I never asked my parents exactly how they met – they had been brought up in the same (or adjoining) villages and I assume they knew each other most of their lives. So in case any of my family want to ask me the same question….
It was 39 years ago this week: Sunday 19th February 1984 to be exact, when I first saw the man who was to be my companion for most of my life. I had been asked to accompany a group of school students – the Hillside School Choir – to spend a week in Offenburg, the twin town of Borehamwood where I lived and taught at the time. I had started my career at Hillside School, doing a one year maternity leave contract, at the end of which I have taken up a permanent post as an English teacher at the other Upper school in the town, Nicholas Hawksmoor. The two school slater amalgamated into Hertswood Secondary School. I was still friendly with several of the staff at Hillside including the Head of Music, Chris Weaver, who was leading the trip.
A few weeks before it was due to set off, Chris was advised that the coach company he had booked were unreliable – on a history trip they had been stopped on the way home at Dover, the drivers being out of hours they had to wait for replacement staff to be sent out. So Chris was on the look out for a coach company at short notice – and found on the staff room noticeboard a letter from a Christopher Sullivan who was the manager of Peter Pan Travel in Garston, asking for business and mentioning he was an old boy of the school. The company was accordingly asked to provide a coach and two drivers to accompany the trip and Christopher, seeking it was his old school and fancying a week in Germany, decided to book himself in as one of the drivers.
Thus at 7.30am on a very cold Sunday morning I crawled onto the coach on the front drive of Hillside School to be confronted with a wide awake and very handsome coach driver, introducing himself over the microphone and checking passports while his co-driver, John, took us to Sheerness on the first leg of our trip.I have to admit I was instantly attracted to him, but was convinced he would not notice me….
Christopher on the coach
We crossed from Sheerness to Vlissingen and drove on through a very cold night – there was ice on the inside of the coach windows – to Offenburg. During an interesting week we visited Strasbourg, toured the area, went to a vineyard in the Black Forest and spent most evenings with all the adults having dinner together and repairing to someone’s hotel room with a bottle of whisky. Christopher and I got to know each other better through the week and on Thursday we were in a record shop where he presented me with the first gift he ever bought me – a vinyl LP of Rick Wakeman’s The Myths and Legends of King Arthur. By the time we got home I knew I wanted to see him again, so I gave him my phone number and said I might want to book a coach as the German students were intending to do a return visit. He gave me his work number; I called to ask for a quote for a coach and he decided to bring it round to my flat in person….and the rest is history!!
Probably the first photo of us together – on the steps of the EU building in Strasbourg
I only have to close my eyes to picture the school where I spent seven years. The school coach from Dickleburgh left from Chenery’s yard and took all the Diss secondary students, dropping off at the Secondary Modern first in the morning and continuing to the Grammar – in the afternoon they were picked up first. We were dropped in the bus lay-by at the back of the school and made our way up the path between the science block and the tennis courts to the main part of the school, which was divided into the old block and the new block, separated by the gym along the side of which ran a covered verandah.
Going into the old block, you found a long corridor with rooms 1-5 lining each side. If I remember correctly, Room 2 on the right was my first form room, and Miss Smith was the form tutor as well as our English and history teacher. She was firm but kind, a real old school mistress type. Unlike today when students take all their belongings around the school with them unless they are lucky enough to have a locker with a key, we had an old fashioned wooden school desk with lift-up lids in our form room to store books – coats went in the cloakroom, of which more later. The desks still had inkwells although biro had just about overtaken fountain pen as writing implement of choice.
Text books – very few worksheets or printed materials of any sort – were the main resource in lessons and we were issued with our own copy of the text book for each subject to be kept – in pristine condition – for the whole year. We were advised (ie ordered) to cover text books to keep them clean – usually with wallpaper. Each subject also had its own exercise book, and with ten subjects, that was a lot of books. Each morning we would transfer into our desks the books we’d taken home to do homework the night before, and load up our satchels with the books needed for that morning’s lessons.
Yes, satchels – brown leather, of the type that now masquerade as up-market handbags. To be carried around the school and to home, transporting books and school ‘equipment’. Nowadays (and as I write this I am back teaching again despite having retired four years ago: as one student put it, I am ‘unretired’ again) it appears to be too much to ask a student to bring a pen to the lesson. Every teacher is familiar with starting the term with a box full of pens and reaching half term with an inexplicably empty box despite counting borrowed pens in and out each lesson. Not so in our day.
