Craig Taylor's shipyard on the Tees at Thornaby

My father, Everett Jones (1884-1969), in 1967
(awaiting better image).

Raby House, Raby Road

Raby House, Raby Road - taken from estate agent's particulars from some time after the deaths of Everett and Maud

Chapter 11: My parents Everett Jones and Maud Mary Wilson

In the previous chapters I have traced first the family trees of the Joneses who came from North Wales, and then those of the Wilsons and Pearsons of northeast England. These families were eventually united in the marriage of my father, Everett Jones, and my mother, Maud Mary Wilson, in 1915.

I believe my parents first met at a social function, where my mother was helping with the teas. This must have been in about 1912, because I have a book of poetry which my father gave to my mother as a Christmas present in that year. At the time of their first meeting my father was living with his widowed mother and four of his brothers and sisters in Lightfoot Grove, Stockton-on-Tees, and my mother's family were living at Rosemont in West Villas. My mother told me she well remembered her first visit to the house in Lightfoot Grove: but I believe the first member of the Jones family she actually met (apart from my father) was my aunt Tina, a rather less daunting introduction than it would have been had she first encountered Mary Eleanor or my aunt Nellie.

The marriage took place on 8 July 1915 at the Brunswick Wesleyan Chapel in Dovecot Street, Stockton. By then my father's family had moved to Sydenham Road. My father was 31 and the marriage certificate shows his occupation as a bookkeeper in a shipyard (Craig Taylor Ltd): my mother was 27. The marriage was witnessed by my father's younger brother Frank, by my mother's younger brother Joseph, and by her cousin Minnie, the daughter of Robert Alfred Pearson. The reception was at Rosemont and, as I have mentioned in the previous chapter, the photograph of the guests provides an interesting and comprehensive guide to the various members of both families who were living at that time. (Editor's note: this was the double wedding at which Maud's sister Edith also married Reg Holmes). My parents' honeymoon was spent mainly at Douglas in the Isle of Man, but they also spent some time in North Wales where they met members of the Jones families who were still living there.

At the end of 1914, six months or so before the marriage, my parents had bought a new house in what was then known as Haughton Road, about half a mile out into the country beyond West Villas. At an early date this was re-named Raby Road, and it was at Raby House (No.11 Raby Road) that my parents set up their marital home, I was born at Raby House on 22 October 1916, Nurse Thomas in attendance. Two years later, on 21 December 1918, my brother Alwyn was also born there: on this occasion Nurse Ramsay was in attendance, (In my young days one was considered quite knowledgeable to be able to name the nurse in attendance at one's own birth when this occurred at home!) At the time of my brother's birth I was sent to stay for two or three weeks with my father's sister Minnie and her husband at Norton, the first of two such visits which I remember very clearly to this day. I believe - without being absolutely sure on the point - that I took my name from the village of Trevor near Llangollen, which my father had visited as a boy and again during his honeymoon. My brother and I were given "Wilson" as a second Christian name: but although both our first names were Welsh, they did not follow those held by any earlier members of the Jones families.

In January 1919, my mother was dangerously ill with influenza, which had swept over Europe in the wake of the First World War and is reported to have killed more people than did the actual hostilities. Fortunately she made a full recovery, although it was at first thought that she had been left with a weak heart, I think this was disproved by the active life she led almost to the end of her life more than 50 years later.

The elder of my two sisters, Mary Patricia ("Pat"), was born at home on 7 November 1920. Again, I stayed at Norton with my aunt and uncle for two or. three weeks. The younger of my sisters, Audrey Elizabeth ("Elizabeth") was born on 17 April 1922. And on that occasion, which was fairly close to the time that my uncle William Close died at Norton , my brother and I stayed with my mother's sister Edith and her husband at Redcar.

