and “Mac” Mathieson who lived further down The Back Lane in Gate Helmsley.”
Indeed, they were at the Black Horse on 17th June 1957, Jean & David (my parents), David’s sister Joyce and her husband Jack, with their friends. It’s just a daft little bit of ephemera, but it made me smile. It is a pleasure to have it on record and to remember them today on what must have been a very convivial evening – and it certainly reflects Uncle Jack’s humour!
It only occurred belatedly to me to wonder where we 3 kids were! We’re guessing that Gran might have been staying and pressed into service!
I’ve since ferreted out a couple of slide scans of my aunt, uncle and cousins (not forgetting Jill the dog) that must be from around the time of this cheery (and beery!) meet-up.
Well, we’re halfway through January and it’s my first post of the new-ish year despite the resolution to write more regularly and the weekly alarm which I set but ignore!
We have much to look forward to this year with Granddaughter starting a new job shortly, having achieved her Master’s degree late last year, a family wedding and a new arrival to come in the summer, plus we want to entertain more now the house is usable again after a bit of work, and get out and about to catch up with friends and family at home and abroad. Let’s hope this year goes more to plan than recent years!
So, the looking back… Granddaughter came to stay for a couple of days last week and we were going through some old photos together. I noticed this one in passing and thought I’d give it the light of day.
In the mid-1980s after we married, our first holiday abroad was one we could barely afford, but we found a bargain buy in Tunisia where we stayed in a not-so-posh B&B down the road from a rather better equipped hotel with all the facilities (pools, restaurant, bars, etc) available to us, so we snapped it up. We enjoyed the country and went back a few times in following years. On this occasion it was just the two of us and as we pottered round town we saw signs offering flights at Hammamet Aerodrome, so decided to explore…
We should probably have taken warning from the fact the there was a sign on the gate made of grey sugar paper (remember doing posters on that at school?) with ‘Hammamet Aerodrome’ written in glue and glitter!
There were two microlights parked up, and a couple of pilots, a Frenchman (if I recall correctly) who looked suspiciously like a rugged ex-Foreign legionnaire from a novel, and a pleasant, younger Tunisian chap, were plying their trade. We scraped our dinars together and decided we could each do a flight round the bay and were duly strapped into our disturbingly Heath-Robinson contraptions.
Helmet on…
Stew went first with M. le Légionnaire and seemed to be away for ages. Eventually we saw them returning towards the dusty airfield and a safe if rather juddery landing on a slightly rutted surface.
Stewart ready for microlight take-off with ‘M. le Légionnaire’! Stewart’s take-off in microlight.
My turn had come. I was almost going to duck out, and the young man was very careful to make sure whether I was happy to go, to be fair. I thought how jealous I’d be of Stew if I didn’t grit my teeth and go, and off we went.
If you look closely, the knuckles are white!
After the initial shock of seeing nothing much solid beneath my feet as I looked down over the Bay of Hammamet, I was entranced. We flew over a wreck site and the clear sea afforded a glorious view. We seemed to set off back in no time at all, and I was so busy looking round as we headed in to land (usually my nail-biting moment) that I was oblivious to a little drama that was playing out, and we landed safely on the rather basic runway.
After I’d thanked the pilot effusively, I said in a quiet aside to Stewart that I did feel a bit cheated as he’d had such a long flight and I’d only had 10 or 15 minutes; he gently pointed out that I had been aloft for the best part of 40 minutes – I’d been just so engrossed that it had shot by. Stewart also then enlightened me as to the mini-drama that had unfolded – all I had noticed was a bit of radio chatter… (Unfortunately either he’d run out of film to record it for posterity or was just too intrigued by proceedings to take any pictures!)
As our microlight approached the aerodrome, the sophisticated Hammamet Aerodrome Landing Control & Clearance System apparently came into play as follows. The pilot must have alerted the Chief on the radio to a donkey that had ambled on to the runway area, I assume in an over-optimistic and not very fruitful search for better grazing. The Chief then shouted to another man who was sitting comfortably half-asleep on a verandah with a small boy at his feet. The resting man jerked into action with a well-aimed kick to the boy’s posterior, galvanising the little lad into action. Said lad grabbed his little stick from the floor and ran onto the runway where, directed by barked commands and arm-semaphore instructions from Verandah Man, he herded the reluctant and unco-operative donkey with pokes and prods of the stick until the way was clear for us to land. I was extremely glad that I’d remained oblivious to all this action!
An anniversary post for this season of remembrance.
John Edgar Hardy was born to my great-great-grandparents, John, a fishmonger, and Mary Ann, in 1883 in Halifax, one of several siblings. They lived at 5 Briar Court. (I say ‘several’ rather vaguely as I know I have made rookie errors on this bit of my family tree journey, but I do know he had quite a slew of sisters known collectively in our bit of the family as ‘the Hardy aunts’, which makes them sound rather perennial!)
