The Isle of Wight August 1970 ......... a concert and a lesson in what to remember for Chris and Marisa

Now just for once I am not going to let the facts get in the way of the story which is another way of saying that I would rather keep my imperfect memories of the Isle of Wight Festival in the summer of 1970 pristine. 

The concert with the hill behind, 1970

The alternative would be to allow reality to spoil what I have remembered for 54 years.

It was a weekend and the four of us were all pretty bored.

The prospect of another night in the pub didn’t appeal and so there and then around seven in the evening we took off from London with sleeping bags, a change of underwear and headed south.

We arrived at Portsmouth, waited I guess till morning and then after the crossing joined shed loads of others on their way to the music.

I am not sure any of us knew what to expect, and had not even thought about the entrance fee.
As it turned out there was a hill overlooking the concert area and to my eternal shame we sat there and watched the music for free.

The line-up I am told included Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, Jethro Tull, Ten Years After, Chicago, The Doors, Lighthouse, The Who Emerson, Lake & Palmer, The Moody Blues, Joan Baez, Free, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Kris Kristofferson, Donovan, John Sebastian, Terry Reid, Taste, and Shawn Phillips.

And of these I can remember but a few and if I am very honest only the Doors stand out.

In 1970 .......

The reasons for such a lapse of memory are unclear, but I fell a sleep listening to the Doors.

That said it was magical, because as dusk gave way to night hundreds of camp fires had been lit across the hill.  I would like to think that as the fires burned the Doors played “Light my fire” but I have no idea.

We left the following day missed Jimi Hendrix but felt relieved that we had avoided the mud and gunge which was the area around the lavatories.

So I have to say I came away with no revelations of spiritual awareness, and not even much of a memory of the music.

In the years afterwards I discovered four colleagues I worked with and another half dozen acquittances were also there but again to my shame I never shared the fact that we stayed for just one day and one night.

And all of this, because two of my Canadian cousins were impressed at my casual reference to the adventure, which in turn has made me come clean.

Location; the Isle of Wight Concert, 1970

Pictures; at the Festival, 1970, Roland Godefroy,who granted permission to use the image  under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 and me in 1970 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

When the internet proves better than your memory

Now I have been  reflecting on that day in August 1970 when along with thousands of others I listened to a host of bands at the Isle of Wight.

The festival and the hill, 1970

It was one of those trips down memory lane prompted by two of my much younger cousins who posted about the Doors.

And quick as a flash I replied with the story making it very clear that I had no intention of searching the Internet to find out what I had forgotten about the Festival, preferring to let my impression of the event be the story.

But I did fall asleep while the Doors played on and so Marisa thought it only fair that I should be given the opportunity to listen to that “lost performance.”*

According to the site they played eight songs, “1. Introduction – 0:18, 2, Back Door Man – 4:18, 3. Break On Through – 4:53,, 4. When The Music’s Over – 13:31, 5. Ship Of Fools – 7:37, 6. Roadhouse Blues – 6:07, 7. Light My Fire – 14:21, 8. The End – 18:18.”

Almost half a century on I have no idea when I fell asleep, all of which will make it fun to listen to again.

And the site also included the date ....... August 30 which again was lost in the midst of time.

A very young me, 1970

Now I still have no intention of looking up the rest of the details of the event, suffice to say I was there, and that pretty much confirms that rather silly observation about the 60s that “if you can remember it you weren’t there.” 

So just perhaps I qualify after all as a genuine part of that era.

And that leads to a serious observation that while the Internet has many detractors it remains a powerful way to follow through a whole range of research projects.

Like many I use genealogical sites almost every day to track people, through census returns, street directories and the General Registry Office, and for over a decade I have fallen back on those digitalised versions of long out of print books which sit on dusty shelves in universities across the mid west of the USA.

August at the Isle of Wight, 1970

The purists will of course argue that this is no substitute for holding the original, but when the original is on the other side of the world there is little chance that accessing it and holding it will ever be a reality.

So there you have it, and as I write I am listening to that performance, and have no idea whether it was during Ship of Fools or Roadhouse Blues, although it would e appropriate if it had been Light My Fire, given that my memory was of all the camp fires dotted about the hill where were sitting.

That hill and somewhere there might have been me

The fires glowed against the darkening sky and made the moment magical if sadly not enough to keep me awake.

So thank you to my cousins Marisa and Chris in Ontario for both reminding me of that long lost adventure and for allowing me to listen to what I missed.

Location; the Isle of Wight, August 30 1970,


Pictures; me in 1970 from the collection of Andrew Simpson and at the Festival, 1970, Roland Godefroy,who granted permission to use the image  under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 

*The Doors – Live At The Isle Of Wight Festival -1970 – Past Daily Backstage Weekend, 

It was 56 years ago ……. the music was good … the sun shone ….. and we were all happy

Today I came across this poster.

That poster, 1970

And in a trice I was back 56 years ago with friends wondering what to do on an indifferent Friday night in late August.

