An early 20th Century upbringing
A wonderful text has come to light! It was written in 1980 by Enid Simpson, nee Oldfield, and it tells many stories of life during her childhood days in the 1920s living in Kerridge. It provides a fascinating insight into the life of a child in those far off days before the world became ‘modern’. The stories are put together with great insight into the social life, living conditions, and daily activities of the time.
The text has been provided by someone who doesn’t know Enid Simpson or the Simpson or Oldfield families. We hoped to make contact with Enid’s family and are delighted to have heard from her daughter, Lesley, who lives in the USA. We have discovered1 that Enid lived in Kerridge and Bollington until 1929 before moving. In later life, as Mrs Enid Simpson, and widowed, she went to the United States to join her two daughters and four grandchildren, for whom she wrote down these reminiscences in 1980.
We provide on this page an index into the stories, which extend to over 27,000 words, and are all on additional pages!
Editing
The text we received was a poor photo-copy of an original which had been typed on a manual typewriter. The typewriter had some slightly damaged letters on it, particularly the letter ‘m’. There was also one paragraph that was partially unreadable and we have done our best to re-draft this as near as possible in the original words. It is hoped that this editing has not altered the words used by Enid. Some of the spellings in the document were American and these have been reverted to the normal English.
The stories had no overall title so we have added ‘A Kerridge Childhood’. One story had no title so we have added ‘The Market’.
The list of chapters includes:
- Kerridge
- Trains, Hospitals and other adventures
- Schooldays
- Books
- Bluebell Wood
- Gourmet delights
- The Market
- Alfred Gatley
- Mrs Granelli and the Rag and Bone man
- Summer nights
- Wakes Week
- Miss Parks
- Village Life
- Mother’s medicines
- Annual sermons
- Harriet Shufflebottom
- Jummy
- Piano Lessons
- Twopenny rush
- Bollington Life
- White Nancy
- Shopping
- Christmas
- From crystal sets to television
The pictures in some of the stories are taken from the Bollington Civic Society collection at the Discovery Centre , Clarence Mill. They are also available online.
Acknowledgement
- This collection of information was obtained from the Bollington Magazine, May 1990. The Bollington Magazine was the immediate predecessor of Bollington Live!