Bernard wrote some notes about his life up to the start of WW1.
I was born at Johannesburg on 7th May 1893 while father, Rev Joseph George Benson and mother Jessie Benson (nee Webb) were on trek from the Transvaal to Capetown to sail for England where father was to have his first furlong after 11 years in S. Africa. With father and mother were my older sisiter Enid and two elder brothers, Harold Washington B and Ronald Hill B.
Of the journey home (to England) naturally I know nothing. I gathered that we went to live in Merton (S. London) where the railway engines were brown! Father had suffered from a severe attack of malaria and was fond by the Medical Board to be unfit to return to S. Africa. Conference appointed him to the moss Lane area of Manchester - a most unsuitable appointment for both him and mother too.
I have few recollections of Manchester. One is of standing on a big rock in a blue navy uniform under a shock of curly hair to be photographed. (Photograph was one of father's hobbies and I believe this episode was probably before the introduction of the "dry plate"). There was also a day excursion to New Brighton where a black hulk stood high and dry on the sands. It was a disastrous day for me. On the way home we shared a compartment with a little girl just recovering from scarlet fever and I, then just four years old, caught it. Harold and Ronald were sent to Merton, out of harms way! Enid stayed at home with a bottle of preventative medicine. To be sure of things she got hold of the bottle and drank the lot - and soon joined me in the sickroom. In the meantime I developed diphtheria and my survival became very doubtful. However the doctor lanced my neck in three places (I still have the scars) and withdrew the toxin from my system and by the Grace of God I recovered.
The illness overlapped the time when father should have changed stations - he was appointed to Rose Hill church, Derby. Our home became 18 Rose Hill Rd in due course.
Merton is a region in London that includes Wimbledon, Mitcham and Morden. The church in Manchester could be Upper Moss Lane Primitive Methodist chapel in Hume, Manchester
His WW2 identity card notes "scars on neck" as a distinguishing feature, so this must be the source.
DERBY (1897-1900)
At Derby I started school, didn't like it and played truant! The first moving picture show, a slapstick comedy with lots of whitewash, I ever saw was here. We used to go too for picnics to Little Eaton on the sides of a steep, wooded valley with the R. Derwent(?) flowing swiftly along its narrow bottom, a lovely spot and ideal for such a purpose. It was from Derby the family went to Bakewell for a summer holiday. I stood in awe at its huge underpass mill wheel and revelled in the walk along the R. Wye to Haddon Hall. There was a fascinating walk in Derby itself: to a level crossing where one could watch express trains from London with a "7'6" single engine and I used to think it would be great fun to have one big wheel for a hoop! Kenneth Lawrence was born here.
In August 1900 we moved to Crewe via the North Stafford Rly, voted by the family to be the dirtiest train they had ever been on!
I cannot find a Rose Hill Road, but there was is a Rose Hill Street, with a Rose Hill Weslyan Methodist Church, demolished in 1991.
The loco would be one like this one.
CREW (1900-1903)
Our address being 3 Heathfield Avenue, I went to Hightown Weslyan day school, headmaster Mr Hinchcliffe.
It was here I made the acquaintance of sundry outlying farmers, Mr Whittaker of Warmingham and the Hall of Minshull Vernon. The latter bordered the railway, the main Euston to Carlisle railway and full of interest. Especially I remember a harvest supper and being specially driven home (4 miles) after it. I spent a week at Whittaker Vernon, being kicked out of the cowshed by a cow didn't spoil it. Whittakers specialised in cheese; the making is so fascinating to watch.
Two events remain vividly in my memory. First the opening of the cottage Hospital when all the school children paraded on the Park and second one summery Sunday evening when there was a stir in the town, crowds parading the streets and everybody chattering excitedly. I went out to see what it was all about and fairly raced home - the Boer war was over. Father and Mother both of whom had personal friends on both sides were intensely overjoyed and mother got out her favourite music - Mendelsohn's Songs Without Words and played the liveliest of them.
