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Note: Born & raised in Westerham, a close village community in Kent, of which she had fond memories. Marr.Cert: Wits: A.E.Allman, W.Cox.
It ws from my Grandma that I first developed on interest in family history. I have some notes, taken from her, with birthdates of her grandparents, and the names Levett, Leigh and Fenner, together with a few recollections,
which are shown herein elsewhere.
(Tudie remembered her childhood fondly, her rather stern father, whom she nonetheless plainly adored, and her mother, to whom she generally referred as "poor dear mother" presumably remembering how hard she must have worked,
or else just in token of sadness at her loss.
She remembered going on the train [from Liverpool St?] to visit her mother's family in Suffolk; her grandfather would meet her in the tumbril, or perhaps the brougham, at Stowmarket station, and they would travel to Bridge
Farm, Great Finborough. George Levett had been a butler at Finborough Hall in earlier days, and now farmed. Tudie remembered as a girl taking flagons of cider out to the men working in the fields. George was a "staunch
churchman - never missed his Sunday Church...." and must have had a freer attitude than her puritanical father, for he took her to a fair, where she won a carnival glass dish, to the horror of her father. She remembered
attending church with her grandfather, and his singing the Benedicite in a quavering voice. There is a letter to Tudie from her Aunt Martha, George's daughter; they were evidently close, and it must have been a considerable
tragedy to her that Martha died in the local Lunatic Asylum. To the end of her days, Tudie feared a similar fate, and would say "I do fear I get more queer ducky.... Don't put me in Graylingwell."
There are two photographs of her at school in Westerham; she had happy memories of her schooldays. Presumably she left early, and certainly went into service, as her mother had done. I remember her saying she had been
Under-Parlourmaid, which must have been her first position; where I don't know. Conversation was not easy, since the deafness which had troubled her since childhood [They eventually sat her near the front of the class:] got
worse with age.
She was eventually Nanny [Nursery Nurse:] to Lord Cunliffe's family -
[From a google search - "A Charles II oak bed in the sale was formerly in the collection of Lord Cunliffe, Director of the Bank of England. The bed was among a collection of early furniture used to furnish his home, Headley Court...."]
I remember her saying how she would go with the family to St Andrew's, to play "Goff." [Then she giggled, and said "Golf" - by which I think she was mimicing the non-U pronunciation of the time.] She was delighted once, on being told that Lord Boothby was on television: "Bobby Boothby? I've powdered his bottom many a time."
Like all domestic servants, she was certainly very aware of class distinctions - her daughter was never allowed to play with certain children in the village because they were "common." Tudie once had a footman dismissed for winking at her; she was most unhappy about it - she had not by any means intended him to lose his job.
I remember her always very handsomely dressed; a blue coat [she loved blue:] with a fur collar, hats with a hatpin, carried when travelling in a dark blue hatbox. The tape-recording of her speaking shows how she retained some
aspects of Kentish dialect; children were often adderessed as "ducky." When, many years after her death, I did a production of "Ten nights in a bar-room" - a glorious Victorian melodrama, there were some points of vocabulary
and pronunciation on which I was able to advise, remembered from her usage of them. She would say "grizzle" for cry - "I mustn't think of it, I fear I shall grizzle dear."
Her hair, as a young woman, had been long enough to sit on; one photograph shows her with it done up in an elaborate Edwardian knot or bun. She gave it a hundred strokes of the brush a day, a brush in each hand.
She was certainly beautiful, and was courted by a German, Wilhelm Ahlert, in the days before WW1. I remember two pieces of his carving - a little matchbox, and a book-cover. She professed that the name Strudwick was German
in origin, and that it might have been von S. or zu S. I find no evidence of this, but rather that the family seemed to have been settled in Kent & Surrey for many years. The Royal Family, after all, was German in origin,
and such a thing may have been fashionable before 1914. It is not a common name.
Perhaps she intended, as Nannies did, to remain single. {We know nothing of her relationship with her brother-in-law Arthur Allman, save that she had his child, John, a fact not known to John until the 1980s.}
The Allmans kept the village store at Birdham; Alfred Trickey that at West Wittering, further down the Selsey peninsula. Alfred was a good and prosperous businessman, with another shop in Portsea, managed by his mother,
perhaps a third shop, and a carrier's business along the south coast, in addition to being Postmaster. He had been widowed in 1914, and was left with a young son, Wilfred, named doubtless for Alfred's uncle Wilfred Cox who
lived closer to Chichester, in Hopedene, a house opposite that to which Nellie & Arthur Allman retired.
"Old Trickey" as he was known, in later life would buy whatever caught his wife's eye; he must have courted her to her satisfaction, for they were married in 1918, when his son Wilf was just 4 years old. Two years later,
Tudie went to her doctor with some unfortunate symptoms; he pronunced her to be "in the family way," a notion she immediately rejected as ridiculous. He was proved right when she gave birth to Sylvia in September 1920. She
always loved the idea of little girls. Eight years later, Tudie's parents, who had moved [I don't know when:] from Rock Cottage, East Grinstead, to The Old Cottage at Birdham, died within days of each other. Frederick
Strudwick had been fiercely Protestant; Plymouth Brethren I believe; they had a big double funeral, but I cannot now recall where they are buried; presumably in Birdham.
