Our Territories

Channel Islands
England
Ireland
Isle of Man
Scotland
Wales

Our Categories

Home
Locations
Surnames
Articles
Library
Lookups

Any ideas we had were always overruled. I wanted to get away from my overpowering mother-in-law. I also wanted to better myself and start climbing the career ladder.

The following year I managed to get a position as Overseas Sales Engineer with Davey Paxman & Co. in Colcheter., the same firm I had served my apprenticeship with. This involved our moving to Colchester and immediately I fell foul of Pamela’s parents. To take Pamela and their new granddaughter out into the wilderness was criminal. We were warned that we would never find anywhere to live and if we did then living there would be hell. We could expect no help or advice in making such a move.

Undeterred, we set off house hunting. We received details of properties from the various agents we had contacted and after perusing the options, made a short list of six houses we would like to view.

We left early on the Saturday morning and made our way straight to Colchester and the estate agent. We asked to view a number of houses that we had listed from the papers we already studied. As we were leaving the Estate Office, we met at the door another member of staff who had been out assessing property. He spoke with our agent who asked us to hold on a moment. The member of staff then drew a cigarette packet from his pocket and on it was written, “The Pantiles”, Elmstead Market. Detached House, £2,500. He said that he had no more details but suggested this house might be of interest to us.

In good spirits, we set off to begin the tour of our selected properties, but our spirits slowly sank as each property we saw was worse than the one before. None of the properties lived up to the impressive write up we had read from the agents.

One house for example was described as having a lean-to shed and carport for two cars. In reality the shed was an upright, disintegrating, interwoven fence with a further fence, of even worse condition, laid on the top to form a roof. This would have been unable to keep anything dry. The double garage was of the same quality but this time it was leaning against the other side of the house. The cars would have to be very narrow for the upright section was no further than six feet away from the wall

The afternoon progressed looking at similar unsatisfactory houses until we arrived in the countryside to the south of Colchester. Time was running out and we still had three houses to view.

These houses were located in different directions and we needed to make a decision which one to view next. Being a good catholic and rather religious I suggested we ask for some help from above and we decided to pray that the next signpost giving one of the house areas would be the direction to take.

We continued along this small country road towards Colchester and within half a mile we saw a small signpost directing us left towards Elmstead Market. I turned to Pamela and asked her what house corresponded with that with but we could not find any details despite us both recalling the name. Then we remembered the cigarette packet – It had Emstead Market as the address—Divine Providence! We wondered.

We turned up the country lane and the already this narrow road became even narrower as we travelled further into the real country. We seemed to be miles from anywhere and Pamela became concerned as time was passing. After a while, I too,

Previous | Index | Next