Bramhall Group Autumn Newsletter

Bramhall Group Autumn Newsletter Future Programme November 2011 - June 2012 2nd Thursday of the month at 7.30pm . 2011 10 November Distant Shores - Part 2 – the history of migration from UK to Australia & New Zealand in 19th Century. – Gwyneth Mitchell 8 December Christmas Party with the usual festive spread provided by everyone Plus The Blacksmiths of Bramhall – Cilla Ward 2012 12 January Benefits of the Website Genuki Colin McInness 9 February Working int’ Mill - aspects of working in the textile industry. Bernard and Jill Champ ness 8 March John Doe and Richard Roe – odd points from old documents. Brooke Westcott 12 April The Importance of Timelines etc. Joan Irving 10 May From First Edition to City Final – a history of newspapers in Manchester. Peter Levy 14 June Goyt Valley Miner – the lives of five generations of the Hewitt family working in the private mine of Errwood Hall. Kevin Dranfield The Bramhall Group meet in the Main Hall of the United Reformed Church on the corner of Robins Lane and Bramhall Lane South, SK7 2PE at 7. 30.p.m. Admission costs £1 including refreshments. Those of you who attend on a regular basis will know that at the end of the meetings we ‘make some time’ for refreshments and give people the chance to discuss their ancestral research problems with others in the hope that they can sort some of them out. Visitors are always very welcome. For further information Please ring 01614395021 or email [email protected] Your New Bramhall Group Librarian is Liz Wilkinson who was co-opted onto our committee in May. Linda Wainwright will assist her. Please return all library items by the following meeting as others may be waiting to borrow them. An up- to-date list of all items held in the library can be viewed on our Bramhall Group website at www.bramhallfamilyhistory.com New in the library : Discover Your Family History - Getting the Most from the General Register Office - pub. Home Office – Identity & Passport Service. New on our website – www.bramhallfamilyhistory.com :- photos of our visit to Elizabeth Gaskell’s house. Please keep me informed at [email protected] of your current email address if you wish to receive information from me and/or notification of the newsletter going on our website. BRAMHALL GROUP COMMITTEE Ian Bickley Group Leader Norman Rowcroft Treasurer Susan Bickley Programme Organiser & Publicity Liz Wilkinson Group Librarian Diana Moilliet Committee Member Janet McMurray Refreshments Organiser The Family History Society of Cheshire Website is www.fhsc.org.uk Of Wheels & Wings by Ian Cameron The origins of the Jaguar car company lie in a back garden a mile or two from where the Bramhall Group meets every month. In 1891 Thomas Matley Walmsley, a Stockport coal merchant on Greek Street, married Sarah Heap, and after living at 57 Beech Road, Cale Green, for several years they moved to a newly built villa, Fairhaven , on Flowery Field, Woodsmoor, now no.5. They had three daughters and a son, William, who served with the Cheshire Yeomanry in the WW1, and when peace came he amused himself civilianising ex-army motorbikes in the garden shed. He also designed and built a sidecar, which caught the eye of several friends who wanted one for themselves. He obligingly built them in a primitive building behind the Bamford Arms on Buxton Road, Heavily, with the help of his sisters and their partners, but there is no sign he ever saw it as a business opportunity. In 1921 his 57 year old father decided to retire to Blackpool, and William promptly married his favourite sidecar passenger, Emily Letitia Jefferies. They too moved, and their son Robert was born in Blackpool in 1922. A new neighbour of theirs was impressed by William’s sidecar and asked him to make one for him. He was 20 year old William Lyons, a sheet music salesman 8 years William’s junior, and he quickly persuaded William to set up a business making them, as the Swallow Sidecar Company. The business grew rapidly and diversified into making special bodies for other makers’ car chassis. They soon needed larger premises and in 1928 the company relocated to Coventry to be nearer their suppliers. In 1931 they began to manufacture their own cars under the name SS. Lyons and Walmsley, however, were mismatched partners. Lyons was ruthlessly ambitious, whereas Walmsley was laid back and casual, and they argued incessantly. Walmsley had never envisaged dealing with such a large and complex company or a man like Lyons, and in January 1935 he cashed in his shareholdings and left. He tried caravan construction with no great success, and his main interest in life seems to have been his model railway, which no doubt reinforced Lyons’s harsh view of him as frivolous, childish and lacking business sense. The year after William Walmsley left, the company started calling its cars SS Jaguar. For obvious reasons the SS part was dropped when car production restarted after WW2 and the company was renamed Jaguar Cars Ltd. With Stalinist efficiency, Lyons, who was knighted in 1956, airbrushed Walmsley from the official company history, and when Walmsley died in 1961 just two Jaguar directors attended. “Terrible man, terrible man!” Sir William once responded when asked about his former friend and partner. Lyons himself died in 1985. Bobby, the Walmsley’s only child, grew up in Coventry, but in 1936 his parents divorced and his mother Emily remarried, eventually moving with her new husband Norman S. Robbins to 295 Bramhall Lane South, which for her was back home. Bobby went from school (Bloxham) straight into the RAF, where he flew Hawker Typhoon fighter/bomber ground-attack aircraft with 3 Squadron. On 10 th November 1943 he was brought down by flak over Cap Gris Nez and killed. He was still only 21, and he is the Robert Matley Walmsley whose name is read out every Remembrance Sunday at our War Memorial. .

Load more