What I do know is as follows. He was baptised at St John’s in Halifax along with one of his sisters, Edith Worthington Hardy, in April 1886. His father died in 1888. In 1891 he and 6 sisters are living at 2 School Street with Mary Ann, who is listed as a charwoman.
Life can’t have been very easy then for Mary Ann, but she remarried in 1897, to Frederick William Cowper Turton, and we find John Edgar and three of his sisters still living with them at 3 St James’ St. in 1901, along with three boarders – quite a houseful! John is by then a printer’s apprentice. Fred is ‘van man’ for a baker and Mary Ann does not give an occupation – hence, perhaps, the three boarders.
By the April 1911 census, John Edgar is still single and now the only resident of no. 3 besides Frederick and Mary Ann. Frederick is still a driver but now for a fishmonger. John has progressed in the printing world to become a compositor employed by Joseph Ashworth & Sons, and a member of the Typographical Association. (Thanks to the Calderdale Companion.) He was also a member of the Rechabites, an abstinence group.
He had probably met Amy Hitchen by now as they married in Halifax during quarter 3 of 1911. She was living at 29 Wade Street with her father William, a widower, having lost her mother Sarah on Christmas Eve of the previous year. (Wade Street features quite a lot in our family records and memories but it would be pretty unrecognisable now to those who lived there over the years.)
My uncle’s find, I think, courtesy of Rene Macioce on Ancestry.
Their daughter Irene was born in February 1914, but the outbreak of WWI meant John Edgar was called up on 8th September 1916, and served as a Lance Corporal with the 13th Battalion Devonshire Regiment. He then transferred to the 174th Company Labour Corps.
Bronze cap badge of Labour Corps.
In March 1917 he went over to France. John Edgar Hardy 104012 has a Hospital Admissions entry in August 1917: Pyrexia of unknown origin, trench fever, S (erious). The record also confirms he had been in the army 1 year with service in France 6 months.
He was seriously injured on 27th September 1918, suffering multiple gunshot wounds and was hospitalised in No.3 Canadian Stationary Hospital, Doullens, where he died of pneumonia on 7th November 1918, aged 35. His photograph appears with a brief report of his death in the Halifax Courier [23rd November 1918]. He is also remembered in the Halifax Town Hall Books of Remembrance and on Amy’s parents’ memorial at Illingworth Moor. (See slideshow below.)
Painted by Gerald Moira in 1918.
John Edgar Hardy was sent here with multiple gunshot wounds.
The hospital was itself bombed in 1918.
PD.
Just another inconsequential but somehow satisfying and serendipitous little find from my genealogy meanderings. You have been warned.
I was doing some transcription work for a family history society and while checking records in the 1939 register, came across Arthur Hinchcliffe, Professor of Singing, living at Montana, Savile Park Road, Halifax. This rang a bell, and sure enough, when I checked with a quick internet search, he had taught Walter Widdop, “the Yorkshire Tenor”.
A 17 March 1950 article in, of all things, the Motherwell Times, says my grandfather Clifford’s voice tutor had also coached Walter Widdop, well-known in his day as ‘The Yorkshire Tenor’. I think this tutor may well have been Arthur Hinchcliffe, who certainly taught Walter and I am sure I’ve heard that name before in connection with Clifford, so it’s quite nice to have picked this up .I was aware of a tenuous link with Walter Widdop and think this is probably it.
The review in the same paper of 31 March 1950 was pleasantly positive about Clifford’s Don José and noted Clifford being ‘superbly co-operative’ in the duet for one with ‘a voice of such dimensions’ so he seems to have been a generous performer.
The only other operatic star connection in the family tales handed down is that my mum’s ‘claim to fame’ was that she once sang for Heddle Nash! My grandfather once brought Heddle Nash back to the house when he was in Halifax for a performance (I think Clifford was involved via the theatre at the time), and had Jean sing her ‘party pieces’ of the time to the ‘great man’. She was only a youngster then and by all accounts had a good, pretty well coloratura soprano (as opposed to the alto and lower of later years).
Sadly I have no recordings of either Clifford or my mother singing, but do have many a happy memory of family sing-songs round the piano.
I was transcribing some school log information for a family history society and needed to check an address in Hebden Bridge. I hadn’t been sure if it was Brink or Bank but a quick search turned up Buttress Brink in this useful site (and source of the featured image, acknowledged with thanks).
Buttress Brink, was a warren of dwellings on different levels at the bottom of the Buttress, off Old Gate opposite the Hole-in-the-Wall Inn. Occupants had to walk through a gloomy ground floor tunnel lit by gas lamps, climb steps set into the steep hillside, then cross bridges spanning the gaps between hillside and property. Needless to say the homes within boasted no modern amenities such as bathrooms and toilets; the kitchens, small and cramped, had only a single cold water tap over a stone sink”.
Buttress Brink was demolished in 1967 as “unfit for human habitation”.
