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Webster Family John Webster July 2019 John wrote to us from Houston, Texas: Just found out about your website and the photos of several members of my extended families. The website brings back many memories of Box and its residents. The articles about Sylvie Lucas and The Wall are especially intriguing. I fell off that wall and broke my arm when I was about 14 years old. Sylvie is my aunt, and her husband John was the brother of my mother Kit Webster. I later lived in the area until my twenties having bought a bungalow in Pine Close off Leafy Lane. The website has been a real catalyst for me to share as many memories as my brain will serve me. Left: Me and Pete Barnett on The Wall in our childhood |
Webster Family in Box
I’m a Box Hill guy and all our family were local residents. My paternal grandparents lived in the Market Place, and Grappa William Barlass Webster worked on the railway (you could tell by the stride in his walk). My maternal grandparents were Jack and Martha Lucas from Boxfields Cottages. My parents were Bill Webster and Kit Lucas. Dad was one of three brothers, Dick, Dad and Phil. Dick lived opposite the Queen’s Head and Phil lived in Bargates. Phil was an excellent cake maker and he specialized in wedding cakes. If you saw the brothers walking away from you, you could barely distinguish between them
I’m a Box Hill guy and all our family were local residents. My paternal grandparents lived in the Market Place, and Grappa William Barlass Webster worked on the railway (you could tell by the stride in his walk). My maternal grandparents were Jack and Martha Lucas from Boxfields Cottages. My parents were Bill Webster and Kit Lucas. Dad was one of three brothers, Dick, Dad and Phil. Dick lived opposite the Queen’s Head and Phil lived in Bargates. Phil was an excellent cake maker and he specialized in wedding cakes. If you saw the brothers walking away from you, you could barely distinguish between them
My parents Bill Webster and Kit (nee Lucas) outside the gate of Box Church at my wedding to my late wife Cindy (nee Kripp from Houston, Texas) on 10 January 1976.
Mum and Dad had three children: me, Mary and David, all born at 2 The Tynnings, Box Hill. We then moved to Aldhelm Crescent, Boxfields, in the flatroofs when I was about 10 years old. I think I have the timing about right as I don’t remember going back to the Tynnings after I was 11 or 12. We moved to Barn Piece when they started the demolition of the two Boxfields estates, probably when I was about 15. Mum was the tea lady at Price’s Candle Factory for years, as well as, the lunch lady at Box School, where she also did the cleaning in the 1960s and 70s. Dad just loved the old school clock and making sure it was on time.
Mum and Dad had three children: me, Mary and David, all born at 2 The Tynnings, Box Hill. We then moved to Aldhelm Crescent, Boxfields, in the flatroofs when I was about 10 years old. I think I have the timing about right as I don’t remember going back to the Tynnings after I was 11 or 12. We moved to Barn Piece when they started the demolition of the two Boxfields estates, probably when I was about 15. Mum was the tea lady at Price’s Candle Factory for years, as well as, the lunch lady at Box School, where she also did the cleaning in the 1960s and 70s. Dad just loved the old school clock and making sure it was on time.
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Prices Factory in 1960s (courtesy Mervyn Tyte)
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My auntie Floss married Ted Barnett, son of the Barnett family of Box Hill. At one time they lived on the Hill at Ebury Cottage.
I know she also lived at Kingsdown at some point and she told me she could remember a German plane crashing there and they all rushed to see if the pilot was dead. There are several articles on the website about our family, such as my grandfather Jack Lucas and the Rabbit Club, our Dad and the Stone Firms. I can add to PC Bosley’s account of the winter of 1962-63 when my uncle Sid, a postman, and I delivered the mail, trudging through deep snow over the fields to Hazelbury Manor and Wadswick
Accident in Box Woods
I had a serious accident when I was about ten. It was the first week of the school summer holidays and I was playing hide and seek with Pete Barnett and a few other young friends down in Box Woods. I was hiding, and climbed a big old beech tree about in the middle of the wood and by a path that cuts through between some old quarry workings. Next thing I recall is waking up on the ground spitting blood, dirt and leaves out of my mouth. Then a lady with a pushchair or pram took me up to Gran’s. and she got me to the surgery with Dr Davey in the Community Centre across the Tumps from 8 Boxfields. Because of all the swelling, Dr Davey didn’t think I had hurt myself badly but an ambulance was due taking people to the RUH, Bath, which took me too. There I sat and waited, for what seemed like hours, until called to have X-rays taken.
