"There never was a good war, or a bad peace." Benjamin Franklin

Erik,  
     I wanted to include some of Momma's overall impressions of the war.   Remember she was 12 when the war started and 18 when it ended.            --Mom


     "In the midlands, we did not suffer from the bombing like those in the coastal towns and in London.  Sometimes a stray bomb would fall in some nearby field, and all us kids would troop out to look at the crater and search for shrapnel.  After an air raid, the ground would be peppered with strips of foil, which the Germans would drop to confuse the British radar and protect their aircraft."
                                                                                        --Joan Shelton
 
Bit of history:   Chaff is a radar countermeasure in which aircraft or other targets spread a cloud of small, thin pieces of aluminium, metalized glass fibre or plastic, which either appears as a cluster of secondary targets on radar screens or swamps the screen with multiple returns.

     "I think what upset me the most during the war was hearing the radio broadcasts and seeing the newsreels of ships being sunk, the terrible loss of life, and the evacuation of British children to the countryside to avoid the bombing in the cities.  It was heart wrenching to see the faces of the parents left behind and to see both parents and children crying.  Some of the parents were killed later in the bombings."                        --Joan Shelton

Bit of history:  The evacuation of Britain's cities at the start of World War Two was the biggest and most concentrated mass movement of people in Britain's history.  In the first four days of September 1939, nearly 3,000,000 people were transported from towns and cities in danger from enemy bombers to places of safety in the countryside.
     Most were schoolchildren, who had been labeled like pieces of luggage, separated from their parents and accompanied instead by a small army of guardians - 100,000 teachers.  By any measure it was an astonishing event, a logistical nightmare of co-ordination and control beginning with the terse order to 'Evacuate forthwith,' issued at 11:07 am on Thursday, 31 August, 1939.  Few realized that within a week, a quarter of the population of Britain would have a new address

the B17 Flying Fortress

     "When you watch an old war movie and see the B-17 Flying Fortresses over England, it was just like that.  We would stand in Arnold Park and watch them flying over in droves night after night.  There was always a fighter planes in front escorting them.
     When I was a teen, dances were held on the lawn in the park and as the planes flew over filling the sky, the Army band would play, "Silver Wings in the Moonlight" and "Coming in on a Wing and a Prayer", both popular songs then."            --Joan Shelton

         
   


















     "We were encouraged to bring all metal such as old saucepans and other things that we could manage without and turn them in for the war effort.  The government even took down all wrought iron gates and fences around buildings, all for the war effort.  We learned after the war that it was done to keep up the moral of the people,  so they would think they were serving the war effort.  Don't know whatever happened to all that scrap metal."       --Joan Shelton



Bit of history:  "Gas had been used a great deal in the First World War and many soldiers had died or been injured in gas attacks (including Joe Shelton, my grandfather).  Mustard gas was the most deadly of all the poisonous chemicals used during World War I. It was almost odorless and took 12 hours to take effect.  It was so powerful that only small amounts needed to be added to weapons like high explosive shells to have devastating effects.  There was a fear that it would be used against ordinary people at home in Britain."
     By September 1939 some 38 million gas masks had been given out, house to house, to families. They were never to be needed.  Everyone in Britain was given a gas mask in a cardboard box, to protect them from gas bombs, which could be dropped during air raids.
     Children had to take regular gas drills at school.  They found these drills hard to take seriously, especially when they discovered blowing out through the rubber made 'rude' noises!

“You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us. And the world will live as one.” ― John Lennon

German prisoners of war bringing in the harvest

Bit of history:  From 1939-1948, an influx of over 400,000 German, Ukrainian, and other prisoners of war accounted for a sudden increase in Britain's prison population.
     There were hundreds of POW camps spread across the UK and a fair number in Nottinghamshire.    
     Prisoners would progress through a series of camps, where their political allegiances were determined. Non-Nazis were graded “White”, dubious cases were “Grey”, and hardened Nazis were “Black”. Prisoners wore patches with these colours so that they were known.
     As a general rule, the “Blacker” the grading, the further North the camps where prisoners would be housed. Prisoners were also shipped to camps in Canada, and later the US, to safeguard security as much as lack of space.

