#100daysofbfotc Day 33: Bideford Bridge

Sep10 by thehistoryinterpreter

In Chapter 2 of Barefoot on the Cobbles we cross Bideford Bridge with Polly, as she goes to begin a new life on the eastern side of the River Torridge. In 1280, the ford that is thought to give Bideford (By the ford) its name was replaced with a wooden bridge, to enable pack-horses to cross the river. At 677 feet, it is thought to be one of the longest medieval bridges. The twenty four arches are of uneven width and there are several theories as to why this came about. It may be that each arch was funded by a different gild and the disparity in their donations meant the arches were not a uniform size. Alternatively, it could be because the available oak beams were of different sizes, or that the piers were placed on firmer ground and the stony outcrops were not evenly spaced. There is also a legend that the piers were set on bales of wool, a symbol of the town’s wealth.

The original wooden bridge was subsequently encased in stone. The bridge was widened in the 1790s and again in 1865, twenty six years before Polly makes her crossing. It was to be further widened in 1925. There were attempts to run a permanent railway track across the bridge but the only time a train crossed the bridge was during the First World War, when temporary tracks were laid. In 1968, a section of the bridge collapsed and one of Barefoot’s characters, Leonard, was to man the safety boat whilst reconstruction took place.

‘Unusually, there was not a gasp of a breeze coming from the river as Polly turned to walk across Bideford bridge, narrowly avoiding the brewer’s dray that was heavily laden with barrels for the inns on the quay.’

Barefoot on the Cobbles will be published on 17 November 2018. More information about the novel can be found here. Copies will be available at various events in the weeks following the launch or can be pre-ordered from Blue Poppy Publishing or the author.

#100daysofbfotc Day 32 Ada Wakely

Sep9 by thehistoryinterpreter

Ada Wakely grew up in the fishing hamlet of Peppercombe, the fourth of five sisters. She appears in Barefoot on the Cobbles as an acolyte to her elder sister, Polly. It is Ada who travels to Bideford to attend Polly’s wedding and Ada who is in Clovelly to assist when her sister gives birth to her firstborn.

One of Ada’s personal tragedies is alluded to chapter 4 of the novel. After marrying a cousin of Polly’s husband Albert, Ada settled in Bucks Mills as a fisherman’s wife. Her son was born after seven years of marriage. Sadly, he was severely disabled and died at the age of twelve. This was not to be the only misfortune in Ada’s life but you will have to wait for the post about her husband, George, to learn more. Ada herself lived to the age of 105, dying in 1981.

‘Ada arrived from Peppercombe on the Friday bringing family news.

‘Ma sends her love,’ she said. ‘She wishes you well, ’tis in part the journey, you know she’s never liked the town. ’Tisn’t that ma hasn’t taken to Albert so much but he is from Bucks and that’s hard for her to swallow. She wants us all to settle down in Peppercombe and not go no further.’

‘And shall you?’ asked Polly.

Ada reddened.

‘Well,’ she said hesitantly, ‘who knows? Maybe I’ll be wed to a man from Bucks too one day.’ ’

#100daysofbfotc Day 31: Percy Cornelius

Sep8 by thehistoryinterpreter

Western Daily Mercury 20 January 1912

We only meet Percy Cornelius when the other characters, who share his Torquay household, mention him. You would be justified in asking why he appears in Barefoot on the Cobbles at all. He is included because his existence and his subservient attitude towards his wife, help to explain her attitudes and behaviour.

It appears that Percy lived in Torquay all his life. He was born in July 1881 and baptised at Upton parish church. Percy lived with his family in Market Street, Torquay and attended the local infants’ school. As a teenager, Percy, a butcher’s assistant, was summonsed for leaving a horse and trap unattended. The horse wandered off. The police had warned Percy about not securing his trap on previous occasions and he was fined ten shillings, or seven days’ imprisonment.

In 1912, when he was working as a manager for Messers Nelson of 186 Sidwell Street, Exeter, he was fined again, this time for adulterating sausages with boric acid. This was used as a preservative but could have harmful effects. Its use was not banned but it should have been labelled. The sausages had actually been made in Bristol but Percy was fined £2 plus costs for allowing them to be sold. This incident was referred to in an early draft of chapter 11 but suffered under the delete button’s mighty power.