Before starting at the school we were sent a letter with all requirements listed, from navy gabardine mac, through brown gym knickers to set squares and compasses. In common with most of my classmates I always had in my satchel an Oxford Maths Set in a tin and a bulging pencil case with pens, pencils, rubber, ruler, coloured pencils and more pens.
What we didn’t cart around school were those navy gabardine macs – once in school in the morning we proceeded to the cloakroom at the end of the old block corridor and hung coats on the peg allotted to us. PE kit went in the wire basket suspended from the bench under the coat pegs or was hung up under our coat.
I remember the two steps down to the left of the corridor into the cloakroom, and if you continued to that end of the large square area you came to the school library, at one end of which was the Lower Sixth Common Room which in turn gave onto the back of the stage in the school hall and was therefore used for schools plays etc. Next to the library were the stairs leading up to the tower in which lived Mrs Ives, the Senior Mistress. Well, her office anyway, which also served as our classroom when we did A level French, which she taught. A fearsome figure when I was in the first form, she proved to be a wise and supportive mentor – and it was Mrs Ives who told me I was mad to think about going into teaching – I think to put me off unless I was sure it was the path for me. Which it was. Sorry Miss.
To the right of the tower room stairs were the toilets – the girls at least (for obvious reasons, I never memorised the location of the boys’ but I think they were around there as well) and at the further end of the cloakroom you turned left into the school canteen and through to the school hall, the route we took every morning for assembly. Whole school assembly, that is, complete with hymn books and prayers and led by the headmaster, ‘Alfie’ (actually Anthony, but we wouldn’t have known that then) Norfolk – or Mr Norfolk, sir to his face. All teachers wore their academic gowns to assembly, sitting in a semicircle on the stage while Mr Norfolk processed from the back of the hall up on to the stage, gown flying in his wake.
It was the end of assembly we girls dreaded as we went up the school – at least, the ones when Mr Norfolk would dismiss the boys and tell the girls to remain in the hall. We knew this meant a uniform check. Male teachers left; female teachers stood in pairs by each door and as each girl walked out of the hall she was made to drop her hymn book, bend down (from the waist – no squatting down) and pick it up while the teachers checked to see if anything untoward could be seen – ie her knickers. Of course, most of us had simply shortened our skirts by rolling them up at the waist, so the hall was a mass of wriggling, squirming girls pulling their skirts down, followed by a mass exodus into the girls’ toilet to roll them back up again before first lesson.
Following our footsteps out of the hall back through the canteen (there were also exterior doors on the other side of the hall) facing you was the tuck shop, operated at break by Mrs Ray, also the Headmaster’s secretary. Her office lay just behind, adjacent to Mr Norfolk’s own office which opened off the far end of the cloakroom. Next along that far wall was the women teachers’ staff room. You then went out of glass doors into the front foyer of the school, which had doors to the male staff room and then the woodwork room which jutted out beyond the front entrance to the school. When I was in the sixth form the rather antiquated idea of separate staff rooms was challenged by Roger Deakin who on his arrival informed our English class that he had taken up residence in the female staff room ‘because I find the company more congenial’. A year after leaving school I went back to do a day’s observation as part of my teacher training course, and found the rooms had been re-allocated as non-smoking and smoking staff rooms. Nowadays there is a total ban on smoking on a school site – I guess that’s some sort of progress.
Like most of us, I remember my parents, grandparents and aunts (less so my uncles – they were a quiet bunch) chatting about times gone by, and thinking how boring it all was and why did they have to keep going on about the old days….only to now wish I’d listened, as well as asked lots of questions about stuff I either never thought of asking or didn’t know about. How much did my nan really know about her birth? Was she aware she’d been born in London? Of course, dear old nan is long gone and I can’t ask – so part of the reason for this blog is so that in the future my own children and grandchildren might find a few answers to some of the questions they never asked me.
Questions like…
How did you and Chris meet?
What was it like when you went to school?
What naughty things did my dad do when he was little?
What relation was X to you and what part did they play in your life?
Did you really have a dinosaur as a pet?
You get the idea…….
