This document also from Mark refers to the same family as Marion's document. It gives a rather different view of 'Mother' The father is Identified as 'Thomas Atlay'
Written testimony form Nancy Green (nee Atlay)
Over a year ago a niece of mine made a request of me which sadly I have
been postponing from month to month after an illness which has put a break
on my mental ability but at last I make an attempt to comply with her request.
He is interested in my mother’s family life and I am now the only
one now alive who knew and talked to her and can fill in tracing her descent
from the famous clergy man, John Wycliffe, who translated the Bible into
English.
I know there was a family bible showing this, but what happened to it I
do not know, but was told the descent was mainly on the female side.
I must make it clear that I was my mother’s fifth and last child
and she was forty-two when I was born. I am now eighty-eight and
this information depends mostly on casual chit-chat between mother and
child and must be treated as such.
The family lived and her father taught in Headlam hall, a beautiful and
spacious house set, with a couple of farms, on rising ground in the scenic
county of Durham. The house was called a ‘school for the sons
of gentlemen’. It was owned and run by her proud grandfather,
Rev. John Chapman.
I hate to state this but I recall my great grandfather being described
as ‘ a pig-headed old man’. However, it seems in keeping
for he became involved in a lawsuit against the Duke of Cleveland over
a right of way which was not terribly important and suffered great financial
loss which led to his losing his home and livelihood and my grandfather
his inheritance.
In the small town of Gainford, nearby, lived a great aunt in a pleasant
house, keeping two maids and a coachman who drove the family coach with
a family crest on the door (I have never seen a replica of this).
Being without children of her own, she unofficially adopted three of her
nephew’s children in turn. She did not like girls so two boys
went in turn to live with her, but she was so strict that each reused to
stay. Eventually mother, a little girl of four, was made to stay
and, I believe, lived with her until she died. The brothers in turn ‘went
to sea, settled in Australia and were little heard of again.
Apparently my mother was somewhat unhappy with someone who did not understand
children, but she was cared for, clothes and privately educated but she
told me that she did not mind not being left anything in her will but was
hurt that she was not even mentioned.
Another thing she said was that her aunt’s ambition for her was to
marry her to a curate and a number of them appeared from time to time. Mother
objected to this and took a dislike to them and whenever she could she
avoided the meeting by hiding in the loft over the coachhouse and emerged
when they had gone.
She was privately educated including pianoforte, singing oil painting and
other lady-like skills and I was told that when she was young she had a
really beautiful singing voice.
Later in life she was sent to boarding school at £90 a year (a mammoth
sum at that time) somewhere in Border Country where she loved the life
and was very happy and adored Scotland and everything Scottish and passed
that love to her children.
One tale she told me was that when a girl had a birthday she could choose
what lunch could be and one girl chose tripe which mother hated, so she
wrapped it up in a handkerchief, put it inside her blouse and got rid of
it in the toilet.
Another was that she had an umbrella which for some reason she hated and
so she deliberately left it in the train when going home for the holidays
and was annoyed when it was unfortunately returned.
The girls were only allowed to speak French at mealtime and mum said it
was sometimes the strangest French imaginable.
However, mum was the one to run to by her children in later life for help
with French homework.
The girls work samplers embroidered on canvas which were popular in those
days. I saw one she had done when I was small.
We were quite proud of a large picture painted in oils of a proud stag
with huge antlers on a cliff top, which hang in a gilt frame on our sitting
room wall.
When I was a small girl she had a dressmaker make me a coat and bonnet
in deep purple tweed for which Mother made a collar and turn back for the
bonnet in heavy white satin, beautifully pen-printed with purple pansies. I
was so proud of it but the trouble was it could not be washed or cleaned
so it had to be kept for special occasions, mostly for church going and
with my naturally wavy hair, of which she was very proud, was brushed out
round my shoulders I felt very smart indeed. There was never another
one!
She was a good pastry-maker as, though, although her great aunt kept maids
she thought no-one could make it as light as she could herself and Mum
learnt from her.
She was busy on a Saturday afternoon when she made lovely scones quite
different from any I have seen since – quite large and made with
yeast. They were about 9” across and maybe 5-6” thick,
split through the middle and buttered hot. On Sunday they were turned
on their side, sliced and buttered cold.