The usual haunts were discarded, and someone mentioned the Isle of Wight Festival, and without much thinking, other than to collect sleeping bags we were off in Tony Behan’s car, heading out of London in the late evening for the coast.

Some where on that hill was me, 1970

The rest really is a blur.

On arrival we found that a section of the festival was camped on a hill above the site, it was free and to my shame we opted to camp three.

Memories are vague with the passage of half a century, but I remember falling asleep to the sound of the Doors and marvelling at heaps of camp fires dotted across the hillside which illuminated the night sky.

Alas ours was a but a short stay, Tony had to be back in London for work on the Monday and so my one real experience of a festival and one of the legendary ones, was a day and a night.

To which when my lads ask, “What did you do at the Festival?” I can only ruefully reply I was a “Hippy for a day”.

But it was memorable and allowed me to bore friends with stories of the event as we watched the film Woodstock on a day when we should have been in lectures.

And I might say added to my image with our kids of something more than just Dad, the teller of silly stories who forgets things and always managed to ruin their best tee shirts in the washing machine.

Me, 1970

I could go on about the significance of the event, the huge collection of talent that was on display or the awful conditions down by the latrines.

But I won’t other than to say over the years I am amazed at the number of people who I have discovered were also there, two of whom I worked beside for nearly 20 years.

I thought of including their stories in the ones I have written over the years, but those belong to them.

Location; The Isle of Wight

Pictures; today’s reminder of yesterday, the poster, 1970, me in 1970 from the collection of Andrew Simpson and at the Festival, 1970, Roland Godefroy,who granted permission to use the image  under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 

*Isle of Wight Festival, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Isle%20of%20Wight%20Festival

That food factory ……. the River ……. and a conversation

Just when I spent my dinner times gazing out over the River talking about music, the chance of over time and pretty much everything is lost.

I think it will be the summer of 1970 and the location was Glenville’s the food factory down by the Blackwall Tunnel.

It could have been the year before or the year after.

Glenville’s made a variety of things from custard powder, and sachets of flavoured water you left in the freezer, to their specialty which was turning powdered milk into granules.

Of all the jobs this was the most unpleasant given that I was tasked with filling large bags of the milk granules as they shot out of a pipe.

It didn’t help that the regulating tap didn’t work very well so you used your hand to stem the flow just long enough to get a bag underneath, and that it came out very hot from being blown through a set of stainless-steel tubes.

Added to which the sweet-smelling stuff stuck to your overalls and worse still your face which on very hot days was prone to mix with your perspiration to form rivulets of milky sweat.

Nor was that all because while we were paid a basic wage there was a bonus for the amount that was produced, and there was the flaw, because on wet and damp days the granulated milk clogged the tubes and production ceased.

At other times I worked in the dispatch area on the ground floor at the end of a long conveyor belt which disappeared into the roof and on to another few floors.

Loading the boxes of assorted “stuff” was never the problem only that they came down at a ferocious pace, and if not unloaded quickly enough would cause a long jam, which the pressure of more from on high meant that sometimes the boxes burst open showering us in clouds of custard or blancmange powder.

All of which meant that breaks and dinner times took on a special place in the day.

And it will have been on one of those that I met up with a South African.

He was the first South African I had met, and I was fascinated by him.  He was a few years older than me, and he had already traveled thousands of miles across two continents, while I had just got the bus from Eltham.

Over half a century later I can’t remember what we talked about other than that song America by Simon and Garfunkel, which chronicles the journey across the US by two young lovers.

We shared the magic of their journey and each of us in our different ways conjured the trip from Saginaw, in Michigan via Pittsburgh to New Jersey.

And now all those years later I have no idea what he looked like or our other companions, and our dinner time conversations are lost.

But listening to America brings back my time in Glenville’s from the smell of the various products being made, along with that of the River to that carefree and optimistic take on life which at 20 I shared with Kathy and her lover.

I still have that optimistic take but long ago lost Glenville's, and despite frequent visits to the area its exact location remains elusive.

So I await a photo, an address or a memory from someone who like me passed a batch of his early 20s at the food factory by the River.

Location; Glenville’s, Greenwich

Pictures; by the River, 1970s, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

The class of ‘68 part 1 an ending

We were the class of ’68.

Twelve young people from south east London about to leave school for the last time.

It would have been in late June or early July 1968 outside Crown Woods School in Eltham, our exams were finished and we were all preparing for that long hot summer which would end with exam results and the beginning of a new phase in our lives.

Of the twelve sitting on the car I can easily name seven of the young people staring back at me. I’m there fifth from the left, beside me was my girl friend Ann, and on my right was Anne Davey, David Hatch, and Mike Robinson while perched on the car at the edge of the picture was Crispin Rooney and behind us Karen and Richard Woods. I rather think the chap on the end was Keith Bradbury while my dear friend Anne Davey  has informed me that behind us was Jenny Turner and Ian Curle.

We have become that favoured generation, “the baby boomers”. Not for us world wars or bitter trade depressions.

 We were born in to a world our parents were determined would be better and different.

