Goodramgate, the street where my great-great-grandparents lived

This is the second of my posts about my pilgrimage to York in August of this year. Accompanied by tour guide Matthew from “Exploring York”, I sought out addresses where my ancestors in my maternal line had lived. This account is about the street called Goodramgate.

Goodramgate dates back to Viking times and it is said that it was named after a Viking called Guthrum” or “Gutherun”. Historians believe this may refer to the Viking king known as Guthrum who ruled from York in the ninth century.

The street runs diagonally from Monk Bar beside the old city walls to King’s Square, or from south-east to north west. Starting at Monk Bar, we trod its ancient cobbles, surrounded by enthusiastic tourists and busy locals. Cars may travel along the street but preference is given to pedestrians. As a result, the atmosphere is relaxed, and the sunny weather on the day of my tour added an extra feeling of jauntiness.

We passed the Snickelway Inn, a pub named after the many narrow alleys and footpaths called “snickelways” which run through the old city. Originating from medieval times, These snickleways provide access to out-of-the-way houses, taverns and workshops. Many of them have odd names, like Mad Alice Lane, but what appeals most to me is the image of people “snickeling” or scurrying along the dim passages, having to squeeze past those coming in the opposite direction!

A little way further on, on the other side of the street, Matthew pointed out a row of wood-frame dwellings built in the 1300s. Called Lady Row or Our Lady’s Row, they are a series of small tenements designed to be let out to bring in an income for a chantry priest at the nearby Holy Trinity Church. What is remarkable about the terrace as a whole is that the upper floor projects out into the street by means of a “jetty”, because property tax was calculated according to the area of the ground floor. Today, Lady Row has shops at street level and the facades have been altered, but it is fascinating to consider that the building was there for five centuries before my great-grandfather Charles came along.

Behind Lady Row , accessed through an eighteenth-century brick archway, is Holy Trinity Church itself. Originally built of limestone in the 1300s, it has undergone major reconstruction to hold up the roof and preserve its quaint features. Today it no longer serves as a parish church and is open to visitors such as me. I was fascinated to learn that, in 1884, two women—Anne Lister and Ann Walker—took Holy Communion together at the church as an affirmation of their lesbian relationship. This would have been shortly after Charles left York with his first wife Emma Elsey but it would have been hot gossip among his parents and siblings who still lived in the city.

Speaking of Charles’ parents, Thomas and Mary Ann Sanderson knew Goodramgate well. They spent the first year of their marriage at an undisclosed address in the street. Their eldest daughter Emma was born there and christened at Holy Trinity Church on 13 February 1851. The 1851 census shows that Thomas’s occupation was hatter, which makes me think that he probably worked close by, but those details remain to be discovered.

Soon the Sandersons would have to move away from Goodramgate to accommodate their growing family. However, in doing so, they would have been just like me, stopping to gaze around at the centuries-old buildings—perhaps even recalling their forebears who worshipped at Holy Trinity Church in years gone by.

The above photo shows me standing outside the Snickelway In, Goodramgate.

 

Impressions of Lord Mayor’s Walk in the city of York

York has called to me for a long time. It’s the city in which my great-grandfather Charles Sanderson was born. Grandma Sandy also spoke about it, although I have no proof that she ever travelled there. Anyway, this August I got a chance to visit York with my sister and get a first-hand sense of what the city is like.

We were there for just two nights, staying in accommodation just outside Monk Bar, very close to Yorkminster. We were so close, in fact, that my bedroom window was just feet away from the old city wall. I couldn’t have asked for a better spot from which to walk the streets where my ancestors lived. Not only that, but the weather was good—neither rainy nor excessively warm—and we managed to avoid—albeit by chance—the crowds which descended on the city for the biggest horse race of the year!

In order to get the most out of my time there, I inquired about a guide who could give me a solo walking tour. I was directed to Matthew from “Exploring York” who was happy to oblige. Before leaving home, I had compiled a list of all the landmarks I wanted to see, along with notes about how each place was connected to my family. Matthew called it an “interesting project” and, using a paper map, worked out a convenient route. He also played photographer, snapping pictures of me at various locations on my phone, so the whole exercise proved very effective.