Questions I Wish I’d Asked: What was your school like?
I’ve already written about my primary school and having to take the eleven plus exam, so what happened when I turned up on my first day at Diss Grammar School, and more to the point, can you visit my old school and see where I spent so many years growing up?
To answer the second question first….no. Diss Grammar School merged with the Secondary School, becoming Taylor Hall, and was finally closed around 1991 and demolished. It is now a housing estate – but the huge water tower that sat on its back boundary was still there last time I looked.
I find myself once again in the hinterland between Christmas and New Year – a time to look back and forward; one of the few times in the year when I actually take a leisurely look at life – and this blog.
And realise it’s been neglected for a couple of years. No excuse really – I am officially retired. Should have plenty of time…but for some reason time gets taken up with so many other things. Reminded though buy this blog of its purpose – to commit as much of our family history (what I know of it anyway) to paper – or keyboard – I think the two newest members of the family, who may someday want to read this, deserve to be written about. Especially since one of them has so recently joined us to so much joy.
How do I feel about being a grandparent? So, so happy – especially since I am Nanny to the two most beautiful, adorable and intelligent small children on the face of the earth. Biased? Moi?
Etta June Rose Sullivan was born in the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel on 21st October 2020, right in the middle of the Covid pandemic, and sharing her birthplace with her grandad Chris, making her a true Cockney, to his delight. Thankfully Joe was able to be with Anne for the birth – lots of dads were being sent out of the hospital because of fear of infection – and she came home the same day. We received photos but as soon as it was possible and convenient, we travelled up to London to meet her.
Given the Covid situation, I was prepared not to be able to touch Etta – I just wanted to see her. But as I walked into the room, Anne had this gorgeous tiny bundle of joy in her arms and just held her out for me to cuddle. I will forever be grateful to Anne for that – as well as for the amazing, brilliant mum she has been ever since. I can’t describe the feeling of holding your new granddaughter for the first time but I think the photos taken on the day demonstrate the joy.
For the last two and a bit years I have been so happy and privileged to watch Etta develop from that tiny baby to the confident, intelligent, happy and sociable little girl she is today. She has developed so fast – I had the delight of staying in London for a week in July 2021 to look after her when Anne went back to work for the last two weeks of the summer term, and even then at under 9 months she was taking her first tentative steps – a couple of weeks later she was walking, and by the time she came to the Isle of Wight for the first time in August 2021 for Grandad Chris’s 70th birthday, she was running all over the place – and the first thing she did when she came into the house was climb up the stairs!
By 16 months she was learning to count and she can now talk in full sentences – and is quite capable of announcing to a packed pub that her dad has just gone for a wee. The relationship with Joe was cemented by his working from home due to Covid when she was born, and is as close as the relationship with Anne – lovely to see. She also loves her nursery and has just made her stage debut playing a wise woman in their nativity – chosen because she was the only child who could pronounce ‘frankincense’.
Early this year Joe and Anne announced that Etta was getting a baby brother: the wonderful way they have handled the addition to the family, from making it her brother rather than their baby, making sure Ted gave her a present when he came home and letting her show him off to others has so far resulted in zero jealousy and lots of affection and pride in her new sibling.
Edward Richard Strummer Sullivan himself was welcomed into the world on 8th November 2022, again in the Royal London Hospital – yes, another Cockney in the family – and while we knew Anne had been admitted to hospital the first time round (she spent two days in there), this time it was quicker so the first we knew was a gorgeous photo on WhatsApp from Joe. Like his sister, he was discharged from hospital on the same day and Joe sent us a fabulous video of him meeting Etta – she pointed at him and said ‘My baby brother!’ Quickly followed with a disappointed ‘Baby brother asleep….’
Again we went up to London as soon as we could, and were met by Etta who proudly took us to the little rocking chair and introduced us to Ted, as he will be known for short. As with his sister, I spent the majority of the first visit with my new grandchild cuddled in my arms, getting to know him, marvelling at the tiny fingers and deep blue eyes and looking for family resemblances. We also had the privilege of sharing Ted’s first outing, to the local park where Etta ran round the familiar bits of apparatus and struck up friendships with any other child around, and Ted slept peacefully snuggled in his pram. Another occasion on which it takes the photos rather than words to reflect the joy.
