Grandparents

In 1892, Frederick Robert Jarvis married Sarah Jane Johnson of Orgreave Farm, Yoxall and they moved to Crewe, Cheshire, where he worked in the LMR Railway workshops to earn better money. My mother, Annie Jarvis (1893 - 1983), was born there and also her two sisters, Frances (1895 - 1983) and Edith (1897 - 1983), before the family returned to Fradley in 1901 to take over the Swan Inn, which was at the junction of the Trent & Mersey/Coventry canals. Subsequently William (1902 - 1978), Rose (1906 - 1992) and Arthur (1909 - 1986) were born there. Then, in 1919, he sold the Swan Inn to Lichfield Brewery for £700 and bought the Nags Head Inn and Farm, Burntwood, of 61 acres from Mrs. L Whitehouse for £3000.

My grandfather farmed in the old-fashioned way, right up to his death in 1955 and when I was exploring the farm with my uncles in 1942 and 1943, the crops he grew were wheat – cut, stooked in 6-8's to dry and eventually carted away to the rick-yard to be threshed later. There was also hay and mangols (large turnips) grown for winter feed for the 15 dairy cows he kept and whose milk was supplied to the “Crows Nest Dairy” at Lichfield. He also had 3 shire horses for ploughing and pulling the carts and other machinery.

All his Family were expected to help to run the busy Nags Head public house and the men had the farm work to attend to, as well. There was an enormous kitchen and brewery area about 30 foot x 60 foot, which had 6 to 8 wooden hogshead barrels (52 gallons) reposing on stands at the far end, ready for filling glasses with beer for the customers. Besides talking and smoking with each other in the Saloon or Public bar (cheaper beer), they only had domino's or playing cards to occupy themselves. Also, in that period, there was no food or nibbley things, like crisps or peanuts. 

All this routine continued until October 1955, when my grandfather died and the Inn-activity and house were sold to a commercial Brewery firm and the farm buildings were demolished and the land sold to a nearby local farmer. In the summer of his final year, my grandfather gave an interview to a reporter from the “Lichfield Mercury”; he assured the reporter that he was in “Good Health” but sadly he died 3 months later from diabetic gangrene.

Ray Derry

My Grandma Emily Portman

Well I only ever knew my Grandma (my Mom’s Mom); my other grandparents had all passed away before I was born, I never even knew their names until I started researching my ancestry.

Grandma always recounted and told us this tale about the time she and her sisters were in their Sunday School Anniversary dresses. As children, they loved to roll down the hill at the back of their cottage (Gentleshaw Common) and they decided to roll down the hill that day, getting their Anniversary dresses dirty. Their Mom was not pleased, she put each of them fully clothed into the dolly tub to clean their clothes, so they could go on the Anniversary clean.

Charlie Roland Sylvester  1901 – 1974 

I am writing about my maternal Grandfather, a Burntwood-born man and a very special person for me.  I guess we would all like to spend a day or a few hours with someone who has passed and, along with my Mother, he would be up there with her. 

In the early weeks of his life, Charlie lived in Chase Terrace along the Cannock Road in Bridge Cross Cottage.  At some point, the family moved to Highfields House in Burntwood when my Great Grandfather purchased the property.  The house is still there and it's the one on the wedding photo of Charlie and Alice in 1925.

Why was Charlie so special?  I was an only child and when we visited every fortnight, on a Sunday, Granddad always had time for me.  I played countless games of chess with him and draughts and cards.  He loved playing cards and even developed his own game of patience.  He loved riddles and puzzles and always knew one to tell me.  He was a miner and, at some point, moved from Burntwood to Nuneaton to get work.  It is said, in the family, his desire to move was centred around his two children for whom he wanted better prospects in education and employment.  I've never been able to find out why he believed this or if feelers were put out to find miners for the Griff Clara mine in Nuneaton and if any incentives were offered. 