Wehrmacht (German) soldier

Erik, 
     What follows are my favorite of Momma's war stories. Both involve soldiers.  It's amazing to me that at age 85 her memories are still so vivid.             --Mom
     
     "I was staying at my sister, Win's, house.  It was early, about 7 am, and I was in the back kitchen getting ready for work, when there was a light tap on the back door.  Win had a recessed porch at the back, and thinking it was my brother, Jack, I opened the door.  There stood a German prisoner of war in a peaked hat and the short jacket of the Wehrmacht, holding out a tin cup.
     I was so scared, I screamed and promptly slammed the door and slid the bolt.  Win's house backed up onto some fields;  I assumed he'd escaped from one of the neighboring POW camps and walked across the fields."-- Joan Shelton

   
     "Did I ever tell you the story about what happened to me just before the invasion of Europe (DDay, June 6, 1944)?  I was 17 years old and was pushing Lesley, my niece, in a large pram up Redhill to her home, after visiting Nanna.  It was a Sunday afternoon.  An army convoy, filled with free French and American soldiers, was driving north to reach the ports on the East coast.  The Free French, British, Canadians and Americans would be landing on the beaches of Normandy to invade Europe a few days later.
     They were very excited because everyone thought the invasion would be the 'beginning of the end.'  When the Americans came level with me, they started tossing out candy bars, chewing gum and other sweets that we had not had much of during the war.  What I scrambled to pick up filled the apron cover on the pram.  The soldiers were all singing their national anthems trying to out do each other.
     When Win saw the candy her first words were, 'Where the bloody hell did you get all those from?' I told her to go down Redhill, hold out her apron and she might get even more."
                                                                             --  Joan Shelton

Bit of history:  "The Free French Forces were partisans in World War II who continued the struggle against the Axis powers after the surrender of France in June 1940.  The movement was launched by General Charles de Gaulle, a French government minister who had escaped to Britain, planning to organise continued resistance from there.
     By mid-1944, the Free French numbered more than 400,000, and they participated in the Normandy landings and the invasion of Southern France, eventually leading the drive on Paris. Soon they were fighting in Alsace, the Alps and Brittany, and by the end of the war in Europe, they were 1,300,000 strong - the fourth-largest Allied army in Europe."

The liberation of Paris in 1944

General DeGaulle entering liberated Paris in August 1944

"If we are to teach real peace in this world, and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with the children." Mahatma Gandhi

     "During the war an English Traitor named William Joyce or Lord Haw-Haw (as he was called by the British public),  would broadcast from Germany, taunting his listeners.  We kids would purposely tune him in to hear him and to hear Dad curse at him.  After nights of bombing in Coventry and surrounding cities, Lord Haw-Haw came on the radio, saying, 'Yes, Nottingham, you think you've escaped it, but it will be your turn tomorrow night!' Sure enough, the next night the Luftwaffe came over to bomb Nottingham."
                                        --Joan Shelton                                                                              
Bit of history:  William Joyce, Lord Haw-Haw, was an Irish-American politician and Nazi propaganda broadcaster to the UK during the Second World War.  In late August 1939 just before war was declared,  Joyce and his wife fled to Germany.  At the end of the war, he was hanged by the British as a result of his wartime activities.  Since he had possession of a British passport, he owed allegiance to the UK and so was convicted of treason.

Bit of history:  On the nights of May 8th and 9th, 1941, the Luftwaffe attacked Sheffield, Hull, Derby, and Nottingham.  In all 424 bombs landed on Nottingham, causing numerous fires, killing a few hundred people, and leaving over 1, 286 people homeless.  Nottingham may have been bombed because the Raleigh Bike factory produced 20 mm cartridge cases which were the main armament for the Spitfire planes.

