FENLAND FAMILIES

The speaker for our well – attended January meeting was Rex Sly, an ex RAF pilot & farmer and now author.
His interest in fenland families began with his own research tracing his family back to the 1600’s.
The family were tenant farmers in Thorney & moved in the 1700’s to Gedney Hill & Spalding. His three times Gt grandfather was a bargee & the rest of the family have moved no further than 10 –15 miles in the last 400 years.
Rex’s first book ‘The Punt & The Plough’ told of life in the Fens & his 2nd book ‘Fenland Families’ told of the trades, business, & professions of the families covering three generations.
Well known family businesses such as Hopper the instrument makers & Franks (originally of German extraction) who were horse dealers & are now well known for their pork butcher shops in Wisbech & elsewhere, Layton’s the dry cleaners & Ladbrooke’s the ice cream makers of Spalding.
Most families had relatives in both WW1& WW2, & it was only the resilience and loyalty of the staff not called up to war that these families were able to continue their businesses. We saw a picture of the WW1 record, written on silk material that belonged to a member of the Goodwin family who were fishermen. Other families mentioned were the Bagleys, tippers & trimmers of coal, the Adam family who were urinal makers, Barnes the undertakers, a family going strong today. In Wisbech the Gibbs family, well known for their shoe shops & today still carried on by the daughter, as is Elgoods Brewery.
The Strickland family worked at Crowland Abbey & Johnson’s were shoe repairers of Holbeach.
Rex told an interesting story of a baker in Spalding who even today bakes bread in the old fashioned coke fuel steam ovens & who was eagerly sort after during a bread strike by the big commercial firms, when queues formed outside his shop to buy his bread.
Rex spoke of new families coming into Fenland who do not follow the traditional trades, but thankfully there are still Fenland Families in the true sense of the word.
[Barbara Holmes]