This post will deal only with the very start of our walking tour, and I hope to follow it up with others that feature more of the locations I visited. My aim is to give an impression of what it was like to walk where my ancestors walked and reflect on the difference between their lives and ours today.

Lord Mayor’s Walk is a busy road running parallel to the north wall of the city between Monk Bar on the eastern end and Gillygate on the western end. As we walked along with the old wall on our left, Matthew pointed out the wide gully separating the old wall and our position on the pavement. He explained that it had once served as a moat to protect the city against invaders. That was long before my known ancestors were alive. As we gazed at the lovely view of the minster rising above the walls, I thought of all the Lord Mayors and residents of York who had walked this route and enjoyed the same outlook.

Lord Mayor’s Walk is where some of my ancestors lived at the time of the first census. Mary Ann Bland, mother of Charles Sanderson, recorded her age as 13 in 1841. She lived with her parents, John and Rachel Bland and her brother Thomas, aged 15. The 1841 census noted that they lived in the parish of St Maurice, and Matthew pointed out the site where St Maurice’s Church used to stand. It was apparently removed in the 1960s after which the churchyard was converted into a green space for public use.

Further up the road from the St Maurice churchyard in the direction of Gillygate is St John’s College. The college was established in 1841—the same year as the census—although it has now been incorporated into the modern York St John University. In its early days, the college was dedicated to the training of teachers. For the first five years, only boys were admitted; then, from 1846, the Diocesan Institute for Female Teachers was launched. By 1847 there were 10 students, and the number increased to 33 the following year. A blue plaque commemorates the pioneering women—Winifred, Catherine and Mary Cruse—who created this extraordinary legacy of equal education in the first half of the nineteenth century.

Neither Mary Ann nor Thomas Bland became teachers, so it is unlikely that they had much to do with St John’s College. Still, growing up on Lord Mayor’s Walk would have exposed them to the possibility of higher education for women and of teaching as a desirable career. The well-maintained gardens of the college would also have been an inspiring sight. Having been there and literally smelt the lavender bordering the lawn in front of the blue plaque, I hope they found time to pause with the sun on their faces and dream of a bright future.

 

Friction between the Sanderson women of Bethnal Green

As the title of this blog says, the family to which we belong—the descendants of Dave and Sandy Ritchie—is very small. In the words of my mother and aunt, this is because both of their parents were only children. Or so they believed. New information turned up in the course of my research which suggested that my grandmother had a stepsister from her father's first marriage.

I wrote previously about this person, Caroline Emma Sanderson, but wanted to confirm my findings. So I hired a professional genealogist, Janice Heppenstall from English Ancestors, to go through the facts I had gathered and expand on them.

Janice confirmed that my great-grandfather Charles Sanderson, born in 1857 in York, married his first wife Emma Elsey in 1879. The couple lived in Roundhay, Leeds, and welcomed Caroline into the world in 1880. Janice pointed out that they had been very clever in naming the child. Not only was she named after her mother but she was named after her father too; "Caroline" is the adjective used to relate to Charles I and Charles II in the United Kingdom, meaning  "of or relating to Charles". This fascinating piece of trivia seems to  signal a strong sense of relationship and pride within the family.

I also learnt that Charles' wife Emma died in 1900 in Surrey. This was new information because, although I knew about Charles and Caroline appearing on the  1901 census for Bethnal Green, I had assumed that they moved to London after Emma's death. Evidently, they had moved south sometime in the decade between the censuses. On reflection, this made sense. Emma's parents lived in Surrey, and it would have been natural for them to want to have their granddaughter closer to them. The move would have made sense from an economic point of view too, because there was surely good work to be had for an experienced coachman in the capital.

Caroline was 20 at the time her mother died. She stated her occupation as "Household duties" in the census the following  year. It must have been frustrating for her, the daughter of a well-travelled military man, to stay at home and care for her grieving father. It was doubtless a huge relief when Charles met and married my great-grandmother Florence Wilson in 1903.