During the early 1920s my father became chief cost accountant at Craig Taylor's shipyard and had prospects of becoming a director of the firm. As he had been in shipbuilding since the turn of the century, he had made many acquaintances in the industry at various levels, and on two occasions he took me to visit the shipyard to see his office and ships on the stocks ready for launching. The shipyard was on the Thornaby side of the Tees, and we crossed the river in a small rowing boat from the foot of Castlegate. The ferryman was an Irishman whom my father had known since his schooldays, and this was a means of transport he had often used in his younger days (for the price of a penny or so) since it was so much shorter than the route by road over Victoria Bridge. Once or twice I was also able to accompany him, on Saturday afternoons, to Middlesbrough for trips in the tug-boats which pulled some of the larger ships from the docks out into the open estuary.

During the first half of this decade my parents were fairly comfortably off and for a few years we had a living-in maid named Mary (although this was not quite the luxury it was to become in later years). By about 1926 my father was planning to send me as a boarder to Ripon Grammar School, a 'public' school with a high reputation in the Northeast. But within a fairly short time these plans had to be shelved, and finally abandoned, as business on Teesside took a turn for the worse following the end of the post-war boom and the shipbuilding firms in the area were particularly hard hit. This recession also ended my father's hopes of becoming a director of Craig Taylors. In the outcome my brother and sisters and I all completed our education locally. By the end of the decade my brother and I had gained scholarships to the local Secondary (Higher Grade) School which my father and mother had attended in their time. My two sisters were then still at primary school.

The shipbuilding industry on the Tees continued to decline and Craig Taylor's shipyard finally closed down in June 1931. I have in my possession a letter which the chairman, Mr Raymond Taylor, wrote to my father in that month, expressing his great regret at the breaking up of the firm of which both he and my father had been members for close on 30 years. The period immediately following this was very difficult because there was, of course, no unemployment benefit to ease the consequences of being out of work with a young family of four. Moreover, as the slump spread rapidly throughout the North-East after 1930, the chances of securing alternative employment were much reduced. At first my father had hopes of securing a job in the Midland Bank in Maidstone, where my uncle Reg's brother was the manager: but nothing came of this. Eventually, however, he succeeded in "buying a book" as an insurance agent with the Royal Liver Friendly Society, and he remained with that company for the rest of his working life, It was by no means lucrative employment, but it did at least stave off the worse effects of being out of work in the thirties,

I joined the Civil Service in December 1933, my first appointment being to the local Inland Revenue office in Stockton. Although my initial salary was no more than £78 a year, this provided welcome support for the family's hard-pressed financial resources, until September 1935, when success in a further Civil Service examination took me to London and a post in the then Air Ministry. My brother followed me to London in the summer of 1936 to take up an appointment with the Post Office, and although we kept in regular touch with our parents thereafter, neither of us returned to live on Teesside. From then onwards only my two sisters remained at home. After leaving the Secondary School (to which she had also won a scholarship) my elder sister Pat went into a local bank shortly before the Second World War, and my younger sister went into a large local department store. During the war my father continued with his insurance agency and also became a District Warden in the ARP Service. My brother, my younger sister and I were in the Forces for most of the War and for some time afterwards, much of my time being spent abroad. And it was not until October 1945, more than six years after our last pre-war holiday in August 1939, that the family were all together again at Raby House following my return to this country from the Middle East. Thereafter my brother and I set up our own homes with our families in the London area and my sisters also came to London to live at much the same time. My parents stayed on at Raby House.