Sometimes I would go over to Bedworth (near Nuneaton) to stay for a few nights, usually during school holidays.  Granddad would be working and he usually came home, after his shift, around lunchtime.  He would sit and play a few rounds of patience and then have a nap on the living room floor with just a cushion under his head.  The big Bush push button radio would be on and the shipping forecast would be listened to, and The Archers.  He had time later on to talk and show me the garden and involve me with all the crops he grew.  The raspberries behind the outhouse were particularly delicious.  He could drive, and had a little Ford Prefect, and occasionally he would drive us home to Coventry otherwise my Mum and I would have to catch two buses home.  I expect he learnt to drive during the war as he was an Air Raid Warden in Nuneaton.  During the bilberry season he and Auntie would drive over to Staffordshire to pick and bring them home to make pies and jam.  He was also a member of St John's ambulance, in the Nuneaton area, and was the one to go to in the family for first aid.  People who lived near to them also valued his first aid experience, he was the first port of call for many. 

I remember they bought one of the first home refrigerators and Granddad was like a kid with a new toy.  Strangely it was a gas one – never caught on!  He liked making ice cream in the small ice compartment and we tasted his latest flavours. When he washed up he left the hot water tap running constantly and washed everything in copious amounts of hot water. Granddad and Auntie had a son David; he was only 6+ years older than me so was like a big brother but he was really my Uncle.  David took me bird egging one day, it was awful.  Granddad found out and David was in a lot of trouble, for doing it in the first place and secondly for taking me with him.

Granddad taught me the ethos of giving presents.  He always said the best present was something you really wanted and it didn't have to cost the earth.  This played out in a present my Mum bought him for his birthday.  He had always wanted an umbrella so we bought him one.  He was so happy with it, his joy is something I will always remember.  

Whenever we went over to Bedworth, family members would pop in and out and at Christmas and special occasions there would be many people there and a table 'groaning' with food.  The dining room would be the games room and anyone could join in a card game, with Granddad officiating.  If there were lots of people, 'Newmarket' would be the game played, betting on 'horses' and the kitty in the middle was in pennies.  Granddad would always know which cards had been played and he kept an eagle eye on anyone who hadn't played the lowest card in any suit to lead and which cards were what he called 'stoppers' in the spare hand that wasn't played.  Wonderful times.

Granny White

Readers of the Burntwood Family History Group Journal will be familiar with the extracts that have appeared over the years from the Boer War and Great War diaries kept by Charles William Graddon, my paternal grandfather. It is therefore high time I redressed the balance and reminisced about my grandparents on my mother’s side of the family.

As you went in the shop entrance, you’d see the scales where vegetables were weighed, however my eyes were always directed towards the right, where Granny ran a fantastic sweetshop; a dentist’s nightmare admittedly but it was heaven to me, with all the temptations a growing lad could crave – sherbet lemons, pink shrimps, coconut ice, flying saucers, pear drops, white mice, aniseed balls, gobstoppers you could only just get in your mouth, cough candy and liquorice. Being that much older, my sister Jo was allowed to work in the sweetshop.

My absolute favourite was kali sold by the ounce in a paper bag. Many years later, our two grandchildren came over from their home in Luxembourg, and we took them to the Black Country Museum. The day was bright and sunny and they thoroughly enjoyed themselves, especially eating proper fish and chips for the first time. When the opportunity arose, I disappeared into the sweet shop and bought them each a little paper bag of kali. What a shock, they didn’t like it!! I was forced to bring the bags home and eat the contents myself. It had a sharp blackcurrant flavour and left you with a black tongue. I’d forgotten that side effect but not the taste – fabulous!!

My wife and I moved our young family to the Midlands in the late 1970s. Even though I was now an “adult” in my thirties, my Auntie Nancy would make sure I had a bag of “lucky” cough candy to take when I went with my cousins Terence and David, and my Uncle Cyril, to the Walsall match at Fellows Park on a Saturday afternoon. The “luck” certainly seemed to work back then, well more often than not. In recent years, the quality of the football has deteriorated, and at Bescot Stadium Walsall’s league position has declined alarmingly. I think it is time I bought some more cough candy!