     "I was sleeping at my sister, Doll's house during the Nottingham blitz, along with my sister, Win.  Win and I were in bed because we were too lazy to go downstairs and get under the table with Doll.  Under the table was our makeshift air raid shelter.  Jack, Doll's husband, who was in the Fire Service, came home next morning and yelled at us for staying in bed.  The Germans had leveled the center of Nottingham, trying to bomb the gun factory.  Instead they hit a huge bakery, and many were killed.  The German pilots would follow the River Trent to find their targets.

Friar's Lane, bombing May 1941

   





     After a bit, I went to stay with my sister Win as she was expecting, and her husband, Les, was away in the Navy.  When she went into labor, I rode by bike down Redhill to fetch Mam.  It was 2 am, and I went to get the midwife and walk back with her to Win's on Henry Street.
     Lesley was born that morning.  Her dad, Les, did not see her until she was a year old.  He was taken off his ship in Halifax, Nova Scotia, with a ruptured appendix.  By some fluke, a neighbor across the street from Win's was sent to replace Les on his ship, and he took the wire announcing that Les had a daughter."
                                                                                    --Joan  Shelton

Bit of history:  "Keep Calm and Carry On" was a propaganda poster produced by the British government in 1939 during the beginning of the Second World War, intended to raise the morale of the British public in the event of invasion. Seeing only limited distribution, it was little known.
     The poster was rediscovered in 2000 and has been re-issued by a number of private companies, and used as the decorative theme for a range of other products. There were only two known surviving examples of the poster outside government archives until a collection of about 20 originals was brought in to the Antiques Roadshow in 2012 by the daughter of an ex-Royal Observer Corps member.

"Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter." --African proveb

     "The Christmas of 1939, my classmates and I were all dressed and lined up in the school yard ready to go into the classroom for our holiday party.  Along game a Gerry plane and 'boom-boom' went Big Bertha.  The teachers hustled us into the air raid shelter instead of into the party.  After the war we found out that hundreds of civilians died in air raid shelters, often because the walls blew out and the thick concrete roofs caved in on people.
     If you had a back garden, the council would come and build an Anderson Shelter.  It was made of steel corrugated panels and was covered with soil.  People often grew vegetables and flowers on top.   There was a bench seat inside which could serve as a bed at night.
     The council built a concrete shelter (not an Anderson Shelter) in our back garden but Dad, doubting its safety, would not let us use it.  He and Jack dug a huge hole at the top of the garden, lined it with railway sleepers, roofed it, and built a couple of bunks inside.  We used this when the sirens went off warning of German planes overhead.
     At the beginning of 1940, the government began rationing food.  Each week each person got 2 ounces of butter, the same of margarine and lard, 8 ounces of meat (half of which had to be taken in canned corned beef), and 8 ounces each of sugar and flour.
     We were more fortunate than most because Dad worked on a farm every Friday repairing machinery and shoeing horses, and he was able to take some of his pay in poultry, rabbit, eggs, and sometimes, bacon.

Anderson Air Raid Shelters in a backyard, unfinished on the left
finished on the right.                                                       

The interior of a type of communal air
 raid shelter.  The boxes the girls are
carrying hold their gas masks.

       Dad had four allotments where we grew vegetables, so Mam salted beans and pickled red cabbage and onions.  Potatoes, we bought from Mr. Moss by the sackful.  Mr. Fish, the baker, would bring us a sack of flour, so we had homemade bread right through the war.  Sheep's head soup and beef tongue were plentiful.  We were able to get fish until the U-boats started sinking the fishing fleet.  I remember seeing canned whale meat at the fish shop; my Aunt Alice would buy it and fry it--ugh!  She also bought tripe (the stomach of a cow), cut it into squares and fried it, too.
     The war was the start of queuing for which we British became famous.  If one heard of a shop that had received something special, word spread like wildfire, and before the shopkeepers could unpack the goods, there would be a queue outside."                                -- Joan  Shelton

an adult's rationed food for a week

3 pints of milk

3 /4 lb - 1 lb meat

1 egg or 1 packet of dried eggs every 2 months

3-4 oz cheese

4 oz bacon and ham

2 oz tea

8 oz sugar

2 oz butter

2 oz cooking fat

+ 16 points a month for other rationed foods (usually tinned) subject to availability.

