Martyn and Zillah Ford at 4 Tyne Court, Sutton Coldfield 17th February 1992
(this is the second cassette of one recording session on that date)
There is evidently a chunk missing from the beginning of this recording which leads up to an inquiry into the Highfield line of the family, that is, Nana’s two sisters, Ada Highfield and Gertrude Martin, and their offspring. The first audible sentence is Zillah saying: “Well, they lived in the country, and you can imagine how lovely it was for us to go and stay there…”
While I ask her questions I am clearly working from a drawing I made of a family tree (since lost).
Winnie Highfield married a farmer.
Vera did well academically and went to Birmingham University. Mother reveals that Vera had a club foot and that Pop took her as an infant to Dudley Road hospital to have it treated. Vera always wore a built-up shoe. Mother says Billy Highfield was dancing into his 80s – “he died recently of course”. Rene (Irene Lavinia) moved to somewhere near Solihull, while Winnie continued to live in the country. Billy Highfield’s wife was Connie’s best friend. She died quite young.
There is also a little about Len Highfield who kept pharmacists’ shops. He and his wife travelled to the US and saw aunty Gertie’s side of the family. Zillah says that she didn’t get on so well with Dorothy Highfield. “She was a bit rough.”
Auntie Gertie in America had three sons that we know of: Billy, Edward and Alan. Connie had recently received a card from Edward. Billy and Edward once came to the UK for a visit and stayed with Connie. Auntie Gertie used to write letters to Nana in which she talked about US politics, which baffled Nana, who had had only a limited schooling. But mother says she wrote a good letter. I mention my own cache of letters from her (Zillah) and she expresses surprise that I have kept them. We have a drink together and I turn off the tape at that point. When I turn it on again at 12 minutes 55 seconds, Mother is in the hall on the phone to Pam. I call out a teasing quiz question for her to ask Pam about the names of Rene Highfield’s children by Jim Bates. Our one-to-one conversation then stops and resumes at 15 minutes 5 seconds with a discussion about a TV programme called Forty Minutes which featured cousin Shirley.
The conversation moves on to more immediate family memories. We talk about the move from 127 Green Lanes to 43 Coleshill Street. Mother reveals that before they moved in a blind woman was living there, who was well known locally. There is a description of the layout of our house, including details like the red sash rope on the wall of the spiral staircase, the curved wall in the kitchen, the black ebony girl at the bottom of the stairs (father’s choice) and how at Pam and Mike’s wedding reception Millie Clayton had knocked it off and broken it. There were over 60 people at that reception, which was held in their front bedroom. They had caterers in for the occasion and the drink was stored in the cellar. This leads onto reminiscences about my 16th party also in the cellar. (This is very sweet but of very limited interest to anyone else!) There are lots of intimate memories of from childhood, of for example the curtains at number 127 Green Lanes, the squirrel jug with the acorn; Z remembers lying in her grandmother’s bed, the drapes around the bed, which had a white background with red figures in which she saw faces. And her earliest memories of zeppelins coming over, and of “being chased around the garden to have Borax and honey put on my sore tongue”. She talks about the large number of visitors they had at their home (presumably this was Rotten Park Road). She quotes herself talking to Betty, “Do you remember Mrs Lowndes?” Curiously, there is a Lowndes branch of the Eardley family which I discovered through the MyHeritage website. I don’t imagine Mother would have knoiwn this but Maria Lowndes was my great-great grandmother, born circa 1826, died circa 1887 in Longton Staffs. She lived in Burslem was married early in 1846. Zilla senior was her daughter. Apparently, she had a sister called Lela then another one called Marie in around 1852. Tunstall Staffordshire comes up a lot. They were all from the Potteries. She remembers this Mrs Lowndes wearing “one of those black velvet bands around her throat”.
I ask about whether they had friends outside the home. “We always had friends in; we had a nice garden a place to play in. Later in Rotten Park Road Dad had a tennis court put in. There were so many children coming and going at the house in Rotten Park Road that once a lady knocked on the door to inquire how much a term it was for the school.”
She talks about how the whole family went down with the flu in that terrible pandemic after the First World War.
There are other reminiscences about childhood illnesses in that period pre-Second World War and after.
Z has some interesting anecdotes about her father’s tough character and a little glimpse into his relationship with her mother.
The tape ends suddenly at 46 minutes. I don’t know if there was any more on the cassette of interest.
[NB This recording is of most interest to the Ford branch!]