Category Archives: New Zealand

Tearle Family history from New Zealand

20Feb/16

The Empire Hotel, a Railway Story in Frankton, NZ

The Empire Hotel – A Railway Story

By Ewart Tearle Nov 2009

I lived for 6 weeks during the Christmas Holidays in the now-burned down Empire Hotel in Frankton, near Hamilton, New Zealand. I can’t remember how much it cost, but at the time, I was earning £5.0.0 a week working as a yardman for Caltex, the oil company, that had three tall storage tanks alongside the railway line. I have a vague idea that the hotel charged £1 a week and I kept my costs down by having only fruit for lunch, at about 1/-, and fish-and-chips at about 2/- for dinner, giving me a profit for the week of about £3. This was the most money I earned until I was a second-year teacher some five years later.

In the Caltex yard, there was one tank for diesel, one tank for regular petrol and one tank for super petrol. My job was to dip the tanks every two hours and let the office know the level. Every few days a tanker or two would be dropped off by the shunters on the siding adjacent to these storage tanks, their appearance triggered by the dips I had recorded. It is a peculiarity of railway stock that they look unhappy and bedraggled if they are sitting waiting, so while they were there, I would dip the tanks again and again until I knew that there was room in one of the tanks for the entire quantity of the fuel in at least one of the tankers waiting to be unloaded. Dipping was easy – I climbed the ladder attached to the outside of the 50-foot tank and looked at a small wooden stick poking above the curve of the tank top. There was enough room in the tank for the contents of at least three tankers, so it was hardly a difficult task. If the top of the rod was six inches or more higher than the hole into which it was fitted, then I could see the collar that stopped the rod from disappearing into the tank, so there was more fuel to be used before it was safe to add an entire tanker. If the collar was nestling into its socket, I would draw the eight-foot rod out of the tank and ensure the last bit of the bottom of the rod was dry. Now I could re-fill the tank. Each of the huge storage tanks had a long metal-reinforced hose attached to the bottom of the tank and the other end I unwound and attached to the tanker, turning on the tap at the same time to allow the fuel to flow. Between the hose and the tank inlet there was a tap that, when turned, automatically started an electric motor that forced the fuel from the tanker into the bottom of the tank. When it sucked air, it turned off. If the yardman got the dip wrong and started the upload, there was no way to stop it. Once the tank filled up, the rest of the fuel overflowed. Each tank sat in a high-walled hollow big enough to take its entire contents, to cope with just such an occurrence. I heard that one yardman had emptied the contents of the diesel tanker into the super petrol storage tank – and to compound things, it overflowed by several hundred gallons. That’s why I was the new yardman.

The hotel served only one meal, breakfast. It was interesting…. The cook was a great guy – huge, bald, loud, dressed in a white singlet, canvas trousers and black boots, sweating all the time. He had one of those distinctively rugged New Zealand names that I wished so badly my mother had called me – something like Bruce, or Jim, or Jack. Of course, the inmates of the hotel had lots of adjectives they went through before they got to his actual name, but they certainly seemed to like him. He cooked a wadge of bacon, and a bucket of sausages, in a yard-wide cast iron frying pan over a red-hot coal range, and threw sliced onions into a smaller frying pan alongside. The eggs he cooked by breaking them directly onto the fiercely hot range-top. The under-cook passed him tin plates hot from the oven and he slapped some bacon, a couple of sausages, onions and an egg on each plate and then whacked it down on the counter, swinging it along the shiny surface until the man at the head of the breakfast queue swept it up before it hit the floor. You could hear each man take the plate and swear at how hot it was as he carried it back to his table. They seemed to know a lot about the ancestry of the cook.

