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Robert Henry Laws
1828-1891
My paternal great-grandfather
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'A Child of the Twenties'
A suburban childhood of the Twenties
As seen from the Nineteen Nineties
By
John Robert Laws (1921-2008)
Wanderings and more
PART 27
There was time to wander while parents were busy, mother shopping and father at work, and every corner of that little town stays clear in my mind. The crumbling cliffs were ideal for climbing and sliding down the dusty gullies if a piece of wood or tin could be found to sit on. Not so good for my white shorts which would acquire an ochre-coloured seat. Resulting in the admonition “You be careful now”. These cliffs were gradually being eroded by the North Sea and from time to time a part of a garden or even a house would go sliding down.
The sea defences were made stronger by extension of the hefty concrete promenade towards the south which is still holding up well. A walk along the beach beyond its end soon brought one to the more exclusive resort of Frinton, with its wide green lawns along the cliff tops which was usually visited once or twice during a holiday.
Walton on the Naze Essex
The northern part of Walton was lower without cliffs. The end of the High Street came along to the Front and the road and seawall went on past a sometimes marshy patch of land beyond which the road went into a scattered little residential area and then dying out. Here the cliffs had risen again at the golf course where an old brick tower stands at the highest point. This provided a pleasant evening stroll which my father and I often took as far as the Naze. Felixstowe could be seen across the water as the land on our side ran back to the muddy tidal backwaters behind the coast.
These backwaters ran right up behind the town and about twenty-five acres of them were cut off from the tides with a dyke and made into a large lake with boats. This was a main attraction of the town to my father and virtually every morning that was fit, he and I would have a sailing dinghy out and sail the seven seas.
His father had been a Sea Captain and I am told that only his mother’s insistence had prevented my father from going to sea as a young man. As I grew older I was allowed a dinghy to myself and although I was never to become an addict I can understand how others do so. Being regulars and known to the boatman. We were allowed to sail on days when the wind was too strong to risk his dinghies in the hands of strangers and these were the days when it became quite fun.
Walton Mere
The attraction of boats also ruled one of our regular outings during the holiday. We always went at least once to Brightlingsea, a slightly scruffy town famous only for boatyards and shrimp teas. It has always been an ocean racing centre but was not particularly prosperous in those days, there were wonderful boats on offer, at giveaway prices. We didn’t buy one.
We just walked in the sun and looked, ate our shrimp tea and perhaps an ice cream, then trundled back to Walton. At Dedham however, another regular outing we could get a rowing boat on the Stour and glide through Constable’s countryside between the pollarded willows in the soft June sunshine.
This was I fear, my father’s holiday, again just he and I went boating but then we were off in the car to Flatford for a strawberry tea amongst the wasps beside the bridge. It is all still there but somehow the rural peace is not the same since everyone spouted wheels.
All the countryside was more rural as a much smaller number of townsfolk invaded it every weekend. All the corn was cut with a reaper-binder of course and stood up in stooks in the field until it was cut, East Anglia was a mass of red poppies, more beloved by the holidaymaker than the farmer. Farming had been depressed for some years and old cottages were being condemned as unfit for human habitation. It is sad to think it is only the war which brought back a sort of prosperity or at least a brief understanding of the need to grow our own food which now seems to be fading away again.
The thought of Corn takes me back to another little holiday I spent in the countryside. In truth, mum and dad wanted a holiday on their own and Lottie took Mary and me for a week to her parents’ cottage in Bocking Essex, which really was rural. The water came from a long-handled pump outside the back door and the loo was by the wash-house in the garden.
It was late summer but any need for light was met by oil lamps and candles. Little did I know that these were the normal facilities for most of rural England and that for many places they would stay unchanged for another thirty years.
It was harvest time and the horse-drawn reaper-binder went round and round the field throwing out sheaves and driving the ever-present rabbits into the centre until they made a run for it, and someone got rabbit pie for dinner.
Wages were meagre, but food was important, there was rhubarb under the apple tree and more cabbages than roses in the garden. There were plums in the garden too and home-made wine in the kitchen cupboard set into the wall alongside the black kitchen range.
There were no pavements through the village. There was after all virtually no traffic A few yards along the road on the other side from the cottage a path led down to the lazy river with its carpet of water lilies raising their bright yellow flowers above the dark green leaves, A few cows grazed the meadow beside the river avoiding the buttercups and leaving their squelchy traps for the unwary walker behind them. I didn’t wonder then, what it was like there in the winter time.
Another little holiday that was different turned up when my Uncle Albert and Aunt Louise were home on leave and were going to spend a little while in a cottage in Cornwall. Their son Frank was a little younger than me, and I was invited to come along so that we could spend some time together.
