I remember Granny Anne from when I was little. She was very little herself by the time I knew her, bent over, and shuffling along the corridor all smiley to open the door for us of her tiny little house.
Her husband Tom was an engine driver and he continued to wear his uniform bowler hat, even when the new modern peaked caps came in.
She was born in 1865… and it awes me to think I knew and talked to and sat on the knee of someone who remembered Queen Victoria, Gladstone and Disraeli as Prime Ministers, and the Boer Wars. She would have seen such changes in women’s fashions, the invention of cars and aeroplanes, and two world wars and when she died in 1955, she would have had at least fourteen great-grandchildren.
Ann had five brothers, and three sisters, her parents were James a gas fitter, and Catherine (née Young) She was twenty-two when she married Thomas William Allen in 1887 and they remained together for sixty-nine years. No doubt they went through many hard times together, they were very poor when I knew them in their nineties, and she must have had sadness in her life, not least the death of her baby daughter Blanche. I’m sure, however they had many happy times too, and they were well-loved by their family
Lois Elsden 
Yes it reminds me of Bertrand Russell who told the story that as a young boy he talked to his grandfather who remembered a conversation with Lord Melbourne about the Reform Bill and so in just three men’s memories you were back to 1832, magic
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Tiny, perhaps, but I can see she was a force.
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She was indeed! Grandad Tom was quite a handful… I must post some stories about the things he got up to!
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