Queuing during World War II

Bit of history:  Every member of the public was issued a ration book which contained coupons that shopkeepers cut out or signed when people bought food and other items.  The color of your ration book was very important as it made sure you go the right amount and types of food needed for your health.

     Most adults had buff colored ration books.  Pregnant women, nursing mothers and children under 5 had green ration books.  They had first choice of fruit, a daily pint of milk and a double supply of eggs. Children between 5 and 16 years of age had blue ration books. It was felt important that children had fruit, the full meat ration and half a pint of milk a day.

      Fourteen years of food rationing ended at midnight on July 4, 1954, when restrictions on the sale and purchase of meat and bacon were lifted.  The war ended 9 years earlier in 1945

"Sometime they'll give a war and nobody will come." Carl Sandburg

Bit of history:  For Great Britain, World War Two began in September 1939.  Following Germany's invasion of Poland, Britain and France declared war on Germany.  Nottingham was bombed on May 8th. and 9th., 1941, by the Nazi German Luftwaffe.  On May 8, 1945, Winston Churchill announced VE (Victory in Europe) Day, and for Britain the war was finally over.

King George VI shakes hands with British Prime Minister Neville
Chamberlain as he left No., 10 Downing Street following the
declaration of war with Germany after the invasion of Poland in
September 1939.

Erik,
     Momma was 12 when the war started in 1939 and turned 18, fourteen days before the war ended.  Through the years she has shared many "home front" memories.  Enjoy!
                                     
                                   --Mom


                                                                                                                 

     "I remember the Sunday morning that war broke out.  It was 11 am., September 3, 1939, and we were all gathered around listening to the radio.   I was scared because we had seen pictures of the bombing of Poland (Germany invaded Poland in 1939), and we knew we were in for some of the same once the war got going.

     Dad was already in the Special Constabulary, an unarmed volunteer organization.  He was given a blue tin hat with Police stenciled on it, a night stick, a band to wear around his upper arm with "Special Constabulary" printed on it, and a military style gas mask.  That first night the sirens started wailing.  Oh, it was the most awful sound to my young ears.  Dad took off to patrol the streets with his partner.  I was sleeping in Mam and Dad's bedroom on a single bed pushed up against the outside wall of the room.  Shaking with fear, I jumped over into their bed and snuggled up to Mam.  

     After that I would not sleep in my own bed because I had visions of being blown into the street if a bomb dropped.  Mam and Dad moved the furniture around and placed my bed as far away from the window as possible.  Things were pretty quite for a few months, and then, a huge gun was placed on a nearby hill in a wooded copse (a small group of trees).  We called it Big Bertha; when it fired the doors and windows rattled.  Those living nearest to it even had windows broken!  The authorities came out with a lace covering with glue size on it.  We cut it to size and pasted it to the inside of the windows.  It stayed there until the war was almost over.   "

                                                                                                              --Joan  Shelton

Special Constabulary tin whistle

World War II tin armband

Special Constabulary tin hat

military-style, World War II gas mask
and carry bag

Bit of history:   "During the Second World War besides their normal duties such as subduing drunken brawls and arresting boys who stole apples, they (the Special Constabulary) were trained to deal with a wide range of eventualities such as first aid in case of injury, initial coordination of the security of aircraft crash sites, clearing people from the vicinity of unexploded bombs, handling of unignited incendiary bombs and checking compliance with lighting regulations."

"We all grow up with the weight of history on us."

     "We all grow up with the weight of history on us.  Our ancestors dwell in the attics of  our brains as they do in the spiraling chains of knowledge hidden in every cell of our bodies."        ~Shirley Abbott

Frank Shelton, 3-4 years old with
his dad, Joseph Shelton 

         Joseph Shelton was born November 13, 1897, in Arnold, Nottingham, England.  The second eldest of six boys, he left school at age 12 with rheumatic fever and consequently, wasn't able to read and write until he was in his 20's.