My father retired from work in 1949, at the age of 65, but he remained active in local affairs on a modest scale. For many years he served as either President or Secretary of the Stockton Literary and Philosophical Society, which he had joined as a young man. He was also an active member and officeholder of the Stockton Brethren, and I have copies of two excellent short talks he gave to the Brethren shortly after he joined them in 1933 as well as the books that were presented to him when he finally gave up office late in life. I do not know how long his association with the Literary and Philosophical Society lasted, but it must have been close on 60 years. Many a time since the War when I was at Stockton on holiday I called at the old reading rooms in Dovecot Street, where he read the current newspapers and magazines, and walked back with him to Raby Road for lunch. When the Society sold its Victorian premises in the 1960s, they joined with the YMCA in their new premises off Church Row. My father did a great deal of voluntary work in connection with this move and he was presented to The Queen Mother when the new building was opened by her. I am sure he regarded this presentation, and the Investiture he attended at Buckingham Palace in March 1962 when I received the OBE, as high spots of his later life. His photograph still hangs in the new Literary and Philosophical Society reading room with one of his friend Mr Pickles who shared the appointments of President and Secretary with him for very many years. For most of the twenty years following his retirement my father also served as a delegate to the Annual Conference of the Royal Liver Friendly Society, which not only gained him many friends from other branches of the Society, but usually provided him with a convenient opportunity to meet one or more of his children and grandchildren - visits which gave a great deal of pleasure on all sides. We in turn were able to meet both of our parents during the holidays which we continued to take for many years at Stockton or on the north Yorkshire coast.

In April 1969, I happened to be at Stockton on holiday on my own when my father died suddenly, He had been "slowing down" during the previous year or two, which was hardly surprising in one's eighties, but had remained in sufficiently good health to make arrangements for his Annual Conference in May 1969 and to enjoy several car rides into the North Yorkshire countryside in the week before he died. We had in fact decided to watch the Cup Final on television in the afternoon of 26 April, but he collapsed and died within a few minutes at about ten o'clock in the morning of that day. It was a melancholy occasion, during the morning a yellowish-green chemical 'fog' had spread over Stockton from the direction of the I.C.I. at Billingham ( a not uncommon occurrence in the Spring when the wind was from the east) and this was accompanied by torrential rain for most of the morning and afternoon. In these rather depressing conditions arrangements had to be made for a possible inquest and for the news to be passed to my family in Coulsdon, my brother in Chesterfield, one of my sisters in Geneva and the other in New York. An inquest was not, in fact, found to be necessary and following cremation my father's ashes were buried in the old churchyard at Norton where he had lived as a boy. He was 85. My mother stayed on at Raby House following my father's death, but as she was in her 82nd year we arranged for a companion to live in with her. This arrangement worked reasonably well at the outset but my mother was obviously failing by the end of the year. She was confined to bed by the beginning of March 1970, when I came from London to see her for a few days while my brother and sisters were also there, and died on the 18th of that month, two weeks after her 82nd birthday. Her ashes were buried with my father's in Norton churchyard, where there is a plaque to their memory. Raby House was sold later in 1970, having been in the family for close on 56 years and known no other owners. One of the first things the new owners did was to chop down the large apple tree which had been planted at the bottom of the garden even before I was born, I have never enquired into the reason for this, but it certainly marked the end of an era!

Two of the letters of condolence received from Conference delegates following my father's death referred to him as "Gentleman Jones" - which I gathered was the way he was identified by the small circle of friends he had met year after year at those annual functions. I can think of no better description, He worked hard and conscientiously for most of his life without, in the end, achieving a great deal of material success. He was a person of liberal views on most subjects and was highly esteemed by the small circle of friends whom he kept to the end of his life. Although he took a great deal of interest in local affairs on Teesside and was active in organisations such as the Literary and Philosophical Society and the Brethren, he never had any wish to be a public figure: although disappointed in his ambitions when young, he was well satisfied with his home and garden, his family and his books. On the other hand he was never loth to travel - especially when this gave him the opportunity to visit members of his family either in this country or on the Continent - and although it was not in his nature to make "instant friends" of the different people he met on his journeys, he was always interested in them and the places he visited. Unlike my father, my mother was not a good traveller, and throughout her life she never moved far from those parts of Stockton in which she had been born and brought up. She did not suffer fools gladly, and her opinions of people she knew were often expressed sharply and to the point. They did, however, have the merit of being accurate and they were devoid of any malice: I do not think this was in her nature. There was much more of my grandfather, Joseph Wilson, in her make-up than there was of Elizabeth Ann, although physically both she and my aunt Edith tended to take after Thomas Wilson, their grandfather, and not after either of their own parents.

Next: Some personal reminiscences