Jean Green (1947-   )

My Tewkesbury Connections

Jean Green now lives in Leckhampton but she was born Jean Davenport in Red Lane, Tewkesbury. Until marriage in 1973 she worked at the Coal Research Establishment at Stoke Orchard. After marrying her husband, David, she moved away but has always maintained family links here. This has inspired her to use her own collection of family photographs to research her family connections with Tewkesbury.

Jean Davenport

I was born in 1947, and when I was young we lived in Avon Cottage, Red Lane, off the High Street, in a one-up and one-down house. There was a yard at the front which contained a laundry area with a boiler and an outside toilet. The house was rented from Nellie Jones who ran a shop at 89 High Street.^[1] I played with the children at Tudor House Hotel, which I believe at that time belonged to the Bigland family.^[2] I also played with Robert Knowles who lived at a house on the corner of Red Lane and the High Street .

We had an allotment and to reach it we would walk along ‘Gas Alley’ and under a railway bridge at the end of Cotteswold Road. When the old steam train thundered above your head it was quite frightening. We would walk along the footpath to the south of Carrant Brook if it was fine but if it was flooded we walked along ‘Piggy Lane’, now known as Station Lane. 

 

My mother Florence was friendly with Charles and May Fries, the Tenants of the George Hotel which was adjacent to our house. I could often be found attempting to play the piano in the bar with a bottle of ‘Club Orange’ to drink. Sadly, May passed away in 1961.

There was an old carcass of a boat at the bottom of the lane and we children would pretend that we were going to sea in it. If we were lucky we would be given old shuttlecocks that were past their sell-by date from the old drill hall nearby.

My paternal grandmother, Ellen Davenport, then lived in 6 Chance Street with her husband Edward. They left Coventry during the bombing in 1940 and stayed in Tewkesbury.

 

The Birch Family

My mother was the daughter of Frank and Florence Birch. Frank and Florence had seven children between 1910 and 1933; my mother, born in 1922, was the fifth child

Frank had been born in 1883 the son of Mr. and Mrs. John Birch and was educated at Holy Trinity Schools.³ He volunteered on 30 October 1914 and was allocated to the ‘New Army’ 9th Gloucesters. He was awarded the 1914-1915 Star because his battalion landed in France on 21 September 1915 where he would have been involved on the Western Front. However, in November his battalion was transferred to the Salonika Front in Greece. They were fighting the Bulgarians but the main enemies were mosquitoes and malaria.  Perhaps because of this, he was invalided out on 20 November 1917 because of ‘sickness’. He subsequently worked as an artist for Messrs. Walkers & Sons, the fairground ride makers, but it closed down in c1924.⁴ He was later the sub-postmaster at 75 High Street. The following photograph shows him outside the Blue Bird shop which housed the post office. 

The Blue Bird and post office was later run by my aunt Marjorie and I can remember visiting her shop for sweets. Known to her customers as Marge, she was always ready to have a chat. She was known to Bryan Linnell who wrote: “She was unusual in a perfectly normal way; her customers saw nothing odd in making the purchase of some small item or having a chat as she swept the front shop. Strangers might have found the time of 2.00am a bit unusual.”^[5] The property was once a public house called the Seven Stars.

The last Birch family house was at 73 High Street to the left of Well Alley. In the background  of photograph 3 is the ‘flying freehold’^[6] of a demolished property.

 

The Chandler Family

My Aunt Marjorie married George Chandler in 1985 and they lived at 74 High Street. George had come to Tewkesbury in 1946 to join his parents Harold and Elsie Chandler, who had also come to Tewkesbury from Croydon to escape the bombing there. They lived in Jessop House in Church Street and Back of Mount Pleasant.

In later years George and Marjorie renovated the former Blue Bird shop and also the property  next door. The properties needed a lot of renovation work. During the renovations they found an old shoe and two merchant’s books which appear to date from the seventeenth century.

The Crouch Family

My uncle, John Birch married Betty Crouch in 1964. Betty’s father, Harold, was the second son of Charles Crouch, who owned the family bakers and confectioners at 35 High Street.^[7]

At the age of thirteen Harold left Trinity School to work in the shop. In 1916 he married Miss Marion Thomas and the same year he joined the Royal Irish Rifles. He was taken prisoner, and spent six months in a German hospital suffering effects of poison gas and a leg wound. Following his marriage, he joined the Congregational Church where he was a deacon and a Sunday School teacher. He served on the council for sixteen years and was mayor between 1945-46. He was a friend of my great-uncle, Walter Rice, whom I will mention later. During the floods of 1947 a ‘DUKW’^[8] carried loaves to the army camp at Ashchurch – apparently the Americans insisted on white loaves. Harold died in 1947, aged only 54, following an operation. 

