Granny Fenwicks Recipes and Remedies: Together with Some Handy Household Hints

How this book came to be written

Granny Fenwick was my mother’s mother, born Sarah Jane Walker in 1887 in Hailgate, Howden, in the old East Riding of Yorkshire. She had an interesting, albeit peripatetic, childhood, as her father, John Jackson Walker (1852-1925) was a policeman, starting out as a Bobby in the East Riding Constabulary, and retiring in 1910, with the rank of Superintendent. As he was posted around the Riding, as part of his duties, he took his family with him, and they lived at a variety of Police Houses in places such as Escrick, and Molescroft, near Beverley.

By the time of his retirement, he was incumbent at Welton Police Station, ten miles west of Hull, a delightful village with a medieval church dedicated to St Helen which sits picturesquely behind a mill-race with a stone bridge. Welton also has (probably mythical) associations with Dick Turpin, of all people. I recall being shown, as a child, the narrow little window (boarded up now, high under the eaves) of the Green Dragon Inn, (which faces the church across the village green in a quintessentially English grouping) where Dick Turpin is supposed to have wriggled through and escaped his pursuers. He dropped down, to land in the saddle of his faithful mare, Black Bess, who happened, fortuitously, to be grazing just below, thus enabling him to make his escape to York from the pursuing Redcoats. Like all legends, it really ought to be true!

Gran had connections with Welton all her life. It was there, in the years leading up to the First World War, that she met Jim Fenwick, whose father, Albert, was a master bricklayer in the village, the latest manifestation of a line of Fenwick plumbers, bricklayers and glaziers in that place, stretching back into the 1700s. Sadly, as a householder, I have inherited none of their genes, which seem to have gone elsewhere in the family. Anyway, the General Register of Births, Marriages and Deaths says that the couple were married in the Summer of 1911, in Howden. Over the next 20 years, she gave birth to eight children, the youngest of which was my mother, Barbara Isabel Fenwick, born 18th July 1928.

Something must have gone wrong with the marriage, though, because at some time after 1928, Gran and her children who were still at home had moved to Elloughton Dale cottages, only a mile or so away from Welton, but much more remote, set back amongst the trees off a neglected country road that led off up over the Wolds towards Riplingham and Beverly. By the time my mother fled the family nest in 1954, when she married my Dad, Gran had already given up Elloughton Dale cottages and moved back to Welton, where she lived with my Mum, her last remaining child at home, at number 9, Ladywell Gate, just up the hill from St Helen’s Church.

During this time, my mother was working at the Flying School attached to Blackburn’s aircraft factory in Brough, and was often offered flips in various planes, including one day when a daredevil pilot offered to take her up in a DH Rapide, and then proceeded to buzz the tower of Welton church at a very low altitude. When my mother called round to see Granny Fenwick that evening, she said Eeeh, honey, you should have been here today, some bloody fool in an aeroplane nearly hit the church tower! to which my mother replied, I know. I was inside the aeroplane!

It was there, to Ladywellgate, Welton, as a child, that I was taken to visit her by my mother, and – if I was on my best behaviour – occasionally be given a ten shilling note. A long bus-ride from Hull, 10 miles out into the country, it seemed like a whole day’s adventure in those days, courtesy of East Yorkshire Motor Services. It never occurred to me, during those visits, to ask what was in the old biscuit tin on her mantelpiece, over the black lead range where she used to sit, her chair resting on one of the many rag-rugs she used to make from old scraps of cloth; at the time, I was more preoccupied with being allowed to play in the garden and climb on top of the solid, substantial, brick-built air raid shelter that still stood there. That in itself was a risky business in short trousers, often resulting in skinned knees or grazed shins, not to mention incurring the wrath of my mother for messing up my best