Picture a rural idyll: helping in the fields with haymaking; riding on carts pulled by horses; visiting country carnivals with brass bands and hot, steamy exhibition tents. This is the pastoral world of Bridget Yates’ family who lived in Holker, a hamlet in Cumbria, more than a century ago.
Bridget has been able to revisit this lost world thanks to the discovery of a collection of family letters, stored in an old toffee tin. “My sister Angela and I found it when we were clearing out my grandmother’s house,” Bridget explains. “It had been put away on a shelf. When we looked inside and realised what we had, we were astonished.”
The tin contained 26 letters sent by Bridget’s maternal great grandfather Robert Thornhill to her mother Barbara. They were penned in 1934 and each one begins, “My dear Babs”. Written in an elegant hand, they deal with enchanting details that would interest a child – the antics of woodland creatures and birds,
a birthday party with dancing, and the sound of children singing together in the fields.
“Reading the letters, I was able to peer through the forest of time and meet my great grandfather, whom I never knew.” The letters have also allowed Bridget to extend her family tree – and resolve a mystery identity.
Robert Thornhill was born in 1858 in the hamlet of Holker, near Cark-in-Cartmel. The area is just south of the Lake District and, on a clear day, the fells can be seen in the distance.
The Thornhill family can be traced back to 1747 in the area. In the 1891 census records, Robert was a hall usher at Holker Hall, a gothic-style Victorian mansion. He lived in a tied cottage on the estate with his wife Emily. They had three children: Frank, Bridget’s grandfather, his younger brother Bob, and his sister Edie.
Frank trained as a teacher and moved to Burton upon Trent in Staffordshire. He married Jemima ‘Minnie’ Gaulter in 1913. Barbara, Bridget’s mother, was born in 1922. “My mother adored her grandfather Robert, and the feeling was mutual. The letters reveal a warm and loving relationship that was not separated by distance.
“Robert died before I was born, but I feel as though I have got to know him through the letters. They have also allowed me to encounter my mother as a girl, through his doting eyes.”
Emily passed away in 1932, and Robert lived on at the cottage with his daughter Edie and Nellie Thornhill. She was always called ‘Aunt Nell’, but it was unclear what her exact relationship was to the rest of the family.
“The letters are filled with lovely anecdotes. In one, Robert describes a visit to his son Bob in Leeds. On the trip Aunt Nell had a fit, which in those days meant that she was of a nervous disposition. Details like these make them live again.
“There’s also a story about a cat getting stuck up a tree in Holker. They had to call the fire brigade
to get it down. It must have been big news in a tiny village in the 1930s.”
Another charming letter recalls the day when Robert was astonished to see “a man on a bicycle race past wearing tights”. More followed at set intervals, and he was astonished at their speed. It began to rain, and he worried that the cyclists would get soaked in their thin costumes.
Robert’s close relationship with his granddaughters resonates through the letters. In one that he wrote to Barbara he says, “I am enclosing a PO for 5/, will you please divide it with Elsie and we wish you a ‘Many Happy Returns of your birthday’. The reason I am sending it now is on account of us having the decorators in and Granddad was afraid under the circumstances he might overlook it. You must excuse
me for being too early.”
Robert’s close relationship with his granddaughters resonates through the letters
Robert’s comments also reveal tantalising glimpses of Barbara’s childhood. He’s glad to hear that she enjoyed picking apples, but “she must be careful not to fall from the tree”. He’s also thrilled that she is allowed to keep a kitten that her friend gave her as a birthday present.
Interestingly, there is little comment on current affairs or world events in the letters – Robert is more interested in the world outside his front door. “He regales Barbara with the amusing antics of wildlife in the garden, and describes them precisely. His generation loved nature, and was very knowledgeable about it.
“They were a normal, gentle, loving family who lived at a time when you depended on your neighbours, and everybody supported each other through difficult times. My mother, Barbara, helped at a nearby farm during hay-making, and she got to know the family well – one of the farmer’s daughters, Hannah, was a bridesmaid at her wedding.”
The correspondence is all the more precious because it has reawakened memories of Bridget’s own childhood holidays in Holker during the 1950s. “Every year my grandfather Frank spent two weeks at the cottage with Edie and Nellie. From the age of six I was allowed to accompany him, and how I loved those visits.
“We would journey up on the train and be met by my aunts, who would always prepare a special ham tea. The cottage was small and cosy, with scrubbed stone floors covered in rag rugs. The parlour was a museum piece, with dark, horsehair sofas and pictures of General Gordon on the wall, who fought in the Crimean War. There was a peat house at the end of the garden, which was the privy of years gone by – it
had been eventually replaced by a toilet off the scullery.
“My aunts made delicious dark, sticky gingerbread and jam by the bucketful. Everyone in the village shared their produce, including blackberries and redcurrants.
“The garden was how I imagined the Garden of Eden to be, with lichen-covered fruit trees among flowering shrubs and bushes that seemed to go on forever. Like my mother, I helped at the farm and I’ll never forget the smell of the milk in the cooler or the sight of huge hoof prints left by the Shire horse.
"The garden was how I imagined the Garden of Eden to be"
“At Holker, I enjoyed a freedom of mind and body that I’ve never had, before or since. If I can’t sleep at night, I imagine walking up the fell behind the cottage with my grandfather and seeing Morecambe Bay and the hills of the Lake District in the distance.”
Reading the letters inspired Bridget to discover more about Edie and Nellie. “Aunt Edie had special needs, and was unable to live on her own,” she remembers. “To me, she was a warm and loving person, always smiling.
“Aunt Nell’s background remained a mystery, however. I had a vague memory of my mother saying her grandfather, Robert, had ‘taken her in’, and with hindsight she must have been a companion to Aunt Edie.
“With the help of genealogist Jane Hamby, I discovered through census returns that Nellie Thornhill was born in Huddersfield in 1880, the daughter of Thomas Thornhill and Mary Ann Wood. Thomas was Robert’s older brother. When Nellie was born Thomas and Ann weren’t married. Although they went on to have more children, she didn’t stay with the family.
“Nellie’s road can’t have been easy. She virtually gave up her life to care for Edie. Nellie died in a nursing home in Ulverston in 1960 and was buried in Flookburgh Churchyard, near Holker. I was so pleased that she had come home and was laid to rest with Robert, Edie and other members of the family. Sadly, their graves were unmarked, so in 2007 I commissioned a headstone to be erected with their names and dates.
“Holker is the place where my roots truly lie, although the cottage was knocked down years ago and replaced by new houses. I make an annual pilgrimage to the village and the churchyard so I can relive those cherished times with those I loved so dearly.”
Frank passed away in 1979, and Bridget remembers him with great fondness. “His love of literacy inspired my own enjoyment of writing. He was a caring, steady Victorian man, dependable and always there in a crisis – just like his father Robert.”