Letters pray for happier times from days gone by
YOU may think I have no need to apologise to several of you this week although, nonetheless, I do for apparently not attending to the letters you have written to me during the recent emergency.
This week a bundle of letters were forwarded to me, one of them written as long ago as July and I have spoken to those who gave me telephone numbers, for letters as diverse as Colonel Vignoles’ son Charles (who became managing director of Shell Mex & BP), the correct title of Mairzy Doats, Pepper’s Hill, and the name of the Duchess of Portland’s mother – Frances Perry DallasYorke! But one letter will transport many of you back to happier times, a missive of memory from Ann Rushby of Elm Avenue whose early years as Ann Ladlow revolved round Flottergate Methodist Chapel of which she was reminded when I used the phrase ‘You in your small corner’ and which, she tells me, brought back happy Sunday school memories.
‘I am sure you will remember the large church in the town centre which seemed vast with its many small rooms. There was one particular room which we always peeked into which housed a beautiful large rocking horse. It was never seen outside the storeroom and we were never allowed to ride on it but it was a marvel to the small children from the local area and those from Brighowgate Childrens’ Home.
The only other such toy we had seen was in Evingtons in the Bull Ring.
‘Sunday school was always looked forward to for as well as Bible stories and singing there was the annual excitement of the school outing, often to Cherry Garth on Humberston Avenue and once to Louth. Harvest Festival with the altar loaded with fruit and vegetables with the centrepiece of a sheaf of corn stays in the memory, as do anniversary Sundays when we went along in our new summer clothes.
‘We were encouraged to join the Sons of Temperance to sign the pledge – now sadly lapsed in my case.’
Mrs Rushby’s recollection will be shared with you whichever chapel you attended.
Flottergate was huge, its interior impressive. George Doughty’s building firm was responsible for the entire interior woodwork, the finest oak and pitch pine of any chapel or church in the district and all out of the Baltic from Lithuanian forests.
It was demolished in 1970, a casu
alty of the clearance of central Top Town to make way for the Freshney Place shops, an episode recalled with a shudder.
I managed to salvage enough fragments of the organ case to build a summer house with them in my garden.
The 1914-18 War Memorial brass plaque I took to the Grimsby librarian Mr EH Trevitt for safekeeping. Where it is now, I have no idea.