Betty Watkinson - A Life Well-lived
Post date: Aug 11, 2018 9:26:14 PM
Betty Cockrell was born in 1916, the daughter of Horace Cockrell, an upholsterer and French polisher, and Faith Towle, a milliner and daughter of a house painter. During the war, Horace was engaged in fabricating airplanes with the Royal Air Corps. The family lived on the Kingsway, Betty and her parents sharing a house with her grandparents. In 1920, Betty’s younger sister Jean was born, but sadly at six months old, she contracted Meningitis and as a result, lay in a spinal carriage for rest of life until she died at the age of 12.
A third daughter Myra (whom we have to thank for this information about Betty’s life), was born when Jean was nine and she remembers peeping into the wicker work spinal carriage on wheels to look at her older sister.
Betty went to Miss Browne’s private elementary school in Rowston Street, which is now the Captain’s Table. Miss Browne’s was a small school with only around a dozen pupils, but they were very well taught and Betty received an excellent grounding before she went to the girls’ grammar school at the age of 11. Myra believes that Betty was a paying pupil at the grammar school as there were no scholarships at the time.
The family lived at 79 Kingsway until Myra was seven, before moving to 65 Highgate, a double fronted gas-lit house, next door to where Betty later lived for many years. The house had no bathroom, but there was a wash house with a big brick-surround copper that was lit either for wash days or bath night.
Betty left school at 16 with some qualifications and got a job with the railway at the Port Offices, but after a few years she left to join the Post Office. The record below from 1934 shows that she was a Sorting Clerk and Telegraphist.
It was at the Post Office that she met her future husband Len Watkinson, but it would be some years before they were able to marry. When the Second World War began, Len joined up. Unfortunately, the troop ship on which he was travelling was bombed at Singapore and Len had to swim for his life. The Japanese got there first and Len was taken prisoner, spending the war in the nightmarish Changi jail on the Burma railway. He rarely talked about his experiences afterwards, only the funny things that had happened.
Whilst Len was imprisoned, Betty continued working for the Post Office and rose to a position of responsibility at the Riby Square branch. She also fire watched at night, sitting with a teleprinter in an attic room in a property on the corner of Cambridge Street opposite the Town Hall, collecting and relaying messages from aircraft, would could be very upsetting at times.
Len came back from the war in late 1945, only to find that his step-mother had squandered all of his army pay in his absence. The couple married that year and started their life together in two rooms at number 65, rubbing along quite well with the rest of the family. Betty gave up her work to look after Len, as he needed special care, because the privations of the prison camp had left him in a poor physical condition.
Betty and Len became interested in bird watching, getting together with like-minded people and making studies. They had a small car and Betty would drive them around the countryside, where they frequently stopped the car to examine some new discovery in a ditch or field.
Betty was particularly interested in botany and the house was filled with books on the subject. She was interested in many different things, from cross breeds of sheep and family tree research. She spent a great deal of time in the archives, finding out a great deal about her own family, as well as helping people who came to her house with their research.
The Watkinsons and their friends in the Lincolnshire Naturalists’ Trust (now the Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust) surveyed Linwood Warren (pictured left, photo by Rod Collins) near Market Rasen, clearing areas that had become overgrown and preserving the good elements. The Trust was also instrumental in the establishment of Gibraltar Point as a nature reserve and the couple spent a great deal of time there, studying and recording the seashore.In 2000, Betty participated in a national survey into flora and fauna and was designated an area near the Boating Lake. A talented artist, Betty would take her sketch book and record her findings on a daily basis, making beautiful sketches of the flora and fauna, then taking them home to identify what she had found in her reference books.
Betty is credited with having first discovered Bulbous Meadow-grass (pictured right), a nationally scarce species that is usually only found in the
South and South-east of England, on the old sand dunes. This fact is recorded on the information board sited close to the Cleethorpes Light Railway. Betty and Len had wanted a family, but sadly three stillborn births meant this was not to be. This took its toll on Betty, but she loved children and her sister’s children and others from the neighbourhood visited her house for tea or to play in the large garden.
Eventually, Len and Betty rented an outhouse at the old Mill House in Mill Road and set up the Avocets, a group to teach youngsters from the age of 10 upwards about wildlife and the environment. Betty was a great influence on the boys and many kept in touch with her from their homes all over the world in later life.
Betty (pictured left in 2009) continued to pursue her interests into her early nineties, but began to struggle after suffering a nasty fall. She eventually went to live in Ladysmith Care Home where she was visited often by her family and the many friends she had made during her long life. Betty Watkinson died on 10th July 2015, but she leaves behind a lifetime of work in her large and diverse archive of research and a great many people who have benefited from her vast knowledge of and passion for the natural world, local and family history and many other subjects.