And we grew up against a backdrop of rising prosperity, looked after by a welfare system which confidently planned to care for us from “cradle to grave” and entered adult hood with the promise of full time employment and the opportunity of a university course which for some of us would be totally free.

Now there was a dark side to all this. The Korean War had begun just as most of us were coming up to our first birthday, and the ever present threat of nuclear war hovered in the distance, and as if to round off our child hood by the summer of 1968 there was the awful tragedy of the Vietnam War.

But that summer was a good one, and I have to say truly it seemed the sun shone all the way through.

 Now I was the late comer to the group along with my friend Bernard, we had washed up at Crown Woods Comprehensive in the September of 1966. Me, from a Secondary Modern School and Bernard from a grammar school.

And Crown Woods was  mixed, which pitched both of us into a series of wonderful new experiences and opened up new friendships that have survived the space of over 54 years.

Of course the intervening years have offered up both triumphs and dismal dog days and along the way some of those twelve have disappeared while we have all had to cope with a mix of disappointments as well successes.

Most stayed in the south with only me washing up in the north and never going back. We did the full range of post school careers, with some of us heading off to pursue a degree and others getting down to it directly in offices and factories.

And now most of us are on the cusp of retiring or have done so with all that that will bring. And as I stare back at the class of 68 I ponder on the stories that we made and the people we touched.

Pictures; from the collection of Anne Davey

Tomorrow, part 2, one of the class of '68 and a secondary modern school

One hundred years of one house in Well Hall part 16 ........... the plays wot mum wrote

This is the continuing story of one house in Well Hall Road and of the people who lived there including our family.*

Well Hall Road, 2014

For as long as I can remember our mum wrote plays, short stories and worked on a novel about life in south east London.

She had begun writing in the RAF during the last war when as a typist she had all that a writer could need ........ spare time, a typewriter, and paper.

All of which were the building blocks to give full vent to her vivid imagination.

On those long quiet moments on an RAF station in Lincolnshire she wrote about what she experienced including the loss of life and the fears and triumphs of the air crews and supporting teams.

Mum and friend circa 1942

Later as we were growing up she tried her hand at writing plays discovering there was a market for the three act play which was aimed specifically at women’s groups.

The basic requirement was that most of the parts had to be for women, and while the plot could be anything from a comedy to a murder there had to be opportunities for women of all ages.

I can’t now remember how many she produced but I know it was a fair few, although sadly none of the published plays have survived and as yet I can’t find any reference to them anywhere.

But we do have the manuscript of the book she was writing on along with some short stories.

Looking back we never thought it was unusual and yet here was a woman whose formal education had ended at 14, and who had spoken only German until she was three years old.

She began work in a local silk factory and went onto have a succession of jobs until the war swept her up and deposited her in “bomber county.”

Later after moving to London she began writing again, using at first a battered old typewriter before acquiring a slick “Oliveti” model.

And as someone who uses a computer all the time I marvel at those who wrote using a typewriter which doesn’t allow the instant use of the delete button, the facility to cut and paste, or either a word or spell check.

Mum in 1949

On the other hand it has left me with a collection of paper copies of her literary output.

The manuscripts maybe on flimsy paper, now are over laden with a musty smell and tinged with yellow but they offer up a link to mum, more powerful than an electronic text.

That said the computer and social media have offered up a huge opportunity for people to record and share  their memories, and publish both photographs and paintings which might otherwise never have seen the light of day.

All of which demonstrates the amount of talent there is out there and by extension just how much of that talent in the past never saw the light of day.

By contrast on facebook and other sites people regularly post fine photographs which are as good as any “art work” and write in the most vivid and direct way about growing up and the places that mean so much too them.

And yes I am sure that if mum were still writing today she would have embraced them all.

Location; Well Hall

Pictures; 294, courtesy of Chrissy Rose, 2015, and mum from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*One hundred years of one house on Well Hall Road, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/One%20hundred%20years%20of%20one%20house%20in%20Well%20Hall

What has family history ever done for any of us ………..?

 Now I ask that question not to offend anyone and certainly not to rubbish countless people including friends as well as my own sisters who have given up endless hours trawling the internet, reviewing dusty archives and standing in quiet churchyards confronting the graves of long dead ancestors.

Unknown and undated family member

And as someone who has done my share of all those things I understand the fascination to know who we are by knowing something of those in our family who went before us.

The journey often throws up tragedies, a fair few mysteries and some lost relatives.

During my research, I not only solved one dark secret, but uncovered a few more yet to be solved and discovered a new and exciting area of historical research. *

But all of which should come with a health warning, like the time on a warm sunny Saturday morning when I received one of those familiar family birth, marriage and death certificates which tell you so much about your chosen relative.

In this case that sunny Saturday became a whole less bright and sunny when the death certificate revealed that a brother of my great grandma Eliz had committed suicide with a cutthroat razor. The shock mingled with an overriding sense of voyeurism that I was somehow intruding on a family tragedy stopped me in my tracks.  This was not some light breeze into the corners of a relative’s life  but something very sad and dark.

