Tag Archives: Gran Henderson

Mary Henderson, Margery Henderson: Thorley 1940s

Yarmouth Common

Yarmouth Common

Margery Henderson, my Aunt Marge, Dad’s sister, has lived in Canada since she married a Canadian soldier in WWII and went out as a War Bride. She’s in her nineties now and has children and grandchildren there.

Recently she told me she wished she’d never gone out. She can remember going across the Common in an Army wagon with her husband and couple more of the Canadian soldiers who were over here, and thinking, ‘What have I done?’  But she said in those days, you didn’t admit it. Her mum would have been horrified.
Her father, Vic Henderson, my grandfather, came off his bike through Wilmingham one frosty morning, coming back from coastguard duties. They thought he’d cracked his ribs, had this terrible pain, and Marge was sent for in Canada. Her husband worked for Canadian Pacific, up in the logging camps right up north. It took her two days to get to a train to take her to get a boat and they were becalmed coming across. It took her two or three weeks to get home.  When her mum met her at Liverpool she thought, ‘Why’s Mum meeting me?’  By that time he’d died, but her mum, my Gran Henderson, didn’t tell her till they’d travelled back to the Island.
Mary Henderson b 1954

Mary Henderson: Thorley, Blacksmith’s Lane 1940s

Blacksmiths Lane

Cottage in Blacksmith's Lane, Thorley

Cottage in Blacksmith’s Lane, Thorley

My Great Gran Henderson lived in the cottage by the stream, on the corner of Blacksmith’s Lane, the one up the village side.  So you had Hec Stone, whose father had been Blacksmith in the forge opposite, his family lived one side, then Great Gran Henderson came to rent hers, when James Enoch died. He’d been Chief Coastguard in Yarmouth. She moved down to Cowes eventually to a daughter, then Gran and Grandad took it on.

Gran Henderson was very strict. The children used to be over the fields playing and she used to blow a whistle to get them back, and everyone said: there’s Henderson’s whistle.  She was quite horrible really because she used to put them under the stairs in a dark cupboard. Marge was asthmatic and she said: I’ll never forgive my mum for doing that. Mary Hendersonb 1954