Author: mark

September 2022 (#070)

The daughter of the niece from Jersey is Mum’s 2nd cousin Antoinette Hérivel, and she is a painter in Gabriola Island, British Columbia (which, incidentally but interestingly, she acknowledges as being on the unceded territory of the Snunéymuxw First Nation).

Antoniette’s work is often autobiographical, and I did know that she had spent time in Swindon when I found them in the census. However, it was still surprising to see that her Facebook banner is a picture of Swindon in the 1950s, complete with reference to the works hooter!

She has had many exhibitions over the decades but her first publically displayed painting was in Swindon Town Hall.

More of Antoinette’s work can be seen on Instagram.

September 2022 (#069)

Found posted online a new pic, allegedly of my gt-gt gran (see posts #059 and #060). I originally posted that I would love to verify (I had doubts) but that the family resemblance is there.

Marilyn Beale has helped crystallise the thought. Looking at other photos, I think it is more likely to be my gt-gran’s sister Isabel Jane in about 1915. She had married a businessman of Scottish descent, and had a son and daughter in Jersey before they emigrated to Australia in 1913. The daughter Dorothy (presumably pictured) married in Tasmania. The son was lost at sea there while shark fishing in 1945.

Incidentally, the exact dates for the family have been hard to pin down as they were methodists, and the records are yet to be fully digitised. Isabel’s niece, Estelle, married a Wesleyan minister, settling for a while in County Road, Swindon in the 1950s.

July 2022

I found a Barnsley FC fan site where people are reminiscing about various scraps with Port Vale fans over the years. (2002, Vale chairman bought me a pint after his fans duffed me up; early 1990s coach window put through in a Stoke housing estate; 1976 FA Cup – kidnapping a Vale fan onto a Barnsley fan bus after he was banging on all the windows looking for trouble. They let him off in one piece at Penistone, so that’s all right, then.)

[In 1966] buses parked at top of hill, 2 chippy rowe coaches from cudworth go down the hill. Port vale fans at bottom of hill all scattered as young Arthur rowe put his foot down and went through them. Our driver bill ( lived in pinfold cottages in cudeth ) slowed down and the vale fans bricked the coach.

I take “young Arthur” to mean the son of Arthur Rowe (1875-1951), one-time greengrocer (1911), founder of the bus and coach business, and cousin of my gt-gt grandfather (via Mary Musgrave).

Grimly, I also found from the Commercial Motor archive, that in October 1947, one of the company’s coaches lost control descending into Holmfirth, when its propshaft broke. The driver attempted to stop the vehicle but the brakes failed to respond, and the vehicle careered out of control. It crashed into the side of a warehouse, part of which collapsed on top of the coach. Nine of the coach’s occupants were killed, and the remaining 24 were injured. The driver on the day of the accident, a week-end employee, had been with the firm for about three weeks, testified Arthur at the MoT hearing.

Later, (found via an ‘old bus’ reasearcher, Joe, on Old Bus Photos) that the partners in the firm were accused of failing to maintain the braking system and “Finding the case proved, the magistrates’ imposed a £3 fine on each of the five defendants—partners in the business [including Arthur].”

The ill-fated coach was an AEC Regal, like my snap from the National Bus collection.

The crash still reverberates – from the (twice Eisteddfod winning) Bolsterstone Male Voice Choir website:

William Evans, still remembered with great fondness locally, led the choir for 30 years through difficult times, including the war years, and a tragic accident in 1947 in which Mr Evans’s father was among the nine people killed when a coach carrying choristers, relatives and supporters to a music festival careered out of control down a steep hill as they approached their destination of Holmfirth, crashing into a warehouse in the centre of the town. William Evans died in 1965 when his choir was on the brink of its greatest achievements.

The injured and dying were, says Yorkshire Live, tended by a young Estonian refugee. She married an injured chorister, and their son became secretary of the choir (as of 2017).

The buses were nationalised by 1970 (Hansard) but, still, I found this:

A coach carrying home sixty children and staff of St John’s Junior School, after a visit to Crich Tramway Museum, went out of control on a steep Derbyshire hill. The quick reactions of the driver, Mr Brian Macey of Arthur Rowe and Sons, saved the children when he ran the bus into a grass verge and trees.

Penistone AImanack: 15 Jun 1982

The pics are from a Barnsley history group – Rowe’s new yard, bought from a farm, 1960; the ‘Chippy Flyer’ Leyland; a Rowe coach, contemporary with the kidnap incident, latterly used as a home (photo: Flickr friend, Tim); .

11 Jun 2022 (#066)

Update on Family Tree Post #11. I finally saw the family gold at the Ashmolean. A small room full of gold things, and a big room full of silver things, bequeathed by cousin Michael Wellby.

Michael was a descendant of the wife of James Larard the clockmaker (post 35), whose family made the Dunkirk little ship (post 17). Harriett’s sister Charlotte married George Burrows, an officer in the Court of Chancery, Westminster Hall, and they lived close to the Larards in Kennington.

Their son George was a provisions merchant in Norwood, Croydon, moving in the 1880s to Ladywood, the Orpington mansion pictured in post 40. I’ve found that George had premises by Holburn Viaduct, near an early Nestlé depot, and owned the brewery in St Mary Cray. In 1901, he was at 211 Piccadilly. Their daughter Alice met and married diamond merchant Edward Wellby in Orpington. Edward was also a director of the hallmarked family silver dealers, and a neighbour when at his 9 bedroom country house, Crofton Hurst. In 1939, their son Hubert is listed as an antique silver dealer in Eton. Edward left £152k when he died the following year (around £9m today).

[At the age of eighteen, Hubert’s son Michael took a part-time job in the family business] where he acquired a lasting passion for the beauty and craftsmanship of early silver. He opened his own shop in Grafton Street in the 1960s, specialising in German silver of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in which he became an acknowledged expert. Both at auctions in London and on trips to the continent with his wife, Joy, he made many discoveries and acquired many rarities. Several of these were sold through the shop but a few exceptional pieces were added to the personal collection which has now been bequeathed to the Ashmolean.

Artdaily

Update: my friend James Sallis sent this pic of 22 Piccadilly today (2022).

24 Aug 2021

In memory of gt-grandad Larard’s second cousin, Flight Lieutenant Ivo Little, killed 100 years ago today when the R38 airship came down.

Apr 2021

Oh yes, she is…

The (national, paywall, unmentionable) paper says that mum’s 2nd cousin (daughter of Donald Squire) has bought both Swindon theatres, amongst others (technically the operating co, I think). What a shame I don’t know her!

Best of luck to her in saving regional theatre, anyway. A dame (a real one, not a panto one) in shining armour.

“By this time next year, hopefully we’ll be back to the good old days,” she is quoted as saying.

http://shentonstage.com/march-31-building-yet-another…/

Apr 2021

Grandad’s (1st) cousin Phillip meets Prince Philip in Sao Paulo, at a time when the former ran the local Dunlop operation.