But now there were two women in the house. Caroline, aged 23, and Florence, aged 28, could not have found it easy. Caroline, who had been raised as an only child, was likely accustomed to being in charge, whereas Florence, who was the third of seven children, was probably used to choosing the path of least resistance.

As the two women were attempting to work out their differences, big changes were happening in the city. The District Railway and Circle Line began converting their passenger operations from steam to electric power. Aldwych was being redeveloped and buildings were being removed to make way for the new, much wider Kingsway. As time went by, the Bakerloo Line was opened, as was The Ritz Hotel in Piccadilly, and the stage play Peter Pan or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up premiered at the Duke of York's Theatre. In Manchester,   the Women's' Social and Political Movement, under the  direction of Emmeline Pankhurst was getting off the ground, later to be known as the Suffragettes. Meanwhile, further afield, the 1904 Summer Olympics took place in St Louis, Missouri; Theodore Roosevelt was  elected as President of the United States; Russian workers began protesting against Tsar Nicolas II's rule in St Petersburg; Albert Einstein completed his scientific paper on the quantum theory of light; and the Cairo-Cape Town Railway was officially inaugurated.

It is possible that none of this meant much to Caroline, though. She had fallen in love with a career soldier named Frederick Sanderson and was preparing to tie the knot. Their marriage took place at the St Pancras Register Office in May 1905, just four months after the birth of my grandmother Sandy. I can picture the wife-to-be leaving her stepmother's home with hardly a backward glance. Charles' new baby was 24 years younger than Caroline, and the doting parents probably got on her nerves. Besides, baby Florence was more like a niece than  a member of her own generation.

As for my great-grandmother Florence, I imagine she felt a weight lift off her shoulders as she turned back into the house and anticipated finally being the mistress of her own domain.

Photo credit: Suffrage Caravan Tours, Bridlington, 1908 by LCE LibraryLSE Library.

 

The thrill of tracking down Auntie Elsie and Uncle Ted from East Ham

We don't know much about Grandma's early life, where she went to school and how she liked to spend her time. We don't even know how she met Grandad, only that they married in 1929 and moved to South Africa to raise a family. What we do know, though, was that she had a cousin named Elsie with whom she corresponded for years and of whom she was very fond.

Until yesterday, my attempts to track down Elsie had been wholly unsuccessful. Without the benefit of a maiden name or married surname, I had been forced to try other approaches: Research the siblings of my ancestors and look among their descendants for girls named Elsie, Ellen or Elizabeth. Assume that Elsie was a Wilson because Grandma's mother was a Wilson and the relationship  might not be that of first cousin. Perform a search for marriages of people named Elsie and Ted plus variations on those names. Alas, all my efforts proved fruitless. It was a brick wall in my genealogy quest and yet I felt convinced the solution was very close.

The reason for my confidence was that I knew about Auntie Elsie from my lived experience. As a child, I often heard Grandma say, "I got another letter from Auntie Elsie this week" or "I must write and tell Auntie Elsie about that." Of course, I took no notice. Being young and preoccupied with what I could grasp first-hand, I simply failed to pay attention.

More recently, I tried quizzing my aunt Gillian for anything she could tell me. She remembered that Elsie was married to Ted but had no idea whether there were any children. Her memories are so scant because she only met them once. It was on a family holiday to England, one of the five-yearly trips that happened when her father visited the London office of Hollerith. Gillian recalls that, when they visited Auntie Elsie and Uncle Ted in East Ham, they were building a bomb shelter in the front yard. She also recalls seeing barrage balloons hanging over London and the need to close all the curtains at dusk for the blackout. Coming from a context where life involved carefree expeditions up the mountain to boil potatoes in a billy-can and watching her father learn to sail, she was naturally struck by the strangeness of it all.

