In 1996 Bruce and I spent several weeks in England. There
were so many places I wanted to walk in. To see for myself the places of my parent’s
stories, the places that up until then only lived in my imagination.
There was little left
of my parent’s East End. WWII and the subsequent rebuilding had seen to that. Despite
that, one of the first places I wanted to go was to Beckton Road. My parents
lived there, across the road from each other. Childhood sweethearts. Finding
the exact place of numbers twenty-one and twenty-eight proved difficult. Eventually
Bruce and I drank coffee in the Macdonald’s that was where the houses should
have been. Definitely not my favourite discovery.
Herbert Henry Hall and Georgina Pirrett (Nan), Mum’s
parents married at St Margarets All Saints Church in Barking. I got to view the
marriage entry in the original parish record, as well as the baptism of Mum, and
her sister and brother. But that wasn’t my favourite discovery.
On one of our many day-trips out of London we drove to Doddinghurst.
Nan had bought a bungalow at Doddinghurst, about 26
miles from Beckton Road. Apparently
without Granddad’s knowledge, as a
weekend place. It was called Sunny Brae. Dad said that that was an unusual
thing for working class people to do. Now, though, I’m not sure if this is
totally true.
From ‘Doddinghurst. A Place in the Country’,
compiled by Peter Kurton:
Until the First World War Doddinghurst had a small
population. The first influx of people came between the two World Wars. At that
time large areas of land were divided up into strips and sold off cheaply. Many
people from the East End of London bought up land upon which they built
temporary weekend bungalows. These shacks were constructed of any materials
that were readily available...Many of these new residents stayed permanently,
particularly to avoid the bombing of London during the Second World War.
Lots of Londoners went
hop-picking for their summer ‘holiday’. Families of mostly women and children
(many from London’s East End) fled the confines of the city for an annual
holiday hop-picking in Kent. I think Nan might have done this too; I know she
went hop-picking in Nelson. Did these country summers give her a lasting taste
for the countryside? We’ll never know. The cottage like its neighbours
had been modernised, but in the book, I read descriptions of these early basic
dwellings. Doddinghurst remains a small village with a population of less than
3000 in a largely agricultural landscape
Nevertheless, it was to Sunny Brae that Mum, and her
parents moved to, to escape the WWII London Bombings. And it was in Doddinghurst’s
Parish Church that Mum and Dad married.
.
The
Wedding
The
wooden steeple of the old stone church pointed into the clear winter sky and a
small cluster of red and yellow flowers sheltered against the wall. Here and
there a few short rows of old headstones cast long shadows onto the closely
cropped grass. It wasn't the old headstones I was interested in though; it was
the church itself. For here on Friday 21st February 1942, a marriage had taken
place. Then, there was no time for tradition, no time for the banns to be read.
The groom only had ten days’ embarkation leave, so they were married by
‘special licence', obtained just the day before at a cost of ten shillings. A lot of money then, when an unskilled worker
would have earned less than five pounds a week. Generally, a soldier needed the permission of his
commanding officer to marry and in wartime this was usually agreed to. There is
no evidence of this on his military record apart from a change in his next of
kin from his mother to his wife.
"Oh
hurry up, Bruce!" I thought. I was eager to be out of the hire car and to
walk where they had walked. Hand-in-hand we crossed the quiet country road. He
opened the gate and, at last, we were there. Dry leaves crunched under our feet
as we walked up the path to the porch. I tried to imagine how it would have
been that winter’s day, February 21st, all
those years ago. She, on her Dad's arm, his hand over hers reassuringly.
Inside, the groom would be waiting - nervously perhaps - with the best man, his
future brother-in-law, at his side. But today the door was locked! Had we come
all this way not to be able to get inside?
"Look,
over there, that must be the vicarage," Bruce pointed to a solitary house
on the other side of the road. "Come on," he said “let’s go and see
if anyone's home.” Bruce knocked and we waited. Inside my jacket pocket I
crossed my fingers. Footsteps.
“Can I help
you?"
"I
hope so," I answered. “We're from New Zealand and my parents were married
in your church. We were wondering if we could go inside."
"New
Zealand?" he said. "Whereabouts? I'm from Auckland myself! Small
world, isn't it? Come in, come in, I'll
just see if I can find the key."
As he
unlocked the heavy wooden door he asked, "When did you say they got
married?"
“Twenty
first of February 1942."
“You’ve
come at the right time, then," he said. “The church is pretty much as it
was then, but we start our renovations next month."
Inside,
the thick-plastered walls were painted a creamy white with the tall pointy top
window arches picked out in pale brown. Dark timbers ribbed across the
exposed-beam ceiling. Above the steps to the altar were three almost life-size
figures. In the centre, a crucified Christ; Mary in her blue robes to the left;
a red-robed St John to the right. Behind the altar three deeply set stained
glass windows glowed in the late afternoon light.
My
imagination took over, and I moved with Mum into the church. A few steps then
turn right to walk down the aisle. Family and friends in the first few rows
would have turned as she slowly walked towards him. I doubt if she wore a new
dress for the occasion, let alone a wedding dress. Clothes rationing, which
included shoes, began in June 1941. Each adult was allocated just 66 coupons
per year. It cost 11 coupons to 'buy' a plain dress, four for a pair of undies,
six for a nightie and eight for a pair of pyjamas. Dad would have probably worn
his uniform; a man’s suit, if you could get such a thing, cost 26 coupons. Stockings were very scarce, so use your
imagination and draw a line up the back of your leg for the seam and hey
presto... well I guess from a distance it would have looked like you were
wearing a pair. ‘Make do and mend’ was the order of the day. Would clothes have
mattered? Probably not: she was marrying her childhood sweetheart; that was all
that was important.
I don't know if it had been a romantic
proposal. When I asked Dad for his memories of their wedding day he said,
"I think it was me decided that we
should get married. Everyone else said no, no, but it only made me more
determined to get married. We were married at
a little old church in Doddinghurst. We had a car to take us to the reception
and everyone else went by bus! The
reception was at Aunt Cis’s - she
had a shop in Brentwood about eight miles from Doddinghurst. She put on a good
spread for us, and someone kept on playing a Flanders and Allen record called
‘Elmer’s Song’.” And they say men aren’t good historians!
All Saints Church,
Doddinghurst
No comments:
Post a Comment