Percy married in 1913 and he and his wife had two further children after Kathleen, who is mentioned in the novel. By the outbreak of the Second World War, Percy was a bus cleaner living in Chatto Road, Torquay. He died in 1967.

‘I don’t suppose it affected you in the countryside but we’ve had trouble obtaining foodstuffs here. Of course, there’s never a problem with meat, Mr Cornelius being a butcher but we’d like to have a few more vegetables for the table.’

#100daysofbfotc Day 30: Mr Tuke

Sep7 by thehistoryinterpreter

At the time of Barefoot on the Cobbles, Harry Tuke was the head gardener at Clovelly Court. We meet him in the summer of 1909, when Daisy has just come to work for him as a live-out servant. I wanted to explain Daisy’s move to Torquay and her rather unusual role there as a gardener. To place her as the Tuke’s employee not only help to do this but also gave me the opportunity of making the Tuke’s son a love interest for Daisy.

A Yorkshireman by birth, Harry was in Clovelly in 1893, when he married Eliza Brenchley from Kent in Clovelly church. By this time, Harry was in his thirties and it seems likely that he had just taken up his post at the Court. The Tukes had just one son. As head gardener, Harry’s home was Gardener’s Cottage, close to the church, the Court and the gardens that he tended. He worked for the estate for over forty years, retired to rooms over the stables and died there in 1936. He was involved in the life of All Saints Church, being both a sidesman and a member of the Parochial Church Council.

Harry Tuke’s role as a senior servant to Mrs Hamlyn and his home, which was away from the cobbled street, set him apart from Clovelly’s fishermen. His family were consigned to an ambivalent social milieu, not quite a villager, yet lacking the status of the respectable middle-class.

‘Mr Tuke had noticed the allure that the garden held for Daisy and the thoughtful gentleman had begun to tell her more about the plants and how to tend them.’

#100daysofbfotc Day 29: Albert

Sep6 by thehistoryinterpreter

Albert allows us to view the events that occur in Barefoot on the Cobbles through masculine eyes. His reactions are very different to those of his wife, Polly. Throughout the book, the relationship between Albert and Polly develops and changes. We are introduced to Albert in the first chapter, when he is the shy young man, wondering how to approach the feisty girl from the neighbouring village. Albert’s tender relationship with his young adopted sister, Eadie, is an interesting insight into his character. He is a taciturn, hardworking fisherman, yet he has a tender side and we observe this in his interactions with his own children. It is largely through Albert that we understand the struggles of the Clovelly fishermen and the impact of a life that is circumscribed by the vagaries of the sea.

We follow Albert through the comparatively peaceful early years of his married life, then watch as tragedy touches the family. With Albert and Polly’s lives spiraling terrifyingly out of control, we find Albert desperately trying to understand his wife’s actions. As Albert strives to support Polly, we empathise with him in his impotence.

Born in Bucks Mills into a fishing family, Albert spent his married life in Clovelly. He lived until the age of ninety four and continued fishing until just a few years before his death.

‘In the bay, the herring were running and Albert and Bertie were making the most of the season, silver darlings shimmering in their nets. They would fling open the cottage door at the end of each day, bringing in the scent of the cold sea, fish scales sticking to their oiled-wool jumpers and to the backs of their scarred hands.’

#100daysofbfotc Day 28: Joe Prance

Sep5 by thehistoryinterpreter

North Devon Gazette 22 December 1896

Joe Prance appears in Chapter 2 of Barefoot on the Cobbles, when the action moves from the rural tranquillity of the North Devon coastline to the bustling town of Bideford. He was primarily a fishmonger and game dealer, with a shop at 26 Mill Street but he also sold dried goods. He had been born in 1834 in the fishing hamlet of Peppercombe, where his father was a fisherman. He was involved in a childhood accident, which left him with one leg longer than the other. Perhaps surprisingly, in an era before compulsory schooling, he received a good education. The 1861 census finds him lodging in Bideford in order to attend school. He returned to fish from Peppercombe and married a local girl, Susan Found; they had eight children, two sons and six daughters.

In the 1870s, the family moved to Bideford and initially the fishmongers was at 25 Mill Street. It appears that at some point during the next decade, the business absorbed the greengrocer’s at 26. In old age, Joseph and his wife lived at Lower Meddon Street with their married daughter. Joseph died in 1912.