Although small for his age, Ted is developing well and it was lovely to see the changes in him when we visited on the 19th for our Christmas celebrations – complete with a suitcase full of presents. Etta is now only too aware of the potential of prettily wrapped packages and enjoyed opening not only her own gifts but Ted’s too – and it was lovely to see how she showed Ted his presents – though one or two she also had her eye on. We were joined by Ross and Ronan and enjoyed a family pub lunch – Etta has decided that ‘Uncle Ronan funny’ and I adored seeing him and Ross spending time with their niece and nephew. As I write, Ted is not yet 8 weeks old but he is already firmly part of our wonderful family and loved as much as our Etta.
I was actually born in Norfolk and Norwich Hospital in Norwich, but was brought home to Dickleburgh, where my parents kept the village shop. Looking back now, Dickleburgh is a good-sized village which runs along the ‘main road’, and encompasses a few roads on either side. When I lived there the main road was the A140 from Norwich to Ipswich, but a bypass means it is now a quieter siding off the A road.
You can see here where the new road joins the old Norwich/Ipswich road running through Dickleburgh – where the main road is now was just fields when I lived there.
Dad’s shop formed part of the house – we literally lived above (and behind and next to) the shop. The house is still there but is a private dwelling, just like all the other shops that were there when I was a child and before that. The drapers opposite us had already closed by the time I arrived, but there was still a butcher’s shop, Chenery’s Coaches and a fish and chip shop as well as two pubs, one of which is still open.
My parents married in 1955 and my dad bought the shop from Dick Chenery and moved in in January 1956 – they lived with mum’s parents in Mendham until then. I think dad’s money came from his inheritance from his own father Frederick who had died in 1942, and knowing my dad he supplemented it with savings – he was always very careful with money. Anyway, they never had a mortgage as far as I know.
The shop, as you would expect, was on what we called ‘The Street’, on the corner with Harvey Lane:
This is the shop as it was in the 1960s….And this is what the house looks like now.
The shop front is towards the right of the building as you look at it in this photo. Roughly where the hanging basket is, was another window matching the one you see, and between them was the shop door. There was no hedge or tree outside the house front in my day – just some rough cobbles between the actual pavement and the house. Next door – the houses are actually detached but separated by about 6 inches’ gap – lived Rose and Dick Saunders. They were old even when I was tiny, and they sold petrol. That’s right – where the red brick house is today fronted by a small walled garden there stood two big petrol pumps. Thinking about it, pulling your car over on to the pavement on a main road should have been considered an obstruction and traffic hazard, but this was the 1960s.
The main front door on the left – you can see it partially covered by the rose bush here – led straight into our large front room, with its traditional 3 piece suite with loose covers, settee facing the fireplace, open fire and a matching armchair each side. I still have my mum’s sideboard which stood against one wall, and for many years after my tenth birthday the other wall housed my piano which was a gift at that age. During the 1970s we gained a ‘wall unit’ which were fashionable then, and my mum’s pride was her glass fronted display cabinet holding her glassware collection.
Behind the front room was the ‘little room’ – a sort of combined dining room and living room – we only went into the front room in the evening to watch TV. The old kitchen was a lean-to at the back, leading to the ‘back yard’ which dad had cemented over, with a narrow flower border along the side wall. At the back of the yard was a shed and the outside toilet – the only loo we had until the ‘renovation’. Opposite the toilet was a tiny square of soil which occasionally had some flowers in it but was usually bare as I remember.
The stairs were originally set between the front room and the shop, where there was a hallway, and upstairs was the master bedroom directly above the front room – my parents’ room at first, then mine later on; a smaller room which was originally mine (and then which I was forced to share with my sister!), over the shop. The smaller window on the right of the top floor wasn’t even there as far as I remember – this end of the house contained the bathroom, reached by walking through my bedroom, and through that a storeroom where I hid and played a lot of the time.
Just because we had a bathroom, don’t think we had a luxurious hot bath every day, with a shower over for when we didn’t have time to soak…oh no. There was a bath with running water – even that wasn’t usual in the late 50’s when my parents moved in. But no hot tap – there was a copper to heat up the water, but it had to be filled and emptied by hand with buckets, so bathtime was once a week. And there was not toilet – just the bath and washbasin.