And it raised the question of why do it, why burrow deep into  the lives of people just because they were once family and because I could courtesy of the internet?

Uncovering their stories, undated

More so because some will have spent a lifetime burying those secrets away from the gaze of loved ones, family and friends.

I always did and still do justify it by trying to place them in the context of where and when they lived and by so doing try to understand how they fitted into the bigger picture.

In the past that had led me to stop digging around the 1830s.  This was not an arbitrary decision but based on the official registration of births deaths and marriages in 1837 and the first fully accessible census return of 1841 which offers up details of when and where people were born and later lived, along with their occupations, and family members.

It was a decision which made sense, because they were easily found by searching genealogical platforms and it fitted with my own interest in the Industrial Revolution.

And so, I had rather answered that question of what had family history ever done for any of us, because it allowed me to better understand the great sweep of history by seeing how my family made all of it work.

"............ I have thrown away the scabbard"

Not for me that fruitless and questionable quest to discover if one of mine had fought at the Battle of Hastings and by degree had been rewarded by stolen English land or punished for not stopping that arrow that may have wounded Harold.

But now I have joined the quest because having known we originated in the east Highlands and were a member of a clan I have begun to wonder if we were mixed up in that disaster that was the battle of Culloden.  

It was indeed a disaster for many of the Highlanders who followed the fop who aspired to win back the throne for the Stuart’s. The defeat led the Young Pretender to scuttle back to Rome leaving those who had followed his vain glorious and misjudged gamble to be harshly punished by the authorities.

The Highland charge at Culloden, 1746

 I had  grown up with the stories from my uncles, two of whom fought with the Black Watch and listened to the Jacobite laments but the realities of the defeat had turned me against all things Culloden.

The Royalist army stand firm, Culloden, 1746

Until having done the ancestral DNA test which confirmed where we came from and rediscovering old family trees that took us back to a John Simpson born in the Highlands in 1780 I just wonder.  

He was born just thirty-five years after the battle, and so will have grown up with family members who might well have talked in hushed tones about the defeat and may even have known that his father participated.

It is a tad romantic especially given the daft nature of the Stuart attempt and the subsequent vengeance which settled on the Highlands and I guess is all most impossible to fulfil, but I wonder if we could get close to uncovering our part in the events of 1745-6.

Well we shall see, and despite the heaps of rabbit warrens I might vanish down I think it would be fun and end up with me deciding family history can do a lot for us.

Uncle George in the uniform of the Black Watch, 1918

Location; Our family

Pictures;  Unknown and undated family member and George Bradford Simpson 1918, from the Simpson collection, uncovering their stories,  undated courtesy of Ron Stubley "Gentlemen he cried, drawing his sword, I have thrown away the scabbard", from Scotland's story: a history of Scotland for boys and girls, , and The Battle of Culloden, David Morier, 1746

*British Home Children, the growing historical study of young people migrated from Britain and other parts of the old British Empire by the Poor Law Unions, and children’s charities. One of these was a great uncle of mine.

Travels with my DNA ……. history ….. geography …. and a lost Simpson

 When you do family history sooner or later you embrace the DNA test.

Where we woz from

I first began seriously researching the family history almost 20 years ago but only dipped into the DNA search to all things genealogical in December.

My late arrival was partly down to the cost of taking the test, but also a slight mistrust of the process and I suppose a big dollop of old-fashioned scepticism.

The scepticism arose out of that simple observation that I had done pretty well with dusty records and family memorabilia which had brought forth a heap of new ancestors, the uncovering of several mysteries, more than a few “lost relatives” and a whole new field of historical research.

That new field was the study of British Home Children who were those young people migrated to Canada and other parts of the old British Empire from Poor Law Unions and children’s charities.

And from there I explored one of Manchester children’s charity which in turn led to writing a book on its history.

But one of my Canadian cousins was keen for me to join her in the DNA journey and it has been interesting.

It confirmed that I am a Celt, with origins starting in the Highlands and Central Scotland and moving by degree into the Northeast of England which came from my father and the Midlands courtesy of mum.

Along the way it minimized the German side of the family and trashed the notion that a bit of us had originated on the sub-continent.

George Bradford Simpson, circa 1918

So pretty much as the census records and family tradition had already established.

Of course, there is also the opportunity to connect with others as Ancestry offers up possible relatives with matching DNA and in following up the connections have found some with elements of their family tree, replicating mine.

And then there was a suggested link to a  lost “first cousin once removed or half first cousin”.  Now technically he wasn’t lost.  I knew of his existence but had never spoken to him or even where he lived.

As you do, I reached out and yes, he is the son of my cousin Mary which has been a pleasant surprise to both my sisters and my kids.

Willian Ferguson Fergus Simpson, circa 1914

At which point I could launch into a detailed description of how that DNA test is reflected in my own research, the stories from my parents and uncles along with a treasured family tree produced by Uncle Fergus and shared with me and my “first cousin once removed”.  But I won’t.  One person’s fascinating family story is another person’s yawn.