‘Uncle Prance was at the counter arranging the dried goods to his satisfaction and awaiting the delivery of crabs, lobsters, and shimmering bass to lay temptingly in the window.’

#100daysofbfotc Day 26: Edward Collins

Sep3 by thehistoryinterpreter

Without Edward Collins’ actions Barefoot on the Cobbles would not have been written. He embodies human frailty, as do we all. His complexities are hinted at in the very brief glimpses of him that have been found in the records. He was key to my story, yet, of the main characters, he was the one about whom I could find least. As I sought to uncover a sympathetic, yet believable, motivation for his somewhat strange behaviour, a three-dimensional individual began to emerge; one who had experienced his own trauma and tragedy. Mainly due to his common surname, I was unable to contact any family members. Should they read the novel, I do hope that they feel the conclusions I have drawn from the meagre facts are not illogical. Despite the appalling, albeit largely unintentional, ramifications of his actions, I wanted the reader to be able to empathise with Edward Collins, who was, in his own way, a victim. I hope I have succeeded.

We meet Edward Collins in Clovelly, where he is staying for the benefit of his health. From the outset he is an enigma. He and his wife can clearly afford expensive hotels, what then are they doing in a small guest house on the North Devon coast? He is comfortably off, a professional, a university man. How will he interact with Clovelly’s down-to-earth fishermen?

Thornfalcon Church

Edward Laurence Collins was born on 1 May 1880 in Liverpool. He gained an MA from Cambridge University and became a consulting engineer. Although I have been unable to positively identify a role for him during the First World War, I think that it is likely that he saw action in some capacity. He married Amelia Martha Hutson in 1915. It seems unlikely that the couple had any children. It also appears that his two sisters died unmarried, hence the lack of living relatives. The Collins remained in Clovelly for some time after the events described in the novel. Edward then travelled widely, probably in the course of his work, going to Gibraltar in 1926 and Chile in 1936. He had plans to live in the Channel Islands but I have no firm evidence that he did so. Edward Collins died on 17 January 1953 in Somerset and is buried in Thornfalcon Church.

‘Clovelly slept. There were no sounds from the cobbled street but the night and its attendant horrors, closed in on Edward Collins. Even eighteen months spent embraced in the village’s serenity had not banished the terrors that darkness could bring. He awoke from the recurring nightmare, shaking and sweating. Curled in a foetal position, clasping his knees, he silently sobbed.’

Barefoot on the Cobbles will be published on 17 November 2018. More information about the novel can be found here. Copies will be available at various events in the weeks following the launch or can be pre-ordered from Blue Poppy Publishing or the author.

#100daysofbfotc Day 25: ‘Johnnie Adelaide’

Sep2 by thehistoryinterpreter

The home of ‘Johnnie Adelaide’ (right hand cottage)

‘Johnnie Adelaide’ is so called to distinguish him from another John, who lived at the other end of Bucks Mills village. Both men had their wife’s christian name appended to their own, becoming ‘Johnnie Adelaide’ and ‘Johnnie Lydia’. ‘Johnnie Adelaide’ is mentioned just once, in the first chapter of Barefoot on the Cobbles, along with two of his daughters Norah and Gertie. As inhabitants of 4 Forest Gardens, ‘Johnnie Adelaide’ and his family were Mary and William’s neighbours. John’s wife, Adelaide, had lived in the cottage with her widowed mother, Mrs Dunn and continued to bring up her family there. 4 Forest Gardens eventually passed to ‘Johnnie Adelaide’’s daughter, Louisa.

Like most of the men in Bucks Mills, ‘Johnnie Adelaide’ spent his working life at sea, combining fishing with engagement in the merchant service. He had been born in the village in 1847. At the age of thirty three he married Adelaide Dunn and they had four daughters and a son.