Chris Graddon

The Grandparents I Never Knew

Sadly, I never knew or had a relationship with any of my Grandparents, with this fact becoming more poignant upon witnessing the extremely close relationship my daughter had with my mother, which made me realise the loss of what could have had a formative effect on my life. I have learned more about my Grandparents since I began researching my family history in 1996, both from records and word of mouth from relatives, than I ever knew of them in the flesh. I didn’t even know what their Christian names were before I started my family history quest. Both sets of Grandparents lived in the Stockport, Cheshire area, although their families hailed from Leeds in West Yorkshire, Rodsley in Derbyshire, the Lichfield area of Staffordshire, Mellor in Derbyshire, and the more distant County Laois in Éire, before the families settled in Stockport. 

I always thought that my paternal Grandfather, Robert Penny, had died before I was born in November 1952, with my maternal Grandmother, Mary Mann née Norbury, having died when I was two years old. My maternal Grandfather, William Mann, lived to 1977 and was 92 years of age when he died yet, despite him living close by during our shared time on this earth of some 24 years, I only remember being in his company twice. To my shock I discovered that my paternal Grandmother, Sarah Penny née Swithenbank, had lived with her married daughter and family in Biddulph, near Stoke-on-Trent, until her death in 1971, aged 81, yet I only remember meeting her once when I was around four years old.

My maternal Grandfather, William Mann, is the black sheep of my grand parentage, being born in The Horse & Jockey Inn, in Bradley (or Bradeley), near Stafford in 1884, into a family of farmers, publicans and landowners, who originated from the Lichfield area of Staffordshire. The family moved to Romiley, near Stockport, in the 1890s when William’s father John was ill, probably moving in with John’s wife Hannah’s older brother Thomas Tatlow and his family, who lived in Romiley at that time, having lived in Derbyshire, Staffordshire and Lancashire previously. William briefly joined the Grenadier Guards in 1903 when he was 19 but the army life wasn’t for him and upon payment of £10 he left after just 54 days. Some of William’s siblings and his maternal uncle, Thomas Tatlow Junior, made it clear that he had married beneath him, with at least one sister actively looking down on Mary and her seven children, despite the fact that Mary’s father was a businessman in his own right, working as a Carter. William worked in the local dyers and bleach works, Joshua Schofield & Sons, in Romiley during his adult life until well past his 70th birthday, and perhaps enjoyed a drink a little too much, with having been born in a public house being no excuse. My Mum used to tell of the children sitting watching their father eating a hearty meal and hoping for some scraps from his plate, presumably the working man demanded the best of the family’s food, with the children coming a poor second, which must have been difficult for Mary as their mother. Despite all this the family home was a happy one and the seven children got along very well and liked to have fun; a real party atmosphere in their youth, with my Mum’s youngest sister Florence being jealous that she was too young to take part in the dressing up and going out dancing that her older siblings so enjoyed.

Following the death of William’s wife Mary in 1954, he met and married a widowed lady called Violet in 1960 but she died in 1967 aged 82. He apparently declared, "I'm not getting married again, it costs too much to bury them"!  William was featured in a newspaper article in 1974 upon his 90th birthday as the longest serving customer in his local pub, the Sportsman in Bredbury. I have recently been told that William was something of a “ladies’ man” and that “Billy Mann’s pushbike was often seen leaning outside a lady’s home” when he was visiting. Even into his 90s he was extremely healthy with only his legs letting him down, which is probably where the pushbike comes into the story. Another story tells of him climbing Schofield’s factory chimney, hundreds of feet high, for a bet, which he won. As William grew older, he was cared for by his younger sons and one of his sons-in-law, as seemingly his daughters were not comfortable in this role. I’m sure my Mum used to take me to visit his home from time to time, but the first time I remember meeting him was at a party for a milestone birthday, probably his 80th, but he didn’t speak to me and wrongly assumed I was the girlfriend of one of my cousins. 

The photograph of William and Mary above again shows an uncomfortable couple looking ill at ease, again with no smiles. Home photography in the 1950s would have been fairly new for the masses and it seems older people were still wary of smiling for photographs, perhaps because in earlier years, due to longer exposure times, they were warned not to move and blur the photograph. My grandparents also grew up in more austere times when children were born to couples every two years or so and children were “seen but not heard”. It’s sometimes difficult to change what was the norm when growing up but thankfully it didn’t take too long for many couples in the following generations to choose to have smaller families and treat their children and grandchildren much more kindly and inclusively as part of the family unit.