(Based on an article in Milltown Memories No.1)
I read the description, which is quite graphic, but was brought up short to realise how late the demolition of these dwellings came – 1967, and that I can recall many of the features in the image, overall pinny, whitewashed walls, tin bath and all, from my 1950s/60s childhood in neighbouring Halifax and environs. (Of course, the question of what replaced these and the impact of the changes is another story.)
I think it’s the contrast that strikes me, in that when people envision the ‘Swinging 60s’, all those bright images of Carnaby Street, pop stars and mini-skirted Mary Quant wannabes seem to come to mind. I’ve always said we weren’t exactly overwhelmed with those in my childhood in West Yorkshire and this does rather reinforce a somewhat grimmer stereotype!
More seriously, the absence of sanitation and safety concers had been a major issue in Victorian times and there were some great campaigners for improvement; though much progress had been made, clearly it took longer than they probably envisaged.
Here’s a link to a couple of more recent shots of the Buttress area on the invaluabe Calderdale Companion site.
I dabble in genealogy and suddenly remembered tonight that Find My Past had offered free access to their newspaper archives over the long weekend. There wasn’t time left for any major research, so I contented myself with a slightly manic and unstructured search for a few close family members and dug out a few nice bits and pieces to flesh out the names on the family tree.
Searching for maternal granddad (who ran off with the opera!) threw up my lovely aunt’s birth announcement just in time for me to send it to her on her 80th birthday, which pleased me greatly.
I also added to the story of his touring the country with Carl Rosa and other companies, with a number of adverts and reviews. These were mostly for Lilac Time, in which he played Schubert (to good reviews) ‘Cav & Pag’, and a new one on me, the 1947 Follies. I am not sure if that is him or another singer/entertainer of the same name. A little more work needed… I was chuffed to find a couple of good reviews and one with a photograph – awful reproduction but still nice to see. I think he also sang as part of The Imperial Trio, and discovered him in amateur theatre in Halifax. I had a brief frisson of excitement when I found him singing oratorios around the chapel circuits with a Joan Hammond, but that was short-lived; ‘a’, not ‘the’ Joan Hammond!
I checked out great-granddad Marsden and found short accounts of his death and funeral in 1950; these provided the trivia that add up to help complete a picture of a person, including his 50+ years as a greengrocer, which I knew, and his membership of the Bowling Club, which I didn’t.
A great-aunt’s efforts on behalf of the chapel and missionary societies started early, I discovered from her Sunday School collected donation. I found various successes of mum and dad’s, from a grammar school scholarship for dad to RSA exams and Grade VII piano for my mum. I still have her Pitman teaching certificate – about the size of a duvet cover and impressively florid!
I found the online version of an article about dad’s appointment to the Colonial Service in Nigeria that sits as a cutting in an album with dad’s angry scribbled note ‘I didn’t say any of that stuff – the reporter must have read it somewhere and just stuck it in!’ ‘That stuff’ referred to a custom of teeth filing (presumably picked as suitably ‘exotic’) and attributed vaguely and inaccurately to the Houssa (sic) in Northern Nigeria. I also came across another paper’s very short version which despatched my dad summarily to Tanganyika along with the other Yorkshire candidate who actually was going there!
That’s all for now folks; you were warned that this is a very random blog!
I’ve just decamped into our bedroom with a bag of electronics, a few bits of extraneous furniture, cardboard packing cases and bubble wrap hoping to get ahead, or slightly less behind, in the schedule of packing up rooms for the decorators (whilst also still trying to maintain some sensible Covid precautions for us and the decorator whose wife is undergoing treatment).
Labelling our life…
We’ve been living mostly upstairs for the past 3 days while decorators were working downstairs: so far, so straightforward. Day 4 sees the living room and dining rooms being finished but still out of use and now also two rooms upstairs are having ceilings de-Artexed and plastered (hurrah!), hence the bedroom retreat.
It’s a curious and slightly unnerving foretaste of downsizing, something we need to consider, or of life in one room in a care context – a less happy prospect. Among other lessons learned, juggling tray on lap while sitting in a dining chair is not to be recommended!
It also remains a mystery to me why, after months of decluttering and having worn a track to the tip and charity warehouse, we still have a houseful of ‘stuff’! Well, not exactly a mystery, as we both have wide-ranging interests and a tendency to collect for very differing reasons, but the rate of disposal vs fullness of house & garage does seem to defy the laws of physics.
The logistics are making me grateful for project management skills gained at work. The schedule is akin to one of those sliding puzzles pictures with just one empty slot which keeps moving. At least it’s keeping up the step count.
Unnerving but probably apt invocation of the Lord of the Underworld on the storage boxes!
Apologies for the banality of this, but in an effort to discipline myself to blog more regularly, I have set some reminders and thought I’d better not ignore the first one. So it is I find myself here on the phone, inviting you to share in the domestic disruptions of the disorganized! With carpet fitting to come too, there’s 3 weeks or so of this still to come, so all tips welcome!
Random Thoughts 