Boston Grammar School

THE SUCCESSION of Gordon Brown as Prime Minister has led to articles in the press about his home town in Scotland, Kirkaldy. One theme has been the number of celebrated or successful people who have emerged from a place where the protestant virtues of hard work and self help held sway for so long.

Men like Adam Smith, the ‘father of modern economics’ and apostle of the free market. I always remember learning about him at school and was particularly struck by his analysis of the division of labour. His most famous illustration was the pin, to produce which requires 19 separate operations.

Robert Adam, the architect, came from Kirkaldy, as did David Steel, the Liberal Democrat politician, and Sandford Fleming, who built the Canadian Pacific Railway. Another Scots-Canadian from Kirkaldy was the recently deceased Bertha Wilson, who became the first female judge of the Canadian Supreme Court.

And I mustn’t forget Jocky Wilson, world champion darts player.

ANOTHER POLITICAL STORY recently was the Conservative opposition’s change of policy on grammar schools, secondary schools where pupils are selected on academic ability. Most secondary schools in Britain are comprehensive, but some grammar schools have survived, especially in Lincolnshire. They remain a bone of political contention.

At the age of ten I was set an examination at my primary school. I had little idea of what it was all about, but some time later I was told that I would be going to Boston Grammar School. Apparently I had passed the ‘eleven-plus’. My family seemed very pleased, even proud. I myself was, if anything, merely relieved that I wouldn’t be attending the secondary modern school, about which I’d heard horror stories about initiation ceremonies.

THE GRAMMAR SCHOOL occupies a former monastery, Franciscans or Greyfriars I believe, together with modern additions. It was granted its charter by (Bloody) Mary I and the main building, ‘the old school’, now the library, has a stained glass window depicting her alongside her husband, Philip of Spain. Philip thought being married to the Queen Regnant entitled him to be called King of England, and later would send the Armada in an attempt to make that a dream a reality. I remain quite proud of my old school, but not the bloodthirsty Catholic and foreign invader who founded it.

Lessons were held in classrooms arranged in a rectangle around a large grassed quadrangle. Teachers often wore gowns and would dispense summary corporal punishment for minor infractions. Surnames only were used. It was also a single-sex school, although in recent years the sixth form has become co-educational. I find it odd that the idea prevails that sixteen and seventeen year-olds are better able to work ‘maturely’ with the opposite sex than eleven-year olds. Be that as it may, the award of best scholar of the year was recently awarded to one of the girls.

All in all, an old-fashioned institution, with emphasis on discipline, competition and academic achievement.

In the sixties I was in favour of comprehensive education, Frankly I am still uneasy about the stark division of pupils into ‘academic’ and ‘non-academic’ at an early age, with little free flow between them. Moreover, it has always seemed wrong to me that the percentage attending grammar schools varies from area to area depending on places available. On the other hand I believe that the ethos of the grammar school is sadly lacking in modern education.

COMPREHENSIVE EDUCATION went wrong, in my opinion, for various reasons. First, the schools are too big. This is one area where the economies of scale do not apply. Second, it was accompanied by trendy liberal educational theories, such as the downplaying of competition and the fear of ‘elitism’. The non-selection of pupils (as I insist on calling ‘students’) was extended with the new schools so that streaming was no longer the norm. Third – and this is not the fault of schools – a new breed of parents was coming into being, who are frankly incompetent at the job, unable to discipline or motivate, concerned only with earning money for foreign holidays and second cars, thinking that the rearing of children is the government’s job.

It’s an indictment of the social mess we have created that grammar schools, for all their apparent unfairness, remain quiet commonsense engines of social mobility, leaning and citizenship.

IF YOU ASK what has all this to do with the Hundlebys, the answer is ‘not a lot’. Merely that BGS is my old school. What’s more, I once delivered newspapers to the home of one the school’s more celebrated old boys, R J Budge, boss of a company running some of Britain’s few remaining coal mines. As I remember the household had two newspapers a day – that always impressed me – probably The Telegraph and The Daily Mail. You could tell a lot about people from the newspapers they bought.

Another famous old boy was George Bass, surgeon and explorer, who gave his name to the strait between Australia and Tasmania.

Lincolnshire has had more than its fair share of explorers. Yorkshire, as usual, grabs the glory with James Cook, the only English captain to tour Australia without playing a single test, but we have had Bass (from Lincon), Flinders (from Donington) and Franklin (from Spilsby).

As a film fan I must pay tribute, though, to Barry Spikings, who left BGS to work for the Boston Standard and somehow ended up in Hollywood producing The Deerhunter. Now that is an achievement.

I became a librarian. Hey ho!

The Hundleby Convention 2007

IT'S TAKEN ME over a month but at long last I’m ready to set out my personal thoughts on the Hundleby Convention. Sunday 6 May 2007.

The bus from Lincoln to Horncastle continues to Skegness and I wondered if it would be full of day-trippers. I arrived at the bus station to find a crowd of children and large women eating a breakfast of hamburgers. ‘Bother,’ I thought, or words to that effect. But then the transport arrived, the children dashed upstairs, the mothers wobbled, gasping, after them, and I settled down to read Far From the Madding Crowd and fantasise agreeably about Julie Christie.

