Alison Webster
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An error occurred while saving the comment Alison Webster
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Dear Readers
We are sourcing what we can from the Library’s holdings and have added 1940-1941, 1943-1950 in the last 24 hours.
https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/titles/id/staffordshire-sentinel
Thank you all for your continued interest in this title, and Happy Reading!
Regards
Team BNA
An error occurred while saving the comment Alison Webster
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Of all the village characters I knew, one remains in my memory more than most. His name was Eli Buxton and he lived for many years in 'Bluebell Farm Cottage' (now demolished) on the Downs Banks. He was quite harmless I'm sure, but we children were a bit afraid of him. He wasn't very well educated, but he was a wonderful organist in spite of not being able to read a note of music. He used to get us to pump the organ for him in the old Church. People used to come and listen to Eli playing, and sometimes we would tease him for a bit of fun by not pumping enough. There was a weight on it that went up and down according to the amount of wind in the organ. We especially liked to pump the organ for weddings, because we would usually be given half a crown!
Jessie Stevenson was the organist and choirmaster those days, he lived opposite the present Post Office.
The church was always open during the day. Billy Till, the verger, by trade a joiner and coffin maker, used to unlock it every morning and lock it up at night to prevent the tramps from sleeping in there.
Nora Morrey (later Mrs. George Hounslow) was a well-known person in the village. Apart from the choral and dramatic societies which she founded, she did lots of work during the war for members of the Armed Forces from the village. When the war ended she organised a party at The Trentham Gardens Ballroom for all the Army, Navy and Air Force personnel who had been fortunate enough to return to the village.Alison Webster
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An error occurred while saving the comment Alison Webster
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I thought I would post this, as I was looking for pictures of Paragon School which led me to this great website - full of history.
My Grandad, Joe Bent, was the live-in school caretaker at the Paragon from the late 1920s to sometime after the war (not sure when). He later worked at Guinness, throughout the 60s (and maybe the 50s too) as a commissionaire/door-man (in a United Services Corps uniform) until the year he died at the age of 85 in 1976.
He was as hard as nails. He had a very tough a rural upbringing in Stowmarket, brought up by an uncle because his parents couldn't keep him. He left home at 14 (1905) when the East Lancs Regiment was passing through and joined up as a drummer boy. He went off to war and was awarded the VC at Ypres.
http://www.lancashireinfantrymuseum.org ... ent-vc-mm/He retired from the army in 1926 as a Company Sergeant Major, came to London and did a few jobs, such as hotel porter, before settling down in Bermondsey. He and his wife Alice had three children, Spencer (aka Joe), Beryl and my mum Pauline. If you look at the photo on the Paragon thread, it is possible that the girl in the front row in the middle is my auntie Beryl, but I am not sure.
My Mum was born and brought up at Paragon School. She went to secondary school at St Olaves. She and her sister Beryl were evacuated to Chertsey with the school. Beryl was homesick and came home for the rest of the war. My Mum was sent to relatives in Scotland - which was pretty harsh.
Mum got married to my Dad (from Enfield) in 1956 and moved away. I'm not sure if she had left home by then or whether they had left the Paragon, but I do know my grandparents were at the school throughout the war years.
It would be interesting if anyone remembers them. My grandad bred standard Poodles and had an apricot one called Suzie (people sometimes remember dogs better than humans!). During the war people would keep rabbits and chickens, which they would take to my grandad (being a countryman) and he'd wring their necks, as the owners had got too attached to them.
He had a few mates, including someone called Patrick and someone called Paul from the pub he drank in - he named my mum after them because he had promised - she became Pauline Patricia as a result.
He was very keen on the horses and was down the bookies every day making a small flutter. He watched the Arsenal and Rugby League.
After the Paragon, they moved to a new flat off the Coldharbour Road - now a Riverside Housing Association property on the Lambeth Estate - apparently it is due for redevelopment. They stayed there for the rest of their lives.
You might also be interested to know about my uncle Joe Bent. He stood for election as Southwark's Communist Party candidate between 1950 and 1964 although unsurprisingly never got too close to being elected. But I guess someone may have known him as he always lived in or around Bermondsey or Camberwell.
Anyway, keep up the good work with this super website.
All the best
Alison Webster
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3,212 votesAlison Webster
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I just had a browse through one of a series of booklets I bought on my last visit back to Manchester some years ago: More Tales of Manchester Jewry by Monty Dobkin, in which he lists from a 1927 directory, all the shops along Bury New Road. Some of them were still there in the 1960s. There was a fishmongers called Gordon's, which in 1927 was owned by one Rose Gordon, but which in my day was owned by a short, pale-faced, bald Jewish gentleman, who was not named Gordon but who had kept the name on the shop front. I do not mean to be disrespectful to the old gent, but he really did resemble some of the fish on his slab! My memory deceives me now as to which was Bury New Road and which was Bury Old Rd. As for The Temple, I have a picture of the pub & cinema taken in the 1880s which, if I could work out how, I might upload onto this site. The cinema, which kep going for 40 years, had two integral shops. On the left was a barbers (I used to go and wait for my father on a Saturday as he had his hair cut, and the kindly barber used to put some 'bay rum' on my hand). On the right was a 'high class confectioners' where we used to buy posh chocs before going into the cinema. I used to attend the Saturday matinees here, seeing awful westerns, cliffhangers and the 3 stooges