‘Firmly and before she could be gainsaid, Mary answered, ‘She be staying put. There’s too many of them down at Ivy. I could do with some help in the house now me arthritics be so bad and she will walk up to school with Johnny Adelaide’s girls. Norah’s about her age and Gertie can keep an eye on them both on the way. She won’t be no trouble.’ ’

#100daysofbfotc Day 24: Bucks Mills, The Coffin Arms

Sep1 by thehistoryinterpreter

Coffin Arms 1928 By the time that it is mentioned, in the first chapter of Barefoot on the Cobbles, it has been twenty years since the Coffin Arms closed its doors. Its unusual name comes from the local landowners, the Pine-Coffin family. The Coffin Arms served the fishing village of Bucks Mills as an ale house for fifty years before the licence was transferred to the Coach and Horses at Horns Cross. Bucks Mills has been a dry village since that time. It is likely that it provided off sales rather than being an inn.

The cottage formed part of the Pine-Coffin estate and was almost certainly built, along with most of the other dwellings on that side of the Bucks Mills road, in the 1810s. The earliest known tenants were the Bale family. During the 1840s the Coffin Arms was taken over by Samuel Harris, who combined beer selling with lime burning. Thomas and Thirza Webb were in residence in the 1860s, until Thomas transferred the licence to his brother-in-law, Joseph Dark.

Once the Coffin Arms became a private residence, it was the home of the Steer family for fifty years. Jane Steer took four orphaned nieces and nephews into her home. This brought the total number of inhabitants in 1871 to fourteen.

In the 1920s, with new owners, the name was changed to Woodlands. The house has lain semi-derelict for decades. More information about Bucks Mills can be found here.

‘He had signed the pledge at a young age of course but did not find abstinence irksome. Since the Coffin Arms closed to customers decades ago, there was no ale-house in Bucks Mills, so alcohol was not a temptation.’

#100daysofbfotc Day 23: Dr Crew

Aug31 by thehistoryinterpreter

Unattributed newspaper cutting

Much of the incidental information about Dr Crew, that appears in Barefoot on the Cobbles, is based on fact. He really was the local scout master and he was indeed fascinated by chicken genetics. He breezes into the lives of the novel’s main characters when they are in crisis and there is only scope to portray the brief essence of a fascinating man, who spent just a short time in Devon.

Dr Francis Albert Eley Crew was born in 1886 in Tipton, Staffordshire, the son of a grocer. Frank was the only surviving child of five siblings. He was educated at King Edward VI School in Edgbaston and his interest in breeding and showing poultry began at an early age. His father changed careers and became the manager of a brick works; the family lived in Stourbridge at this time.

Frank went to Edinburgh University to study medicine, graduating in 1912. He married fellow student, Helen Campbell Dykes and together they set up a practice in Hartland and Clovelly. Quite what the inhabitants of rural North Devon felt about the ministrations of a female doctor is unrecorded.

A keen member of the territorial army, Dr Crew also ran the local scout troop. This allowed me to make a brief reference to a recently founded, yet significant, institution, which helped to evoke an essence of the era. The Bank Holiday camp in East Devon, to which Dr Crew alludes, is reported in the local press. Dr Crew was also an honorary member of the Mariners’ Union, along with Mr Caird, Clovelly Estate’s Land Agent. When the First World War broke out, Frank was attached to the 6th Battalion of the Devonshire Regiment. He gained the rank of major, serving with the Royal Army Medical Corps in France and India. The Crews had two children.

Dr Crew did not return to Devon after the war; instead, he went back to teach at Edinburgh University, becoming a leading authority on animal genetics, particularly chickens. During the Second World War he was in charge of the military hospital at Edinburgh Castle and was inspired by the many Polish prisoners of war to set up a Polish School of Medicine in Edinburgh. He gained the rank of brigadier and became the director of Medical Research at the War Office. After the war, he abandoned genetics in favour of concentrating on the development of nursing training. He made several overseas trips in connection with the World Health Organisation, including visits to Egypt, Canada and India. He worked for several years in Burma and India before retiring to Sussex.

In 1972, the year before his death, Frank remarried to Margaret Ogilvie Withof-Keus, with whom he had worked in the Army Medical Corps. More information about Dr Crews can be found here.

‘The doctor looked at Bertie appraisingly.

‘Hello young man,’ he said. ‘You look just the age for my Scout Patrol. Have you heard of the Boy Scouts? I am sure you would enjoy the jolly times we have. We are off to camp in a week or two. What do you think of that?’ ’

The History Interpreter – Janet Few

Presenting and Preserving the Past

Tag Archives: Historical Fiction