It was a sunny day, a good one to travel through the open, rolling foothills of the Wolds. Hundleby country, I thought, as I saw the signs for Hemingby and the original village itself.

As we drew into Horncastle we passed the library, which I used to visit when I worked for the County Council. It is built over part of the Roman wall which once surrounded the town and indeed part of it is exposed in the reference library. But I hadn’t inspected the town itself until today. It has that organic feel of a town that has developed in a natural but practical way, with streets winding out from the large market square and along the river.

ONTO THE Admiral Rodney Hotel where the clan was gathering. It was an odd feeling: sixty or seventy people, for the most part complete strangers, but all linked by a name, a Lincolnshire village and varying amounts of genetic material.

They came from Lincolnshire – Orby, Spalding, Lincoln – from Lancashire, Cheshire, from Essex, from Berkshire. And from Vancouver Island and South Africa. Not quite from the four corners of the earth, because the Solomon Islanders couldn’t make it. Nor the Brazilians, Japanese or Hong Kongers.

Almost everyone there could trace their ancestry to John Hundleby (1756-1793) and two of his sons, John and Thomas Hundleby, born in or near Great Steeping, who married two sisters, Ruth and Anne Bradley, in 1817. For this information I am grateful to Evelyn, Susan and the other organisers whose notes and charts were of great value in placing ourselves in context. We were even all colour-coded.

I was interested to see any physical resemblances amongst us all. Would it be a roomful of Viking look-alikes? Unfortunately not. We’ve obviously been diluted by the Anglo-Saxons. It seemed rude to stare into people’s eyes looking for the tell-tale blue. And as for the nose, I think that’s peculiar to my branch. Perhaps someone will do a detailed study of the many photos that were taken. I mused on the potential rsults of a DNA study of everyone. Maybe next time. Then again, maybe not.

I grew up knowing that my name was unusual, with very few relatives on my father’s side. And when, as a child, I checked the local phone book, I found very few Hundlebys. And frankly I’d no idea where Orby was then. To find so many cousins in the same room, let alone to see from the charts that there are so many more around the world. I guess there must be hundreds of living ‘Hundlebys’, let alone those in the many female lines. (I’m fortunate enough to be in a female line but still have the name, although I doubt my great-great-grandmother was thinking of the favour she was doing me in 1841.)

Evelyn's notes are invaluable and I’d like to highlight one character she describes. This is Joseph Hundleby, born in 1853 to John and Ann (née Jarvis). He appears to be from a 'senior’ branch of the family, his great-grandmother being Elizabeth Hundleby, eldest daughter of Robert (himself the grandfather of the abovementioned John and Thomas). Another disguised female line, it would appear.

I think I will extricate myself from that genealogical tangle and go on to say that Joseph interests me because in 1874, as a young man, he set sail for New Zealand and a new life. Evelyn tells us he was an installer of sheep-shearing machinery, which must have been pioneering work at the time and in later years he set up his own business exterminating rabbits. No doubt there was never any shortage of work.

As far as I can see he was the only Hundleby who migrated to Australasia and his many descendants are scattered around that corner of the world – Sydney, Christchurch, Japan and Hong Kong. And I note with interest that his great-grand-daughter, in the Solomon Islands, is my own daughter's namesake.

IN THE AFTERNOON many of the delegates set off on a tour of local villages associated with the family – Firsby, Great Steeping, Monksthorpe and Hundleby itself. I find Ashby-by-Partney particularly interesting because it was the birthplace of Thomas, ancestor of myself and so many others. He married Ruth up the road in Candlesby, but seems to have spent most of his life in his home village, and was buried there in 1881, aged 87.

Thomas took his children to be baptised in the Ashby’s Anglican church, but Thomas’ son Samuel preached in the newly built Methodist chapel in 1885. By coincidence, Far From the Madding Crowd, which I was reading that day contains the comment of one character, ‘Chapel folk be more hand-in- glove with them above than we (church people).’ I’ve a feeling that great-great-great-uncle Samuel might have agreed with that.

Methodism seems to have been strong in the family at one time and I myself was baptised into that church. I like to think that nonconformism is still strong in the family, preferably secular - with all due respect to the one vicar we have in our ranks.

I suppose it’s true of all families, as it is of society, that people are pursuing quite different lines of work. 100 years ago Hundlebys descendants were agricultural labourers, many illiterate, with the more upwardly mobile becoming threshers, tenant farmers, carpenters, butchers and publicans. Women were busy raising large families, as well as working in the fields. Now there are engineers, computer experts, doctors, businessmen, artists and civil servants, but the links with farming are still there, as far away as South Africa and Japan.

THE DAY CLOSED with a quiet moment to remember the Hundlebys who had fought and died in the armed forces. Men like L/C Herbert Henry Hundleby of the Lincolnshire Regiment, killed in action in 1915; and Pte W Hundlebyof the Ist Hertfordshire regiment. See: http://www.hertfordtown.fsnet.co.uk/hertsregt.htm (This link didn't work for me, but the site is there). How many others died, I wonder.

It’s as well to remember that and even worse destroyer of human life was Spanish flu, which swept through Europe in the years following the Great War. This affected the Hundlebys too. Harry Hundleby, for example, who was taken by the disease at an early age.

