My mothers mother, my maternal grandmother was Naomi Ann Cornish. That’s
her married name her single name was Gaisford and she was brought up in
Colerne. .. I
remember my mother’s father had died many years before, twenty years before
I was born. So my grandmother, his wife was the one who lived with us I
got to know her very well in fact she’d been one of a large family she’d
brought up I think seven children of her own and lived on a farm with a
husband who tended to go from farms into pubs and back into farms again
much of what there business was but certainly when he died they were farming
in Worcestershire and so because she was with us and lived to be a good
age. She lived to be ninety six. I heard quite a lot about her life. She
used to live, she was brought up in a village called Colerne, near Bath
and she used to drive her pony and trap into Bath, stable it at the Saracens
Head to go and do shopping and so on. She used to tell me about the great
blizzard of 1881 and kind of life as it was then. I think they had a shop
in Colerne she obviously had brothers and sisters and so on .
...of course this is going back a long way, but my oldest uncle on that side Bert, was killed in the first world war and that certainly hit my Grandmother very hard and certainly that was a matter of great regret and sadness really throughout most of her life and I well recall she had a sort of painting or engraving on the wall of her bedroom showing a kind of a slightly mystical impression of a kind of dying soldier, a figure or face which was a kind of reflection of her sadness I think in the loss of her eldest son.
Listen to Ted talk about his Grandmother
but yes, she was an interesting old lady with a wonderful kind of Gloucestershire, Worcestershire accent with various dialect words and things which you wouldn’t hear nowadays like she used to say ‘you’ll be as fat as an ont' which is a mole. She’d always talk about ‘not being able to abide’ things that she didn’t like, she’d say ‘oh for goodness sake don’t moither me' which means don’t bother me . Roofs would be if they weren't in a good state would be 'dadacky' and if things didn’t work they 'didn’t ackle'. All of those are sort of dialect words of that area ..
We had a good close relationship. She could be a bit cantankerous but she was really a rather nice old lady we were friendly until I was about twenty. She must have died when I was about twenty.
And your mother was she glad to have her there? She was.. Although it was a lot. When she was very elderly my mother was also then elderly so she was really quite hard work for my mother I think she found it very difficult because she lived with us for probably twenty years I suppose so it was a lot of work for my mother and did get her down a bit I think at times.
Did she live with you until she died? Yes. Virtually, yes I mean she went into hospital only really a month or so before she died I think.