Wednesday, May 2, 2012
My plan for the day was to go to the Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies in Aylesbury because on Wednesdays they have staff on hand.
Market in Winslow
The outing got off to a good start when I met a nice elderly couple at the bus stop on Vicarage Road in Winslow. How accommodating of bus drivers to give change, and sell return tickets. My return ticket to Aylesbury was a little over 5 pounds. Speaking of money, 75 p. for four potatoes seems awfully cheap. That would have been my entire expenditure on Monday if I hadn't left some money at the Addington church.
Not sure how long the ride was - maybe over half an hour. Buses only run once an hour here, and go south to Aylesbury or northwest to Buckingham.
The bus passed by some incredibly charming buildings - brick, rock, thatched… one covered in wisteria. That all changed in Aylesbury. Ick. It's the kind of place you feel you'd better hang onto your purse. Some creepy looking people around.
I must say, that as much as I didn't like Aylesbury, everyone I talked to was very friendly, even the young man selling coffee in the bus station. A woman I'd been talking to in the bus line-up kindly made sure I knew where to get off back in Winslow.
AYLESBURY
This sort of building leaves me cold. It reminds me of Nijmegen, Holland, where Glenn and I had spent a few hours, back in 1998.
Market in Aylesbury
Are giant feet a trend in statuary? Somewhere I saw a sculpture in which the men had huge out-of-proportion feet.
I like taking pictures of these towers because they show the time. If it was correct, I must have been finished at the records office, about to head back to Winslow.
My experience at this office was the opposite of that at the awful Guildhall Library in London. Here, the woman behind the desk couldn't have been more helpful. She was terrific. I got lots of wonderful info off microfilm (I'd reserved a reader beforehand), then went next door to look at actual marriage, christening and death records. Those are not easy to get copies of but for 5 pounds you can photograph them.
I discovered that Mackwood and his wife Christiana are buried at Addington! How could it be that nobody knows where? The inscriptions online (including the other four family members) were done by the historian I spoke to on the phone. How he got all that info from those four markers, I don't know, because I was barely able to make out the names. So it would seem that Mackwood and his wife either had markers that became unreadable or chose not to have any at all.
A treasure was found in a newspaper in the form of a lengthy obituary for Mackwood. Also a marriage record from 1901 for the then mysterious Adele, the actress staying at the rectory. I learned that she belongs to Christiana's family. A marriage record for Kate Stevens in 1912 shows her address as the Addington Rectory as well.
It was a very productive afternoon in that office.
Padbury Lodge
When Mackwood died, Christiana not only lost her husband, she would have lost her home at the rectory. One record shows that she lived at Padbury Lodge at the time of her death. (Padbury is not far from Winslow.) I was unable to find out the status of the building at that time. It may have been some sort of care home or still a private house. I believe it was no longer owned by the family shown in the text with this picture which read: Home of the Gore-Langton family for many years. Sidenote: Mrs. Gore-Langton attended Mackwood's funeral and some of the family moved to Vancouver Island.
* * * * *
I had good chats with people and started feeling part of the community, so I didn't want to leave Winslow.
With more time in the area I could have returned to Addington to take a soft brush to the family gravestones and also lay some flowers there. I should have listened to the signs that were telling me over and over not to book Oxford. But I panicked, not wanting to risk being without a place to stay. Had I not done that, I could have stayed in Winslow another three nights, until Jeff returned. Once again, I wished I had not booked the B&B in Oxford through the travel agent because it involved a third party. Also, I thought that messing with my timing might throw things off for the entire trip, but now I don't think the timing was very important at all. I should have stayed longer in Winslow. Had hoped to return later in the trip but with schedules and the weather, that was not to be.
I considered the options of how to get to Oxford - taking buses, renting a car, or hiring a ride. At many car rentals you have to pre-book… to avoid that I would have had to have gone to Milton Keynes, which I really didn't want to do. Around the corner from the B&B is an office that advertises rides to airports so on the way home I popped my head in their door and wound up having a good conversation with a local woman.
I'd been living pretty inexpensively in Winslow. Hadn't eaten out at all except that first night, so I decided to splurge on a ride, door to door, Winslow to Oxford. I wasn't terribly enthused about going to Oxford except to see a family house. I think I much prefer to be away from cities.
So, I would leave here the next day at noon.
With more time in the area I could have returned to Addington to take a soft brush to the family gravestones and also lay some flowers there. I should have listened to the signs that were telling me over and over not to book Oxford. But I panicked, not wanting to risk being without a place to stay. Had I not done that, I could have stayed in Winslow another three nights, until Jeff returned. Once again, I wished I had not booked the B&B in Oxford through the travel agent because it involved a third party. Also, I thought that messing with my timing might throw things off for the entire trip, but now I don't think the timing was very important at all. I should have stayed longer in Winslow. Had hoped to return later in the trip but with schedules and the weather, that was not to be.
I considered the options of how to get to Oxford - taking buses, renting a car, or hiring a ride. At many car rentals you have to pre-book… to avoid that I would have had to have gone to Milton Keynes, which I really didn't want to do. Around the corner from the B&B is an office that advertises rides to airports so on the way home I popped my head in their door and wound up having a good conversation with a local woman.
I'd been living pretty inexpensively in Winslow. Hadn't eaten out at all except that first night, so I decided to splurge on a ride, door to door, Winslow to Oxford. I wasn't terribly enthused about going to Oxford except to see a family house. I think I much prefer to be away from cities.
So, I would leave here the next day at noon.
I wrote then that I felt Glenn's presence beside me.
