My Metcalfe Ancestors

The first of a few articles looking at my Mum's side of the family. I am lucky enough to have personal memories of all four grandparents and three great-grandparents. Grandma and Grandad Burke were always called that when I was young, but for my first few years we lived with my Metcalfe grandparents and they were simply Nanna and Grandad, the latter often retaining (until old age) an earlier baby pronounciation of Gan-gan.

This is Charlie Metcalfe, aged around 14 somewhere around the year 1870. He was born in Cambridgeshire in a small Fens village near Ely called Haddenham on 16 August 1856 and he was my great-gt-grandfather. The family owned and lived in a 17th century coaching inn called Porch House. More of this later.

Charlie married twice, first to Great-Gt Grandma Lucy. Lucy Metcalfe was born 21 June 1850, was married 25 August 1878 and died long before Charlie on 7 January 1909. The photograph shows them with their son Frank. Frank was born 9 November 1882 and the photo must have been taken around 1884-85.

Frank was followed by a sister, named Lucy Mary (the Lucy after her mother, which makes me wonder whether either Charlie's or his wife's mother was Mary) on 27 October 1884 and lived to a ripe old age dying in 1989. The family were Baptists and baptism, involving full immersion, not just wetting the head, was deferred until the child was old enough to decide for themselves that they wanted to be baptised. Lucy was baptised on 14 February 1903.

This photograph dates from around 1900. Charlie is now aged 44. A note in the family bible mentions that his grandfather died 8 July 1876. The photographer is from a studio in Rochdale, then in Lancashire, now Greater Manchester. He took over the business of T Palmer who was a block and chain manufacturer at Franklin Street Works, Rochdale, though the main trade was leatherworking, making bridles and harnesses for horses.

Frank Metcalfe with his wife Jane. My great-grandparents, I remember him well as a kindly old man who had a twinkle in his eye and a ready throaty chuckle but who was prone to falling asleep almost as soon as he sat down. He worked well into his seventies at a chemist (J & J Thomas) at the lower end of Yorkshire Street, Rochdale.

My favourite photograph from the Metcalfe collection. It shows four generations from my grandad (also Frank), just a toddler in 1910 then clockwise, my great-grandfather Frank, great-gt-grandfather Charlie and my great-gt-gt-grandfather whose name I unfortunately haven't the foggiest.

The year before that photograph of the four generations Charlie's first wife Lucy sadly died in the first week of 1909. The small visiting card sized memoriam cards became very popular during the reign of Queen Victoria who was, let's face it, just a little into long-haul mourning.

Possibly taken on the same day as the four generations photo is the family home. Porch House, built in 1657, a coaching house on Hill Row in Haddenham. The entire family, perhaps family and some workers as there was an extensive orchard behind the house, are gathered. My four grandfathers of varying greatness, Charlie and great-gt-aunty Lucy both dressed all in black, my infant grandad held on my great-grandma's lap. The white picket fence still existed when I was visiting although by then it was no longer white and the strakes were all thin, worn, black and twisted. Somewhere there's an old cine film of great-grandad Frank wincing at the prick of a wooden spell as he grasps the fence... The main house by then had left family ownership, but Great-Gt-Aunty Lucy still lived in the attached tiny cottage labelled "Porch House" over the window. Until the mid-1960s it was still lit by gas mantles and had no electricity supply.

My great-gt-gt-grandfather with my grandad helping to feed the chickens from the coops behind the house. A generation later my Mum would be doing the same under the supervision of Charlie, who she called and still remembers as Pappa Metcalfe. He was a stickler and disciplinarian apparently. A family legend exists about Great-Grandma Jane chasing him around the kitchen table with a knife to stop him interfering in how she brought up Frank junior, my Grandad!

In 1996 whilst on a family holiday in Norfolk we drove back to Haddenham for a last look at the house. Sometime in the 1970s Great-Gt-Aunty Lucy was offered what no doubt seemed a huge amount to her for the house and in her late 80s, she sold without consulting the family. It dismayed the family quite a bit. Here the old porch where travellers had sheltered now has an external door and the doorway to the side cottage has disappeared altogether, the house probably having been knocked through into one. The fence has at last succumbed thus saving old men the pain of splinters. We will meet the family again.

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