Essentially the whole of the back of the house was knocked out and a new shell built extending it on both floors. The door you see in the picture leads into the new kitchen, and there was another door where the window in the back of the original house can be seen, which led into the shop. So you now had to go out into that little courtyard to get from the house into the shop. Incidentally, that little courtyard was home to a large oil tank, filed over the wall by a tanker when needed and with a tap on the front to enable dad to sell paraffin oil. While we’re outside, where the wooden gates are we had rather shabby red wooden double doors leading into a covered garage which ran down the side of the house and backed onto the back yard. The outbuilding you see was dad’s warehouse where boxes of groceries were stored prior to being put on the shelves in the shop – there was only so much space! It has – or at least had – a small attic from which dad produced plates, cups, saucers and dishes which I was given when I left home for college. They had been freebies years before, given in exchange for vouchers collected with some purchase or other, and dad had just left the residue in the attic ‘for when it was needed’. He never threw anything away!
In the early 1970s – can’t remember the exact year but I was at secondary school so probably around 1970-71 – we had “the renovation” done. You can see in this picture, taken from the rear of the house, the obvious ‘new’ bit added:
The renovation took what felt like years but was actually months, and the catchphrase of the time, used whenever anyone (usually mum) complained about the mess and disruption, was ‘It’ll be better when it’s done’. It’s still a family saying. As well as a brand new kitchen, with fitted units and a small window to the shop so mum could see from the kitchen if there were lots of customers (meaning she had to leave her housework and go in to help), the ‘little room’ became a larger room and the stairs were moved to the back of the house leading from the ‘little room’ (still called that). The old stairs and hallway were demolished and became part of the larger shop area, meaning dad could extend his range of products – notably now stocking wines and spirits. I approved, as it meant in order to ‘get to know the product’, we started having a different bottle of wine each week with Sunday lunch – and I was just at the right age to ask for a small glass…
Upstairs a landing was created leading past what now became my bedroom above the front room and the new bathroom opposite – yes, with a proper toilet and bath with hot and cold taps. No shower though – not in the early 70s! Next to the bathroom was mum and dad’s new room, part of the extension facing the back of the house. Further on a corridor took up part of my old room – now my sister’s – leading to the old bathroom/storeroom which became my brother’s room. You can see his bedroom window in the photo above.
The original part of the house is so old it has no deeds, so we are not sure exactly how old it is. During the work on the house a few coins were unearthed dating from the reign of George III, putting it in the late 1700s/early 1800s but it is likely to be much older than that. My room had black beams running through the walls and ceiling, and if you ran a marble across the floor it would describe ever-deceasing circles till is ended up in the lowest part of the floor. Nothing was straight or at the right angle – and I loved that.
When I first came home as a baby I slept in a cot, but once I was old enough for a bed I went straight into a double bed – I presume because mum and dad had bought the double for what was the spare room. I never felt it was too big – how could it be when every night I had teddy one side of me and my Sally doll the other? I think I crowded a few more cuddly toys in at various times, like my mum’s old panda which even then had seen better days, but the two constants were my treasured childhood companions. Teddy is still to this day resident in the reading room upstairs, but the elastic bands holding Sally together have disintegrated. Maybe one day we can do a Repair Shop job on her….
21 October 2020 – the day Etta entered the world; the day my eldest son became a dad for the first time and the day I became a grandparent. A new generation of the Sullivan/Blyth dynasty – not to mention the Edwards dynasty – and an impetus for me to start writing more about my own family memories to preserve them for the next generation.
So I have committed to writing a blog post or three with the intention that if Etta – or anyone else in the family – has an interest at any time n what the family have been up to over the years, they can read this and be one up on me, who should have listened to my parents and grandparents when I had the chance…..and didn’t.
We had traced the Sullivan family back very confidently to Joseph Sullivan who married Mary Ann Egenolf in 1897 in Our Lady and St Frederick’s RC Church, Limehouse. We also knew about the Egenolf family’s coming from Germany, and tradition stated that the Sullivans hailed from Cork.
But the Sullivan trail seemed to end with Joseph. His marriage record and census returns both indicated his birth in or around 1875 in Shadwell, East London, and his father was named on his marriage certificate as Jeremiah Sullivan.