Instead, I reflect that the DNA test has confirmed what I already knew about where we came from, making me one of those indigenous peoples who were here in these islands before the Romans and those upstart Anglo Saxons.

To which some in England will mutter “go back to your ancestral home”, which would be both prejudiced and unfair given that the maternal side of me has strong connections with both the west and east Midlands.

In time the journey back to Germany via my German grandmother may offer new sides to the family.

But for now I shall close with the knowledge that Marisa one of my Canadian cousins will be pleased that I have finally taken up her suggestion to “do the test Andrew”   and have shared with my kids and sisters the slightly odd, bizarre and maybe misleading “94 traits” which are most likely or unlikely to be in my make up.  Some are laughable and don’t match us, but alas male hair loss seems to fit the bill, to which one of my son’s replied “thanks dad something to look forward to”.

To which the only answer might be "its in the DNA, next July we'll reveal  it all"*

Location; in the Ancestry DNA lab

Pictures; confirmation by map of our Celtic origins, courtesy of Ancestry, Uncle George in the uniform of the Black Watch circa 1918, and Uncle Fergus in the uniform of the Black Watch, circa 1914

*"Have you heard it's in the stars

Next July we collide with Mars" .... Well, Did You Evah, Cole Porter, 1939

or with a nod to Julius Caesar "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in the stars,

But in ourselves..."   Julius Caesar  Act 1 Scene 2 William Shakespeare 1599

A family mystery from the Great War

Now this metal notebook holder has been in the family for as long as I can remember.

It is small but quite heavy and  I am ashamed to say has suffered from being in the cellar.

Its metal exterior has been attacked by rust and I am looking at how best to restore it.

It carries the German Imperial Cross with the letter W and the date 1914, and given that my grandmother was German I assumed it belonged to one of her family.

But now I am not so sure.
The name inscribed on the front is not one I recognise.

Of course that doesn’t prove it is not one of our family but allows for some doubt.

Alternatively it could have been picked up on the Western Front by either my grandfather or great uncle Jack.

Both served in the British Army and both were in France.

Whatever its origins I do know that it passed to my uncle who served in the RAF and whose name, serial number and the words RAF were inscribed inside.

Uncle Roger enlisted in 1938 aged 16 and saw action in Greece, and Iraq before being captured by the Japanese in 1942 and died in a prisoner of war camp the following year aged just 21.

And that offers up a second mystery because it remained in our possession.  I very much doubt that had it headed out to the Far East with him it would have returned.

I am of course totally prepared to accept the commonsense explanation that he just left it behind for anyone of a number of reasons.

The German side of our family is the one that we have not explored and when we do we might find the answer to its original owner.

Sadly there is no one left to ask and had we not decided to clear out the middle cellar I suspect it would have been many more years before I came across it.

All of which is a lesson in how to look after family objects.  All too often because we have grown up with them we take the item for granted, and that can lead to neglect and eventually to the loss of the object.

So that is it.  The search has begun.  Leaving me only to reflect on the irony of the fact that it passed to my uncle who was in the RAF but like my mother had been born in Cologne.

Picture; metal notebook holder, circa 1914, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Mr. Roger Hall …. last known in British Columbia has been found ….

It is the sort of discovery which would gladden the heart of anyone engaged in family history.

The Griffth farmhouse, New Brunswick, 2008

More so because Roger Hall had disappeared almost a full century ago and despite the efforts of me in the UK and my Canadian cousins, he remained the “lost relative”.

He had been born in 1898 in Birmingham to Montague and Eliza who were our great grandparents.  Theirs was a tempestuous relationship and after moving from Derby via Birmingham and London, they settled in Gravesend only to split in 1902.  He remained in Gravesend, and she returned to Derby with her three sons and it was there in the Derby Workhouse that she gave birth to her last child.

Her return was not an easy one and for most of their childhood the children were in care before being placed in occupations.  Roger and my grandfather proved more troublesome, and both were sentenced to a naval boot camp.  Granddad went but great uncle Roger opted to go to Canada, migrated as a British Home Child in 1914.*

His Attestation Papers, 1915

In a few short months he worked on three Canadian farms, being sent back twice and absconding from the third to join the Canadian Expeditionary Force.  In the process he changed his name, lied about his age and gave his aunt as next of kin rather than his mother.

His unwillingness to conform on the farms was replicated in the army and he court martialled four times, once for hitting an officer and three times for absence without leave.

But he survived, returned to Canada, and persuaded his sister to follow him out on an Empire Assisted Scheme in 1925, and then sometime after that we lost him.

Until our Marisa found him on the census return for the Municipality of Coquitlam in British Columbia.

One of his letters, 1916

He was lodging with a family, gave his occupation as a labourer on a farm and was single.

There is much more to find out which I know our Marisa will uncover. But its is the first real reference we have after 1925 and confirms his sister’s belief that he had headed out to the west of Canada, a place still in the making and as rough and ready with promise of new things as the western states of its neighbour.