We all sat down within half an hour of 6am, or else we got no breakfast, sitting on assorted wooden chairs around equally mismatched round, square and oblong, bare wooden tables. A wooden floor of 12” oak planks spoke of the former grandeur of the hotel, but grimy windows and dark stains in the wood told even more about its fallen present. I suppose there were thirty of us. Wizened little men from the First World War dressed in cloth caps and harassed tweed jackets with woollen singlets exposed under threadbare blue-grey shirts sat in silence and shovelled the bacon and eggs from their tin plates into their thin, sometimes twisted mouths. They were tiny, like my grandmother, who fitted under my arm when I held it out horizontally. How on earth had they won a war? They looked straight ahead; old, tired and sick, their eyes full of nightmares. Railwaymen in dark overalls ate ravenously and drank their hot, sweet tea from squat china mugs they would thump onto the table between mouthfuls of bacon and sausages while they laughed, gossiped about each other and told filthy jokes. They were taller men, bigger, some with paunches that forced their belts to cut into their middle. They had one of the most dangerous jobs in New Zealand, because at shunting time, it was they who ran between moving railway rolling stock, coupling or decoupling on the run, jumping off and onto a step welded near the rear and front of all the wagons. They would stand beside the wagon to be attached and would wave the shunter forward until it clacked against the coupling unit. If the lock didn’t come down, these men would jump into the gap between the wagons and drop the lock, skipping backwards to clear the still-moving stock and jumping onto the step. The shunter was in a hurry – the engineer had to fend for himself. I saw the force that the shunter sometimes used when coupling, and it had torn the heavy cast iron fist of the coupling unit on the wagon into a grisly twisted hook. When a wagon was decoupled, the shunter gave it a thundering whack and the wagon, with all the other rolling stock in front of it, clattered coupling irons together and charged forward. The engineer on the ground raced along the track to push a lever so that the cortege of rolling stock was diverted to its resting place for the day. If he failed to reach the lever in time, the first wagon passed onto a portion of the track that was not intended for it, and the engineer could only stand in frustrated impotence while he waited for the stock to stop rolling, or crash into a terminal barrier, and the shunter driver yelled curses at him that would have split the heavens. That short train of stock moved very quickly and in total silence. In the fog that often afflicted Hamilton, and in the rush to get all the wagons in the right places for the day, a man could easily be in front of the onrushing freight and die without ever knowing what hit him. The men at breakfast were loud and violent-tongued in an effort to remove the thought that today’s fog might be the last thing they ever saw.

One or two men worked in local car garages and one I knew of worked in a metal scrap-yard, but most of these men were working on the railways.

My bedroom was on the second floor and overlooked the railway shunting yards at the back of the hotel. An iron-framed cot with a wire base slung like a hammock supported a kapok mattress, and a smelly, stained pillow which rested in the right-hand corner under the only window. A small, pale green four-drawer dresser left a narrow path to the bedside table with my shiny, chrome-plated alarm clock the only ornamentation. A rimu wardrobe filled the last cavity in the floor space on the left-hand side of the door and a 40-watt light bulb hung crookedly from the ceiling on fraying wires. I could see faint colours and shapes in the aged wallpaper that might have been tales of far-away lands, in ancient times, but nothing I could turn into any sort of sense. The “ablutions room” was at the end of the corridor when I turned left from my door, while the kitchen was to the right, and down two sets of creaking wooden stairs. There was no key for my bedroom, and I never had enough money to replace the awful pillow. I used my eiderdown on the wire base to put some body into the mattress.

Across the tracks, there were wooden cottages built for the working class, originally painted white, but when I was there they were down-at-heel with rusting corrugated iron roofs, unkempt lawns, cracked windows and un-sealed roads. In the summer they summoned dust devils and in the winter, they were awash with mud. This was the Frankton slum and it nursed a generation of screaming, much-abused, much-maligned young mothers with grubby, shabby kids. Work for post-war men was not always close to Frankton and these young women could find themselves without their men for long stretches, and most likely penniless until the men arrived back with whatever was left of their pay. The howling kids and their screaming mothers – even late into the night – was what I heard most from the other side of the tracks, through the window of my bedroom on the second floor of the Empire Hotel.