I also remember signing as a subscriber to the 20th Century Fund of the Church and the signature is there in the Central Hall, Westminster to this day.
In August 1903 we moved top Middlesbrough (South Bank).
Little Brother, Maurice Howes was born at Crewe
The house looks to still be there. Minshull Vernon is still a tiny hamlet.
MIDDLESBROUGH (SOUTH BANK) 1903-1906
I think I must have begun to take notice of people and things about this time, beginning with the journey up when I first saw an ocean going ship, just a glimpse at Stockton, then a view as we ran parallel to Middlesbrough Docks.
South Bank proved to be a rather dreary town, with blast furnaces at Cargo Fleet on the way into it and more on the way out of it towards Grangetown and Redcar. Still we were given a warm welcome by an elderly man James Ryder, who was a pillar of the church and a man of standing with the N.E. Railway Co. We nicknamed him "The Grand Old Man" and it fitted him perfectly. We lived almost opposite the church at 120 Middlesbrough Rd and I went to the adjacent Wesleyan school, Headmaster Mr G W Stevens. After a year there I went to Middlesbrough High School, two miles away in Middlesbrough proper. Mostly I walked except at midday when Ronald gave me a lift home to dinner on the steps of his newly acquired bicycle.
I did reasonably well at school though I never took to the Headmaster a Mr W Edwards whom I regarded as a bit of a fop. Long errands to other churches took me to Grangetown and Eston, this latter being a delightful village nestling at the foot of the Cleveland Hills. The tops of the hills were moorland covered with bilberry (or lingberry) bushes. Halfway up the hillside were two winding engines used to pull strings of loaded iron ore trucks out of the mines on the hills. One was operated by a stout round-faced Mr Hooper and the other by a tall, lean man[?, looks more like desk!] Mr Hatfield. Bother were local preachers.
Ronald achieved some distinction at the High School by winning firsts in both the Cambridge Junior and Senior exams. The Head wanted him to try for a University Scholarship at Oxford but had no ideas for a subsequent career and father turned it down. Enid and Harold became pupil teachers and attended the Hugh Bell School in Middlesbrough two days a weekfor the "pupil" part of it.
Little sister Celia Gwendoline was born here, I had to go to Middlesbrough to fetch a nurse for her.
[The page ends here, but he seems to continue still at Middlesbrough]
I sat for one of the Sunday School's Scripture Exams and came in third in the district, being beaten by the two sons of another Wesleyan Minister. As one of the two was yunger than I , the family did not think much of my effort.
When father and mother first married, they naturally discussed father's future as a missionary and agreed that it could be very helpful to him if he applied the wonders of the universe to illustrate and enhance his preaching. So they set aside a sum of money each year to buy equipment - a small microscope and a 3" refracting telescope to begin with. When he found he was to stay in England the microscope developed into a good binocular and the telescope to a 6" reflector. He got a local cabinet maker, I think in Derby[?], to make him a portable octagonal observatory and at South Bank he erected in n a strip of church land beside the church. On fine nights he took oner or more of us children outwith to learn some astronomy. Harold was an excellent artist and made coloured drawings of what he saw, especially I remember of Jupiter and Saturn.
In our last year there was an eclipse of he sun and father attached the camera to the telescope eye-piece and took a photo of it - to the detriment of the camera which caught fire in the process, a vivid example of the sun's power.
The three years soon went and we moved to Redditch, in Worcestershire. It was a long journey made much more comfortable by "the Grand Old Man's" consideration in reserving two complete compartments for us from Darlington. We travelled the 44 miles to York (from D) in 41 minutes. Some trains
[the sentence just stops there, part way along a line]
Middlesbrough Rd is still there, but few of the buildings remain. There is a map of South Bank from around that time here. It shows just how the town is sandwiched between two huge factory complexes; easy to see why he considered it dreary.
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