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Messages - Keith Sherwood

Pages: 1 [2] 3 4 5 ... 605
10
Wiltshire Lookup Requests / Re: Greenways Preparatory School, Codford St Mary post 1969. Miss PILLOW, Matron
« on: Thursday 30 November 23 18:36 GMT (UK)  »
Yes, she really deserves a bunch/bouquet with 99 roses in it!
Keith
Miss Pillow now appears to have been an extremely faithful old retainer of our school for at least 30 years, tending to  her boys.  I do hope she settled into a well earned retirement after 1969…

11
Wiltshire Lookup Requests / Re: Greenways Preparatory School, Codford St Mary post 1969. Miss PILLOW, Matron
« on: Thursday 30 November 23 17:45 GMT (UK)  »
Rosie,
You are amazing, and I've replied to your PM now...
A wonderfully exciting revelation  of who exactly our Miss Pillow was at last.
Keith

12
Wiltshire Lookup Requests / Re: Greenways Preparatory School, Codford St Mary post 1969. Miss PILLOW, Matron
« on: Thursday 30 November 23 17:22 GMT (UK)  »
...and hi again, Rosie99, too!
Ah, yes indeed. If anyone didn't have or need a forename in those days it was her.  Not even an initial?  But maybe not quite the past of a Miss Haversham.
Keith
Oh, do explain the connection between Rikki and the cubs....

13
Wiltshire Lookup Requests / Re: Greenways Preparatory School, Codford St Mary post 1969. Miss PILLOW, Matron
« on: Thursday 30 November 23 17:19 GMT (UK)  »
Hi again, Carole!
Thanks so much for responding...and yes, the forename doesn't really fit the woman as I remember her.  Perhaps a form of Ulrike/Ulrika or Erica/Frederica. And  she could have been in her fifties, possibly.  She was also an expert in Country Dancing/Morris Dancing, and we used to win prizes at the annual(?) Country Dancing Festival at Devizes.  She was also Akela for our Cubs.  Strict but fair.  Nightly inspection  before bed was teeth, ears, hands, knees, and you had to tick a book, honestly or dishonestly, to say whether you'd managed to do a poo that day.  Also the doling out of those big dollops of a gruesome malt or cod liver oil substance...
K

14
Wiltshire Lookup Requests / Greenways Preparatory School, Codford St Mary post 1969. Miss PILLOW, Matron
« on: Thursday 30 November 23 16:43 GMT (UK)  »
Hi, Everyone,
I suppose this is not strictly a family history enquiry, though in fact Greenways Preparatory School was in effect a small family in itself - it felt very much like that while I was there between 1955 and 1960 at Ashton Gifford House, nearby Codford St Mary.
The school closed in 1969, having been there from 1940, moving from Bognor Regis because of wartime concerns about German bombing on the coast there.
I am particularly wondering what became of our Matron, rather a mythical figure, but known as Miss PILLOW.  I think she was a spinster, some say that her forename was Rikki or Rickie, but although PILLOW is not a commonly occurring surname, I have been unable to find someone of this name anywhere.  No certainty about her age then - little boys are really not very good at guessing - but looking back I would say she might have been in her mid forties.
Any subsequent trace of her, or of her origins would be gratefully received!
Keith

15
Essex Lookup Requests / Re: "The Blue House" BRADWELL-ON-SEA in 1891 or 1901 Census
« on: Tuesday 19 September 23 14:59 BST (UK)  »
AndyJ2022,
Oh yes, I'm a great T.S.Eliot admirer...
Another of my great-grandmothers was born with the Annie Laura forenames, and as an adult preferred to be known as Laura.  However, spending some years living in a house with her extended family, with three year old twins (not hers) whose attempted spoken version of her name was Lee-la, she "adopted" Leila as a third forename.  On her death certificate and on her headstone in the cemetery in Devon where she lies, she is Annie Laura Leila (Nott)...
Keith

16
Essex Lookup Requests / Re: "The Blue House" BRADWELL-ON-SEA in 1891 or 1901 Census
« on: Tuesday 19 September 23 10:16 BST (UK)  »
SoftlySoftly,
I suppose as individuals grow into adulthood they perhaps feel more free to use one other of their forenames.  Maybe Nora didn't like Ada and preferred Nora.  Maybe as her mother was an Ada she used the alternative forename to avoid confusion.  I had a great uncle in my Gurner family who was baptised Stanley Ronald Kershaw Gurner, but he was always known as Ronnie.  A schoolteacher, too.
And very glad that you still have some hair to pull your comb through, red herrings are very much the stuff of family history trails!
Very many thanks for all the hours you have put in on our family's behalf here...
Keith

17
Other Countries / Re: Samuel BAILDON, d.27-03-1914 Calcutta. East India Company?
« on: Tuesday 19 September 23 10:04 BST (UK)  »
Wow, more fascinating detail about this individual.  Thanks so much for this as well, Shaun.  Interesting that he was a partner, too...
Keith

18
Other Countries / Re: Samuel BAILDON, d.27-03-1914 Calcutta. East India Company?
« on: Tuesday 19 September 23 06:55 BST (UK)  »
Neale 1961,
Thanks so much for looking these details up for me.  His widow Mary survived him by a further 42 years...
Keith

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