On the railway, the drivers and engineers yelled orders and banged trains together all night long, but no more energetically than at eight o’clock in the morning when everyone in Frankton had to cross the railway line to go to work in Hamilton. At that hour of the day there was always a train (or two – it was a dual line between the station and the shunting yards) across the only level crossing on the only road to Hamilton. Even in the sixties, the days of steam were behind us, and these trains in Frankton were all diesels. I stood once by the tracks in Rotorua watching the billowing white smoke and listened to the chuffing and animal breathing of the one steam loco I ever saw pulling a train from Rotorua over the Mamaku Ranges to Hamilton. When I was in high school, Aunty Grace had sent me back to Rotorua from the mining village of Pukemiro deep in the Mamakus on a steam train consisting of a couple of carriages immediately behind the engine and nearly a mile of freight and empty wagons behind. Fire and sparks leapt from the funnel and fell on the dry grass alongside the railway track, setting fires every few hundred yards. White smoke tinged with black shadows writhed from the engine, through the carriage and down the length of the train. The huge black engine in front of me seemed to be straining every muscle, breathing deeply and sighing heavily like the draft horses that pulled pine stumps from hedges on the farm my father worked when I was a pre-schooler. The smell of coal smoke, leather and old timber in the carriage was deeply impressionable. The sense of going on an adventure with a rumbling giant was palpable. There is no romance like that, in diesel.

“Dirty bloody things,” my mother said with considerable feeling. “You’d put a full wash of clean clothes on the line, and some smelly damned train would crawl past and leave clinkers all over the washing. At least diesels are clean.”

The hotel – more a boarding house, in the way it was run – was an elegant, three-storey wooden structure clad in weatherboard. It was quite a handsome, turn of the century building painted green and white with a large gold sign, outside staircases, steep roofs and an imposing turret. But it had seen its best days. The green was faded, the white was dirty and the sign was cracked and had bits missing. The stairs creaked, the roof leaked and the manager put his head to every door in the hotel to assure himself there were no girls in the hotel after nine PM. In fact, women were not allowed in the hotel in the day-time let alone stay overnight. Frankton was a down-at-heel railway town and the hotel had A Reputation; the manager was determined to stamp it out.

I suspect (as did the local press) that a disaffected Lothario burnt the hotel down when his girlfriend was discovered under his bed. The tragedy was that he killed six in the attempt to exact his revenge, and he will be in prison for some time.

07Feb/16
Rosemary Tearle and Nightingale - August 2009, Kaeo, Northland, NZ

Goodbye Rosemary Tearle, Auckland, NZ

Rosemary Tearle and Nightingale - August 2009, Kaeo, Northland, NZ

Rosemary Tearle and Nightingale – August 2009, Kaeo, Northland, NZ

31/05/2011

Hello Ewart, it is with great sadness that I write on behalf of Michael to let you know that Rosemary died very suddenly on Sunday morning. She died in her sleep and it has been very shocking for Michael and her family. Her funeral will be this Friday. Jacqui and John are coming to Kaeo to be with their father.

Michael would be grateful if you could please let the Tearle group know of our sad loss.

Kind regards, Barbara (Rosemary’s sister).

Dear Richard

It is with the greatest sadness that I have to inform you of the death of our beloved Rosemary on Sunday morning, 29 May 2011. Her sister Barbara tells me that she died suddenly in her sleep at her home in Kaeo, Northland, New Zealand and she asked me to convey this news to you and the Tearle group.

We will all miss Rosemary’s unbounded enthusiasm for our work, her razor-sharp intellect and her incredible persistence to find the stories of members of the Tearle family. For me, her most memorable accomplishment was to find the details of the life and times of Rowland Grigg Tearle, his mother Elizabeth and the follow-up story of their lives in India. Through her efforts and determination, Rowland has been given a lasting memorial. Rosemary was also the one who figured out the relationship between the George Tearle and the Elizabeth Tearle who had married in Michael’s tree, and as a result of her work, we were able to place Elizabeth within her family, as one of George’s cousins. She also researched and wrote up the lovely story of Lionel Victor and the Lowestoft Tearles and their remarkable meeting with Arnold, the Liverpool Tearle.

