After a long series of Covid lockdowns and travel restrictions, Tricia visited in summer 2021 and again in October/November. After a lovely walk for Iain & Tricia around the marine drive, seeing several porpoises, and a fish & chip supper with John & Moira in the evening, we hatched the plan for a day out the following day.
First stop was Wilsthorpe, the scene of many weekends away and holidays by the sea for the Spence family of Morley Street.
John Spence senior, my grandfather, having returned from the war badly injured after the Battle of Oppy Wood. He’d spent 18 months in hospital, the doctors wanting to amputate his leg but John refusing. Much of his muscle had been stripped and his bones were badly misshapen. But compared with the 12 teacher colleagues who signed up with him in 1914, he came off the best, all the others being killed in action.
Life in Goole found a new norm, with John being treated as a war hero, and his father and father in law clubbing together to buy him and his new wife Lillian a small house on Morley Street, new builds in Old Goole. One of several houses on Morley Street and surrounding area the families bought at and around that time.
John junior (Jackie) and Bessie were born, John Senior got a teaching job at Goole school across the field at Percy Street, but John was never a fan of Goole. He’d have liked to move away but stayed in order to be close to his father John who lived round the corner on Couper Street, Wesley House. His father owned several houses and the Couper Farm and allotments which still stand today.
The family would visit Bridlington and John struck up a friendship with a tenant farmer who owned a field on the cliff top at Wilsthorpe. They’d play card together and chat about investments and other money making ideas.
John suggested to the farmer that he could rent plots on the field for holiday homes, and they agreed the lease of a small plot, closest to the sea, where the Spences could install a holiday chalet of some sort. John found an old railway carriage to buy which was duly brought to the field and made into a weekend holiday home, which was named after the kids, Jack & Bess.
This lasted some years until they outgrew it and set up another larger and less mobile holiday home, a chalet made of wood, which to keep the naming convention going, was called Lil Lea – Lil short for Lilian, the mother of the family and Lea being a name for house.
We have various photos of the railway carriage and the holiday park (which grew in size after the Spence’s started it up). On our visit back there, we didn’t find the house, but the park is still there, many times the size that it was then. Hopefully one day we’ll find it.
In the meantime though, we went down on the beach, a long and lovely Sandy beach stretching for miles from Bridlington all the way towards Hornsey and Withernsea.
John & Bessie would play on the beach, and dig for worms where the worm casts gave away their position. They’d then attach the worms to a string and hook and attach the other end to the and with a heavy object. When the sea came in and back out, they’d return to find a fish or crab or similar attached t the hook. Supper sorted!
John recalled the story from 1939, he and Bessie were playing on the beach, which by this time had rolls of barbed wire coiled up along the shoreline. Nana came rushing out to call them in from the beach, and told them they needed to come up and get ready for home – Britain had declared war on Germany. How many people today can remember where they were on 3 September 1939, 82 years ago, when Dad would have been 11 years old?
We then drove to Bridlington and stopped at number 50 Eighth Avenue, Nana’s home for many years until she moved into Combe Hay in Scarborough. The lovely roses and garden are gone, concreted and pebbled over in a gardening style that resembles my own!
Hunger forced us to stop only for a quick photograph, by which time John had already set off striding down Third Avenue looking for food. Fortunately I caught up with him in the car and we set off to Flamborough for a very good lunch at the North Star, one of John & Moira’s favourite destination eateries. And very good it was too!
Back for a coffee & a piece of neighbour Shirley’s custard tart rounded off a grand day out down memory lane.