      His father, John Thomas Shelton, had a little hardware shop at the bottom of Atherley's yard on Front Street in Arnold.  He also had a horse and dray (cart) and peddled household wares such as kerosene, gas mantles, clothes pegs, and other necessities to the villages around Arnold--Lambley, Lowdham, Oxton, and Calverton.  When Joe left school at 12, he helped his dad and eventually took over the business when his dad died at age 42.
      In 1914 at age 17, lying about his age, he went into the army with the Sherwood Foresters.  He was in Dublin, Ireland in 1916 in the Irish Rebellion and fought in WWI in 1917.  He was mustard gassed at Ypres,  Belgium, and did not regain consciousness until he was back in England.  He told Dad that he bayoneted and killed a German soldier; after rifling through his pockets, he found a photo of a wife and children.  He had nightmares about that until he was 30.
      After recovering from his war injuries, he worked as a coal miner. After a nationwide strike in 1926, miners wages were cut by 50%.  By 1935,  no longer able to make a decent living as a miner, he went to work in a factory, Erikson's Telephone.

Bit of history:  The Irish Rebellion was a revolt in Ireland during Easter Week, 1916.  It was mounted by Irish Republicans who wanted to end British rule in Ireland and establish the Irish Republic.  At the time the British Empire was heavily engaged in the First World War.

During World War I intense and sustained battles between the Germans and Allied Forces, occurred at Ypres, Belgium.  British soldiers nicknamed the small city "Wipers" because of the difficulty of pronouncing Ypres in English.  Mustard gas was used for the first time ever near Ypres in the autumn of 1917.  The symptoms of mustard gas (Yiperite) are the formation of large blisters filled with yellow fluid on exposed skin and in the lungs, intense itching and skin irritation, and an increased risk of developing cancer later in life.

Joseph Shelton, age 17, in uniform

Left to right, Albert Strutt, Hannah Strutt, Emily Shelton, and Joseph Shelton--my grandparents.

     Joseph Shelton, Pop, on the far right, was a jolly man, an exuberant hugger.  He loved to play cards and gamble, especially the horses.  He also loved to sing.
     Maureen remembers Pop giving her a drink of Advacar (an egg based liqueur that tastes like egg custard) at Christmas and having "crackers" to pull.  A cracker is a decorated paper tube, twisted at both ends.  A person pulls on each end and the cracker breaks, a small chemical strip goes "pop" and the contents,  a small gift, a joke, and a paper crown fall out.
     Pop had a lovely garden on the side of the house; he grew many things, but I loved watching him take a fork and turn over the "new" potatoes (immature potatoes harvested during the spring).  They were so good boiled and served with mint.  He also carved the loveliest miniature chairs.  I adored him.

Joseph Shelton, Barbara, age 18-19, and  Emily Shelton

"Love is all we have . . . .

"Love is all we have.  The only way that each can help the other."  --Euripides

Joan Shelton (Momma) said of her dad,
      "My dad, Albert Edward Strutt, was born in November, 1887 in Oxton, a village near Nottingham.  The Strutt name is one of the oldest in the village.  My dad's family lived in a 3-story Georgian type house that belonged to the village squire.  It was one of three behind the local pub, The Green Dragon, which still stands in Oxton today.
     My granddad was the head gardener at the manor house; when Dad left school, he was taken to work there in the garden alongside his dad.  There was no industry in the village so most lads worked the land.  Dad stayed at the Sherbrooke home, Oxton Hall, until he rebelled.
     It was the custom in those days that if any member of the squire's family passed by the workers, the workers were compelled to stand, doff their caps, and wait for the person to move past.  Dad got the idea that the squire's three young daughters were 'passing by' a bit too often, so at some point he refused to stand and doff his hat.  He was reported to the squire and let go.  His dad later apprenticed him to the local blacksmith, and that became his trade for life.