A GREAT DAY. Lots of information, lots of links, lots of contacts and conversations. And even more questions and areas to follow up. And many ideas for postings here.

I can't finish without belated thanks to Evelyn, Susan, Suzanne and Janet for all thier efforts in conceiving, planning and organising the event. A great success. Thank you.

Countdown - Tuesday

One or two things I've been pondering since meeting Evelyn and Walter the other day.

• After chatting with Evelyn about all those academic Hundlebys with titles and degrees that seems to go with being Canadian, I've been making notes for the article on 'Identity' I plan to write and send to Dr Catherine. I believe I have a more biological than psychological approach to the subject.
• On behalf of Lincolnshire, many thanks to Evelyn for donating Samuel's handwitten memoir to the county archives. Have I got this right - he was my great- great- great-uncle?
• I was surprised to hear that no Hundleby seems to have emigrated directly to the USA, though some have found their way there from Canada. I'm wondering where Margaret Hundleby, who lectures in English at the Universty of Houston-Downtown fits into the family tree.
• It seems that Hundlebys abroad - I'm including the female line in all this, of course, coming from it myself - stem from single emigrant families, whether it be Canada, Australia, South Africa.

Just a few thoughts and questions. Maybe I'll get a few answers at the weekend.

Countdown to the Convention - Monday

With less than a week to go before the Convention, I had the pleasure yesterday of meeting both Evelyn and Walter from Canada, and Phil and Lynn Whitworth from Louth.

Strange isn’t it that although we’ve never met before and lead such different lives we feel we have so much in common?

Evelyn’s already taken up residence in the Central Library and the Archives and was reporting enthusiastically of her discovery of Hundleby wills, which take the line back into the 1600s. (It can be a bit ghoulish, can’t it, this family history business?).

Lunch in the Wig and Mitre ‘uphill’, Lincoln, where I thought I might be able to demonstrate the pleasure of drinking Bateman’s real ale. Pity that it was the worst pint I’ve ever drunk. No wonder people stick to lager and what I think of as pasteurised beer. It may not be any good, but you’re never disappointed.

By chance, when I called in later at Wetherspoon’s Ritz pub there was an inspection of beer going on. Every year or so, without warning, an independent inspector arrives to check that the beer is being stored and dispensed correctly and to award, or withhold, the ‘Cask Marque Trust’ seal of approval. The manageress showed me the form he fills in, marking each beer on taste, temperature (ca 50 deg), colour, appearance, etc. She was pleased to report that all had passed with flying colours. She also told me that all staff have to watch a video which teaches them precisely how real ale should be drawn through the hand-pump.

All this explains why a lot of pubs don’t like it. To me the worst part of it all was that the inspector had left six pints on the counter with just a mouthful removed.

‘How about selling them off at half-price,’ I suggested, always willing to be helpful.

‘I’m afraid not,’ she said. ‘He’s had his gadget in them.’

I pursued the matter no further.

Hundleby Convention - 6th May 2007

The Hundleby family is gathering at The Admiral Rodney Hotel in Horncastle at 10am on Sunday 6th May 2007. Hundleby descendants from across the globe (including Canada and South Africa) are meeting for the first time. There will be around 55 people at the gathering and lots of people have been searching their attics and cupboards for old family photographs, letters, journals and other historical information to bring with them. Whilst the event will be a good opportunity for serious family history research most of the fun will come from meeting long lost relatives. Some of the family are using the event as an excuse for a close family get together whilst others want to meet distant cousins they have heard about but never met. If you are related to the Hundleby family in any way please feel free to come along and add your name to the evergrowing family tree.

Just a couple of points of interest.

My son has been surfing the net, using the Images facility. He tells me he's discovered a Hundleby in the US Marine Corps. Unfortunately, he's forgotten the name and I haven't been able to find the reference myself.

Then a death in my wife's family. An uncle by marriage called George Norman Emerson. I only discovered yesterday that he was born in Hundleby.

Just a few weeks to the convention.

The Greenwich Meridian

As far as I can discover the only place in the whole world with the name Hundleby is our own dear village in Lincolnshire. I would have thought the Americans would have obliged, but apparently not.

I was surprised to find, however, that there are three towns (‘cities’) in the USA named ‘Lincolnshire, one in Illinois, one in Kentucky and a third in South Carolina.

By the way, I was obviously thinking American when I wrote ‘named Lincolnshire’. For I recall that Alastair Cooke once broadcast that Americans can always spot an Englishman, no matter how much he has adapted to their speech, when he says things like ‘I am called Roger.’ That, apparently, indicates a nickname. President Eisenhower was called Ike, but he was named Dwight.

Another tell-tale sign, so I am told, is saying something such as ‘I like Californian wines’ rather than ‘California wines’. I suppose that’s why the Beach Boys sang about California Girls.

It happens within Britain as well, not just broad regional accents, or those U and non-U shibboleths (is it a drawing-room or a lounge, sweet or pudding?), which used to divide the classes. For example, I like to think I’m reasonably well-educated, with an accent that is pretty middle-of-the-road and non-descript, but I only have to say ‘bath’ or ‘castle’ to show I’m not from southern England, and the trouble I have with words like ‘bus’ or, even worse, phrases like ‘good luck’ mark me as coming from Lincolnshire.

