A 1930s Courtship

We are heading back almost 100 years for this blog entry, to a collection of photographs from the late 1920s to the 1930s. They come from the collection of my maternal grandparents, Frank and Eva Metcalfe whose romance led to marriage.

12 July 1932 was the date of their matrimonial joining. The bridesmaids are Frank's sisters, Nora and Muriel. Groomsman, Cecil Mercer, Eva's step-brother is on the left and Best Man was Ivan Taylor. Eva's step-father is on the right.

Most of these photographs have been scanned from the tiny enprints held in a photograh album of the time. Some of them showed signs of much wear and tear. I've done my best!

They show a loving relationship between Frank and Eva that lasted until 1971 when Eva passed away at the age of 65 having developed multiple sclerosis which over a very short time robbed her of mobility, speech and the ability to swallow.

This and the previous photograph were taken at one of their favourite places, the Promenade lake at St Annes, near Blackpool.

Frank's parents, Frank senior who I remember as my only great-grandfather still living during my lifetime and his wife, Anne-Marie, who I never knew.

Eva's family, my Great-Grandmother Eleanor Mercer and her second husband Mr Mercer, whose forename I don't know. My Gt-Grandfather was called Holcroft - again I don't know his forename.

Oy! Will you two stop flirting and pay attention to the camera?!?

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Great-Gt-Aunty Lucy's Autograph Book Sketches

Sorry readers - a few months flew past there. My last entry was back in March. Since then I've been enjoying the delights of high-doseage radiotherapy on the cancer, courtesy of the wonderful people at The Christie Hospital, Manchester. I can't praise them enough. Treatment started late in March and ended mid-April after eight treatments. Had it been a normal dose it would have been 30 treatments. The side effects are starting to wear off now and hopefully I should hear whether it has been successful or not somewhere near the end of July.

Anyway, enough about the woes and the excuses for not writing regularly! As generations die away and descendents either accumulate far more "stuff" or just get rid without looking through it, I took the former option and have finally got round to sorting and looking at "stuff" some dating back three or four generations. Autograph books and photo albums can be full of nostalgic photographs and memories, whilst older ones tend to be filled with biblical quotes and the odd sketch or watercolour.

For this article, all of the sketches came from an 23 x 18cm size autograph album that belonged to my Great-Gt Aunty Lucy Metcalfe. It was a Christmas present from her brother, my Great Gandfather, Frank Metcalfe in 1904.

I do not recognise the names of many of the contributors to the pages of my gt-gt-aunt's book - even where some have the family surname (My mother's side were the Metcalfe side). Nellie Metcalfe, for instance, added a few inspirational and biblical lines of poetry in 1907 but always signing herself "Nellie Metcalfe" without any expressions of family love or relationship. No "Cousin Nellie" for instance.

This pencil and wax crayon drawing was the work of Emily Lord who added it to the album on the 5th January 1906.

On the facing page is a pencil drawing of fishing boats, coming into - or leaving - an unknown harbour. It is signed A Pollard and was added to the album on 28 December 1905. Such albums were not filled in order, but by contributors opening a page at random. The latter quarter of the album is mostly empty save for an entry on the very last page, written c1950 in a large and dramatic child's hand. My Uncle David, who wrote: "By hook or by crook, I'll be last in this book!"

Here is gt-gt-aunty Lucy. Born on 27 October 1884, she lived an incredible 104 years, passing away in 1989. She never married and lived the vast majority of her life in Haddenham, a small village in Cambridgeshire, at the ancestral family home, Porch House, which was an old coaching house, built in 1657. Her father Charlie Metcalfe had had the distinction of being the oldest person in Haddenham when he died aged 93 in 1949. He had been a member of the Foresters Society for 74 years.

Here members of the family stand outside Porch House c1910. In the porch is my 3x great-grandad, Isiah Metcalfe. In front of him is my great grandad, Frank, whose wife, Mary(?) holds my grandad, also Frank. Charlie is to the right of the postbox and Aunty Lucy is dressed all in black under the window. The picket fence survived into the 1950s, somewhat warped and shrivelled and I have a bit of cine film of an aged Frank snr, jumping as he gets a splinter in his hand from it!

Back to the album! A watercolour of an eyed hawk moth, (Smerinthus Ocellatus) rendered by Edward Pearce on 26 June 1918.

A beautifully delicate pen and ink drawing of blackberries, added by L.E. Farthing of Haddenham in December 1913. The quote is a slightly misquoted version of a verse by Elizabeth Barrett Browning:

"Earth crammed with Heaven
And every common bush aflame with God
But only those who see take off their shoes
The rest sit round it and eat blackberries."

A pencil drawn sketch of a rural street by F. Lord aged 13. It is undated.

A pen and ink drawing of Porch House drawn by J Wilkinson on June 18, 1911. He adds the line: "May time deal kindly with those who dwell there."

Great-Gt Aunty Lucy towards the end of her long life, I think taken on a trip to Scotland with my Grandad.

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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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Hould ye Weesht!

Och aye! It's a wee tartan laddie as seen at a Boxing Day party last night!

Yes, those family wacky present finders have struck again! The mad Metcalfes of Mirthdom, left these Angus McCoatup accoutrements in a bag near my coat and then scarpered quick before I found them!

Rather natty (or is that "carroty"?) locks cascading from me ol' tam o' shanta I reckon! Ah, weesht tha noo! Mebbe we can do a coople o' Proclaimers ditties wi' yon band???

Trafford Centre Shopping

Yesterday we had a trip over to Manchester to meet up with the Metcalfes - that's Uncle D, Auntie B and Cuzzy Kate!

I was really impressed with this place when it first opened; the architecture is fun and the place is visually very good.

Around the eating section there are themed "streets" and the main seating area is like a cruise ship's deck with a huge video screen set in the front of the "bridge" superstructure.

It's the shops that let it down. Fine if you're a female - although how all those clothes shops manage to make a profit is beyond me. When the place first opened there was a section at one end with lots of small shops and stalls. They included one selling musical instruments and a "Last Picture Show" selling movie and comic-related stuff. Now that's been replaced by a huge John Lewis store.

The only real male-oriented shop is an excellent model shop right up at one end near Debenebenebenhams. There is also a Virgin rip-off store, an HMV, a Waterstones, W H Smith, Jessops and that's the male interest bit done with.

There's only so many DVDs and CDs you can look at (I did come away with 6 DVDs...)

Anyway, excellent steak and ale pie in the "Trafford Tavern" - big chunky and appealing! Or was that the waitress...? No! No! No!

Nostalgia Day

It does you good every now and then to reflect back on where you came from and what led you to where you are now.

Not that I'm a great one for digging into the family past but my maternal grandfather had a go at tracing his family tree once in an unsuccessful bid to find a claim to a fortune that is held forever waiting for a member of the Metcalfe family to prove their right when the relevant records disappeared in a church fire long before records were collected and held centrally. So all you Metcalfes, don't get too excited now ok???

He did find out that one of our ancestors fought at Agincourt. In the battle of 1415 I mean, not some football match scrum outside the gates of the local ground...

Frank Metcalfe, Grandad, passed on several years ago but one of the things that came to light was this photograph of him as a two year old in 1910, with his father who was also Frank, his grandfather Charlie and the old head of the family, whose name I don't know but he must be my great-great-great-grandfather! If you hanker after the old days, have a click of the link for "Nostalgia" below. That should bring back a few memories of the 1950-70s!