Edith Fordham (nee Woodock)

Edith Woodcock - known as Pet - was daughter of Samuel and Amy Woodcock (nee Penterlow).  She was their third child and Samuel's fourth child - his first wife had died in 1865 and he had remarried in 1871 in Kettering

Edith was born on 26th September 1878 in Thorney, Northamptonshire and baptised and subsequently confirmed at Peterborough Cathedral.  Her father, Samuel Woodcock, had lost his first wife (she had died in 1865 aged just 26) and he had married Amy Penterlow - Edith was the third child from this marriage - there were to be four more children.

The Woodcock family were a prominent family in the village - Samuel was the main village blacksmith and well known - this was before the era of everyone having cars and the village blacksmith was a frequent visit for most people, not least to get their horses shoed.  However, her father Samuel died in 1891 when Edith was just 13 and her older half brother William took over as the Blacksmith.

Edith started off working in a haberdashers shop in Peterborough for 1/6  week and was a very accomplished at needlework and millenery.  She was very close to her brothers William and Harry and sisters Kate, Flo, Maud and Maggie.

How George (known in his family as Chook) and Edith met is unclear, but by 1903 they were engaged to be married - the engagement was captured by Edith's brother-in-law photographer Frank Sweetland Cocks.  Frank was to capture the family, especially the Woodcock family, in photographs for the next thirty years.

George and Edith were married on 5th May 1904 at St John's Church, Peterborough.  The bridesmaid's were Madeleine Fordham and Maud Woodcock.  Edith drove to the wedding in an open topped landau.  The wedding photographs were taken at Frank's photographic studio just next to the Church (now MacDonald's!), Exchange Street.

The wedding was clearly something of a big event - a notice was placed in the Peterboro and Huntingdon Standard - "MARRIAGES: Peterborough, at St. John's May 5 George Edward Fordham of Royston to Edith Woodcock." (Saturday May 7th 1904)

One of the wedding thank-you cards survives, sent after the wedding to guests who had sent gifts, and it is amazingly delicate and attractive.  It announced their new marital home as 2, North Villas, Old North Road, Royston, - this was the signal of a couple on their way up.

Edith and George moved to Royston, Hertfordshire, and lived there, having two children

Both were baptised into the Parish Church in Royston.

Soon after the birth of their second child, Edward Alan, the Edith and George moved to London, initially into a flat in Clapham obtained by Chook's brother (Uncle Bob - James Robert Fordham) before moving to 122 Links Road, Streatham Common, SW17.

The house backed onto the railway line and Felix (Edward Alan Fordham) in his notes record that Chook drank quite a lot and on occasion could be seen leaning out of the train waving his tankard on the way home.  No doubt this was a one-off memory but gives an insight into the home life.

In many respects the family was utterly victorian, and at best, edwardian - traditional, stiff and rigid.

In 1940, in the face of the second world war and the bombing raids the family moved out to 14 Gloucester Road, Teddington, where they were to remain.

But this was not a happy household - the relationship between Chook and Felix's wife Florrie was at best tense and unnecessary (they did not make her and the young children welcome during the war); the marriage between Chook and Edith moved apart and they slept in separate rooms; and here is a widespread acceptance that Chook had an affair with another woman and another daughter but it has proved impossible to track anyone down who could confirm this.

Memories of Edith from her grandchildren are the memories of children but they reflect an elderly lady, with false teeth, who required a parasol to be carried when in the garden and for whom routine in the family home was the norm.

The surviving letter from Edith to her daughter Cicely on her 21st birthday in 1928, whilst charming and personal conveys something of this vistorian/edwardian stiffness and style of the era.