Oxton Hall, where Albert Strutt stared working in the garden alongside his dad

     Dad was one of 9 children; one sister died when she was 12.  She ate the skin of a baked potato, chocked on it, and died.  So we were never allowed to eat potato skins.
     My dad always kept himself so smart and clean.  I felt proud to be seen with him.  He polished his shoes, shaved, and wore a tie and trilby hat (a soft felt hat with a narrow brim and an indented crown) when out in public.
     Dad was a hard worker.  During the first world war he was sent to the Digby pit mine in the countryside to shoe the pit ponies, which, poor things, lived underground.  They were used to haul the tubs of coal to the shaft where the tubs were then lifted to the surface.  No mechanization in those days.  He worked there for most of the war years, keeping the machinery running and shoeing the pit ponies, working underground sometimes and other times at the surface.
     He was an avid gardener and kept the family in vegetables and flowers throughout the years.  He always smoked a pipe, and even now I can close my eyes and smell the sweet scent of tobacco on his clothes."        
                                                                                                --Joan Shelton

Digby pit mine

A pit pony

Bit of history:  'In shaft mines, ponies were normally stabled underground and fed hay and maize, coming to the surface only during the colliery’s annual holiday.  Typically, they would work an eight-hour shift each day, during which they might haul 30 tons of coal in tubs on the underground narrow gauge railway. 

     Recollections differ on how well the ponies were cared for in earlier years, but it should be remembered that they represented a capital asset to the mine, and that the best work could be obtained from animals that were in good condition."

The Green Dragon Public House in Oxton.  Dadda grew up behind this pub in a Georgian style home owned by the local squire.  The pub is still there.  Sadly, the house is not.

“We never know the love of our parents for us . . .

Frank and Gladys

 “We never know the love of our parents for us till we have become parents.”  Henry Ward Beecher  

Erik,
     Many years ago, Dad wrote down memories of his parents and grandparents.  Below are memories of his Mam and Dad, my grandparents, who I called Momma and Pop.
                                                                --Mom

 

      "My mam, born March 1, 1897 and died at age 80, was not a naturally happy woman.  There were flashes of fun that I saw in her, especially when she was at her Mother's with her 5 sisters, but she was, in general, rather serious and somber.
     She was one of 10 children, 6 girls and 4 boys and left school at age 14, which was the norm in those days.  A very good looking woman, she appeared taller than she was because of her erect posture.   She had auburn hair, dark eyes and was always quite thin.
     My mam, Emily, met my dad, Joseph, at a vaudeville show next to the Theater Royale in Nottingham.   They were married in August 1920.  Life was not easy, especially after World
War I.  There was unchecked poverty in England for years after the war.
     Mam was a good woman with high moral character.  Dad did not always comply with her regimen, and their marriage was bumpy.  She worked hard all her life and kept the family together.  After the war, Dad worked as a coal miner, but in the early 1920's there was a nationwide strike and miner's wages dropped 50%.  During my childhood, Mam ran a machine at Raleigh Cycle Company.
     Her pleasures were simple.  She loved nothing more than eating a thick crust of bread slathered with butter.  During World War II, she alone used up the family's butter ration.
                                                         

Emily Shelton

     She loved going to Goose Fair ("going down the fair"), held each Autumn in Nottingham, and looked forward to playing the mechanical horses.  If her horse won, she would come home with bits of china for the house.
     She and Dad enjoyed going to Skegness, a seaside resort, on a half day train trip sponsored by the local pub.  At Christmas, the family would go to the pantomime in Nottingham.
     In 1959, Mam and Dad came on the Queen Elizabeth to America to visit us.  Pop came again, alone, in 1963, and both came again by ship in 1965."
                                                --Frank Shelton


Erik,
     Even though Dad's childhood was difficult, he loved his mam and dad, and they loved him.  He talked about how Momma would smother his face with kisses.  He faithfully wrote an aerogram (a sheet of light blue paper, folded and sealed to form an envelope) to them every week after he left England.  That's 52 letters a year, year after year!
     I can only guess, but it must have seemed to Momma and Pop as though they'd never see Dad again once he left for America.  Dad's sister, Gladys, married an American serviceman after World War II and also left  England, years before Dad.  Thankfully they did see Frank and Gladys again, many more times.  They came to America, and throughout my childhood, we went back to England nearly every other summer.

