Coles family – Jenny Webster (nee Coles)

Jenny Webster (nee Coles), 16 October 2004

I am the Great Niece of Mr & Mrs Vere Coles who used to own the shop in Cottingham High Street. Their daughter, Audrey, visited me at the weekend and we took a look at your website. We felt you may wish to know that Doris Coles was known as ‘Doss’, definitely not ‘Dot’.

I attach 3 photos from way back when. Hope they’ll be of use. You will see that I’ve put names and dates on the family ones.

In the picture of High Street, the house and the yard with the double gates on the left belonged to the pub and later the village shop owned by the Coles family. The building within the yard was a garage/workshop.

Family history confirms that my Great Grandmother and Great Grandfather ran a pub in the house before it became a shop. It is they and their children who are shown in the family photograph. My Grandfather (shown in the photo) was John Lovall Coles, their eldest son. He became an engineer, met my Grandmother whilst working in Bedford and remained there. He died of consumption in 1921 before the birth of his third child, Audrey. My father, Alan Brandon Coles, was his eldest child. Another son, John Neil, died aged 1 yr 3 months.

I thought you might also like this for the Cottingham website. Margaret wrote it some years ago for a family reunion. It describes her memories of large family gatherings at Cottingham with Grandma Coles. The family would have come from Raunds, Cambridge, Bedford and Leicester, as well as Cottingham. Margaret’s Mother, Irene, was Vere Coles’ sister.

“At Cottingham the huge joint of beef and Yorkshire pudding would be taken up the hill to the Bake House to be cooked. The men would fetch sufficient buckets of water from the pump at the cross roads at the bottom of Rockingham Road for all needs up to and after the meal. Prompt at dinner time someone had to be at the Bake House to collect the cooked joint, which would be taken from the enormous oven by a wafer thin slat on the end of a long pole. The baker would slide the slat under the tin in which the joint had cooked, enabling him to pull the tin to the oven door. There would be so many joints that he would have to bring several out until he found the right one, piping hot and sizzling – it was covered and carried with thick pads down to the house, Here it may well have been put in the oven of the range in the kitchen or the oven of the oil stove in what was called the cellar, to regain or keep its heat before being served, the vegetables having been cooked on the range or oil stove. Pudding would very often be Grandma’s unforgettable trifle with whipped cream and macaroons on the top, or those lovely large open tarts she used to make with raspberry jam, currants and coconut in a custard-like mixture which set with baking. I remember one occasion when there were so many Walters in the gathering we chose nick names like ‘Smiler’, ‘Happy’ and so on to distinguish them.”

Margaret Clarke (nee Patrick) 1923 – 2005
Daughter of Irene Patrick (nee Coles)