Anyway, what was I talking about? Towns called Lincolnshire. And I only mentioned that because I found them when looking for information on the Greenwich Meridian, which runs through Lincolnshire. Actually, all four proposed lines run through Lincolnshire, but that’s another story.

The Meridian, starts at the North Pole (obviously) and doesn’t hit land until it reaches Yorkshire. It crosses the Humber and passes close to Cleethorpes. It then runs through the middle of Louth. If I remember correctly, the library there sat on it.

The next main town it reaches is Boston. Not far from where I lived was a street called Meridian Road. I’ve never found out whether the Meridian actually runs along it, but it is a nice thought.

The line leaves Boston and after London crosses the English Channel into France and then Spain. It doesn’t touch land again until Mali. Then Burkina Faso, Ghana and, briefly, Togo. After these countries it’s all ocean until Antarctica.

So when winter returns to Britain tomorrow, as we are assured it will, it might be some comfort to know that my co-meridianites in Ghana will be baking in the sun, and that further south it’s a lot worse.

Bovates and carucates

http://www.british-history.ac.uk:80/report.asp?compid=53623

My Google alert for ‘Hundelby’ [sic] throws up some interesting items occasionally.

The link above takes you to British History Online, in particular a list of disputes and/or agreements about land. Frankly, I find working my way through old documents rather dry and boring work, but there is the odd intriguing nugget.

This one is a list of ‘final concords’ (agreements, I assume) for Lincolnshire during the reign of Henry III. Henry was the son of King John and, although he reigned a long time, is probably the one king of England about whom no-one knows at least one fact.

But it was during his reign that one of the most important events in our history occurred, namely our first Parliament. It wasn’t his idea, of course. Simon de Montfort put a sword to his throat.

These particular cases are dated 34 Henry III, in other words the 34th year of Henry III’s reign, 1250. Acts of Parliament are still dated in this way. Having said that, I wouldn’t be surprised if Tony and his mates have decided unromantically that it’s out of date. Imagine abolishing the office of Lord Chancellor! But I digress.

One of the settlements involves a prior from ‘Kattele’ (Catley, near Digby) and a couple from Digby itself over land and a church. It’s a nice touch that when the dispute is settled, the prior gives them a ‘sore’ sparrowhawk. Sore?

The words used are rather strange. The people involved are often called ‘querents’, which I assume means ‘petitioner’ and ‘impedients’, the other side. And the agreements often involve ‘bovates’ of land. I’ve discovered that a bovate was the amount of land that could be ploughed with one ox in a year (bos is Latin for ox) and was one eigth of a ‘carucate’, eight being the normal number of oxen in a team or yoke. A carucate, from the Latin caracus meaning plough, was nominally 120 acres, an acre as we all know being one furlong (furrowlong) by one chain, still the length of a cricket pitch. Wake up at the back!

By this time, of course, the terms were rather loose and could apply to land that never saw a plough.

‘Tofts’ are often involved, meaning a farmhouse or homestead, sometimes including the surrounding land.

There were no surnames fixed at this time, apart from the aristocracy, and the description of Gilbert and Anthony as ‘de Hundleby’ simply refers to their home, not that they were brothers or are related to me.

Despite what I said earlier, these old records can be fascinating. They show an efficient legal system, functioning well despite political turmoil, with judgments accepted, compromises made and appropriate gifts given and received.

You get an impression of a very agricultural way of life, with hints of the feudal social structure, such as the mentions of ‘scutage, lordship and foreign service. Payment is in ‘marks of silver’ and sometimes shillings sterling. There are disputes over ‘dowers’ and women feature quite prominently. There is one case of a lady, widowed, in dispute with the Knights Templar - thanks to Dan Brown, we all know who they were -over lands which she claimed were her dowry. She agreed to renounce her claim in return for 20 shillings a year for life.

Even at this distance of time I don't think she got a very good deal.

Some Lincolnshire Place-names

I thought I would muse a little on places in Lincolnshire and their names.

I learnt a little about the various suffixes of towns and villages at school, but just a little research shows that it was all rather over-simplified. For example, I was always told that ‘wick’ was Anglo-Saxon for ‘market, and therefore Butterwick was obviously derived from a dairy or a place where butter was sold. Apparently not true, because ‘wick’ can also be of Scandinavian origin, especially when the place is found near the sea, because it means ‘inlet’ or ‘creek’. The Butterwick where my people come is just a mile or two from the Wash and it seems pretty likely that Butruic, as it was called in the Domesday Book, was a Viking settlement.

It stands to reason that the earliest Viking invaders or settlers would create colonies near the coast. Skegness was one of them. Admittedly ‘ness’ can be Old English as well, but ‘Skeg’ has the giveaway K, characteristic of Scandinavia. The suffix ‘ney’ was old Norse for ‘island’ – eg Orkney – but came to mean an enclosure or, especially in Lincolnshire, land reclaimed from the marsh. Bardney, Friskney and Stickney, where I lived briefly as a child.