There must have been little affection between her great aunt and her though
Mum said that she was hurt not that she did not leave her money, but that
she was not even mentioned in her will. Mother was not trained for
anything and had to fend for herself. So she did the only thing open
to her and went as governess for children of a colonel and his wife until
they were of boarding school age.
How she met and married her husband, Thomas Atlay, I have no knowledge
but she married a schoolmaster of a very different standard from her own
family being the son of the village wheelwright. He worked in a school
which consisted of a large room heated by one large stove, possibly in
Hull, where around 90 poor children (sometimes without shoes) congregated. They
were divided into groups and taught by pupil teachers instructed by the
head.
Later they moved to a small school at Sunk Island with a house at the side
where the only water supply was a tank to catch rain water on the roof
where once a dead cat was found and where the great water estuary, the
Humber, spread a moaning sound at certain stages of the tide.
Later they moved to the pleasant village of Keyingham and liked it. However
Dad always had a yen to learn new things and Mother taught him to play
the pip-organ. This led to Dad reading an advertisement for a schoolmaster
and organist for the estate village of Hillmarton in Wiltshire where he
applied and was appointed to the post at £90 a year and £10
extra for organist(?) with a cheap but pleasant house.
They settled down happily, loved the place, and brought up a family of
five there.
Sadly the First World War spread its pain and suffering over the country
and two of the sons were among the first to answer the call ‘Your
king and Country needs you’. By winter they were in Flanders
in the mud and suffering of the trenches and in March Alec was reported ‘wounded
and missing’ and the next month Keith was killed. Nothing more
was ever heard of Alec. Later on a third son joined the forces but,
thankfully, came home safely.
Gone was the family happiness as my parents threw themselves into war work
and did their bit in every way they could as they dragged themselves through
the war years. My mother neglected her own health and developed cancer.
One operation after another and years of agony followed another and those
were days when the doctor said ‘Don’t take too many aspirins
or the effect will wear off!’
Fortunately there was morphine for the end, brought by the doctor from
miles away before the last.
A really wonderful trained nurse helped my father and me to care for
her till the end and when she died my father said ‘thank god’.
She was bed-ridden for some time and unable to attend her third son’s
wedding and moaned ‘I have lost two sons and now I can’t even
go and see the third son married!’ But she insisted the rest
of us went.
Yet she kept the family running as smoothly and cheerfully to the end. She
was white-haired when I first knew her – straight hair caught up
into a bun at the back. She was always neatly dressed in tailored
suits and high-necked blouses and always looked neat even when working,
but always maintained she was ugly! I can prove her otherwise, Shortly
after her death I was sent to church training college. At first tired
and miserable, I hated it, one day I lay in bed in my cubicle prostrate
with migraine and the nurse sent for, she came into my room on the dressing
table stood a portrait of my mother, the nurse said ‘what a lovely
face – who is this? Is it your mother? How you must
miss her!’ ‘She’s dead nurse! I gasped and it was
as if an abscess burst and relief came. Afterwards I was able to
take the course and fought my way through my qualification.
Mother hated housework. She had taken some exam at boarding school
which had given her some qualifications for teaching but she had torn it
up saying '‘ am never going to need that’’ But there
was no way of obtaining a copy after so many years. Spending so many
years in caring for a family she wanted a change. So when a vacancy
fell in my father’s school for a supplementary teacher she took it
and for years managed a class of 40 infants happily and successfully for
30 shillings a week and made a good job of it. For less than that
wage she could have home-help and relive herself of undesirable chores.
It is there, at the age of 3, I started my own school life sharing a desk
with a friendly boy whom I grew quite fond of. But that is another
story.
She was always immaculate in a dark skirt or costume a high necked blouse
with a brooch at the neck and prinz-nez with a cord falling in beside the
nose, beside a small wart and it annoys me that I can never remember which
side it was.
Always pleasant and polite it was remembered in the family ‘the only
time mother aid Damn was when she was carrying a newly made jar of jam
through the living room and the bottom fell out of the jar!’
She spoke well and correctly and insisted in this with all the family in
the home but after living in Wilts she aid the boys had three languages
Yorkshire, Wiltshire and the King’s English.
She was a lovely lady and I am proud of her!