Elaine and I first met Rosemary in the early nineties when researching a Tearle family in Auckland, to find that Rosemary’s Michael Tearle of Avondale was not the Mike Tearle of Avondale whom we had gone to see. She was a lady of wit and charm and we instantly liked her and her family. We also found we had similar experiences in NZ. Rosemary and Michael had been herd testing (testing cows for pregnancy after AI) in the Otorohanga area and had even got married in the Otorohanga Church. Elaine and I had lived and worked in the Waitomo/King Country since 1977 and we were very familiar with all the places that Michael and Rosemary had been. As rural folk ourselves, we knew exactly how they had lived and we had lots of laughs over stories of farming life and farming families. We were looking forward to seeing her on our trip to NZ in August.

She was an endlessly kind lady, a generous, wholehearted person, and a devoted wife and mother. She has been our friend and our compatriot for the past 15 years. Elaine and I will miss her very much and we extend to Michael, Matthew and Jaqui our very deepest sympathies in their hour of sorrow.

Ewart and Elaine Tearle

From Teresa, Brisbane:

Ewart, thank you for passing on this most sad news. My sincere condolences to her loved ones, she will certainly be missed.
Regards
Teresa

From Pat Field:

This is indeed a great sadness and shock.

I personally will miss Rosemary and her amazing knowledge of Family history in particular our Tearle family. She has become a friend over the past few years and it was lovely meeting Michael’s two sisters at our last Meet. Our big tree would be much smaller and less interesting without her huge influence.

My love and sincere condolences go to Michael and the family at this time of great sorrow.

Pat Field

From Richard Tearle, leader of the Tearle Yahoo Group

Ewart – this is just so devastating and I am shocked and stunned. Rosemary was one of our first members, as I recall, and through the time she has provided us with not only information, but theories, useful contacts and tremendous results from her own endeavours. She was ever helpful to our members, new or old, and would willingly take on a project that was to the common cause rather than her own, personal interest in the Tearle family.

Our group will be a sadder place without her, but for those who have met her or, like myself, have corresponded with her over the years then our whole world will be very much emptier.

I heartily applaud – and thank you for it – your decision to devote a page on your site to her memory: hopefully future members and visitors will be able to recognise the enormous contribution Rosemary made to our researches as well as our lives.

From Wendy and Tony Skelley

Richard

I would also like to acknowledge Rosemary and her dedication to this family research. We had many email conversations, and I was looking forward to meeting her one day here in New Zealand.

Rosemary was very inspiring and her memory will live on.

Regards to everyone that knew her.

Wendy & Tony Skelley in NZ

From Ewart and Elaine:

Richard

We have spent the afternoon with Ray and Denice Reese and we drove to see Tebworth, the home village of Denice’s grandfather, James Henry Tearle 1884, and to call in his at home parish church, All Saints Chalgrave. While we were there, we took the opportunity to ask Ray, who is a Salvation Army chaplain, to say a few words for Rosemary.

It was a lovely little ceremony, and would have touched the deeply Christian side of Rosemary’s character.

God speed, Rosemary; we will miss you.

Ewart and Elaine

From Pam:

Dear Ewart

Words cannot express how shocked and saddened I am by this news. I had an e-mail from Rosemary just three weeks ago saying that they were OK and still self sufficient on the farm.

I was fortunate to meet Rosemary in the days when she came to Auckland regularly to see her mother. She would pop in to see me and we had lunch together on several occasions.

A lovely lady who will be sorely missed by her family and all those who knew her.

God speed Rosemary, I will definitely miss you greatly.

kind regards to all

Pam.

Auckland NZ.

From Wendy Skelley:

Two weeks ago I sent to Rosemary my first draft of Aubrey’s Boys, and she was very excited about it, she even mentioned she got goosebumps when reading some parts. Her enthusiasm was amazing and I am so glad that she got to read it, we had often talked about the coincidences and I will miss her interest.