At the end of the same year, Alfred's eldest son, also Alfred, living somewhere in the area, lost his wife in childbirth of a son Gordon. Don's father was grief-stricken, and rejected the child, who came to live with his
grandfather, and was brought up as a brother to Sylvia and Wilfred. Perhaps this was too much for Tudie, despite their having a maid. Wilf was sent to a naval school, which he hated. My mother remembered vividly being left
alone on Christmas Day 1928 for what seemed like hours to her, an eight year old; it was then that Don came to live with them.
Tudie persuaded Alfred to retire to Bognor, that being the more fashionable place, and at some point in the early 1930s they moved into Oaklands on Chichester Road, having sold the business to a Mr Watts, father of Grace Watts
with whom we stayed at Victoria Road, Bognor, on family holidays thirty years later.
The Trickeys worshipped at Bognor Baptist Church, [the old church in the middle of Bognor, where Melvin & Sylvia were married.] Alfred payed to have a system installed to help the hard of hearing; I remember my grandma using
this, the Acoustican; it was like a telephone earpiece on a black handle. Despite her hearing, Tudie loved the hymns of Sankey & Moody, of which she had an encyclopaedic knowledge. Perhaps they reminded her of her youth.
No letters survive from her to Sylvia after Bilby married in 1942. Tudie may not have been overly impressed by the colonial soldier come a-courting. Certainly her son-in-law found her niceties tiresome; there might be three
preserves put on the table at teatime, but it was not done to have more than two; one should always leave some food left on the plate; suchlike things. I remember her baking delicious currant buns; she brewed delicious tea
using a mixture of Indian tea with a little China tea; indeed she loved tea drinking to the end of her life. The chiffonier always had a bottle of Rose's Lime Cordial. She had an ancient wireless, and loved to listen to
Sunday Half Hour, and would join in singing "Hark, hark my soul, angelic songs are swelling." Her voice, speaking and singing, was really quite deep.
It was a surprise to me to hear the account given of Tudie by my mother's old flame Roy; he had been struck by her elegance, her sense of style, and evidently considerable presence, not a little of which I suspect was a sexual
attraction. Sex, of course, was not part of conversation. When my sister married, Tudie took her on one side, and said "My dear; men are Very Sexual." That was it. The proprieties would allow no more.
After Alfred's death in 1955, Sylvia took Susan and Roger to live for a time with her mother at Fairways, Chichester Road, whence they had moved from Oaklands I think sometime before the war. I have the dimmest memory of
rather a dark house; oak panelling, a grandfather clock and large comfy chairs. A little while after her daughter's family moved to Yorkshire in 1957, Tudie moved to be close to them, and bought a small house on I think
Homefield Avenue, Morley; certainly only a few hundred yards from her family on Barfield Terrace. But it was not only deafness that isolated her; she asked Sylvia to come and translate what her German milkman was saying.
Sylvia went, perplexed; "Nah then lass," he said "'Ow 'st tha goin' on; ist tha 'reet?"
Tudie moved back down to Sussex. She bought a bungalow on Greenfield Close, No.30 I think, named it Westerham after her childhood home, and there I remember her serving tea, in a room painted a china blue, with pictures of her
Victorian family hung from a picture rail, and potted palms before they became fashionable again. There was not much for a child to do there; I was much cheered when she asked if I wanted to go and see Auntie, and deeply
disappointed to learn that this was just a euphemism. She had an old bagatelle board, and a wooden solitaire board with a bag of marbles. She kept her garden beautifully; my mother knew the names of every plant, it seemed
to me, but she thought herself ignorant beside her mother.
Tudie had lost her beloved sister Florence, known as Floss or Fopper, back in the 1920s. She kept up with Bertie, who lived I think at Fontwell, until his death. Nellie she saw, but the relationship between them was always
a little strained. Sybil & Tony would visit, Margie and others; Don & Grace lived just half a mile away, on Orchard Avenue. Churchfolk took her regularly to the new Baptist church on Victoria Road.
Then in 1970, when she was 90, I went to stay with her for a few days. She was not coping well; the larder had mouldy food in it, and she was a little confused.
The few years previous she had come up to London to stay with us for the winter months. Her stays had become longer, and it was clearly time for her last move.
We had a small flat built on to the side of the house in East Finchley, and she was happy to be with her Bilby. I loved having her there, and whatever I learnt from her of her childhood and the family's history was gleaned in
those days.
Her faculties began gradually to fail more. In October 1974 I went to University, and two months later came back for her funeral. She had died at home, as she wished. The cortege travelled down to Sussex, and she was
buried in Bognor Cemetery with her dear Alfred, in the place where many years later her daughter's ashes were scattered. Dear Grandma.
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