Such was the extent of my knowledge about Elsie and Ted. I had reached the point where my notes on the elusive couple languished in a file awaiting inspiration. Then, this past week, Ancestry made an offer I could not refuse. I had a free account, created when they were offering free access to military records a little while ago, and they saw fit to reach out to me , offering a three-month subscription for just one dollar. Unfortunately, Ancestry is hard to use with accessibility software for blind users so I won't be using it long term. However, the effort it took to build a basic family tree was well worth it because I made a startling breakthrough!

My first Ancestry hint led me to a profile for Grandma. This was unexpected because she had been an only child and I hadn't found her included on any other online family trees. Checking the details for her parents and grandparents, I satisfied myself that there was no mistake. Then I set about tracing the relationship between myself and the owner of the tree.

I hadn't been thinking about Elsie and Ted when, suddenly, I found an Elsie Ada Bristow from West Ham. The name caught my attention, as did her birth date of 1907, just two years later than Grandma's. She was married to an Edward Collins, which ticked the box for Uncle Ted. To top it all, the couple lived in East Ham in 1939, the year in which Grandma, my aunt Gillian and my mother had seen them.

What a find this is! The online family tree makes it possible for me to contact the owner and exchange information. She obviously knows more about Grandma's extended family than I do, while I know more about her children and grandchildren. This opens up a whole new line of investigation. Not only do I have a slew of new names, dates and locations to research, but I have DNA results to compare, photos to share and new ancestors to care about. So many possibilities for exploration!

Photo credit: "A man sits on a park bench in London 1940" by Christine

 

Charles Sanderson and the streets of York

In researching my maternal great-grandfather I made a surprising discovery. The family of Charles Sanderson grew up in what is now an extremely popular tourist area of York. They lived in the historic part of the city known as Micklegate, close to the River Ouse.

Charles Sanderson spent his infant years in the street known as Stonegate. The term "gate" in the name comes from the Viking word meaning "street" and the "stone" part refers to the stone laid on it by the Romans. The street itself is long and narrow, running from Petergate in the north to St Helen's Square in the south. The house in which Charles and his family lived was at the St Helen's Square end, and was likely Georgian in design, judging from the other buildings in the street. Stonegate is said to be one of the most attractive streets in York.

At age 13, Charles was living at High Jubbergate, Holy Trinity King's Court. This street's name dates back to the fourteenth century when Jewish people settled there but it was built much earlier. Although the church known as Holy Trinity King's Court no longer exists, having been demolished in 1937 to create King's Square, it was still standing on the corner of Colliergate and Shambles when Charles was a boy. Drawings done at the time clearly show the church's tower  above the chimneys and rooftops of Jubbergate.

When Charles married Emma Elsey in 1879, he stated his address as 22 Trinity Lane, St Martin's cum St Gregory, Micklegate. Trinity Lane is a small road that connects to Micklegate, the main road on the west side of the river. The house no longer exists but it has an interesting history. From the time of the 1841 to the 1871 census, it was occupied by a coach proprietor named George Walker from York. For twenty years he lived with his wife Mary and a couple of servants, and then, after Mary passed away, was assisted by his young niece, Mary Elizabeth Wilson. Interestingly, George Walker stated that he employed 5 men in his coach business. We know that Charles' occupation in 1881 was "coachman", so perhaps he started out his career working for George Walker. This would explain how his widowed mother Mary Ann Sanderson and three of his siblings came to be living at 22 Trinity Lane in 1881 after George Walker moved away or died.

Charles must have enjoyed the opportunities for travel and adventure that coaching afforded him. However, the market was shrinking. Since the arrival of the railway in York in 1840, the amount of goods being transported by coach declined sharply and many  people chose the speedier option of travelling by train. Still, coaches were familiar, convenient and possibly cheaper than rail transport. A coach journey between London and York typically took four days, stopping overnight at inns which offered accommodation to travellers and stabling for the horses. The coachman and groom would eat and drink in the local tavern and, since they brought news and stories from far afield, drew locals there as well.

Photo credit: "Stonegate, York, England, View from Great/Central Tower of York Minster." By Billy Wilson.