One possible lead was a Joseph Sullivan born in Bermondsey around the same time, but this proved a false trail. There appeared to be no birth in the name of Joseph Sullivan in the East End of London which fitted the details we had.
So, perhaps Joseph was actually born back in Ireland, and was -er – less than accurate in his census information? A possibility, except looking for a Joseph Sullivan’s birth in Cork, even with a father’s name, yielded pages of possibilities. Turns out Joseph Sullivan is a fairly common name in Ireland – who knew???
Just to confuse the issue further, we had the marriage certificate for Joseph’s eldest son Thomas Sullivan – my husband’s grandfather – which named his father not as Joseph but as Jeremiah. Perhaps Thomas’s grandfather attended his wedding and was named rather than his father? Joseph was certainly dead by the time Thomas married, so this was a possibility…..or maybe Joseph was also known as Jeremiah?
That was as far as we had got when we had our DNA profiles done. Among my husband’s DNA matches was a gentleman called Alan McAdam, whose tree went back to an Elizabeth Sullivan, born 1870 in Shadwell.
Her father was Jeremiah Sullivan who had been born in Cork, and census data revealed that she had a younger brother born in Shadwell in 1875 – called Jeremiah!
With the DNA to back us up, we can now fairly safely assume that my husband’s great grandfather was baptised Jeremiah (maybe Jeremiah Joseph) and was later known as Joseph – perhaps to distinguish him from his father. This also explains his birth name being used on his son’s marriage certificate.
We can also extrapolate that Jeremiah’s wife was Rebecca Wolfe, and I am currently following up some possible DNA matches with the Wolfe family descendants.
It is some time since I have written a post for this blog – life and work have got in the way, as so often happens. Having worked as a supply teacher as I came towards the end of my career, I was offered first a term’s then a one year post at Sandown Bay Academy (formerly Sandown High School where all three of my children went, and now reborn as The Bay CE School). This contract came to an end in August 2018 which, since I turned 60 in June, led perfectly into retirement – or so I thought. For various reasons I have returned to help out in the English department this autumn, and so other pursuits have been put on hold.
One thing we did manage to do in 2018 however was get our DNA analysed. When I say ‘we’, I mean myself and my husband Chris. And I have been busy ever since following up the leads offered by DNA matches on Ancestry. It has been fascinating to say the least, and as well as putting me in touch with a few cousins across the world, it has confirmed a few unproven links and family stories.
So I intend (work and other commitments allowing) to restart my commitment to this blog and to record some of the information I have gleaned about the Sullivan and Blyth families, along with a few more memories of my own.
A few days ago, through talking to a gentleman who is making a study on the history of Mendham, where as other posts have detailed, many of my family lived, I was made aware that the painter Sir Alfred Munnings, who was brought up in the village, named some of the locals – including a character he called Old Norman – in his autobiography, and I bought a copy of this book.
What a revelation! For Old Norman is clearly my 3rd great grandfather James Norman, and he appears to have worked for Munnings and to have been a close friend. Furthermore, Old Norman’s son in law Dan Betts – my 2nd great grandfather – appears with him in at least one painting, alongside two of Dan’s children!
Daniel Robert Betts is referred to in Munnings’ autobiography as ‘one of our carters’ and as I knew from census returns this was his occupation, I now know his employer – Munnings’ father ran Mendham Mill and my nan told me the Betts family lived, around 1900 when the pictures were painted, in a cottage by the river near Shotford Bridge, which would have been a short walk across the fields from the Mill.
Dan is described as wearing small silver earrings, and having a moustache which he shaved off to sit for the painting: ‘and became so transfigured that his wife and family didn’t know him. A kind man and father.’
In ‘A Gala Day’ (below) Dan stands, pipe in mouth, wearing a brown jacket and waistcoat with a blue kerchief, in a small group alongside Hoppy Daniels, who we learn was lame, and Polly Scotchmer from the Red Lion, being offered oranges by Old Norman. Next to him are two of Dan’s children, Jimmy, eating an orange, and Tilly, peeling one.
Munnings introduces the family thus: ‘At the time, I was beginning to employ an old son of the soil; and we formed a friendship which lasted until he died.