I suspect it was somewhere that would allow a young restless man an opportunity to reinvent himself.

As it was, he had reverted to his given names of Roger and Hall, which had been dropped in favour of James Rogers when he ran away and enlisted.  That reversion seems to have muddied the search but now we have him, living in a community dominated by single men from China and Japan who were labourers.

His landlord was a James William Williams who was also from the UK and was a barber aged 42 and perhaps a search may reveal something more of his Canadian life.  I know he was married to Mary and that their daughter, Elizabeth Mary was born in BC in 1917.

There are several James William Williams who fit the date of birth in various bits of Britain which in turn may offer up more.

But essentially that is it.

To which some will mutter so what?  And follow it up with, “apart from the family what interest can there be in a man who disappeared a century ago?”

Well, whenever research brings anyone out of the shadows that is a good result and even more so when he is a member of that group of children who were migrated to Canada and later other parts of the former British Empire. 

Places he knew, St John River, NB, 2008

They were sent from 1870 and a century later some British organizations were still engaged in settling young people in Australia.

Until recently they were a virtually forgotten group and while they are still a neglected part of our history at least in Canada the study of British Home Children has become a serious area of historic study.*

That study has occasioned a serious debate about the motives of those engaged in the migration, the effects on the young people both at the time and subsequently, and the contribution they made to the countries they settled in.

And our great uncle was one of them.

Special thanks to our cousin Marisa Cooper who continued the search for Roger Hall when I had all but given up.

Location; Canada,

Pictures; One of the farms he stayed at in New Brunswick, 2008, his Attestation papers, 1915, letter from Roger James Hall/James Rogers, February 2, 1916, from the collection of Andrew Simpson and picture of the Griffith's farmhouse, N.B., Angela Faubert, 2008

*British Home Children, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/British%20Home%20Children

A little bit of Tudor History in Well Hall on a summer's day in 1964

Well Hall Pleasaunce, August 1964

This is one of those photographs we all have in the collection.

It was taken in the summer of 1964 and there amongst the smiling children and their parents is one of my sisters.

And it is one of those odd things that I not only remember the event, but also my mother cutting the photograph out of the local paper and sending a copy to our grandmother.

The event was “Junior Showtime” one of a series of summer time events put on by Greenwich Council at Well Hall Pleasaunce.

The moat and Tudor Barn, 2013 © Scott McDonald 

I doubt that our Jill even remembers the show and I am pretty sure it will be almost impossible to track down the performers on that Saturday in the August of 1964 but it is a reminder of the extent to which local councils put on all sorts of cultural activities.

I still remember a magic summer of fun put on during that long six weeks holidays at my Junior school in south east London in the July of 1961.

And round about the same time the Manchester Corporation Parks Committee issued a “Guide to Leisure and Pleasure in the Open Air” with everything from the big events like the Manchester Show down to “Jerko the Clown, Versatile Children’s’ entertainer presenting Magic and Mirth in various parks.” 

Of course it was not all positive.  Many of the bandstands which for over fifty years had been places to listen to live music were slowly being left to rust and the attention of vandals while the paddling pools were closed and filled in.

The moat and Tudor Barn, 2013 © Scott McDonald

All of which takes me back to the Well Hall Pleasaunce on that warm summers day in 1964 and the Tudor barn which had been built by John and Margaret Roper in 1525.

She was the daughter of Thomas More, Lord Chancellor to Henry V111.

They had married in 1521 in Eltham and lived on a moated island to the south of the barn.

The barn was used for storage but may also have been occupied by servants because at the western end there there are two huge chimney and is all that is left of the buildings they would have known..

Maragret Roper 1539

Margaret and Thomas were the very embodiment of the Renaissance.

She was an accomplished writer and translator while he wrote a much praised biography of his father in law.

The Roper’s home was demolished in the 1730s and a new house called Well Hall House was built between the moat and Well Hall Road.

Its most famous occupant was the children’s author Edith Nesbit, who wrote The Railway Children, and lived here from 1899 until 1922.

After its demolition in the early 1930s Woolwich Council decided to use the renovated Barn as the centrepiece of a new park, the Well Hall Pleasaunce.

Well Hall House, date unknown

"The park was opened in 1933 and the Tudor Barn as a restaurant in 1936.

Although it was intended that a library should be situated there, this never happened and for many years after the War, the Barn was run by the council as a restaurant and upstairs an art gallery and function room for weddings and events.""**

And that brings me back to that summers day in 1964 and the concert area.

It was a popular venue where I attended a mix of blues and folk nights while Brian Norbury remembers “seeing the Strawbs there when Rick Wakeman was making one of his first appearances, about 1970.”

