Please help my quest for family memories
MY name is John Peregrine Wilkinson. I was born at Clifton on July 13, 1940. My mother was Hilda Ann Wilkinson (nee Virgo). She was in her younger years fairly close to the Wills family. I was baptised in Abbots Leigh and my Godmother was Mrs F.O. Wills of the Manor House. I still have my sterling silver christening mug, with ‘John Peregrine’ on it, given by my godmother at my baptism, recorded on page 51 of the 1940 Abbots Leigh Parish church records. I recall when I was a child being shown round the tobacco factory and museum. I also recall that the Queen Mother was an avid collector of cigarette packet cards. She would come to the Manor House to pick up the latest cards. My mother had an old photo of me there as a baby being held by the Queen Mum. Moving on a few years I went to India where I became a tea planter at the age of 19. After a few years in India and later in London, I sailed a small boat to North Africa and then did a stint as an overland driver between the UK and Tibet. Finally I spent nearly 40 years in Papua New Guinea and am now in Australia. Throughout all those years, due to a difference with my father, I never kept up any sort of contact with my godmother. Mrs Wills was, I believe, Sir Frank Wills’ wife. Whilst I was still in PNG, my father died. My mother told me that Alan Wills drove down to our house at Langport in Somerset, to see her and check that she was coping. I recall as a child in the UK, my mother told me that one of the Wills boys was the Lord High Sheriff of Bristol. I see on looking it up, that the maternal grandfather of Sir John Gilmour was Frank Oliver Wills, who was High Sheriff of Bristol in 1924, and Alan Oliver Wills OBE was High Sheriff of Bristol in 1953. I wonder if that was the same Alan Wills who visited my Mother in Langport after my father died? (My mother seemed to have much influence in strange places. There was a RAF base near Langport, and jets would fly over the house on The Hill where she lived. She invited the RAF commander, of whatever rank, to tea and thereafter flights were directed elsewhere.) Once in Papua New Guinea, I was out of work and she told me to
My mother had a letter from Winston Churchill thanking her, after she uncovered a German spy in the early forties, who was signalling ship movements to spotter planes using washing on the lines!
go and see the General Manager at Ramu Sugar, the huge sugar company there, who would interview me and fit me in somewhere. I did go to see him, but decided to do something else. I always wondered who she knew and how. She also had a letter from Winston Churchill thanking her, after she uncovered a German spy in Anglesey in Wales in the early forties, who was signalling ship movements to spotter planes using washing on the lines! I would dearly like to try to obtain some sort of contact with the Wills, just to close off blank bits of where I came from. My mother would tell me of the times she was a nurse at Abbots Leigh, had some connection with the Bishop of Bath and Wells, and too few other anecdotes. I have tried every way possible to go through the normal contact means, without any success whatsoever. I am hoping that this letter will jog someone’s memory enough to contact me, please, for which I would be extremely grateful. John Wilkinson email: johnwilko199@yahoo. com
Remembering river trip to tea gardens
✒ I WAS pleased that you printed a picture of a Postcard of Beese’s Tea Gardens in 1906. I first went there in about 1950 on a river trip organised by the Evening Post Pillar Box Club with “Uncle Bob”, departing from near the Neptune Statue. I recollect that the newspaper printed a picture of the boatload of young members. Things could not have changed much as I have a distinct memory that the boat was temporarily moored to the bank which was higher than river level where passengers embarked and disembarked for the tea gardens via a landing stage. A recent visit there with an almost bare river bank nearly level with the water made me doubt my memories as the house seems now to be a lot further from the river than in the picture. Perhaps a more recent picture taken about 60 years ago would clarify the changes. Graham Best by email Editor’s reply: We’ve had a quick look and the only older photo we have of the tea gardens is a postcard - year unknown but presumably from the first half of the 20th century. We probably do have others, but these will be hidden away in the Post basement. We’ll have a look next time we’re down there, but there must be some readers out there who have family snapshots taken at Beese’s. If you have any from, say, the 1940s to 1960s, do feel free to scan them and mail them to BT, perhaps also with a few words about who’s in the picture and the memories you have of the outing.