It was the only long train journey I had taken as a small boy, about ten years old I think, although the steam trains were always rushing past the bottom of our garden at home, I was unimpressed by the train journey. Once it had chugged out of Paddington the countryside rushed by, very different from travelling in the car. Leaving our smoke and smuts behind us we dashed on through green fields until we came to the red soil of Devon, with its sheep smeared with the colour, then into the less lush Cornwall.
The cottage was at Crantock on the north coast but not the bleak and barren part. It was tiny and ancient, just a few stone and thatch cottages and a church, but the memory of it is of the peace of the village and the emptiness of the beach where we were able to swipe a golf ball along without fear of hitting someone.
My uncle was reputed to be keen on photography and certainly had an enormous quarter plate camera which no doubt was capable of taking excellent photographs he must have needed a pantechnicon to carry it around.
He was the up-market brother, whereas my dad was the up-to-date brother and had a little folding roll film camera just for holiday snaps.
To be continued tomorrow
If you are interested in anyone listed here, email us with the name, dates and reference number, and we will happily do a lookup.
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(Please note all spelling is British English)
Please also note we have several hundred LAWS & LAWES who were alive 29 September 1939, so mail us with your inquiries
EXTRACTS FROM OUR DATABASE FOR TODAY 27th December
Family Events
1748 - Baptism: Elizabeth LAWS-21619, Ponteland Northumberland England
1843 - Birth: Alexander Robert John LAWS-4215, (Greengrocer - Master Lighterman) Wapping Middlesex England
1876 - Birth: Robert J LAWS-47802, (Gas Works Attendant Vacuum Control Room)
1887 - Birth: Thomas LAWS-44975, (House Decorator)
1893 - Birth: Frederick G LAWS-13297, (Wheelwright) Chatteris Cambridgeshire England
1894 - Birth: Winifred M LAWS-43819, (Private means)
1896 - Birth: Dorothy Story LAWS-46027, Peterborough Cambridgeshire England
1897 - Birth: Albert Victor LAWS-42558, (District operator for Petroleum Board) Seaton Delaval Northumberland England
1902 - Birth: Ernest LAWS-43696, (Stoker at Electrical Power Station)
1907 - Birth: Ernest Jack LAWS-35025, (Milk Rounds Foreman) Somersham Suffolk England
1911 - Birth: Ina Lillian LAWES-46730,
1913 - Birth: Emily E LAWES-48985, (Domestic Servant)
1913 - Birth: David H LAWS-44615, (Transport Driver)
1913 - Birth: David Noel LAWS-36891, Kings Lynn Norfolk England
1914 - Birth: Florence V LAWS-48022,
1915 - Birth: Leonard George LAWS-36798, (Farmer/Cowman) Northallerton North Yorkshire England
1916 - Birth: Frederick J LAWES-48215, (Ag Lab)
1916 - Birth: John Frederick LAWES-27123, Winchester Hampshire England
MARRIAGES
1722 - Marriage: William LAWS-13826 and Mary LEARNER-13827, Mildenhall Suffolk England
1762 - Marriage: George LAWS-25747 and Elizabeth GILES-25748, Tarrant Hinton Dorset England
1791 - Marriage: James LAWS-3383 (Innkeeper & Agent for London Trades) and Elizabeth REDHOUSE- 17675, Bungay Suffolk England
1793 - Marriage: Ralph ATKINSON-10595 and Ann LAWS-10596, Earsdon Northumberland England
1855 - Marriage: George Handley ALDRIDGE-7209 and Fanny Maria LAWS-7208, Penge Surrey England
1862 - Marriage: Thomas WARNES-24920 and Mary Anne LAWS-24919, Norwich Norfolk England
1866 - Marriage: George LAWS-6147 and Jane GRAY-6148, Hinds Mississippi United States
1893 - Marriage: William George LAWS-3383 (Ophthalmic Surgeon FRCS) LAWS-3009 and
Helen Maria LUMBY-3010, (Hospital Nurse) Chesterton, Cambridgeshire, England
Helen Maria LUMBY-3010, (Hospital Nurse) Chesterton, Cambridgeshire, England
1905 - Marriage: James Leonard LAWS-37655 and Bertha SEWELL-37656, Madison County Tennessee United States
1920 - Marriage: George SIMMONS-40402 (Grocer) and Edith Daisy LAWS-15969, Kenley Surrey England
1926 - Marriage: KETT-35568 and Flora Eva LAWES-24503, Norwich Norfolk England
1930 - Marriage: William CUNNINGHAM-20776 and Annie Lavinia LAWS-20775, Hammersmith Middlesex England
1867 - Death: Edward Robert LAWS-8256, KwaZulu-Natal