Suddenly I was the centre of attention, with nurses propping me up with pillows all around me. The injury was a dislocation of my Odontoid Peg which allows the almost universal movement of the head and it sits between the Axis and Atlas at the top of the Spinal Vertebrae. My next recall was in a ward, a geriatric ward. At first, I was on a children’s ward but there was too much activity going on and I was moved and told not to move my head at all. I had a leather harness with lots of weights around my chin and head and over the back of the bed. Later, the technicians at the hospital installed a rod system with motor bike mirrors on it so that I could angle them and look about without moving my head.
I spent hours sitting on a table with long mirrors surrounding me and the orthopaedic doctor and the plaster doctor building a plaster cast around the back of my head, around my chin and down to my waist, basically encasing me. Later, I was moved from the RUH to the Orthopaedic Hospital close by and to do so, the doctors built another cast fully enclosing me down to the waist and with a square opening for my mouth, eyes and nose. I was a ten-year-old spaceman.
I know she also lived at Kingsdown at some point and she told me she could remember a German plane crashing there and they all rushed to see if the pilot was dead. There are several articles on the website about our family, such as my grandfather Jack Lucas and the Rabbit Club, our Dad and the Stone Firms. I can add to PC Bosley’s account of the winter of 1962-63 when my uncle Sid, a postman, and I delivered the mail, trudging through deep snow over the fields to Hazelbury Manor and Wadswick
Accident in Box Woods
I had a serious accident when I was about ten. It was the first week of the school summer holidays and I was playing hide and seek with Pete Barnett and a few other young friends down in Box Woods. I was hiding, and climbed a big old beech tree about in the middle of the wood and by a path that cuts through between some old quarry workings. Next thing I recall is waking up on the ground spitting blood, dirt and leaves out of my mouth. Then a lady with a pushchair or pram took me up to Gran’s. and she got me to the surgery with Dr Davey in the Community Centre across the Tumps from 8 Boxfields. Because of all the swelling, Dr Davey didn’t think I had hurt myself badly but an ambulance was due taking people to the RUH, Bath, which took me too. There I sat and waited, for what seemed like hours, until called to have X-rays taken.
Suddenly I was the centre of attention, with nurses propping me up with pillows all around me. The injury was a dislocation of my Odontoid Peg which allows the almost universal movement of the head and it sits between the Axis and Atlas at the top of the Spinal Vertebrae. My next recall was in a ward, a geriatric ward. At first, I was on a children’s ward but there was too much activity going on and I was moved and told not to move my head at all. I had a leather harness with lots of weights around my chin and head and over the back of the bed. Later, the technicians at the hospital installed a rod system with motor bike mirrors on it so that I could angle them and look about without moving my head.
I spent hours sitting on a table with long mirrors surrounding me and the orthopaedic doctor and the plaster doctor building a plaster cast around the back of my head, around my chin and down to my waist, basically encasing me. Later, I was moved from the RUH to the Orthopaedic Hospital close by and to do so, the doctors built another cast fully enclosing me down to the waist and with a square opening for my mouth, eyes and nose. I was a ten-year-old spaceman.
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I remember several things at the Orthopaedic: the rubber band fights across the ward, wheelchair racing along the corridors, the merchant sailor who fell between his ship and the dock and was now paralyzed after breaking his neck, and men in the Iron Lungs after contracting polio. Often, I was pushed out onto the patio to catch the summer sun, lying there on my back, only with a loincloth, a suntanned front and a very white back. This also where I learned my appreciation of classical music.
The whole time I was in hospital I never had a haircut and it grew down to the middle of my back. Another thing I remember, is the bits of food, drink and drops of soapy water that ran down inside the cast and not being very pleasant. Afterward I had to learn to walk again and gain my strength back. Also, a lot of deep breathing exercises because of my asthma. About a year after recovery I fell off ‘The Wall’ and broke my arm. The doctors in the RUH remembered me. Left: John and Dorothy Lucas, the youngest of the four girls in the Lucas family. She went on to marry Sid Fletcher, the Box postman. |
Barnett Family
The Barnett boys from Box Hill, Ron, Ted and Tony, were related to us through Ted Barnett who married my mother’s sister, Floss. Ted was a mason by trade but worked at Westinghouse, Chippenham, in his later years. During the Second World War he served in the War Department Constabulary at the Central Ammunition Depot.[1] Ted died in 1955 aged only 45 at Ebury Cottage after several years of ill-health. He had no children. Tony, the youngest, lived at Clydesdale Road, off Henley Lane, and his wife worked in Fudge’s Post Office for many years. Ron was in the Parachute Regiment during WWII and I believe he was wounded dropping into Arnhem. Ron was the Finance Director for Westinghouse and a mentor to me from my youngest childhood days through to my early twenties.
