Not the end of the story...
SO, THE house is on the market, end of story. But what story? When you lose a loved parent, - our Mum died last April, - I suspect it’s quite normal to find yourself revisiting all sorts of memories…
And when I think about it I’m sure there’s been numerous couples with very similar stories to that of our Mum, Elsie, and our Dad, Sid Clarke. Couples with remarkable backgrounds returning from all over the world to establish new lives and new communities here in Great Britain after the war.
Mum and Dad were the first council tenants into their house in Broadway, the one that’s just gone on the market, when it was built just after the war.
But where did they come from? And where did their lives go from there?
My Mum was born in Bangalore, south India, to a fairly well-off Anglo Indian family. “Anglo Indian”, but like many of that subculture she was actually as Welsh and as Irish as “Anglo Indian”, so a great sense of loyalty and belonging to the UK, or Great Britain.
After her teenage years at boarding school in the Nilgiri mountains, the war had broken out and she volunteered for the Women’s Army Corp in India, the WACIs.
She was posted to New Delhi, where the University had been turned into a Wireless Experimental Centre by the War Office Y Group. I believe its role was to intercept messages on the Japanese front and feed them back to the UK, ultimately to Bletchley Park.
Part of Mum’s role was to send stuff back to the UK for archiving and the place to which she despatched the material was a place called Beaumanor Hall, the centre of all Y group secret listening stations.
It was while she was stationed in New Delhi that she met and fell in love with the piano playing, Royal Air Force Sergeant, Sid Clarke, our Dad.
Their relationship was not without challenges right from the start - in those days relationships with local girls were discouraged because of the disruption that could be caused on the return home by the British servicemen.
But Mum and Dad persevered and were married in Bangalore in June 1945. They then went into living quarters over there for the remainder of the war.
On demob, by the time they set sail for the UK in 1946 Mum was pregnant with her first child.
They came back to Loughborough where Dad’s family lived, but they didn’t have an easy time.
What with austerity, and rationing, and an in-law family who had difficulty receiving this pregnant Anglo Indian with a warm welcome, they found living with the in-laws impossible.
So Dad cleaned out a Nissan Hut Air Raid Warden Shelter on Derby Road where the Ring o’ Bells is now, and made their home there. They were there, now with two tiny baby girls, through the coldest winter on record, 1947.
Shelthorpe was being built at that time and so when Broadway became available they moved in as the first council house tenants to that property, less than two miles from Beaumanor Hall, where Mum had been sending so much material from Delhi only a couple of years before.
Dad had worked at the Great Central Railway when he was younger, but in the fifties he worked fulltime at the Brush, the Electricity Board and then Rolls Royce at Mountsorrel.
In addition, a part time job took him into villages, and communities all over the area,- Quorn, Barrow, Sileby, Mountsorrel, where he cycled miles on his bike collecting insurance policy premiums each week,- no direct debits in those days.
But his best known other part time job was playing the piano and singing in pubs at weekends all over the area.
Amongst others, he played in the Railway Inn Mountsorrel, The Copt Oak Inn, The Packhorse,- now the Organ Grinder, and the Plough Inn Thorpe Acre, resulting in each one of them serving packed houses on the nights he played. Quite a celebrity he was!!
Back at home he staged musical pantomimes at our house with many Broadway families taking roles,- Rumple Stiltskin, The Witches Ball in the Moon, and others.
Many families came to see their children perform, with Dad playing the accompanying music.
Dad died in 1995. He’d played cricket for many local teams and bowls too. He made board games and wrote novels. But I suspect he’s best remembered for his ability to entertain and get others to join in having a good time.
Mum and Dad ultimately had four children in all. And after we’d all grown Mum too had various part time jobs, working at Tucker’s Brickyard canteen, Corah’s, and John Storer House. But before all that she was a seamstress and dressmaker.
Not only did she make most of our childhood clothes, but she was dressmaker to many of the families on and around Broadway and the estate.
After dad died she got herself a mobility scooter to maintain her independence and continue to go shopping in town and Shelthorpe.
Unfortunately she was injured on her scooter in 1999, spending the turn of the Millenium in hospital with broken legs. But it didn’t stop her resilience and determination and she continued shopping around town after her recovery using the shopmobility service behind the Town Hall.
And she continued to attend the church of the Good Shepherd by scooter or wheelchair, where she and Dad had worshipped together for so many years.
Ten years later in 2009 she received her Veterans War medal in a presentation at the Town Hall for her service all those years previously back in India, but for me she should have been decorated for her curries!
She had her 93rd birthday in March last year in a care home in Quorn and died two weeks later. And the house is on the market. End of story. Really?
I’m sure that many couples restarting their lives after the war have similar remarkable stories that could be told by their families. Stories about how they overcame the challenges the new era and culture brought them and how they attempted to face up to them. I’m sure many were of equally mixed race and culture. Polish. Italian. Asian and West Indian.
I’m sure that process is happening all over again in the UK now in the same way, the way that makes our British Culture so rich and remarkable.
I just felt the story of my Mum and Dad needed telling to the community of Loughborough who knew them both so well.