His name was Norman. He was a grandfather many times over. Dan Betts, of whom I have written….was his son-in-law. Betts’ children are in the Whitsuntide picture, and grandfather Norman is there, in a white hat with a blue linen coat and white apron. His all-round grey whiskers are worn in this picture. He was over eighty – active and strong, hale and hearty; – a nature’s gentleman, a swell of the soil. Indeed, one of the ‘rude forefathers of the hamlet’ if ever there was one. He had a fine countryman’s face, a good nose, and a well-shaped mouth. His top lip and chin were clean shaven in the fashion of Mr Watchhorn…..He often wore one of those hundred year old smocks seen in Leech’s drawings, and either a corduroy and drab bet waistcoat or a truly cut countryman’s jacket of earlier days. A coloured handkerchief, bird’s eye, was worn round the neck. His cord trousers were tied below the knee, and sometimes he wore a closish fitting pair of horseman’s breeches and box leggings.’
Munnings describes seeing his ‘staunchest friend’ working in his three cornered garden, and his dwelling has been identified from the book as what Mendham folk now call ‘the Coal House’ since it is thought its first use was to house the coal supplies for he whole village, from where they were doled out.
Old Norman was an accomplished horseman, gardener and rock maker – as in sweets. Munnings describes watching the old man make the rock in his small house, and taking it on a hand cart (which Munnings decorated with pictures and slogans for him – what would that cart be worth today??) into Harleston to sell. He also acted as butler during sausage suppers at the Red Lion – though he clearly also ate – and drank – his share, before being ‘seen’ (a euphemism for carried?) home at one in the morning.
Helping to deliver a grand piano however, he was mystified as to what the object was and apparently exclaimed upon hearing it played: ‘well…. That dew wholley stam me!’
Munnings also recounts the stories Old Norman told of his early life. Being born in 1816, by the time he knew the painter he would indeed have been around eighty, and he lived through the ‘hungry forties’ – that’s 1840’s, when he went bird scaring and stone picking, in his home village of Metfield, and later walked five miles to work digging drains for nine shillings a week, while his mother did washing and farm work. ‘He never went to school,’ Munnings tells us, ‘but he knew all about the beasts and the soil.’
In 1840 he married Elizabeth Watson in Metfield: she died in 1886 and they had fifteen children including my great great grandmother Matilda. Yet Munnings tells us that the love of his life was a young widow who lived in a cottage in the fields and made leather gloves for hedging: he regretted not marrying her although he had a good wife in the end. Personally I’m glad he made the choice he did, since his wife is my direct matrilineal ancestor.
He knew what it was to go without so that his children could eat, and in 1851 he went to London to work on the ’51 Exhibition’ as he called it. To save his earnings he would walk the hundred miles home to Metfield, getting lifts on wagons where he could and sleeping under haystacks.
He is described as still hale and hearty when in 1903 he was gathering apples, standing on a ladder. Unfortunately the ladder slipped and he fell, later dying from the effects of this.
There are other paintings, such as ‘The Woodcutter’, and sketches featuring James Norman, and thanks to Sir Alfred Munnings I now have a detailed impression of my 3rd great grandfather and more information on my family’s past.
Well, as I have explained in another blog, it was the mystery of my Nan’s birth that really set me off on the trail, but the seeds had been sown long before by a relation, Percy Garrod, who will be the subject of his own blogpost – he deserves it!
When I was very young and impressionable, Percy’s conversations with Dad seemed grown up and therefore interesting; Percy quickly cottoned on to my love of history and explained what his complex hand drawn family trees meant.
Once I had grasped the context, I was fascinated that someone related to me had lived through not only the World Wars (I am old enough for it to have been unremarkable when I was a child to meet someone who had fought in both wars), but had lived at the time of Queen Victoria and even earlier.
As an adult I enjoyed perusing Percy’s documents even more, but small life matters like work and bringing up three children left little time to wander round graveyards or visit registry offices.
Now, with grown children and the wonder of information at my fingertips via the Internet, I have time to devote to my interest, and like most worthwhile hobbies, the more I discover, the more there is to find out – but I have been absorbed by my discoveries, and connected with distant relatives.
There is still much to discover, but alongside my passion for tracing my own forebears I now have the time and skills to help others find out about their own family history, and this is something I really enjoy doing. Those who I’ve worked with so far have been as delighted to find out where they came from as I was myself.
Sullivan Blyth Family 