In week 49 I briefly wrote about Louisa in the context of her being the wife of a great grandfather on my adopted tree, Henry Ross Bird. I explained that she was the daughter of a wealthy merchant (Week 51 : William Wareham and the pleasure boat tragedy) and had married at the age of just 21. Henry and Louisa had three children, one of whom died aged just four and a half months.
Sometime after 1901 and before the 1911 census, the family had moved to 54 Royal Parade in Eastbourne and had two servants, a cook and a housemaid. This must have been quite a large house as it had 9 rooms. Subsequently, and certainly by the time her husband died in 1926, they had moved to somewhere called 'Kenmore' at 36 Upper Avenue in Eastbourne. The properties in the photo below are in Upper Avenue which is about 10 minutes from the sea, so one of them could be the "small detached villa" referred to in the advert above.
But what was Eastbourne like at that time and what was Louisa like as a person ? Normally these are questions usually left to the imagination but luckily my uncle wrote an unpublished autobiography and provided us with an answer to both questions.
Sometime after 1901 and before the 1911 census, the family had moved to 54 Royal Parade in Eastbourne and had two servants, a cook and a housemaid. This must have been quite a large house as it had 9 rooms. Subsequently, and certainly by the time her husband died in 1926, they had moved to somewhere called 'Kenmore' at 36 Upper Avenue in Eastbourne. The properties in the photo below are in Upper Avenue which is about 10 minutes from the sea, so one of them could be the "small detached villa" referred to in the advert above.
But what was Eastbourne like at that time and what was Louisa like as a person ? Normally these are questions usually left to the imagination but luckily my uncle wrote an unpublished autobiography and provided us with an answer to both questions.
What a great name ! I have never found where the Louisa or the Maria or the Pim came from and given that both parents came from a long line of ancestors with multiple children you would have thought someone else in the family would have used the names before, but none had.
What did he and his mother think about Eastbourne and his grandparents house ?
He said that although nobody enjoyed the experience much, they took nearly all their summer holidays during the 1920s in "that most depressing of south coast watering places". He said his mother only organised these Eastbourne visits as she felt the family ought to have a seaside holiday and this was the cheapest way to have one. She "abhorred the town, hated the house and disliked her mother-in-law, so a fair measure of gloom was cast over these pilgrimages from the word go".
He explained that after Louisa became widowed in 1926 she continued to live "in the ugly, uncomfortable, double-fronted late Victorian house, in which the kitchen arrangements were a monument to misapplied ingenuity in their inconvenience". Do you get the feeling he didn't think much of the place ?
He said that although nobody enjoyed the experience much, they took nearly all their summer holidays during the 1920s in "that most depressing of south coast watering places". He said his mother only organised these Eastbourne visits as she felt the family ought to have a seaside holiday and this was the cheapest way to have one. She "abhorred the town, hated the house and disliked her mother-in-law, so a fair measure of gloom was cast over these pilgrimages from the word go".
He explained that after Louisa became widowed in 1926 she continued to live "in the ugly, uncomfortable, double-fronted late Victorian house, in which the kitchen arrangements were a monument to misapplied ingenuity in their inconvenience". Do you get the feeling he didn't think much of the place ?
...... and what was Grandma like ?
He describes her as "short, plump and diffident. I remember her as a rather vague, indecisive old lady who put me in mind of the White Queen. She had had a slight stroke which left her a little lame and it affected her speech to the extent that her carefully acquired aitches were apt to slip to her great embarrassment. I never understood my mother’s dislike of her inoffensive mother-in-law which she did little to hide".
He describes her as "short, plump and diffident. I remember her as a rather vague, indecisive old lady who put me in mind of the White Queen. She had had a slight stroke which left her a little lame and it affected her speech to the extent that her carefully acquired aitches were apt to slip to her great embarrassment. I never understood my mother’s dislike of her inoffensive mother-in-law which she did little to hide".
Obviously these are only one person's views but, whether they are positive or negative, they are all we have.