Bit of history:  Goose Fair, was thought to have begun in 1284.  Originally it was a market fair and got its name from the thousands (20,000) of geese that were driven from the Lincolnshire Fens (a flat, low-lying area) to be sold in Nottingham, 100 miles away.  Until 1880, Goose Fair was held for 15 days in early October in the old Market Square in Nottingham City Center. It has since been moved and only lasts for 3 days now.  

Goose Fair in the early 1920's

The Helter-Skelter ride at Goose Fair

     "I remember going on a ride at Goose Fair with Dad called the Helter-Skelter.  It was a lighthouse shaped bulding with a staircase inside and a slide spiralling down the outside.  I would carry a mat up the stairs and then sit in front of Dad on the mat and fly down the slide."                              
                                        --Mom

Cock-on-a-stick

   


 There are many foods traditionally associated with Goose Fair--coconuts, brandy snaps, toffee apples, candy floss, mushy peas with mint sauce, and cock-on-a-stick (yes, it's really called that), a candy, rooster-shaped lollipop!   Momma also remembers winkles and welks (shellfish), served in newspaper cones.              

"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.

"I never thought it was such a bad little tree . . . ."

               "I never thought it was such a bad little tree.  It's not bad at all, really.
               Maybe it just needs a little love."           --Linus from "A Charlie Brown Christmas"

Erik,

     I wrote this story in early November, 2009.  Enjoy.Mom

     "I'm not dreaming of a white Christmas this year.  We're going to have a white Thanksgiving.  However, I am dreaming of a Christmas tree--a pre-lit, faux tree.  In the catalog it says 

". . . just fluff the branches, add ornaments, plug in and voila!"  My kind of tree!"

      In 1959, I came to America with my family aboard the Queen Elizabeth.  Mam packed a small, artificial Christmas tree.  A central wooden dowel sat in a hole in a square base.  It was 3 feet tall with branches that pulled out and down to form the shape of a tree.  It came with light bulbs, each with a shade like an inverted Dixie cup.  A nursery rhyme and character were painted on each shade.

     In the early 60's, we bought a 5 ft. silvery tinsel tree.  It had a silver painted "trunk" with holes drilled in it at increasing angles, so that when each of the branches of the same size was inserted into the holes, they would perch upwards, forming a tree shape.  My brother, Darryl, was born during the era of the silvery tinsel tree.  Maybe that's why he loves tinsel so much. 

     In the 70's we had a 6-foot artificial evergreen tree.  It looked real, but didn't smell real.  We three kids could assemble it, no parent help needed.  Dad always put those big, cone shaped, multi-colored lights bubs all over the tree.  Maureen and I begged for fairy lights.  Darryl just wanted to lob tinsel at the tree, big clumps that would drip from random branches.

     I swore some day that I would have a real tree, a tree I cut myself at a tree farm.  And I did have that real tree, year after year after year.  But I was always the one who cut the tree, stuffed it into the too-small trunk or tied it on the roof of my car, forced the trunk into a too small tree stand, dragged in all into the house, attached lights and ornaments, and vacuumed endless pine needles. Each January I took it down, packed all the ornaments and lights away, dragged the tree back out into the yard, and cut it into 3 pieces for easy garbage pick-up.
     Every year the tree I bought was still real but a little bit shorter, with fewer lights and ornaments and eventually came from the local Target instead of the local tree farm.
     The year I'm ordering, from a catalog, a prelit faux tree with balsam fragrance.  The sections of the tree are hinged and pop into place--just fluff the branches, add ornaments, plug in and enjoy.  My kind of tree!

The 1960's silvery tinsel tree