Butterwick is not far from Benington, an Anglo-Saxon, or Old English, ending, which shows how the two nations lived in close proximity to each other. I expect the local derby football matches had a bit of needle in them. I read that there are places where the Vikings took over an English settlement and renamed it, but only partially. Grimston (there’s one in Leicestershire, another in Yorkshire) has an Anglo-Saxon ending, but a Scandinavian prefix. It looks like Grim gave his name to the place but didn’t bother to remove the suffix, perhaps not wanting people to get his village confused with Grimsby.

The ‘by’ ending is well-known as the great Viking indicator – Hundleby, Spilsby, Hemingby, etc (incidentally, I read that Rugby in Warwickshire is the most southerly town with a 'by' suffix) – but less well-known that it can be a prefix occasionally. The village of Bicker is the only example I can bring to mind, being a combination of ‘settlement’ and ‘marsh’. The ‘car’ in Redcar, Yorkshire, is another variation of the Norse word for marshland.

So ‘Bicker’ does not mean ‘Wrangle’, where an uncle once lived. That name means ‘crooked’ in Old Norse and refers to a winding stream long since gone.

Back near Butterwick, there’s Frieston, an English ending with a suspiciously Nordic beginning, and down the road there’s Fishtoft, definitely Scandinavian, but I doubt it’s got anything to do with fish. I may well be wrong about that. In any case, the ‘fish’ came later; the village was simply ‘Toft’ in Domesday.

Boston, of course, is St Botolph’s town, but now incorporates the old Danish settlement of Skirbeck. ‘Beck’ means stream in both language traditions, but we know that Skirbeck was called a ‘wapentake’, a small administrative unit, similar to the Saxon ‘hundred’, which theoretically contained a hundred households. The concept of the wapentake wasn’t finally abolished until 1888. It’s possible that the ‘Skir’ means ‘church’, for it’s not just Scotland where ‘kirk’ has that meaning.

Back to ‘wick’ and a variation is ‘wig’, as in Wigford, the area that became part of Lincoln as I know it today. This time it does mean market, market by the river crossing to be precise and lies at the bottom of the hill on which ancient Lincoln proper stands. There’s still a bit of snobbery in the city about whether you live ‘uphill’ or ‘downhill’.

The various names in Lincoln are reminders of the different peoples who became strands in the fabric of the city. The ‘Lin’ in Lincoln comes from ‘llyn’, a Celtic word meaning lake; and the ‘coln’ is a reminder of the Roman colony established on the hill for retired soldiers, who would have been of all nationalities throughout the Empire, not just Italian. The Romans also left us the Fossdyke, as well as the Fosse Way and Ermine Street, which meet at the bottom of Cross o’Cliffe Hill. (By the way, that’s where one of the Eleanor Crosses was erected). The Angles founded Wigford and the Scandinavians left us several ‘gates’ or streets, such as Hungate and Saltergate. The Normans are remembered in Beaumont Fee, as well as the Castle and Cathedral.

I’d better stop before I get on to Swineshead, which probably has nothing to do with pigs. I strongly doubt that that Threekingham has any royal connection at all.

'Never been twenty-one before'

David reached the age of 21 yesterday, and we had a little family get-together to celebrate the occasion.

We went to Zucchini’s for Sunday lunch. Zucchini’s has a fine array of Italian food, but we all went for the traditional roast beef dinner, made all the more attractive by being served as a buffet, with the words ‘Eat as much as you like’ on the menu.

Certain people, who had better remain nameless, had two huge platefuls and even had the cheek to ask for a clean plate.

It struck me that this was the first time in ages that all five of us were in one place at the same time.

Zucchini’s by the way gained a little notoriety when it was patronised by (Lord) Jeffrey Archer, minor politician and all-round dodgy character, when he was in the North Sea Camp open prison near Boston and allowed out to work at Lincoln’s Theatre Royal.

The age of majority has been eighteen for a long time, but the tradition of marking one’s twenty-first still seems pretty strong. I was amused, though, when David asked me why his grandmother had sent him a card with a large key on it. I thought it might be fun to embarrass him by singing ‘Twenty-one today . . . I’ve got the key of the door, etc.’ but thought better of it.

We rounded off the afternoon by adjourning to a nearby pub, where the beer is cheaper and we could watch the rugby, Ireland against France. Needless to say, we all became honorary Irishmen for the day.

Mediaeval Hundlebys

'HUNDELBYS'

I've found that the above spelling is worth using in a Google search for the name. Not only is the name often misspelled - I do it myself - but it appears to have been the standard form up to the 1500s. I suppose it has to do with 'Hundulf'.

I see that John (or Johannes) Hundelby, a 'carvour', was admitted as a freeman of York in 1423.

Robert Hundelby registered a will in Lambeth in 1406, leaving most of his money to his father and mother (John and Cecilie), who lived in Alford.

And going further back, Ralph de Hundelby, of Benington, received a 'lay subsidy' of 11d in about 1332. Benington, of course, is only a few miles from Butterwick, my own ancestral home.

A trip to Boston

Every now and again, my sister and I meet in Boston for lunch, with varying numbers of Hundleby family members. Boston is equidistant between our homes in Lincoln and Peterborough, and as our Aunt Kath lives there it is convenient for her to come along.