Ewart – when you come to New Zealand we shall certainly celebrate her remembrance.

Wendy

From Sue Albrecht:

A very sad day for the NZ nest of Tearles and indeed for the worldwide Tearle group. Odd how people one has never met, one has no physical mental picture, and who are not part of your day to day existence can become significant in one’s life. I have always thought of Rosemary as someone I met through a genealogy group but who became more than that – she led such a multifaceted life that it was not hard to find common ground with her in other areas as well. I saw a picture of her today for the first time ever on Ewart’s site, and it was a strange feeling, cos I’d only ever known the “essence” of Rosemary, not her physical being, and had warmed to it immensely. I just thought I would write my immediate thoughts down, because the same thoughts apply to you, Barbara and Ewart. I guess many others in the group would feel the same way. Sue Albrecht.

From Tracy Stanton:

Ewart,

I would like to pass on my condolences to Michael and the family. Rosemary liked to follow things through so thoroughly and her work helped fill gaps for many of the wider group. This work will carry on her memory and be a lasting legacy for Tearles still to come.

My thoughts are with you all.

Tracy Stanton

From Barbara Tearle

This must be a devastating time for Rosemary’s family and I join with everyone in the group in thinking of them and sending condolences.

It is also a sad loss to the Tearle group. Rosemary’s enthusiasm, persistence, research skills and lateral thinking contributed so much to unravelling the human stories behind the bare records of our Tearle family. As we got to know her, the world became smaller and we all became much closer. I loved hearing the odd snippets about the farm and could visualise her caring for the animals then turning to her computer for a change of scene.

She will be missed by so many people.

Barbara Tearle

Message from the group to Rosemary’s family:

Thu 2 Jun 2011

Dear Michael, John, Matt, Jacqui and Robyn,

First of all, may I offer condolences and sympathies from the entire Tearle Family Group following the passing of our dear friend Rosemary.

The sad news came as a complete shock to us all and our thoughts are first and foremost with you, the family, and I hope that knowing that Rosemary was much loved and respected will help give you strength through this tragically difficult time.

Many of our members have asked if they could pay their respects and it was decided that it might be better for me to write to you on behalf of everyone. Some personal tributes are already visible on Ewart’s Family site.

Rosemary was an inspiration to all of us in the field of family research and her tenacity and perseverence solved many a problem for us. But more than that, Rosemary’s commentaries on ‘life on the farm’ were joyful to read and her warmth and vivacity as a person shone through.

Be assured that our thoughts will be very much with you on Friday: Rosemary will be sorely missed by all of us.

Richard Tearle, Barbara Tearle, Ewart and Elaine Tearle, Pat Field, Pam Whiting, Susan Albrecht, Wendy Skelley, Tracy

Hello Ewart and members of the Tearle group,

This is Robyn, Rosemary’s eldest daughter and 2nd in line of 4 siblings. I am writing on behalf of Michael, her husband, my siblings, Rosemary’s 3 sisters, her mum, and 4 grandchildren.

I’m writing on behalf of the family to express our heartfelt thanks to the folks in your group who have written such loving comments about our mum. It has touched us deeply, and reinforces to us how loved our mum was. She threw herself into things boots and all with her enthusiasm and drive, leaving no stone unturned in her quest to get things done and discovered. She loved a challenge, whether it be the family history or building up her farm from a scrubby gorse ridden paddock. We are heartened that she had so many interests that really excited her – the Tearle Family Tree, being a huge one. Mum loved people and the interaction with people, and she loved the process of finding out about people and their history and how their lives connected and crossed paths. Being part of the Tearle Group was a huge source of enjoyment and provided huge satisfaction for mum on many levels. So thankyou all for being colleagues and friends to our mum. It has warmed us all to know she had so many friends.

Matthew the youngest sibling wrote this eulogy below for mum’s funeral, which was Friday (NZ time), and is happy for it to be included in this email of thanks. It sums up how we feel about mum.

