I also had a response to that lovely photo sent to me by Gerry and Celia Hawkins showing a delivery of wood to elderly residents by members of Hethersett Youth Club. Readers identified Peter Salter as the figure at the front of the cart and Andrew Hardy as one of the youngsters. Andrew still lives in the village. Peter was a leading light in Hethersett Pantomime Group and on Hethersett Parish Council and is buried in the churchyard at St Remigius.
I will be featuring some of the other responses in future blogs but today I have some information about the two people I mentioned yesterday who are buried in Little Melton Churchyard.
To be fair I wasn't able to find much out about John Russell Crompton Moore and Clarissa Javanaud
All I could find about Clarissa on the Internet was a paper about the Velocity of Sound in Vegetable Oils which sounds very surreal. The description of the research undertaken by Clarissa was nothing if not confusing:
"The velocity of sound in seven vegetable oils has been measured to an accuracy of ± 0.3 ms−1. The different values of the velocities are correlated on the basis of composition. Average values for the temperature coefficient of velocity, at room temperature, and for the dispersion between 2 and 10 MHz are also given."
I doubt that the paper became a best seller and I certainly will never look at vegetable oil in the same light again.
As for John - well all I could find out was a 1971 patent application in the United States for a suspension system with the description even more confusing than the vegetable oil one (if that's possible).
"A rotatable member for a suspension system comprises a hub and a rim joined by at least two compliant spoke structures each having two portions connected in series at an angle to each other between hub and rim and each portion having two substantially parallel spoke members forming a compliant parallelogram arrangement."
Much more down to earth were the memories of long-term Little Melton resident Chris Doggett who remembered both John and Clarissa. Below are his words.
"John was Church Warden with Joe Day I think when I first lived in Little Melton. He was an eccentric kind-hearted gentleman who lived at the end of Rectory Lane in the old Rectory accessed from Watton Road. The house in his time was dilapidated. I believe he was son of a vicar? Clarissa too was quite a well known character.r I think she was the lady who rode a bike through the village and I would often overtake her with a smile as I walked by
"I’m sure there will be followers who knew them both much better than l. The more I think back I think Clarissa may have had a special interest in preserving trees in the village and John used to drive his mini like a boy racer through the village."
My down memory lane photograph today is another from the collection of Gerry and Celia Hawkins. I'm sure some local people will recognise many of the people in this photo.
The photo was taken at Celia and Gerry's wedding in 1964 in St Remigius. The photo includes the bride's parents Cissie and Walter, her grandparents Agnes and Fred Rumsey (who we also featured a few days ago), Angela Smith from Wymondham and Paul Rumsey. The bridesmaids are Sandra Bunn, Wendy Perkins and Sally Bunting from Norwich. The Rev Turner officiated. Celia was driven to Hethersett Church by family relative George Leverington in a car belonging to Lord Mackintosh of Thickthorn Hall.
I was particularly interested in the press cutting from the Eastern Evening News which is dated October 24th, 1977, and comes from a regular column (in those days) called Whiffler's City. I worked on this column in 1973 and 1974. It was a joy to work on, being a mixture of chat and nice articles about nice people. My boss was Neville Miller who was "Whiffler" and I am pretty sure that he would have written this article. Neville was also arts correspondent for the Eastern Evening News, a personal friend for many years and Godfather to our children. Now well into his eighties we still see him on a regular basis.
At the time this article was written, I had moved to become the deputy chief reporter for the Eastern Daily Press and Beccles and Bungay Journal at Eastern Counties Newspaper's Beccles office where I worked with another superb local journalist Tony Clarke. Of all the people I worked with over my lengthy career, Neville and Tony were the best. Both made going to work a joy. Sadly Tony passed away a number of years ago. He was a man with a tremendous sense of humour and kindness and a real local character - often dressing up in a smock to relate Norfolk stories to various groups. He was a member of the Press Gang team who gave concerts/entertainments throughout Norfolk and Suffolk.
I went to Beccles to attend Tony's funeral only to find an empty church. I had turned up a week early. Tony, I know, would have had a good laugh about that. Writing this column I can hear his voice in my head even now!