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Village History

Setting out from Aytonholm, 1930

Two photos of the Bowers family collection, labelled only “ Oxhill 1930” have so far eluded identification.  I believe they show the house in the Kineton Road, now called Aytonholm.  (At the time few village houses and cottages had individual names; people just knew where you lived!).  Mr Bill Heritage tells me that the couple who lived there in 1930 were called Mr and Mrs Marshall, but that they are not the people in the photographs, whom he does not recognize.  The grand car is also significant, as he remembers only three cars in the village at this early date.  The Vicar, Mr Brayne, had a bull-nosed Morris, Mr Tom Heritage, Snr, had a Wolseley, and there was one other that he could not quite remember, possibly owned by the Groves family.  The people pictured seem in their best attire; the man wears a flower in his buttonhole.  Is this perhaps a wedding – parents, and mother with daughter? 

There were two weddings in Oxhill in 1930.  The earlier one was on 25th February, when David Cecil Heritage, farmer, from Tysoe married Phyllis Mary Gleed of Oxhill Hill Farm.  Bill Heritage tells me that, as the bridegroom was his father’s brother, the reception was held at Church Farm Oxhill, the bride’s home being thought too distant from the village centre.  (Bill himself, being just seven, got himself into trouble by drinking some of the port, so that he couldn’t walk and was put to bed in disgrace!)  A wedding of two farming families might well have occasioned a big car, and the Heritages are known to have been related to the Cliftons, and therefore, distantly, to the Bowers.  However February seems early in the year for the photos, some of which are specifically labelled as being taken in August.  A study of the trees here show them in leaf as if in summer.  Also, Bill Heritage does not recognize the people shown.

There was an August wedding, though possibly on a smaller scale.  Daisy Frances Harper, daughter of Albert Henry Harper, hay presser, married Harry Coldicott, gardener of Solihull in Oxhill Church on 16th August, 1930.  Many people will remember this couple’s younger daughter Pat, who was later brought up by her aunt Mrs Ivy Middleton, Daisy’s sister, at Sanroy, Church Lane.  Pat delivered our papers for many years, and still lives in the Stratford area.  There is a Middleton/Harper link to Aytonholm, as Bill Heritage tells me that the Marshalls, who lived in the house, were related to the Middletons, who were coal merchants, and that the coal depot was kept at the bottom end of Aytonholm’s garden

If either of the weddings has any bearing on the photos, I think it more likely it was the August one, since several of the photos were definitely taken that month.  Perhaps that celebration, or another unidentified one, actually occasioned the Bowers family visit to Oxhill in the first place.  Neither Peter Mowlam nor I can unravel this mystery.  Is there anyone out there who can supply the missing link?  Who are these people?

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Last modified: November 09, 2009