George Edward Fordham and Edith Woodcock

George Edward Fordham - known as Ted and Chook - was the fourth child of George and Alice Fordham (nee Anker).  Click on the picture to the right for a larger image taken on 3rd August 1903 by Frank S. Cocks (soon to be brother-in-law).

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

How George 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.

At the time of the wedding George is listed on the wedding certificate  as a Cashier living in Royston, Hertfordshire, and Edith as a spinster living at 6 Exchange Street, Peterborough - above Frank Cock's studio

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 witnesses at the wedding were Frank Cocks and Flora Woodcock.

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.

George Edward Fordham was born on 16th December 1875 in Ailsworth, Northampton.  His mother Alice is suggested to have drunk to excess (though probably later in life!) and his father George was at different times a Publican and Police Constable.  The family lived in Ailsworth and then Castor and then for a long period of time - most of George's childhood in Barnack where he attended the primary school.

The picture to the left is the front page of a schoolbook of George's in which he has written his name, Barnack School and dated it to 1889 - he would have been 14.  The subsequent page has the name of his brother Zephariah in it, who presumably 'inherited' the book as a school boy.

From a very early age, George showed his intelligence and was said to have been so bright at mathematics that he on occasion was able to take the lesson at school instructing his fellow pupils.

Building on his excellence at mathematics George took a job as an clerk/cashier at a brewery in Stamford.  Whilst working there he joined the choir at St Mary's church.

When he moved to Royston is unclear but was most likely around the the end of the century and was probably for work - there were a number of prominent breweries in Royston owned by the Fordham family (unrelated).

Edith Woodcock 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, Flora, Maud and Maggie.

Edith and George moved to Royston, Hertfordshire, and lived there, having two children Cicely Evelyn born 16th July 1907 and Edward Alan born 30th May 1910.

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.

Pictures are of Edith and Cicely, Chook and Cicely and Cicely and nephew Adrian.  All taken in the Garden at 14 Gloucester Road, Teddington.

Chook worked as an accountant at first in Oxo and subsequently at Charrington's - he worked well beyond his retirement at 65 and was reputed to be paid in sovereigns.

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.

Edith passed away on 12th March 1948 aged 68 and was buried in Teddington Cemetary, Shacklegate Lane, Teddington.

It is worth remembering that Cicely, Chook and Edith's eldest daughter is now 41 and still living at home - she was not to leave the family home until her father died in 1970.

From here on Chook and Cicely live in Gloucester Road a life of almost total routine, firmly rooted in edwardian and increasingly eccentric tradition: taking a rest in the afternoon, leaving a slate by the back door for messages, allowing grandchildren Veronica and Adrian to have one strawberry (as opposed to several), giving the children fallen apples rather than fresh picked ones.

This assessment, based largely on recollections, risks being too harsh - Chook was elderly, the era (the 1950's and 1960's, were still very traditional and this coldness is not really captured in the pictures and letters that survive.  There is a certain detachment from the realities of the increasingly modern world but that in itself is not unusual!

However, there can be little doubt that Chook had eccentricities and Cicely's catholic fervour had been accentuated by illness and a period in hospital.

Chook passed away aged 94 on 11th may 1970 after a brief period of illness and a short time in a local nursing home in Teddington. 

His love and passion for poetry (in particular Tennyson) and his sense of the proper and the correct both reflect the era he grew up in and lived through as well as his intellectual capacity.