Thanks again for being wonderful friends and colleagues to our mum.

With much love from the Tearle’s and extended family.

Rosemary’s eulogy – written and presented by Matthew Tearle

Strength and honour are her clothing; and she shall rejoice in time to come. She openeth her mouth with wisdom; and in her tongue is the law of kindness. She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness. Her children arise up, and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her.

“Who can find a virtuous woman?” the Book of Proverbs asks. Well, we did.

Mum, I feel that I should be able to say that when I heard the news, I collapsed in tears. But… I didn’t. Not because of lack of sorrow; not because of inner strength; just because it didn’t make sense. It was like being told that gravity didn’t work anymore or the sky was now orange. It’s incomprehensible. It’s not how the universe works. It’s not in the script.

So I didn’t really know what to do. At the time, I was building a chicken coop. So, not knowing what else to do, I kept building… which, I guess, is appropriate for a child of the virtuous women who eateth not the bread of idleness.

I think you’d like the chicken coop, mum. First, of course, it will house chickens. Second, I’m doing it myself, even though I really have no idea what I’m doing. And third, it’s going to be ridiculously overbuilt. That’s something I know I got from you. We all did – none of us can do anything in half measures. You never did. But I’m glad that at least now you can rest. I think you’ve earned it.

And I’m glad that, if it had to happen, at least you didn’t know it was coming – it might have caused you consternation. Not that you’d have feared death; you would have accepted it, clothed with strength and honour. But you would have worried about everyone else; you would have felt it was your responsibility to plan the funeral, stock the freezer, make arrangements for the livestock, pay the bills,… In other words, to looketh well to the ways of your household. To take care of everyone else before yourself. Well, not any more. Now you can rest and be at peace, and your children call you blessed.

20Mar/15

Helen Hinkley, 1865, London

6 July 2001

Mr Jim Spence

Christchurch

NEW ZEALAND

Dear Jim

I have brought to England all the material about the Orange family that you sent me. A few weeks ago, I was browsing through it all and I realised that I had heard of Southwark and couldn’t think why.  They ordained the latest Bishop of St Albans in Southwark Cathedral and while I was looking through your material I saw Helen Hinkley, 53 Union St, Southwark.  Within weeks, I was called to a job interview at Sainsbury’s 169 Union St, Southwark and I spent the day, either side of that interview, wandering around the area that Helen would have known so well.  In a week or so, I was appointed to a job with Sainsbury’s in Rennie St, just around the corner from Union St.  I sent the following to Mum:

I have landed a very nice job as a Technical Support Analyst on the Help Desk for Sainsbury’s head office in Rennie House, Rennie St, Southwark.  Pronounced SUTHic.  The place is often confused with Suffolk because lots of Brits can’t say the th in Suthic, so it comes out suffok anyway and people say to me, “Oh, you’re working in Suffolk – that’s a long way from St Albans ….”

Now, Mum.  Your grandmother, Elsie’s mum, Helen Orange, nee Hinkley (I’ll call her Helen Hinkley for the moment) was born in 1865 and lived at 53 Union St, Southwark.  When she left for NZ in 1883, she left from a very good place to leave. It’s easy to picture the Dickensian pea-soup smogs and imagine peering through slit eyes as you pick your way to work through the grubby brick buildings, skipping past horse droppings, breathing the foul and putrid air and listening for the trains hissing  and rattling noisily overhead, as they make their way to London Bridge or Blackfriars.

She was a nurse in London, did you know? I’d love to know if you ever met her – she died in 1928, and you would have been 7 at the time, and she divorced your grandfather in 1924, so it’s quite possible you never meet her.  However – back to Southwark.  I’ve taken to walking all around the Bankside area that Helen would have been familiar with and I have been looking for anything older than 1883, so that what I am looking at, she would have seen.  

Well, there is a lot.  Firstly, her house is still standing.  