 

My question regarding Mary Ann Howell of Bilston

This blog post continues the account of my research into the ancestors of Florence Mary Sanderson. Florence Sanderson was my maternal grandmother and was very much a product of London's East End. However, her ancestors came from Yorkshire and Staffordshire, and it is with the Staffordshire branch that I am currently busy.

My grandmother's mother was Florence Mary Wilson, who was in turn the daughter of Mary Ann Howell. The Howells were from Bilston, Staffordshire, and it isn't clear how Mary Ann ended up in London. According to census records, she moved south between 1851 and 1861, or sometime between her fourth and fourteenth birthdays, so it is likely she accompanied her parents or relatives when they travelled south. Yet, from what I can tell, her parents never left Bilston. Joseph and Mary Howell remained at the same address for their entire married life. So, why exactly did Mary Ann leave Bilston, and did I even have the right parents for her in my family tree?

Genealogical websites often advise amateur family historians to start with their most recent ancestors and work backwards from there. When I tried to trace Mary Ann Howell in both London and Staffordshire, however, I only got confused. The name Howell is extremely common in both locations. Moreover, the name Mary Ann turns up frequently, and there is more than one person named Mary Ann Howell born in 1847 in the Bilston area. The Howells of Bilston appear to be a long-established family with deep roots, and there are multiple Samuels, Williams, Sarahs and Phoebes in each generation. Faced with so many options, I didn't know how to distinguish one family from another.

Finally, I had an idea. Focusing on just one collection, the 1841 census for England and Wales, I typed in the surname, birth year and birth location of the man I had identified as Mary Ann's father; namely, Joseph Howell. Deliberately omitting his first name, I sought all  men born in Bilston who were capable of fathering a daughter in 1847. Thus, I came up with a list of over 20 individuals, enabling me to sort out the different families according to street address. Then I did the same exercise using the 1851 census. This helped in two ways: First, it let me add other, younger children to the families. Second, it clarified who was who in each family because the later census included the category "Relationship to head" alongside each name. If an individual appeared as "nephew", for example, it established a possible link between that Howell household and another with children roughly the same age.

It took me days to go through all the family groups and I struggled to trace connections between them. While there were several Howell households in Bilston's Oxford Street in 1841, they weren't obviously related. Doubtless, they shared common ancestors and knew each other as cousins of some sort, but tracing them all back into the mid-1700's and beyond posed too great an obstacle for my flagging energy! I opted instead to check my references for all the people I had already included in Mary Ann's tree to see if they stood up to scrutiny and, happily, they did. I found convincing documentary evidence for her birth to Joseph Howell and Mary Vaughan of Oxford Street, as well as for Mary Vaughan's birth to Edward Timothy Vaughan and Ann Prosser of Bridge Street.

At the same time, I messaged several of my DNA matches and came up with a strong link between me and a descendant of George Frederick Wilson. George was, like my great-grandmother Florence Mary Wilson, a child of Mary Ann Howell and Thomas Wilson. The DNA match proves that the documentary evidence I have for Mary Ann Howell and her Bilston-based family is indeed correct, and it also proves that there weren't any cases of misattributed paternity in that line.

But my original question still exists; what brought Mary Ann Howell to London in her teens, and how did she meet Thomas Wilson of Bethnal Green? Such mysteries are what good stories are made of. I'm hoping that, by putting my question out there, someone will be able to solve the puzzle. For that matter, any information that can shed more light on the Howells of Bilston and the Wilsons of Bethnal Green would be much appreciated.

Photo credit:  "Bilston Town Hall: Church Street and Litchfield Street" by Elliott Brown

 

Surprising new family member in the Sanderson branch of our tree

In my last blog post, I mentioned the large gap in the ages of my maternal great-grandparents, Charles and Florence Sanderson of Shoreditch. Charles was 46 when they married in 1903 and Florence was just 28. It made me wonder, was Charles Sanderson married before?

Formulating this question made it easy to progress with my genealogical research. Working on FindMyPast, I ran a search for an early marriage record for Charles Sanderson. I estimated that the marriage would have taken place around 1880 when Charles was 23, and restricted the search location to Yorkshire, the county in which he was born.