So a nice mix of personal memories a bit of Civic enterprise and a link with Tudor history.  Not bad for a small piece of south east London

Pictures, Well Hall Pleasuance, August 15 1964 from the collection of Andrew Simpson, the moat and Tudor Barn, 2013 ©Scott McDonaldcourtesy of Bernard Skinner, Estate Agents, http://www.bernardskinner.co.uk/ Maragret Roper, from a 1593 copy of a now lost painting by Hans Holbein,, Well Hall House, courtesy of the Edith Nesbit Society, http://www.edithnesbit.co.uk/wellhall.php#picture

* Leisure and Pleasure in the Open Air  Parks Committee, Manchester Corporation, 1963
** http://www.tudorbarneltham.com/

The film ….. a train journey ….. and a birthday ... or ….. Spartacus … London Bridge and being 10

Spartacus remains a film I return to if only for that scene at the end where a dozen or so men stand up and proclaim, “I am Spartacus”.

Roman soldier, circa 1975

It is one of those bits which has become much parodied over the years but always takes me back to the film.

In my case the first time will have been 1960 at the Metropole Cinema on Victoria Street which was followed by a journey in the cab of a train from London Bridge home to Peckham.

And it is one of those things that I have no memory of the film, the cinema or even the journey up to town.

The premiere had been on December 7th and regular showings followed which means it was less a birthday present and more a treat after the event as I was 10 in the October.

I don’t think mum told me what was happening and even now I can’t be sure it was London Bridge Railway Station.  Waterloo would have been closer but we may have got the Underground or perhaps even the bus.

But what has stayed with me was the trip home.

Mother with that impetuous side to her character, asked the train driver if I could sit in the cab for the trip back to Queens Road Railway Station.

It must have broken every rule in the book, and I can’t even be sure she stayed with me, which today would be unheard of.

Lightening the dark, 1981

Now the journey from London Bridge to Queens Road is a short one … just about eight minutes with one intervening stop. All of which is a blur other than the speed, the lights and the oncoming trains.

A full 66 years later that is what I remember about the evening.

The baker Terentius Neo with his wife circa 79 AD

I was quite oblivious to the fact that the story behind the film was equally as challenging as the subject matter of a slave army taking on the Roman Republic.

Kirk Douglas who played Spartacus and produced the film hired Dalton Trumbo, who had been blacklisted as one of the "Hollywood 10".  And because of his non status, Mr. Trumbo was paid using his pseudonym "Sam Jackson". 

Douglas insisted that Trumbo be given screen credit for his work, which helped to break the blacklist.Trumbo had been jailed for contempt of Congress in 1950, after which he had survived by writing screenplays under assumed names. Douglas publicly announced that Trumbo was the screenwriter of Spartacus.[25] Further, President John F. Kennedy publicly ignored a demonstration organized by the American Legion and went to see the film.*

As for the Metropole Cinema on Victoria Street, my cinema TREASURES tells me “The Metropole Kinema was the first large cinema in the Victoria district of central London and opened on 27th December 1929 with Stanley Holloway in 'The Co-Optimists' and Jameson Thomas in 'Hate Ship', plus Jack Hylton’s band on stage”.**

Romans against Spartacus, 1975

And like many of our picture houses its ending was slow but inevitable. It became a “Laser Theatre” in 1977, and then a concert hall before finishing as a restaurant, having undergone the indignity of losing its auditorium to the demolishers and finally being knocked down in 2013.

So best that most of those memories are lost and instead I can be happy with that short train journey through the night on a birthday treat.

Leaving me just to reflect that like so many recollections the images that instantly spring to mind can not be reproduced.  

Stuff from Spartacus remains copyright, and there is no time to ask cinema TREASURES for permission to use their picture of the Metropole.

Added to which one agent is advertising Spartacis posters at a cool £200 a piece which prompt that thought .... what price my nostagia? To which there is the cost of that journey, which in 1960 would have cost one shilling, or 5p and now would set me back £4.68.

Best stay with the memory.

Location; London 1960

Pictures; Airfix models of a Roman solddier, circa 1975,the baker Terentius Neo with his wife. Italian National Archaeological Museum of Naples (cat. no. 9058 ) and Lightening the dark, 1981

*Spartacus (film), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spartacus_(film)

** Metropole Cinema, 160 Victoria Street, London, SW1E 5LB, cinema TREASURES https://cinematreasures.org/theaters/3770

When you are ten ………. and the days are full of sun and adventures

When you are ten, away from your friends and spending the long summer holiday with your grandparent’s, time can hang heavy, especially as they had yet to own a TV.

I remember endless hours spent playing beside the ornamental ponds imagining them to be a series of secret lakes which hid mysterious monsters.

Or looking down into the apparently bottomless well in the greenhouse with the pungent odour of growing tomatoes and wondering who would rescue me if I fell in.

But these were as nothing compared to what greeted me in the hay loft above the barn at the bottom of the garden.

There was still a powerful lingering smell of hay which combined with the heat from the slates and the fustiness of the crumbling mortar made this a place with a difference.

If I were particularly daring I would open the loft hatch allowing fresh grass scented air to invade the room and look out across the fields. This was daring given the drop to the lane below seemed enormous.

On other days I just walked the country lanes, empty of everything but the occasional bird. There can be no greater sense of freedom than to be alone with just the hum from the telegraph wires and the blistering heat.

