"Success supposes endeavor." --Jane Austen

Erik,

     "Success supposes endeavor." You come from a family that has worked hard to succeed.  Your great-grandparents' stories are of success and advancement through diligence.  You are where you are today because of all who have come before you.  Momma's dad was a blacksmith and her mam a maid; Poppa's dad was a coal miner and his mam a worker in a bicycle (Raleigh) factory.
     Most of the stories in these posts come from Momma.  I send her questions via e-mails, and she answers them in her replies.  I love reading her stories; many are new even to me.
     Right now Mam, Maureen, Rachel, Erin and I are watching "Downton Abbey," a period drama on PBS, set on the fictional estate of Downton Abbey, or Downtown Abbey as Jay likes to call it.  It follows the lives of the "upstairs" Crawley family and the "downstairs" servants who wait on them.  Although I knew that my grandmother had worked in a big house before she was married,  I was quite surprised to receive the following reply when I asked Mam about her life.     --Mom

Hannah Sophia Strutt and Kit

     "My mam, (Hannah Sophia Bradley) was born in Woodborough, near Arnold, on April 7, 1885.  She left school at age 12, having few other choices in a small village.  She went into service (as they called it) starting in the kitchens and working up to be a house maid at a vicarage in South Normanton, a nearby village (reminds me of Daisy in Downton Abbey).  As a kitchen maid, she probably earned the equivalent of $50. a year.  There was no other work for the village girls as industry was centered in the cities.  

     She said the vicar's wife was a tyrant.  She would pin an expensive brooch under the mattress to make sure the maids were turning it.  She and the other house maids would play a trick and instead just move the brooch to the top of the bed.
     The vicar and his wife had 3 boys who were away at boarding school.  When they came home at holidays, they were always up to mischief.  One day their mother was entertaining a group of local ladies for tea.  The boys went up onto the roof and placed a tile over the dining room chimney which smoked out the vicar's wife and her guests.

     Nanna's last job in service was for Lady Seel in Nottingham Park, a wealthy area near the castle.  She was the cook and housekeeper and stayed until she and Dad, Albert Edward Strutt, married in 1910 at St. Wilfred's Church in Calverton.
     When Dad was courting her, he would ride his bicycle from Oxton, where he was born, to Nottingham (12 miles each way) to spend the day with her when she was off work.  She always packed him a hamper of food to eat on his way home.
     On the day they were married, they moved into a private rented house at 151 Cross Street in Arnold and remained there until they died, Dad first in 1966 at age 79 and Mam in December 1984, six months shy of her 100th. birthday.  The house is still there today!  It had 6 rooms and the toilet was outside.  It did not have a flushing system, so every time we used it, we would turn the kitchen tap on, and the water would go down the drain outside and flush the toilet through to underground pipes.  Pretty primitive, eh.  I guess that is why they were called privies.  It wasn't until 1945, 35 years later, that the back bedroom was made into a bathroom with a tub and flushing toilet.  That was because after the war a law was passed that required indoor plumbing for a toilet and bath in every house."
                                                                         --Joan Shelton, February 2012


Here are a few other memories that Maureen wrote down years ago:

Albert and Hannah (Kit) Strutt with their only son,
Jack and daughter, Joan

     Nanna, my grandmother, loved to sew and was an expert seamstress on a treadle machine.   She sewed all her children's clothes.  She loved to walk and take bus trips into the countryside with Dadda.
     Dadda, my grandfather, worked under his father, who was head gardener at Oxton Hall, but he got in trouble and had to leave that job when he refused to tip his hat to the squire's daughter.
     He loved to garden and had 4 allotments and a garden,  greenhouse and shed in the backyard.  He  grew a grape vine in the greenhouse.  He loved his work as a blacksmith, fashioning wrought iron gates and such for people.
      When moving pictures began, they enjoyed going 2-3 times a week.  They would walk to The Roxy down Daybrook way, a suburb of Arnold.  They also went to the Pantomimes at Christmas.  Excursions to the seaside resorts of Skegness and Mablethorpe were also a treat.
     In 1962 they flew by prop plane to New York to visit Mam and Dad.  We were living in North Carolina at the time and Mam and Dad drove all the way to New York to pick them up.
     Maureen remembers that Dadda was an emotional man who cried easily.  He would get sentimental at each daughter's wedding; tears would run down his face.  His hand would tremble as he tried to hold the hymn book.  At each wedding he wore a black coat and black and grey pin striped trousers.  Afterwards they were put back in the wardrobe until the next one married.
     When they flew back to England from Charlotte, North Carolina, he got on the plane.  She could see him in the window of the plane waving his hankie.  He was a very gentle, quiet man.

St. Wilfred's  Church in Calverton where Nanna and Dadda were
married in 1910.   This is how it looks today.