Sure enough, my search produced a result. Charles Sanderson married Emma Elsey in 1879 in York. The record I found confirmed that Charles' father was Thomas Sanderson and gave Emma's father's name as George Elsey. The Elsey family came from Surrey and George was an agricultural labourer.

Excitedly, I set about trying to find out more. A census record for 1881 revealed that Charles and Emma were living in Roundhay, a rural district of Leeds, Yorkshire and that Charles was working as a coachman in domestic service. This detail was encouraging because his occupation later in life when he was married to Florence was horse keeper. When I researched Roundhay, I learnt that it is an ancient green space outside the city of Leeds, originally enclosed as a deer park, subsequently opened to the public as a recreational area, and more recently developed in part with houses for the working class. Presumably, when my great-grandfather Charles lived in Roundhay, he was serving a rich landowner and driving a carriage pulled by two tall, strong horses like the Yorkshire Coach Horse shown in the picture.

The 1881 census also showed that Charles and Emma were starting a family. Emma had recently given birth to a daughter named Caroline. Caroline Sanderson was just 10 months old at the time of the 1881 census.

This was an extraordinary find. It meant that Grandma, born an only child, actually had a half-sister who was 24 years older than she. Nothing had been suggested about this before, causing me to have serious doubts about the veracity of my evidence.

Then I made an even more astonishing discovery.

Returning to the Sanderson family Bible, I scanned through the names. One name jumped out at me. In a slightly smudged hand, someone had written, "Carre Sanderson born 5th April 1880 at Roundhay, Leeds". I searched for a birth record online and found Caroline Emma Sanderson born in April 1880 with her mother's maiden name given as Elsey. The name, date and location of this record all confirm that Caroline Sanderson, daughter of Charles and Emma, was indeed one of my ancestors.

I then turned to MyHeritage to see if I could find out more. Another census record popped up, this time from 1901 in the suburb of Bethnal Green. Clearly, the person who took down the family's details had terrible handwriting because Caroline's birthplace of Roundhay is transcribed as "Roimdhay" and the county of her birth is shown as Leicestershire, suggesting a faulty transcription of Leeds. In addition, Charles is transcribed as "Marles". Even so, there was enough to convince me that they were the right people. I knew that Charles had married Florence in London in 1903, so this record for the 1901 census helped establish his move. It also confirmed he  was a widower. He stated his occupation as "foreman/house keeper" which is probably another error in transcription, intended to read "foreman/horse keeper" as in the 1911 census. Caroline, at 20 years old,  stated her occupation as "household duties".

My investigation then turned to Emma's death. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any trace of it online. All I know is that it occurred sometime in the 20 years between the 1881 and 1901 census. I tried to find evidence of Caroline getting married or, failing that, appearing on the 1911 census or 1939 register but again, had no luck. I couldn't even find a death record for her, since all the death records for women named Caroline Sanderson corresponded with census records that showed them married to men named Sanderson.

This isn't the end of the world, though. I have lots to investigate for now. Up to this point, the city of Leeds and its surrounding countryside held no interest for me, but that has changed. If I get the chance to travel to Yorkshire, I will definitely make a pilgrimage to Roundhay to walk in the footsteps of Charles, Emma and Caroline.

Photo credit: Cigarette card: Yorkshire Coach Horse by CigCardPix.

 

Census record for Charles Sanderson sheds light on Grandma's early life

There is a story in Grandad's memoir about him and Grandma attending fox-hunting events while they were courting. Given that neither of them came from noble families, their presence at these events didn't make sense. Now some new information has emerged which throws light on this mystery.

Grandma was an only child who grew up in the East End of London. I knew very little about her early life when I began this blog except that her maiden name was Florence Mary Sanderson and that she was born in Shoreditch in 1905.

