A Somerset Lad

It is some forty years since I first obtained a birth certificate for my grandfather Sidney Herbert Poulton. It shows that his mother as Ellen Poulton, a machinist of Chiswick, and that he was born in Isleworth Infirmary. The box for details of his father is blank.

Through online contacts since 2015, a bigger picture has developed.

Ellen Poulton was Ellen Miriam Poolton, the name spelt with a second ‘o’ instead of a ‘u,’ and that she had two other children George Stanley and Ida Frederica. The official documents telling the story of Ellen and her family are plentiful. They include full details of the military career of her father Hugh Henry Poolton.

For Ida, it has never been possible to find a birth certificate. Perhaps, in 1907 or 1909, her year of birth was never firmly established, it was possible for births to go unrecorded in the official records. Ida’s first appearance on an official document is on a return for the 1911 Census when she was living with Ada Poolton her grandmother in Wandsworth.

Only on the birth certificate of George Stanley does a father’s name appear. Born on 23rd September 1908, he is named as Fred Stratton who is described as a civil engineer. Under “name and maiden name of mother” there is entered “Ellen Miriam Stratton formerly Poolton.”

Fred Stratton was Frederick Robert Stratton from a family in Chelsea. Family memories recall visit by Ida to the home of her grandparents. They were not rich, but were considerably more affluent than Ellen.

Sadly, Ellen seems to have been deceived by Fred Stratton for a number of years. He could not have married her, or not done so legally, for he had married Marion Gwladys Williams of Bangor in North Wales in 1904.

The full nature of the deception is unclear. At one point, in one of the few letters that survive, Ellen writes to her mother about Ada having moved house. Ellen says that it was good of Mrs Carrington, a neighbour, to have helped Ada to move. Ellen asks, “how do you like your new flat?” and then says “you mustn’t forget to let Fred know your new address.”

Where was Fred at this time? Presumably at home with Marion, from where he went to his job each day at the railway clearing house, where the values of fares paid to travel on journeys involving trains of more than one railway company were divided between the companies concerned. It was a good job, but not as he had described himself to Ellen. What did he tell Marion when he was visiting Ellen?

Did he tell her he was working away? When did she find out that he had deceived her? Was it when she was in the workhouse again in 1911? Or when she died in 1912 at the age of 23 and a cousin had to register her death?

Fred Stratton lived until the age of 76, dying in North Wales in 1956. One wonders if Marion ever discovered the truth.

The gradual advance in years bring moments when benches are welcome.

So it was that I sat on a wooden bench on steel legs that offered a place for weary shoppers to stop to catch their breath.

A line of steel bollards protected the pavement on either side of the entrance to the car park.  The bollards had been painted green at some point in the past, but the paint had suffered weathering and knocks, leaving a dull, metallic darkness. Moss and grass grew around both the bollards and the legs of the bench. The wood had once been stained, but had become grey and cracked and without beauty.

However, weathering and cracks did not catch the eye of the small boy who came running up to the bench and stepped up onto it. Perhaps three or four years old, he turned and smiled at his father who held out a hand to him.

The boy wanted to jump from the bench to the nearest bollard.

Even the most athletic of people would not have attempted such a jump. The tops of the bollards were spherical and there would have been nowhere to land on a firm footing.

The boy’s father did not demur from the request, instead placing his arms around the boy he lifted him high into the air before bringing him down so that the boy’s feet just touched the top of the bollard. The leap from bench to bollard was just the start of the flight as the boy was carried aloft to the car park, delighted at his aerial exploits.

There was a moment’s connection with the world of imagination before it fell under the shadow of reason and sternness; a moment’s recall of times when anything seemed possible.

The Standard car driven by my father could be transformed into something that had the capacity of a James Bond-vehicle. Household appliances could become devices for resisting alien attacks. Even the most ordinary things could be imbued with a sense of wonder and boundless possibility.

Had someone asked, “can this car become a boat?” or “can this food mixer become a ray gun?” of course, the answer would have been, “no.” Even a small boy knew the physical limitations of ordinary things, and yet there was always the possibility of holding the two dimensions in tension, always the possibility of clinging to the world of imagination.

Somewhere along the way, we lose our capacity to fly.

Preparing the First Year history lesson for tomorrow, I wistfully perused the material for the lessons. I wish there had been such resources when I was at school.

Before they even begin to look at historical materials, the First Year students are taught about sources, about asking questions, about looking at evidence. They are enthusiastic in their responses.

The focus of the course is on skills as well as knowledge, on making history a lifelong activity. There is the cultivation of an awareness that history is to be found in their own area as well as in distant locations. It took me half of my life to learn what they are learning in the opening weeks of first year.

Working in an Ulster parish south of Downpatrick, a parish with traditions that dated from the days of Saint Patrick, there was an anniversary festival in 1995 which included a bus tour of the parish.

The bus tour was not for outsiders, but for the parishioners themselves. An archaeologist from Queen’s University was numbered among the people of the parish and was our guide for the tour. An Ulsterbus was hired and, at the most distant point, from where we started we must have been three miles from where we had begun.

What had seemed a piece of silliness when it was planned, became an experience people were to remember. Each pile of stones, each fold in the hill, each grassy mound suddenly assumed an identity of their own.

Standing at the gate of a field, in which a single wall standing alone was all that remained of a medieval building, the archaeologist described the digs that had taken place there and how what was found told the story of the everyday lives of the people who had lived there. There had been laughter when he had talked about the excavation of what had once been the cess pit of the medieval house and had commented that it was amazing what people dropped when they were going to the toilet.  A place that had been passed by many people everyday became more than just a stone wall in a meadow.

It is unlikely that a professional historian or archaeologist will emerge from among the First Year students, such talents are few and far between, but if the lessons should prompt their adult selves to pause and to see the past around, then the course will have been a success.