Pete Barnett, Ron’s son, was my best friend. Pete used to visit me frequently in hospital and we played a lot of monopoly. Pete was ahead of his time with his mathematical solutions and systems-design for the acoustics for concert halls. I have a photo somewhere of Pete and me, aged about three or four, sitting on the wall of a pigsty, on a piece of land just above the A4 and at the top of Hedgesparrow Lane. Pete’s parents later built their bungalow there just before the Rising Sun blew up.
The Barnett boys from Box Hill, Ron, Ted and Tony, were related to us through Ted Barnett who married my mother’s sister, Floss. Ted was a mason by trade but worked at Westinghouse, Chippenham, in his later years. During the Second World War he served in the War Department Constabulary at the Central Ammunition Depot.[1] Ted died in 1955 aged only 45 at Ebury Cottage after several years of ill-health. He had no children. Tony, the youngest, lived at Clydesdale Road, off Henley Lane, and his wife worked in Fudge’s Post Office for many years. Ron was in the Parachute Regiment during WWII and I believe he was wounded dropping into Arnhem. Ron was the Finance Director for Westinghouse and a mentor to me from my youngest childhood days through to my early twenties.
Pete Barnett, Ron’s son, was my best friend. Pete used to visit me frequently in hospital and we played a lot of monopoly. Pete was ahead of his time with his mathematical solutions and systems-design for the acoustics for concert halls. I have a photo somewhere of Pete and me, aged about three or four, sitting on the wall of a pigsty, on a piece of land just above the A4 and at the top of Hedgesparrow Lane. Pete’s parents later built their bungalow there just before the Rising Sun blew up.
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Pete and I were together up to and through our childhood on Box Hill and our college years at Bath Technical College. We lost touch for a while when work intervened. but reconnected in the 1970s when I was posted to a National Westminster Bank branch in London and he was working there too. I lodged with him and his family in Frimley. Pete worked on concert halls throughout the world and I was fortunate enough to be with him when he was designing one of his first systems for the Royal Festival Hall, London. We spent many hours in the equipment rooms above and at the back of the auditorium. He also designed the system for the Royal Albert Hall and you can still see the upside-down mushroom deflectors that he designed hanging from the ceiling.
Pete sadly passed away in 2000. He had a heart attack whilst driving his car, the car crashed through a hedge into a field. I went to his funeral and talked to his wife Carol and others that the accident was the culmination of earlier problems. Some years before, Pete was working on the acoustics for a new Hong Kong Airport and was flown home to England by air ambulance where he underwent major heart surgery. I think he had five heart bypasses and was given 11 years to live. He died in the eleventh year. |
Me aged 21
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Other Connections with Box
I worked for Richard Fudge, the Box Postmaster and Newsagent, for years doing his paper rounds, and on Saturdays odd jobs about the shop, the telephone boxes, washing and polishing his car, mowing the lawns. In the 1962 heavy winter snows I helped my uncle Sid Fletcher, a Box postman, who married Dorothy Webster. We delivered mail and food necessities to Hazelbury Manor and all over Wadswick, trudging most of the time through deep snow across the fields. I worked at Prices tennis ball factory during school holidays and I recall buffing the excess rubber after coming out of the presses and then when the fabric cloth was stuck on the steam process to fluff them up. Bob Hancock and his wife Lauri were landlords at the Quarryman’s Arms, Box Hill, where the Hancock family had been involved decades before. I used to run the pub one night a week, giving Bob and Lauri a night off. I also worked at the Northey Arms on certain nights too.
When I married Cindy, she arrived at the church late with her father in Jockey Peters’ carriage after a roundabout loop which went from aunt Sylvia’s home in Boxfields, past the Horse and Jockey and down the Devizes Road. We had the reception at The Chequers in the Market Place, one of my favourite pubs where a stream runs through the cellars. Rev Tom Selwyn Smith, our vicar, had Cindy’s banns called with her at my home in Longbridge Deverell and me at my Mum & Dad’s home in Barn Piece.
