Sunday 22nd September 2019

Sunday 22nd September 2019 - Number 5917

Welcome to the Laws Family Register

We reach out to all, regardless of Race, Colour, Creed, Gender, Orientation, or National Origin, offering support for researching family history and documenting cultural inheritance.

Robert Henry Laws

1828-1881

Captain of the Barque 'Woolhampton'

my paternal Great Grandfather

This is Robert Henry's Wife

Sarah Ann Laws, formerly Fuller

My paternal Great Grandmother

1846-1924

R I P

Gone but not forgotten, this blog is dedicated

to all those who have borne our illustrious

surnames LAWS and LAWES Worldwide

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so please e-mail me, now

registrar@lawsfamilyregister.org.uk

John P Laws

'The Registrar'

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A Child of the Twenties

A suburban childhood of the Twenties

seen from the Nineteen Nineties

by my late father

John Robert Laws 1921-2008

Further Afield

We spent all the family holidays on that little bit of east coast and going further afield did not arise until I could go off on my bike alone or with a friend. I had already been to scout camps, all on a shoestring. About the same time school journeys were started, only in the holidays of course not in term time as today. The camps were for boys only. I doubt whether our devoted school staff thought they could cope with the tribulations of a mixed camp. The journeys to foreign parts, however, were co-ed without any problems.

I recall one school camp at St.Audries Bay, near Watchet in of course wonderful summer weather. Our site was in a field between the coast road and low cliffs above the beach.

We must have gone to Somerset by coach, an uneventful journey of which I remember nothing except that our kit was moved by horse and cart from the road down a narrow track to the field beside the farm where a line of bell tents had already been erected for us. We had the luxury of palliasses which we filled with straw from the tumbledown buildings near the farmhouse and the cooking was done by the school caretaker with a small amount of help from us on a rota basis. A few cows were kept by the farmer and we were able to see the milk he supplied to us hand-milked into the pail.

Behind and above our camp on the other side of the road, rose the warm late summer colours of the Quantock Hills, an almost impenetrable terrain of bracken and bilberries guaranteed to stain one's fingers and lips and scratch one's knees to ribbons. We had time to wander on our own and there were organised trips when we visited Dunster and walked to the top of Dunkery Beacon.

The timeless stone cottages and ancient butter market of Dunster were already an attraction to visitors but as boys, we were too keen on looking forward to really appreciate the glimpse back into the past that such places are able to give us later in life. Exmoor’s wide vistas and stony ground thatched with heather and berries were pure joy, the purples and crimsons of the foliage stretching out through the sunshine to a distant hazy horizon and the world at one's feet.

In our free time, we wandered into the little town of Watchet lying somnolent in the sunshine, seemingly untouched by tourism. There was a corner shop selling sweets and buns, and Cydrax to refuel the inner man for a walk into the hills. Watchet was minding its own business around its tiny harbour where cargoes seemed to be black coal in and white china clay out. There must have been a few holidaymakers about however because one day we went by paddle steamer along the coast to Lynmouth where we disembarked in small boats and had a day to explore and wade up the river to Watersmeet. This was decades before the catastrophic flood destroyed the town which had previously stood secure for centuries.

Nearly everyone who holidayed around Somerset visited Lynmouth but the numbers were small and it was not crowded.

Back at St Audries Bay, the beach is stony with grey rocks and flat stones ideal for skimming the waves. The most interesting find was that it abounded in fossils of spiral creatures up to a foot across, ammonites I believe, which had been preserved when their nice grey slimy mud was pressed into the rock a few million years back.

Another boys-only school trip took us youth hostelling to the hostel at Millersdale in Derbyshire. There were about fifteen in the group with two of three school stall including ‘Sammy’ Stewart one of the most popular masters. He taught geography and seemed to be a member of nearly all the journeys. We walked the hills and dales and went by train to Edale where the station name board said ‘HOPE for Castleton’ though we never saw Castleton as we walked away from Hope over the hills. A visit to the Blue John Mine where blue fluorspar is mined showed us something new in this glowing rock and in an underground trip by boat through a low tunnel which led us to a cave where there is a hefty waterfall from above which went down below us into the depths of that the guide told us was a bottomless pit. At least it never filled up with water.

be continued tomorrow

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