53 Union St Middle house was Helen Hinkleys.

53 Union St – middle house was Helen Hinkley’s.

It’s just the shell and is being refurbished for business premises, but many of the houses around it are still in 1883 condition and you can easily get a sense of the dust, grime and poverty of the area.  It was primarily a warehouse district and many of the Victorian era buildings still standing, although converted to modern use mostly as offices, have retained the lifting gear attached to the outside walls.  

She would have been familiar with the Southwark Cathedral, which was called the Church of St Mary Overie when she lived there – it became a cathedral in 1910.  It’s only a few streets away, adjacent to London Bridge.

Southwark Cathedral

Southwark Cathedral

She would have been familiar with the stories of The Clink – the prison that gave all others the name.  It’s just a few streets away, even though it wasn’t an active prison when she lived there, the rubble from a huge fire in the area in 1814 was still there in 1883 and its underground vaults still exist, too. It was the prison for the Duke of Winchester in Winchester Palace and it started life in the 1300’s.  A really horrible place.  

Entrance to the Clink.

Entrance to the Clink.

Southwark has been home to prostitution and crime since Saxon times.  The Duke of Winchester “regulated” the brothels and owned a large section of Bankside since King Steven gave it all to him in the 1130’s. The Clink was his private prison and he held life and death over its inmates until the prison was destroyed in 1780.

Prisoner in the overhead cage outside the Clink.

Prisoner in overhead cage outside the Clink.

There is a little bit of Winchester Palace still standing – a wall and a large rose window – and under that is the Clink. In Clink St, of course.  The palace itself, in its heyday, was inside a fully-walled area of about 200 acres; all that’s left today is that bit of wall with the window, and the remnant of the Clink.

Winchester Palace, the last fragment.

Winchester Palace, the last fragment.

She would also have been familiar with St Paul’s Cathedral towering over the Thames on the other side of the river, and all the other works of Sir Christopher Wren in the area built in the late 1600’s, early 1700’s.  

St Pauls Cathedral.

St Pauls Cathedral

His chief mason, by the way, was a man called Edward Strong who was a citizen of St Albans and is buried here in St Peters Church. The Blackfriars bridge Helen crossed to get to The City from Bankside is the same one I cross to get to work, because it was built in the 1760’s; by an engineer called Rennie, incidentally.  She would have been familiar with the Blackfriars rail bridge, too, that crosses the Thames and swings through Southwark on a big brick viaduct.  I suspect that then the arches would have been open, but today they are bricked up for lockups – and there is a very large amount of space to be let under the arches of a rail bridge.

Ivor Adams, my cousin on my grandmother Sadie Tearle’s side, who has worked in The City most of his life, said that Bankside was the haunt of the Teddy Boys in the 1920’s and 1930’s and even today, in spite of all the upgrading that has been done there, areas just to the south, like Peckham, and Elephant & Castle, are still poverty-stricken and crime-ridden.  If you stay close to the river, you’re ok. It’s very nice.  I walked 7 minutes from work down The Thames Walk to the Tate Modern, a coal-fired electricity station that has been converted into the largest indoor space I have ever seen.

Tate Modern.

Tate Modern.

And they use all this space for an art museum. Free admission, too.  I could only spend 10 minutes there but the building outside is massive in brick, dominated by a tall red-brick chimney that has been a feature of the Bankside skyline for nearly a century.  Inside, it is light and airy and there are overhead cranes quietly tucked away waiting to move large and heavy exhibits.

I have attached photos of the landmarks in the Bankside area that Helen would have seen.  

I have also found Glen Parva, Blaby, Leicester, where Albert Edward Orange (1865-1942) came from.  It was a Roman settlement and nestles in a crook of the A426 and the Leicester Ring-road. There is a Great Glen in the area as well as Peating Parva, Ashby Parva and Wigston Parva.  Elaine’s cousin, Jack Dalgleish, lives in Leicester and we have been to see his family several times.  Would you like some photos of 1870’s Glen Parva? Next time we go to Leicester we’ll stop and have a look to see what is left.  Do you have a street name?  That would be a real help.

Kindest regards

Ewart Tearle