It was rather sad yesterday that since we last got together, we had lost our Aunt Lynne, our mother’s sister, and Herb, our step-father.

Carolyn and I always take a bus from Lincoln. It takes an hour and a half, but I always enjoy the journey, because the bus’s route is not along main roads but through a succession of villages and landscapes.

We climb up the Lincoln Edge towards Metheringham and then down towards the fens. At this stage the narrow roads bend and wind through woods and stone buildings, and I always wonder if we aren’t just going a little too fast. When we emerge onto the long straight roads towards Kirkstead, the deep dykes either side look like another accident waiting to happen.

We pass through Woodhall Spa, whose waters cured my mother-in-law of arthritis and where my great-uncle owned one of his shops. It’s now known as the refuge of the rich and retired, recently in the news for opposing a chicken farm. It has a delightful cinema, located in the woods (hence its name ‘Kinema in the Woods), the only one in the country, I believe, where the image is projected from behind the screen.

Before long we are in Tattershall, home of the Castle and the church where 'Tom Thumb' is buried.

I was always told that on a clear day you could see both Lincoln Cathedral and Boston Stump from the top of the castle and I’m happy to report that it’s quite true.

On to Coningsby, home of the Battle of Britain Memorial flight.

Well over halfway now. All around are vast fields, empty in January, dotted with idle tractors. Sometimes in the middle of them, a mile away, is a farmhouse, with barns and other buildings, set in a grove of trees.

Along the road are several isolated chapels, Methodist, Primitive Methodist and Baptist. Lines of windbreaking poplars, signs to places like Dogdyke, Gypsey Bridge, Scrub Hill, Cowbridge, Anton’s Gowt, even New York. I see we have turned out of ‘Hundlehouse Lane’.

We come a behind a typical Lincolnshire driver, ambling along at just below 40 mph, oblivious to the impatient bus tailgating him. We overtake eventually and as we take a bend at 60 I think we’re in the hands of the other variety of typical Lincolnshire driver.

But we arrive, safe and sound, and I’m all set to interrogate my aunt about the family, and listen to my sister reminding everyone how awful big brother was to her.

I wonder if it was sensible to invite her join this blog.

Random Stuff

Some photos of my son, David, testing himself in the Lincoln 10k last year. Any resemblance to anyone out there?

http://www.everybodysmile.biz/cgi-bin/public.cgi?form_status=emailfriend&event_id=28021&photo_id=322&img=10KP4522{1030.jpg&ss=&sk=1030

A Hildred Connection

It was very interesting to see you mention the name Hildred, Roger as a Hildred did marry into the Hundelby family. Matilda (Tillie) Hundleby of Hemingby, daughter of Samuel and Elizabeth, married James Hildren on Oct. 8, 1898. He was 24 years old, living at 75 Burgfield Street, London and was was a Porter with the GN Railway. His father, Thomas, was deceased. He and Tillie lived at 25 New End Road, Hemingby and Mildred's parents lived at #10 and her brother, John at #19. My Dad remembered Aunt Tille and Uncle Jim and evidently he was a very jolly sort of person (at least to an 8 or 9 year old boy)

The Lincolnshire Village

I have a friend in Lincoln, Ken by name. He was 65 the other day and was born and bred in the city.

He's a man who seems to know everybody and it's amazing how he can find a link between newcomers and people he already knows. Another friend returned to Lincoln from New Zealand and Australia after nearly 10 ten years and tried to look me up. He went to a pub where I used to be a regular a decade ago and asked after me. The one barmaid left from those days said, 'He doesn't come here anymore - he think he drinks in Wetherspoon's.' So he went there and was told, 'He usually comes in at 1 o'clock.' And sure enough I did. You can't have secrets in this place.

I introduced Dave to Ken and of course, though they'd never met, they had lots of people in common.

The same thing happened when Ken and I were talking to one of the barmaids in Wetherspoon's (this is the Ritz, formerly a cinema) and when she mentioned her surname, he was bound to know someone with the same name. 'Hildred' was the name, and I thought I knew it too.

'I'm sure I know that name from Boston,' I said, and wasn't surprised to hear that, yes, there were lots of Hildreds there. But I was sure I'd heard the name from one of my relatives. I had a feeling that a Hildred had been a local councillor when I was growing up. And after checking on the net I found I was right. Councillor John (Jack) Hildred had been Mayor of Boston from 1979-80.

And what's more he'd come from Benington, and that was my connection, because my step-father, Herb, came from Benington (a few miles north of Boston) and knew Jack.

Herbert Millard was a close friend of my father, Ernest, and stood as his best man. At the time he was 'courting' my mother's sister, Nellie, but that never came to anything. After my father died, Herb, himself a widower, married my mother. Herb was another man who lived and died in the same place and seemed to know everybody in Boston.

He died just over two years ago. While he was in hospital, Nellie herself died.

Names

I once worked for a year for the local office of the Department of Work and Pensions, the Records department. It was pretty routine and I spent my day filing large folders of personal information on long racks of shelving.