The Davenports

My father Clifford Davenport came to Tewkesbury with his parents when they left Coventry in the Blitz. His father Edward Davenport was born in Erdington the son of a corn merchant, maltster and tin-ware manufacturer. Edward served in the South African war as a Lieutenant in the Royal Engineers. In the 1914-18 war he was in command of a field corps, retiring in 1920 with the rank of Major. In World War II he was Inspector of Tanks at Gloucester Wagon Works.

The family connection with Tewkesbury, however, comes via Edward’s wife, Ellen Rice, who was the eldest of six children of John William and Fanny Rice (née  Parker), who for many years lived at 6 Spring Gardens with their growing family. 

The Rice Family

John worked for Bayliss and Merrell, brewers and wine and spirit merchants, at their premises at the rear of the Black Bear Inn on what is now the beer-garden. The family worshipped at the Congregational Church in Barton Street where Ellen was a Sunday school teacher.

In 1911, however, a very sad event happened.  Walter, Ellen’s young brother aged 19 at the time and an apprentice at the Tewkesbury Register newspaper offices, drowned at Stanchard Pit. The report in the Register dated Saturday 12 August states that he was bathing with friends William Snelgrove, James Beesley and Fred Havard. He swam across the river but when returning to his friends about four yards from the bank he became exhausted and sank in about 15 feet of water. His friends and others made frantic efforts to reach him but it was not until Tom Williams dived into the water from a boat that he was brought to the surface. Dr. Devereux and the police made every effort but were unable to revive him. An active worker with the Congregational Church and Sunday School teacher, Walter was described as an intelligent, steady and upright young man who would be sadly missed.

At his funeral one of the coffin bearers was Harold Crouch, and he is buried with his parents at Tewkesbury cemetery.

I have fond memories of growing up in Tewkesbury; the following photograph shows me (sitting at the left of the table) enjoying a party to commemorate the 1953 Coronation at the home of the Nash family in the High Street.

I attended Trinity Infants School, and the Church of England Junior School in Oldbury Road. From these schools, I remember Miss Merrell, Miss Stevens, Mrs. Mew and Mr. Robinson, the headmaster of the Church of England Juniors from 1941. 

I then went on to Tewkesbury High School when Miss Craighead was the headmistress. Other teachers I can remember are Mrs. Jenisch,^[10] Miss Baker, Miss Bowen, Mrs. Curnock, Miss Arscott, Mr. Purvis, Miss Rowe, Mr. Lord and Miss Dann. 

 

From the High School we would go to Tewkesbury Abbey for School Commemoration Day where we would have a service, during which we would visit the tomb of the founder of the school, Archdeacon Hemming Robeson.   Tewkesbury Abbey has played so many parts in my life. I was married there as were my mother and father, and some of mum’s siblings. Also sadly there have been many family funerals. Originally we worshipped at the Priors Park Mission Hall^[11] and my father was a Steward at the Abbey when Her Majesty the Queen visited to distribute the Maundy Money in April 1971. There is nowhere else quite like the Abbey.

Other youthful memories were visiting Blundell’s Milk Bar on the High Street and the Ivy Leaf Café in Barton Street. I rode in a Dowty ‘Turbocraft’ boat on the River Avon, and walked on the river when it was frozen during the winter of 1963. 

I am still exploring my past! My mother met my father as a result of the bombing in Coventry which brought Ellen and the family back to Tewkesbury, but I do not know how Edward Davenport met Ellen Rice. But as I look further into my family history perhaps I will find out?

 

References

1. Nellie Jones was famous for making shop-made ice-cream. For more information, see J. Dixon & T. Clempson, Doddo Defiled (THS Publication No.2, 2003) pp47-48.
2. From c1939 to 1953 according to the Woodard Database.
3. His father was a tin-worker born in Blakeney. Frank died at Tewkesbury Hospital aged 62;  he was buried 13 October 1945, ref: 7865 [Burial Register of Tewkesbury Borough Council, Transcribed by Mike English in 2002-3].
4. Research by Editor.
5. Brian Linnell, Tewkesbury Gossip (1978, Theot Press).
6. ‘Flying freehold’ is an English legal term to describe a freehold which overhangs or underlies another freehold. Common cases include a room situated above a shared passageway in a semi-detached house, or a balcony which extends over a neighbouring property [Editor].
7. In 2016, 35 High Street is the St. Richard’s Hospice Charity Shop and the alley to the left is Machine Court.
8. The DUKW (colloquially known as a Duck) was a six-wheel-drive amphibious truck used by the US military in World War II and operated from Ashchurch Camp.
9. Thomas Rice was ordained a Wesleyan Methodist minister in 1919 whilst living at Albion, Michigan, USA.
10. In 2016 Mrs. Jenisch is an officer of the Civic Society.
11. This church was set up by the Abbey on the new housing estate.