Side Trip Visiting Relatives & Family History

I’m back on-line. I’ve travelled this morning back to Morden to Stewart and Janette’s, from Linslade. I have to prepare for tomorrow flight to Dublin. Below I have written four days worth of my journey which is mainly about my English side of the family plus some sightseeing of the local area.

Saturday 9th August

Today I am going away from London again to visit some more relatives I got to watch some of the Olympic Men’s Road Cycle race, but did not get to hear who won it till later in the afternoon when the T.V. showed an hour long daily wrap of the different events.

Once again Stewart had to take Jeanette to work at St Thomas Hospital and then Stewart and I drove north to Milton Keynes to catch up with some collecting friend’s Peter & Joyce. Peter is a playing card collector who collects British Brewery Playing cards. He has visited Australia many times to visit his Daughter who lives in Queensland. Luckily his trips seem to always occur when a large collectors meeting is on. I had seen Peter a few weeks ago at Balina our annual collector’s weekend there. Peter and Joyce actually arrived back in England the same day I arrived here.

Travelling up the M1 we were stopped by a traffic accident which held us up for about 20 minutes before arriving at Peter & Joyce’s home. We talked for a while and I got a chance to look through Peter’s Guinness playing cards. He has a great collection of British playing cards and has them displayed very well in a series of card albums.

Later Peter took Stewart & me on a quick tour of Milton Keynes, which is a planned city much like Canberra in Australia. It is a grid system connected by roundabouts. The roads are mostly lined by hedges which hide the housing etc. The town has an indoor snow centre where you can go downhill skiing. We also included a trip to one of Peter’s local pubs the Victoria Inn.

I managed to get a photo of Stewart & Peter without beers in their hands! I was able to get some beer coasters while we were there.

We then went to look at the concrete cows which are a sculpture alongside one of the main roads before going to another pub The Beams for a very good lunch. After we took Peter back home and said goodbye to both he and Joyce we drove down to the village of Linslade which is about 20 miles away.

Here I will be staying with Doreen who is the wife of my Fathers Cousin Arthur who passed way in 2003. Both Arthur and Doreen visited us in 1993 and stayed in Sydney for a while and went around with Mum & Dad. They also went to Brisbane, Ayres Rock and Cairns. At the same time Mum & Dad drove up to my Brother Robert’s in Brisbane and then up to Cairns to my sister Janice’s and caught up with Arthur & Doreen again in both places showing them around as they went.

Bennett Family History Lesson – The 1918 England Connection. (Not to be confused with the original English ancestors who were of Convict stock)

My grandfather Walter Bennett was in World War 1. As an Anzac, he fought in Gallipoli and on the Western Front in France. He was injured at one stage and was sent to England to recuperate. A school teacher in a primary school in a countryside village asked the school children to bring in a hard boiled egg to send off to the injured solders in hospitals. The children put their names and school addresses on the eggs and my Grandfather received one of them.

He sent a letter back thanking the child and she passed it on to her teacher. The teacher showed it to her best friend Margaret Corkett who lived in the nearby village of Burcott (which if you have visited our house in Eastwood would know that our house is named ‘Burcott’). Margaret told her friend to write back to Walter but she did not want to, so Margaret wrote a letter back to my grandfather. After the war finished my grandfather came up to Burcott to meet Margaret and they fell in love and were married. My grandfather actually stayed in Burcott long enough to play a season of cricket for the Wing cricket club. I have at home a medal given to him at the end of the season in 1918-19 from the cricket association.

Not long after that both Walter and Margaret travelled to Sydney by ship and settled in North Sydney. Soon after arriving back in Australia my father Aubrey was born.

The rest of Margaret’s family of course were still in England and therefore my father had Grandparents plus an aunt and five uncles in England. So my grandparents then my mother and father kept in touch with the family in England and when mum and dad visited the U.K. they finally met Dad’s Aunty and Uncles plus his numerous cousins, staying with several of them on their two visits to the U.K.

End of Bennett Family History Lesson

So back to Doreen, I have met her previously in Australia and spoken to her many times on the phone over the years. She lives with her pet dog ‘Bo’. Also in the back yard Doreen keeps two pygmy goats which she took on as orphans a few years ago. They have a stable and yard fenced off in the rear yard.
As I arrived Doreen was going out on one of her two daily walks with Bo so I tagged along. We walked along the canal which is a local section of the London to Birmingham canal which is known as the Grand Union Canal. At the London end it finishes at Regents Park. There were a couple of canal boats lined up along the side of the canal as we walked past.

Afterwards back at Doreen’s home we spent the rest of the day talking about both our families and watching some television.

Sunday 10th August

I woke up early and watched Doreen feed the goats. Then had breakfast and watched some of the Olympic Games on T.V. It is frustrating watching the events and being restricted to the British commentary. I have to watch all the British athletes races and you only get to see the Australian athletes if they are in the same race or playing against the Australians. So the only Aussie’s I saw today were the in the cycling road race for women and some swimming events.

During the morning Doreen’s son Paul arrived for a visit. He lives in Bournemouth and is a hire car chauffeur. Paul was very generous and offered to drive me around the area and look at some of the villages. Firstly was a trip to Old Linslade church called St Mary’s and visited the grave of his father Arthur, who as I mentioned earlier was my father’s cousin. The church is now only used on special occasions.
Next we visited the village of Burcott where my grandmother Margaret was from. It is only a small village of perhaps thirty homes. Then we drove to the village of Wing, which is a larger village right next to Burcott. Wing is the village that my Grandfather played cricket for in 1918-19.