I don’t ever remember getting lost, but then I don’t suppose I ever went too far and never underestimate the homing powers of a ten-year-old who had not eaten since breakfast. Not that I remember many of the meals.

Our bread was baked at home on a huge black range. It was strong brown bread which granddad buttered before he cut a slice. The vegetables were also home grown and more than anything I remember her peas which Nana cooked using cloves which was fine until you ate one by mistake.

They had bought 170 and turned into bedsits with their living accommodation at the back of the house. I however got to stay in the front room and can still remember what seemed the long and scary walk from their kitchen.

The candle I took with me cast small pools of dim light and I was never quite sure what lurked in the corners of the passageway. True there was some safety when I got to the light switch by the front room but then there was still a night of darkness to endure punctuated only by the headlamps of passing cars.

Despite my nighttime fears this was a good place to grow up, and a world away from how my grandparents had lived close to the centre of Derby. In their two up two down terraced house in Hope Street people lived on top of each other, knew each other’s secrets and were even aware when they visited the outside lavatories in the back yard.

Chellaston and in particular 170 Derby Road were different. Our neighbour kept pigs at the bottom of his garden, there were fields behind us, and everywhere there was grass, trees, and open land.

 But I suppose these very things that had brought my grandparents to the village also brought others. They were in fact partly responsible having sold two of the three fields behind the house to a local builder who quickly filled them with houses.

The summer of 1961 was my last holiday there. I have to say the intervening years have wiped my childhood memories. The trolley bus terminus at Shelton Lock is fenced off and the disused weed infested canal has gone, and 170 Derby Road is no more.

We were lucky to visit just before it was demolished. In its empty, abandoned, and neglected state it seemed much smaller than I remembered. Nor did the garden seem to stretch forever while the stables had shrunk.

But I guess that is why we treasure those long ago memories belonging as they do to a time when the sun always shone, our grandparents were always cheerful and the worst that could befall a ten year old was a Sunday when it rained.

Location; Chellaston, 1959

Picture; open spaces, and secret hideaways, 1960-2018, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

“To prove them wrong” ……….

 I have never hidden that I had and still do have difficulties with literacy.

It made many aspects of learning in school a daily torture which presented a vast chasm between me and many of my contemporaries and plunged me into acres of self-doubt and feelings of unworthiness.

All of which was compounded by Miss Reeves in Junior Four who on the cusp of the eleven plus examination told Mother that I “was not academically inclined”.

A Solomon like judgement which burned in mum, and doomed dad and I to endless nights practicing eleven plus past papers in the kitchen by the stove through the winter months.

All to no avail, as I failed that “test of intelligence and future promise” confirming the assessment of Miss Reeves and consigning me to a Secondary Modern School.

A fact that years later further underlined my lack of academic credentials when I became a teacher in a Manchester High School and realized that I was the only Secondary Modern kid amongst an entire staff who had gone to grammar schools.*

Made worse by that simple realization that I could not trust myself to write on the blackboard, and so painfully all the words I might need to fall back on were written in advance.

At 75 the shame, and indignation still walk with me, but less so, but were reignited today while listening to Nigel McCrery on Saturday Live from BBC Radio Four.**

He is responsible for the long running crime series, Silent Witness and the delightful New Tricks along with a range of other works.

He is dyslexic suffered greatly at school, and confessed at 71 that he still hates a teacher who regularly publicly humiliated him. 

And it so chimed with me.

He said people thought he is well read, when in fact he is "very well listened" having spent ages with Talking Books, and said of his reason for writing that it was to "write for revenge" and so "prove them wrong".  Adding that "there are always "ways around things" to cover the difficulties with literacy.

So, as a policeman he would take his reports home and work on them to correct grammatical mistakes, and because he couldn’t read the menus in transport cafés he visited as a lorry driver he would work out what was on the board from the smells.

I still have to rely on a spell check and when it doesn’t recognise my attempts at spelling a word, I fall back on a different word which often means I am forced to rewrite the sentence.

Many of us will have those moments which can be as vivid now as when we were young.

For me, one of them was when I was sent out of class by the teacher to check the time on the hall clock only to be confronted by a bout of wild terror as the numerals and the hands meant nothing, and I clung on desperately to the hope someone would pass through and help me.

Of course, in the great sweep of physical and learning difficulties encountered by many, my dyslexia might not seem to count for a "hill of beans", but it was real then and still is now.

But like many I coped, came through it and while it still sits on my shoulder, I do now wear it with a bit of pride.

Not that I rank myself beside Mr. McCrery whose skill as a writer and whose literary output far outweighs me, but it is a confirmation that perhaps Miss Reeves was wrong and  I was not thick.

Location; 75 years of my time

Pictures; Young Andrew, circa 1958, and 1961

*To be strictly accurate, there were amongst the staff, three who had been "emergency trained" after the war having gone straight from the services into teaching and one plumber who switched from  the Direct Works Department of the City Council to the Education Department.

**Saturday Live Radio Four, BBC, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0024lhd