Kaye Christian

Paternal Grandparents

 My paternal grandparents were Joe and Minnie Oakley who were both born in Walsall, in 1897 and 1895 respectively. They married in 1920 at Bloxwich Church and lived initially in nearby Blakenall, moving back to Bloxwich in 1930 and then to the south part of Walsall in 1940. Joe and Minnie had 2 children, Sidney (my dad) and Leslie his brother. When my parents got married in 1945 they moved in with Grandma and Grandad, in those days young couples could only get a council house if they had children, and as I didn’t come along until 1954 Mom and Dad lived with them for 9 years. During this time Mom got to know Joe and Minnie really well. Grandma Minnie, in particular, talked to Mom a lot about her life and family and also passed onto my Mom many of her cooking skills.  

Sadly, I didn’t get the chance to know Grandma and Grandad very well as they both died when I was still a young girl, Minnie died first in 1960 and Joe two years, later so my memories of them are limited. One thing I always remember is the kitchen in their house, in it there was a tall cupboard in which grandma always kept some sweets or chocolate on the top shelf, I can always remember standing by it knowing full well that sooner or later she would give me some of her stash. Also, granddad had a large leather chair by a coal fire in the far corner of the room and often he would sit me on his lap in the chair and read to me.

Other memories I have include Grandma’s love of cats, something which passed through to my Dad and also to me; also of Grandad taking me to a local pub on a Saturday lunchtime, where we would sit outside on the wall, Granddad partaking of his pint of beer and me with a bottle of Vimto and a straw. The pub’s name was “The Tiger” and a few years ago I went in search of it only to find it looking very dilapidated and boarded up, which was very sad. I know from old photographs that I enjoyed several days out and a couple of holidays with my grandparents but, sadly, I don’t have any concrete memories of those. During my family research I have gained quite a lot of factual knowledge on Joe and Minnie, also Mom was able to give me quite a few interesting details which Minnie had passed on to her during their talks, but sadly these are no substitute for having more memories of my own.

The photographs show

left: Joe and Minnie with me aged 1 at Virginia Water, Surrey;
centre: Joe and Minnie with me aged 3 on holiday, possibly in Cornwall;
right: Joe and Minnie outside their home in Walsall.

Pam Turner

Grandfather

I have been publishing a series of blogs about my Grandfather Patrick for just over two years. The total is now over 100, and rising. You can click on the links below to see a couple of the more recent ones: 

https://www.roscommonstanley.me.uk/direct-line/education/

https://www.roscommonstanley.me.uk/military/advantages-of-birth/

The content is social as much as genealogical. I have written a lot about the place where he was born (Roscommon) and the places he visited (South Africa, India and then France/Belgium in the Great War). There are items about the places where he stayed (Dewsbury and Brighton). There are items about relatives, and possible relatives. There is something missing. There is almost nothing about Patrick from my perspective. The reason is straightforward. He died just before my seventh birthday. My memories of him are hazy.

In an effort to fill in some of the gaps, I had a long talk with my (older) sister. Together we explored the cobwebbed corners of our shared experiences. We disturbed the dust of the ages and endeavoured to agree a timescale.  

My most prominent memory of Patrick concerns a lack of light. When we visited their flat, we went up a short staircase. This was dark. Inside the flat, the light levels were still ‘subdued’. Think of a National Trust house where they are protecting delicate fabrics. This was probably due to low wattage bulbs and plain furnishings.

My sister reminded me that Patrick would normally give both of us half a crown. In today’s terms it would be worth roughly £2.50. I have a feeling that this cash went straight into our money boxes. He was a short, stocky man. I think that he had a pocket watch in his waistcoat. Pretty much everything else is hazy. Were we given squash and biscuits? I don’t know. What was his voice like? I don’t know. I had to ask my father whether Patrick retained an Irish accent. (Apparently it was still detectable even after 40 years in Brighton.) Did they come to our house for a meal? We don’t think so.

I know quite a lot about him, but I didn’t really know him.

This photo shows him outside of the gentlemen’s hairdresser where he worked.

Keith Stanley