From research done on My Heritage and Find My Past, I've been able to discover a little more about her roots. Her father was Charles Sanderson, born in York, Yorkshire in 1857. Her mother was Florence Mary Wilson, born in Bethnal Green, London in 1875. What is remarkable here is the age difference between her parents. Charles was nearly 18 years older than Florence, which may explain why they only had one child.

I am fortunate to have become the keeper of the Sanderson family Bible. It came to me in a very fragile state and I had it professionally re-bound to preserve the precious notes recorded on its front pages. Charles' name is listed, along with his father Thomas Winskill Sanderson and his mother Mary Ann Bland. The record shows that there were eleven children in all, although only eight made it to adulthood.

According to census records, all Charles' surviving siblings lived out their lives in Yorkshire. He was the only one who left and move to London. Perhaps his being the eldest son placed certain expectations on him, or perhaps he was simply looking to seek his fortune in the city. At any rate, that was how he met and married Florence Wilson.  The marriage took place in 1903, the year before Grandma was born.

It was from the 1911 census taken in Mile End Old Town that I learnt Charles Sanderson's occupation was horse keeper. This little detail reminded me that Grandma had a small brooch with a riding whip and horseshoe which she gifted me when I entered my first gymkhana as a child. She also fostered my interest in horses by buying me a subscription to an expensive English horse magazine. Grandma never rode after she and Grandad moved to South Africa but she must have retained fond memories of the horses her dad cared for back in London. When I shared what I had found with my sister, she reminded me that she had a three-handled mug depicting a hunting scene which had belonged to our mother, and that this may have been passed down from Grandma who received it from her father. I have added a photo of the mug here, and if anyone can suggest its provenance, I would be most grateful.

Did Grandma and Grandad gain access to fox-hunting events through Charles' job, I wonder? After all, it was through my own friend's father, who was a keen better on the races, that she and I gained access to the race course! It seems conceivable that Charles, who was responsible for  someone else's horses and therefore familiar with horsy events, should wish to open doors for his daughter and her fiancé, especially as David was always so keen on visiting new places.

I like this explanation of the story in Grandad's memoir. It feels right. I can just see my very tall grandfather  holding the elbow of my very petite and stylishly-dressed grandmother as they politely acknowledged the master of the hunt in his black top hat and scarlet coat, while throngs of riders, grooms and horses milled about on a grey winter's day.

Photo credit: Illustration of fox hunting from Sporting Sketches (1817-1818) by Henry Alken (1784-1851). Original from The New York Public Library. Digitally enhanced by rawpixel.

Why my grandmother reminds me of bells

Bells are usually associated with weddings, aren't they? I wish I could devote the whole of this post to my grandmother's wedding 90 years ago but sadly I have very little information to share. The marriage took place on 18 may 1929 at St Paul's Church in Haggerston in the parish of Shoreditch in the East End of London. The witnesses to the marriage were Hilda Mary Charlotte Wright and Archibald William Wright. The vicar was Wilfred H. Abbot if I have read it correctly. I'm afraid I don't even have a photo of the wedding to share. I wanted to look up the weather on the day [sometimes mentioned in forecasts or reports in old newspapers] but researching in newspapers is a whole other skill which I haven't yet mastered. So I'm going to ask you to join me in a little exercise instead. My grandmother, known to everyone as Sandy, used to say that she grew up in range of the 6 famous bells featured in the nursery rhyme, "Oranges and Lemons". They are, of course, the bells of St Clement's, St Martin's, Old Bailey, Shoreditch, Stepney and Bow. You can hear a lovely rendering of the song here, and as you do, imagine the peal of all these bells ringing out over the Thames dockyards, East End streets and wedding guests on Grandma's special day. Bells continued to be part of her life right into her golden years. She and my grandfather retired to a house at the beach in the late 1960's and decorated it with many of the treasures they had gathered in their round-the-world travels. Among these was a sturdy brass bell in a bell-rest which they used at the dinner table to summon their "house-boy", Charlie. Thinking back to that dignified old gentleman in his white tunic and trousers, smartly trimmed with red, I cringe, but that was the way my ancestors lived. Come to think of it, I wonder where Charlie's people are now?