The website has brought back many memories of my Box connections: Rodney Brickell, son of Brickell’s Ice Cream Factory on the Ley, Mike Betteridge who emigrated to Australia, and Anthony Fry. Many of us were scouts with Skip Cogswell and I well remember the camping trip to Guernsey and building and using the canoe. It seems like yesterday.
I worked for Richard Fudge, the Box Postmaster and Newsagent, for years doing his paper rounds, and on Saturdays odd jobs about the shop, the telephone boxes, washing and polishing his car, mowing the lawns. In the 1962 heavy winter snows I helped my uncle Sid Fletcher, a Box postman, who married Dorothy Webster. We delivered mail and food necessities to Hazelbury Manor and all over Wadswick, trudging most of the time through deep snow across the fields. I worked at Prices tennis ball factory during school holidays and I recall buffing the excess rubber after coming out of the presses and then when the fabric cloth was stuck on the steam process to fluff them up. Bob Hancock and his wife Lauri were landlords at the Quarryman’s Arms, Box Hill, where the Hancock family had been involved decades before. I used to run the pub one night a week, giving Bob and Lauri a night off. I also worked at the Northey Arms on certain nights too.
When I married Cindy, she arrived at the church late with her father in Jockey Peters’ carriage after a roundabout loop which went from aunt Sylvia’s home in Boxfields, past the Horse and Jockey and down the Devizes Road. We had the reception at The Chequers in the Market Place, one of my favourite pubs where a stream runs through the cellars. Rev Tom Selwyn Smith, our vicar, had Cindy’s banns called with her at my home in Longbridge Deverell and me at my Mum & Dad’s home in Barn Piece.
The website has brought back many memories of my Box connections: Rodney Brickell, son of Brickell’s Ice Cream Factory on the Ley, Mike Betteridge who emigrated to Australia, and Anthony Fry. Many of us were scouts with Skip Cogswell and I well remember the camping trip to Guernsey and building and using the canoe. It seems like yesterday.
Family Tree
William Barlass Webster (b 27 September 1871 - 1958), permanent way packer, married Florence (b 10 August 1874). William served in the Gloucestershire Regiment in 1891. They lived at Pye Corner in 1911 and at Springfield Cottage in 1939. Children:
William Barlass Webster (b 27 September 1871 - 1958), permanent way packer, married Florence (b 10 August 1874). William served in the Gloucestershire Regiment in 1891. They lived at Pye Corner in 1911 and at Springfield Cottage in 1939. Children:
- Ellen (b 1898);
- Richard Valentine (b 25 May 1904 - 1982) married Evelyn Ball (b 22 June 1907) on 22 March 1930.[2] Richard was a carpenter and they lived at 1 Alverstone Cottages, the Ley in 1939;
- William Harold (b 18 June 1905 - 1978) married Kathleen B Lucas (b 9 January 1914) in 1940. In 1939 he was living with his in-laws John and Martha Lucas at 8 Boxfields where he was working as a foreman in the underground Ordnances. Kitty was a Bakelite Moulder and Dorothy was a Glove Ironer;
- Phillip Edward (b 25 March 1907 - 2006) married Marjorie Lester in 1947;
- Lilian Florence (b 18 March 1909 - 2002) married Walter E Mizon in 1945;
- Florence E Lucas, known as Floss, (17 December 1910 – 1997) married Edward George Brenton Barnett (1911 - 1955), known as Ted, son of Wilfred Loftus (b 1887), banker mason, and Harriett Louisa (b 1885) Barnett in 1934. Wilfred and Harriett lived at 1 Tisbutts Cottages. Ted and Floss lived at Kingsdown then Queen's Square and later Ebury Cottage, Box Hill. Kath later emigrated to Australia.
- Dorothy M (12 July 1922 -) married Sid Fletcher. They lived in Bargates. Child: Graham.
References
[1] The Wiltshire Times, 26 November 1955
[2] Wiltshire Times & Trowbridge Advertiser, 29 March 1930
[1] The Wiltshire Times, 26 November 1955
[2] Wiltshire Times & Trowbridge Advertiser, 29 March 1930