It is also the village where another of dad’s cousins Claude and his wife Dianne live. Claude’s mother Emily was my Grandmother Margaret’s only sister. Claude’s father Septimus, or as we knew his Uncle Sep, was employed during his lifetime as a hound keeper for one of the Gentlemen of the area who at times ran fox hunts. On my two previous visits to the area I have stayed with Claude and Dianne.

In Wing we visited the All Saints Church, which is a large church which the grounds of can be traced back in writings to have been used as a church since the eleventh century. When two school building next to the church were taken down an archaeological dig discoverer Roman artefact's’ in its grounds.

The current church has sections of its building dating back to 1216 and there are in existence churchwardens accounts books dating back to 1527. In the cemetery of this church are the remains of many of my Grandmother Margaret Corkett’s ancestors.

We drove from there to another few local villages including Mentmore where they used the Manor house as part of the Batman 3 movie.

Afterwards we returned to Linslade and had lunch before Doreen and Bo took me for a walk around an old sand pit which has been filled with water and is now a fishing lake. It is right next to the Grand Union Canal. The sand from the pit used to be sent by canal boats to Birmingham to be used to make glass. After the sand was removed the local council decided to fill the hole and make park lands and walking tracks around it. The park lands are used at times for local fairs and festivals.

This evening both Doreen and myself went to Claude & Dianne’s for dinner. Claude also took me to look at his pride and joy a Ferguson 'Fergie' tractor. He has spent a lot of hours refurbishing the tractor and is the chairman of the local tractor club, The Old Friends And Relatives Tractor Society.
As a group they display their tractors at local festivals and fairs and also on New Year’s Day they do a 20 mile tractor drive around through all the local villages finally finishing in Wing where they line up for display.

Monday 11th August

This morning was spent watching the Olympic and writing up yesterday’s events onto the computer.

During the morning Claude and Dianne came over and picked Doreen and Myself up to go out for lunch. I had asked them to arrange a lunch for the four of us before I left Sydney, so I could thank them all for taking me in for these few days.

On the way to lunch we stopped at Edlesborough to see Sandra, who is Claude & Doreen’s eldest daughter and her daughter Emily. Her Husband Stephen was away for work and unfortunately I did not have a chance to catch up this visit.

For lunch we went to Marsworth, to a pub called the Angler’s Retreat. It is a freehold pub and is also right next to the Grand Union Canal further up stream towards Birmingham. It serves great homemade meals which are cooked as you order them. The pub also provided a couple of new coasters for the collection.

After lunch we walked alongside the canal and fed the Swan’s, Ducks and Fish who swim just below one of the locks along the canal.

We then drove back to Linslade past the point where The Great Train Robbery took place. The train was stopped at a bridge which crossed the roadway and the money dropped from the train down onto the roadway and into the vans that drove away.

Later that afternoon Doreen and myself took Bo for his walk in local parklands which used to be clear fields but years ago various local community groups have planted trees and have made a forest type landscape which has now got many pathways criss-crossing it.

Tuesday 12th August

This morning another of Doreen’s sons, Stephen came by the house and took me out for the morning. Stephen works in television. He works on a lot of outdoor broadcasts and travels around both England and the Continent working on major sporting and news events doing both the satellite links, editing and camera work. He is soon going to be doing the Outside Broadcast for the Ryder Cup golf in Switzerland.

We went into Leighton Buzzard as Tuesday is Market Day and the centre of the village is filled with Market Stalls. This is a tradition village market which dates back hundreds years in Leighton Buzzard. There are mentions of the market in writings from the late 1700’s and photo’s of the markets from the 1890’s onwards in local history books. We then walked all around the town area and I took plenty of photo’s for my mother to look at to see what changes have been made since here visits to the area. We then went up to the Rothschild’s Estate which has within the estate the Ascott Cricket Ground. This is the village ground my Grandfather Walter played cricket for the Wing Cricket Club in 1918-19. Unfortunately the gates leading to the oval were locked so I could only see it in the distance.
From there we went and picked up Stephen’s son Harry who lives with his mother and who is on school holidays at the moment. We drove to Milton Keynes to look at the large leisure and entertainment complex. It is a large fully enclosed area which includes a large cinema complex, a bowling alley, rock climbing walls, a family games centre, an indoor skydiving experience and a giant enclosed snow skiing slope.

We then walked next door to the Milton Keynes Theatre which is as large as Sydney’s Entertainment Centre and shows all the major theatre productions as well as many international acts.

From there we walked to the Milton Keynes shopping complex. It is mainly on a single level and is huge; the walkways between the shops must be 25 metres wide. It has every shop you could think of in a fully enclosed area which would be great for doing your shopping in the English winter.

Stephen then had to take Harry back to his home and then with Doreen and Stephen’s wife Karen we then went to lunch at a large pub near Milton Keynes. After lunch we went back to Doreen’s for afternoon tea before Stephen and Karen had to go home.

Tomorrow is my last morning here in Linslade and I have really enjoyed my stay. It has been good travelling the countryside in this area as it is really traditional English scenery of small villages and plenty of rural farming lands with a bonus of the old canal system that travels through the area.

It has been great to see Doreen, Claude and Dianne again and to meet Doreen’s sons Paul and Stephen. I also spoke to Doreen’s other son Tim on the phone but was unable to catch up with him on this trip. I also missed seeing Claude and Dianne’s other daughter Paula this trip, as she and her family are away on holidays also.