1890 - Death: Thomas Brignell LAWS-7994, (Secretary Copper Mining Co) Croydon Surrey England
1915 - Burial: Mary LAWS-24886, (Widow) Shenandoah Indianna United States
1919 - Death: John LAWS-22292, (RNVR Trimmer 7610/TS) HMS Pembroke
1919 - Death: John LAWS-22292, (RNVR Trimmer 7610/TS) HMS Pembroke
1932 - Death: John Bailey LAWS-22996, Glen Cove, Colman County Texas United States
1939 - Death: Frederick Joseph LAWES-28369, Tilford Surrey England
1939 - Residence: Frederick Joseph LAWES-28369, Grayswood Surrey England
1947 - Death: Frederick LAWS-39057, Morden Surrey England
1965 - Death: Jenny LAWS-39260, South Shields Durham England
1967 - Death: Florence Adelaide LAWS-36041,
1970 - Death: Elsie Louisa LAWES-24559, Burwood, New South Wales Australia
1978 - Death: Mary LAWS-45609,
2003 - Death: Irene Margaret LAWS-27509, Timaru New Zealand
2003 - Burial: Belton LAWS-13482, (Reverend) Spartanburg South Carolina United States
1920 - Residence: George SIMMONS-40402, (Grocer) Seaford Sussex England
1920 - Residence: Edith Daisy LAWS-15969, Kenley Surrey England
1954 - Arrival: Mary LAWS-31463, Southampton Hampshire England
1954 - Arrival: Peter LAWS-31462, Southampton Hampshire England
1954 - Arrival: Jane LAWS-31461, Southampton Hampshire England
1954 - Arrival: Kirstie DUNDAS-31460, Southampton Hampshire England
OTHER BIRTHS
1835 - Baptism: Mary Ann ALLAWAY-6494, South Cerney Gloucestershire England
1849 - Birth: Sara Elizabeth COLLEY-11235, Monterey, Butler Alabama United States
1875 - Birth: Amelia RANSOM-21026, West Hartlepool Durham England
1897 - Birth: George Arthur SUTTON-9851, Leyton Essex England
1904 - Birth: Elizabeth BRYAN-31769, Stoke on Trent Staffordshire England
1897 - Birth: George Arthur SUTTON-9851, Leyton Essex England
1904 - Birth: Elizabeth BRYAN-31769, Stoke on Trent Staffordshire England
1912 - Birth: Helen HUNT-41693,
1912 - Birth: Arthur J TAYLOR-22446, (Railway Policeman)
OTHER MARRIAGES
1858 - Marriage: Charles Abercrombie WELLS-14254 (Gasfitter & Brass Finisher) and Agnes CARSON- 7215, (Tailoress) Bethnal Green Middlesex England
(My maternal Grt-Grt-Grandparents)
1898 - Marriage: John ADAMTHWAITE-45529 and Ages CREIGHTON-45530, Dalton in Furness Lancashire England England
(My maternal Grt-Grt-Grandparents)
1898 - Marriage: John ADAMTHWAITE-45529 and Ages CREIGHTON-45530, Dalton in Furness Lancashire England England
OTHER DEATHS and BURIALS
1855 - Death: William GORDON-34607, Brechin Angus Scotland
1927 - Death: Lena JONES-22785, Morgan Utah United States
1927 - Death: Lena JONES-22785, Morgan Utah United States
1968 - Death: John GARRIGAN-49430, Quang Tri, Vietnam
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PLEASE NOTE GDPR (2018) PRIVACY TERMS
We have excluded records of living people to protect their
Privacy.
We only show births before 1920 and marriages before 1940.
Privacy.
We only show births before 1920 and marriages before 1940.
If you are interested in anyone listed here, email us with the name, dates and reference number, and we will happily do a lookup.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Mail us at
-----------'Welches Dam, Cambridgeshire England ---------
Lord, help me dig into the past and sift the sands of time.
That I might find the roots that made this family tree of mine.
Lord, help me trace the ancient roads, on which our fathers trod.
Which led them through so many lands, to find our present sod.
that missing link between some name that ends the same as mine
Lord help me find an ancient book or dusty manuscript,
that's safely hidden now away, in some forgotten crypt.
Lord, let it bridge the gap that haunts my soul when I can't find,
that missing link between some name, that ends the same as mine.
Sharon Nicola LAWS
2008 Olympics Cyclist
Environmental adviser for Rio Tinto Zinc
1974-2017
R I P
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It is always advised that you consult original records.
Member of The Guild of One-Name Studies
THE GUILD OF ONE-NAME STUDIES
www.one-name.org
registrar@lawsfamilyregister.org.uk
With grateful thanks to Simon Knott
for permission to reproduce his photographs on this site see
http://www.norfolkchurches.co.uk/
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