For someone interested in names, though, it was fascinating. There was the usual character who had changed his name to Elvis Presley – ever town has at least one – as well as problems deciding which part of a Muslim or Sikh name counts as the surname and the frequent mixing up of ‘Macs’ and ‘Mcs’.

I found somebody once whose surname was ‘De La Pole’. I informed my colleagues, who by now were used to my eccentricities, that if Richard III had not killed at Bosworth, murdered as I see it, the throne of England might have passed to the De La Pole who was the son of Richard’s sister.

I used to say that the records were a marvellous resource for students researching surname distribution throughout the country. And the section devoted to Retirement Pensioners would have been useful to anyone interested in the changing fashions in first names. I remember all the seventy year-old women called Rose, Pearl, Doris, Iris, Mavis – flowers, jewels, birds, nymphs, etc. And of course, names from the Bible were once very popular.

I think perhaps the most popular woman’s name seventy years ago was ‘May’, but oddly seldom as a first name. I was usually added to another, Daisy May, Sarah May, Laura May, etc. (Pause for ribald jokes).

I was thinking about this when I was perusing one of the charts Susan sent me.

I was particularly intrigued by Thomas and Ruth (b 1794 and 1795).

Apart from names, I noticed first that Thomas seems to have been a posthumous son, born (or baptised?) in 1795, the year after John died.

Thomas, unlike his father, lived to a ripe old age, as did his wife Ruth, 87 and 79 respectively. Maybe this is because they were country folk, plenty of fresh air and hard work, partly protected from the diseases of the towns. No doubt their food was plain and simple, with plenty of vegetables, if not fruit. Lincolnshire people, however poor, have usually had plenty to eat.

I wonder if they were even then god-fearing people, forswearing drink and tobacco, although I find it difficult to imagine Thomas without a pipe.

And then there are all those children, the last, Samuel being born when Ruth was 46. Another lesson there in longevity, perhaps. Samuel himself lived to be 80. He and his father spanned three centuries, just.

It’s interesting that they had two sons called Joseph. I assume this is because the first died. I hadn’t noticed people doing this before except in mediaeval royal families. I think Edward III lost children and later gave their name to another child. As I recall, he and also King John used to use the same names for their illegitimate children, so that they had two or more families growing up in parallel.

The names Thomas gave to his children are all pretty standard for the times and are not uncommon today. I wonder if Princes William and Henry will lead a revival of those names, which oddly were the names of Thomas’ first two sons. His daughters were Sarah, Susanna and Ann, names still in use, with variants.

Only Cornelius is intriguing. I wonder if anyone knows why it was chosen. Did Thomas like classical history and read about the Punic Wars? Has it been passed down like so many Hundleby Christian names?

Note: Susan tells me that the name 'Cornelius' seems to have been introduced as a Hundleby name from Ruth's family, the Bradleys, as were Susanna and Nathaniel, both Biblical names. But no-one seems to know why Cornelius was chosen originally.

Away from Thomas I notice a use of mother’s maiden names being used as forenames. Bennett Warren Hundleby, for example, and Stanley Truman Hundleby sound very American. I named my own first son, James, Barrett, after his mother, but that was done in conscious imitation.

Interesting link:

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=184

Luke's family

Roger talks about widening the gene pool, so here's a little background to my husband's family. Luke's father Max Hundleby (author of 'The German A7V Tank') was born in Hogsthorpe, Lincolnshire.

Max's father, William Henry Hundleby was a third generation Lincolnshire thresher. As well as being threshers the family designed and built their own elevators. Max went to University in Hull to study engineering, and met his wife Mary, who was born and brought up in Normanton, South Yorkshire. The couple settled in Lancashire where their two sons Luke and Giles were born and educated.

Luke married me, the daughter of a Shropshire man and a Yorkshire lass, whilst Giles married Kathryn, who comes from the Bristol area. How about that for branching out across England? Giles is an engineer as well, so one could say that the engineering gene has survived five generations and the move away from Lincolnshire.

Last time I blogged I talked about the dangers of Lincolnshire's roads. I have to say that the dangers are real. There are usually about a hundred people killed every year in accidents, usually through sheer idiocy. A few years ago my cousin's husband was killed on Christmas Eve by someone pulling out onto a main road and more recently my wife's nephew was killed when the man giving him a lift decided to overtake on a bend and hit a lorry head-on.

At least three of my mother's brothers had serious motorbike accidents, one of them almost fatal. It's one of my earliest memories, my mother's father appearing at the house to tell us about Uncle Dick. It's funny, it was always my father who was needed when there was a problem of some sort.

I wanted to talk about widening the gene pool as well, especially my own contribution.

My first wife was Shirley, Shirley Anne in fact, named so because her father was a fan of Shirley Anne Field, perhaps best known for Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.

Shirley's father was Bill, son of a Lt-commander in the Royal Navy. I don't know whether was a regular sailor, but he certainly served in the Navy during the war. I believe he sailed in The Hood, but fortunately was transferred before she met The Bismarck. It seems that he met my mother-in-law while stationed in the Navy base at Scapa Flow in the Orkneys, for she is an Orkadian. Incidentally, Orkadians are not Scottish, whatever region of the UK the civil servants place them in, and always vote against 'Scottish' independence or devolution when given the opportunity. It's back to the Viking heritage.

