Kingsthorpe Hollow in the Great War

               Reminiscences of Lilian Ashby (1902-85) of Stanhope Road 

My mother, Lilian Ashby, was born in May 1902 at Knightly Road, Kingsthorpe, second daughter of James Moore (Jim) Ashby, from Towcester,

and Minnie Kingston of Pury End. Jim and Minnie had met when he was a grocer’s boy delivering around the surrounding villages by horse and cart. 

Shortly after 1902 the family moved to Stanhope Road, also in Kingsthorpe, where Jim and Minnie kept a grocery shop and off-licence.

It is difficult to believe these days, but in common with many of their neighbours, the Ashbys kept a pig in the back yard.

This was fed with scraps and my mother and her siblings grew quite fond of the animal. But eventually the day would come when the

slaughter man called. Mum told me that one of the children was very upset about all this and declared that he was ‘ashamed of the pigs’.

He really meant that he was sorry for them, but it served to lighten the sadness.

Anyway it didn’t prevent the kids from having the pig’s bladder blown up on the end of a stick to play with.

Jim Ashby looked after the beer side of the business, but on one occasion he was called upon to serve a lady in the shop who

wanted a couple of yards of knicker elastic. The scale for measuring such things was set into the edge of the counter.

Not knowing about such things Jim was stretching the material against the scale, until the lady protested and Minnie came in to sort things out.

But my grandfather had his own back. One of the customers used to swear a lot. It was ‘bleedin’ this’, and ‘bleedin’ that’.

To such an extent that Jim nicknamed him ‘Mr Bleeder’.

Unfortunately Minnie thought it was his real name and the next time he came in addressed him as such.

They were a close knit family, and got into all sorts of scrapes. Mum, who used to share a bedroom over the shop entrance, confided to me

that she and elder sister Nell used to lean out of the window spitting onto customers’ hats. Not very good for custom.

My mother told me of all the games they used to play in the street, but the only one I recall was named ‘Jump jump Jo-ardy’ or something similar.

She also remembered playing in ‘Chuckies’ Meadow’. This is also mentioned elsewhere in reminiscences of Kingsthorpe Hollow on this Web site.

She also recalled the rag and bone men who used to visit, named ‘Bacca’ and ‘Arner’. The latter had a speech impediment.

His real name was Arthur. Sadly the kids used to tease him.

My mother attended Kingsthorpe Grove School, and before that a corrugated iron establishment she called ‘The Tin School’.

Where that was I do not know. It was probably a temporary building. At Kingsthorpe Grove a fellow pupil was the composer Edmund Rubbra,

who lived in Balfour Road. All my mother can remember about him was that he wore a high stiff collar, and corrected the teacher who drew a bird

sitting on a twig on the blackboard. Edmund amended the bird’s feet so there was a claw behind the twig. He was quite correct.

My mother taught me a song which they sang at school, called the ‘May Day Garland’. This appears in the Oxford Book of Carols,

published much later in 1928, and there noted as a Northamptonshire folk carol.

In those days public transport was by tram, and the trams had open tops. When raining the conductor would come round and put a tarpaulin

around the upstairs passengers!

During the Great War the Racecourse was turned into a vast army camp for new recruits, and soldiers were billeted all over the town.

Stanhope Road was no exception and my mother, who was then an early teenager, recalled the procession of young lads who were billeted on them,

and went over to France and Flanders, only to appear in the lists of casualties after a few weeks.

Mum’s cousin Jim Billing was lucky. He joined the Royal Navy but survived the war. Jim Ashby had a job helping to cater for the recruits on the Racecourse.

When Zeppelins raided Northampton in 1917, apparently Mum’s younger sister Winifred, who was not yet 6 years old, was so terrified that she shot

into the cellar and refused come out for hours.

Jim Billings’ mother, Susanna Ashby (Mum’s Aunt Sue) also lived on Stanhope Road. My mother says that when they went to the theatre

(in the gods) to see the latest melodrama, and the heroine was on the point of being seduced by the villainous squire,

Aunt Sue would think it all real and warn that ‘She’ll come to a bad end, like our Bess’. Later genealogical research has confirmed that Betsy Ashby

did have a child after being in service at a ‘toff’s’ house. Where it happened I do not know, I suspect Wellingborough. But it was a common

enough peril for young girls in service in those days.

These are just some of the reminiscences my mother told us. She died in 1985, and now I wish we had recorded them all for posterity.

There’s lots more I have forgotten.

My mother did munitions work later in the war, which is where I think she met my father. They were married at Trinity Church, Balmoral Road,

 which is where I was baptised ten years later, travelling down from Leeds for the privilege.

[Above] Balmoral Road

Michael J Gainsford

Burbage, Leics

07 05 09