Stories from our past

Stories from our Grandparents link us to the past they are like a bridge to an earlier time. My Grandmother Violet Popplewell, whom I called Nana, was born at the beginning of the last Century, on the 12th December 1900. Her Father, Harry Popplewell died when she was only two years old. He had worked in a coal mine since being a young boy of fourteen and the coal dust had infected and blocked up his lungs, he was only twenty six when he died. A year later Violet’s Mother Rose remarried, a widower with six young daughters between the ages of two and thirteen, Violet suddenly had six sisters to grow up with.

Violet’s step father, William Whiting and his daughters lived in the Seaside town of Bridlington, North Yorkshire. People around that time were just beginning to start taking vacations, they would usually travel with the train from the busy industrial cities to seaside places like Bridlington, for this reason Violet’s mother Rose kept a Bed and Breakfast establishment on Quay Road and William worked as a Porter by the Railway station. Violet told me that when the guests would leave at the end of their vacation, she and her sisters would line up by the front door and they would often receive a little tip. When Violet was old enough she attended school with her sisters at Oxford Street School. On this photo you can see a May Pole, the girls all learnt to do a little dance around the May Pole, each girl had a different coloured ribbon, Violet’s ribbon was red. After their performance Violet’s Mum, Rose brought a basket of little chocolate bars for all of the children.

At Easter the girls all received a new dress and bonnet, which Rose had sewed for them, they were white with a red ribbon and their straw bonnets where decorated with flowers. After church the girls asked whether they could go down to the beach, their parents gave them permission but warned them to stay on the promenade and not to go down to the sand. Once they where there it was much to tempting, one of the sisters suggested running along the sand from one set of stairs to the next before the tide came in. They all agreed but unfortunately they were not quick enough for the tide and they all got soaked, their beautiful new dresses were ruined because the red dye from the ribbons ran out over the white dresses.

One of Violet’s step sisters was called Fanny but she had a nickname, they all called her Joey, she was a year older than Violet and she was a bit of a tomboy. Violet and Joey got on really well together and Joey often thought up wild adventures for them to do. One day they borrowed a rowing boat and took it out into the bay, it was a beautiful sunny day and they had brought along a couple of books and a picnic to enjoy. Violet was a little bit worried about rowing out too far but Joey waved away her worries, they ate their lunch and then began reading their books and enjoying the sun and the solitude. At a certain moment, Violet looked up from her book and couldn’t see the harbour anymore, they had drifted far out to sea!Thankfully another boat had seen them and had notified the Lifeboat rescue service so they were eventually towed back to safety.

When the girls were a bit older they received bicycles, a relatively new invention which gave them the freedom to discover the surrounding countryside. One day one of their friends joined them for a bike ride, she had a brand new bike and Joey really, really wanted to ride that bike instead of her own. At first the friend didn’t want to swap but Joey was so insistent that eventually she gave in and Joey got to cycle on the brand new bike and the friend took Joey’s older bike. Everything went well until they started biking down a fairly steep hill and Joey couldn’t find the hand brakes to slow her decent, her friend’s new bike had back pedal brakes! Joey ended up crashing into a hedge at the bottom of the hill and learnt her lesson about being too bossy the hard way.

After spending most of her childhood and early teens in Bridlington with her step sisters, Violet’s mother Rose was divorced from William Whiting and Violet and her Mother and younger brother Hector moved down to the larger city of Hull.