My second wife, Carolyn, is the product of a Lincolnshire woman (surname Louth) and Cecil Bower. She met Cecil in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) during the war. Cecil, obviously named after Rhodes, had grown up in Mozambique. His family's name had originally been 'Bauer', having come from the Alsace-Lorraine region on the border of France and Germany. During the First World War they anglicised their name, just like the Mountabttens (from Battenberg) and King George V himself.

Not a bad mix, in all.

Lincolnshire comes in for a lot of bad press. Not only are its roads are among the most dangerous in England, it has also been voted (unaccountably) the fourth most unattractive county in the land. Grantham is famously the most boring town and Boston has the fattest, the laziest, the most racially bigoted and most promiscuous population in the country.

It's also a common calumny on Lincolnshire folk that we - how can I put this delicately? - that we,when marrying, do not take sufficient steps to broaden the gene pool. Only the other day, I heard this repeated on a blog written by a football supporter who is working his way through all the other sides in his own team's division, including Lincoln and Boston. To be fair, he said the same thing about Cambridgeshire.

Well, it's not true of my family.

My father, Ernie, came from Butterwick, five miles north of Boston off the Skegness road. My mother was born in Fishmere End, which is somewhere near Kirton, five miles south of Boston, on the Spalding road.

Fishmere End is not a village. It's an area on the map and consists of vegetable fields, the odd house and a dyke (in Lincs that's a drain, not a mound as in Holland or a levee as in the US). Before WW2 it was the kind of area where the boys were let off school in the autumn term to help with the harvest.

My mother's father was called Walter Moses and worked for a local farmer. I think he reached the rank of foreman because the 'tied cottage' he lived in was, to my young eyes, a real farmhouse, complete with barns and greenhouses. The barn was full of items which served my grandfather in his on-the-side buying and selling business. He was a short but rather fearsome man, with a thick leather belt, which he was not afraid to use on his children when they strayed from the straight and narrow.

He also drank his tea from his saucer and seemed to strain it through his moustache as he did so.

He served in the artillery in the First World War and once gave me his tin hat. Being a silly little boy, I didn't take care of it and a precious family heirloom is now lost.

He had five sons: Walt, Joe, George (known as Podge), Dick and Frank. They all went on to agricultural work and lived in villages like Wrangle, Heckington and Donington. They were all typical south Lincolnshire men, taciturn, close and hard. My first wife could hardly understand a word they said, partly because of their broad accent, partly because their pipe never left their mouth.

Their education was poor and my father would often be asked to write letters for them or fill in their tax returns. But they were no fools. When it came to money they were very shrewd. And they would have nothing to do with credit. I remember that when my grandfather retired, my father persuaded him to buy a bungalow. He accompanied him through the whole process and when the solicitor asked him about the method of payment, my grandfather produced a wad of notes from his back pocket and counted out £1,000 in notes. That was in 1964.

My mother's sister, Nellie, was to my young eyes, very glamorous. She married Leslie Henshaw, the brother (I think) of Alex Henshaw, well-known as a pre-war aviator and Spitfire test pilot. He ran a holiday park near Mablethorpe (Trusville). When they married he renamed Nellie as Lynn.

I've often wondered about the name 'Moses'. My mother used to tell me, when I was growing up, that it was a good thing we'd won the war. Whatever my mother's origins I always like to claim Jewish blood, along with the Viking strain. When you are known as a librarian,you need something exotic to boast about.

I'll write about my own attempts to widen the gene pool next time.

Canadian Connections

How did Hundleby members get to Canada and why.

Ellen Hundleby, daughter of Samuel the Preacher was born in Hemingby 14 May 1879. She married Valentine Edmund Mackinder on Dec. 25, 1899 at Horncastle. They had the following children: Frederick and Edmund, identical twins born Oct. 23, 1900 at 41 North Street, Horncastle; Nellie born 3 March 1903; Grace born 4 March 1906 died 22 Oct. 1906; Kathleen born 3 Feb. 1908.

Ellen was not that healthy a person and in 1909 the Doctor recommended that they find a drier climate. As Valentine had a friend, Joe Walkey, who had been an apprentice butcher with him, they decided to come to Canada to Cranbrook, British Columbia where Joe lived. They had considered South Africa and Australia but chose the wettest and dampest place!

After a very stormy 8-day crossing on the S.S. Laurentic, the family arrived in Quebec City on Oct. 23, 1910 the twins' 10th birthday. They then took a 5 day trip across Canada by train. Life was not easy for them, and their daughter, Kathleen, died 15 Nov. 1910 in Jaffray, B.C. The doctor listed her death as from Marasmus, which was basically malnutrition due to a protein difficiency in the diet.

They then moved to Qualicum Beach on Vancouver Island, becoming part of the group of first homesteaders on the townsite, Valentine building his Butcher Shop on 2nd Ave and homesteading 5 acres further out. They lived in a tent. Ellen, however, was diagnosed with T.B., so they moved again to Kamloops in the interior of the Province in the year 1918. This is a very dry semi-arid desert area. However, it was to be too late for the improvement of her health. Ellen died in Kamloops 17 Dec. 1922.