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John Thomas Hallam (1870-1950) 

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John Thomas Hallam was born in 1870, the eldest Son of John Thomas Hallam & Hannah (nee Price). the 1939 register taken just before the war notes his birth date as the  23rd April 1870. He is my Great Grandfather on the Hallam side of the family,  Father to Mona Hallam, my Grandmother.

  (** The below are mostly from the original notes from Margaret Saxelby, who has researched the Hallam family **) 

He was born when his parents were living down Sandy Lane, Moorhouse, in a cottage that no longer exists.   Granddad pointed out the site of this cottage when he came on visits to my parents when I was a child, some of the buildings were still there.  The cottage shows quite clearly on maps of that era.

On Tom's birth certificate his father was said to be a farmer at Moorhouse, though more accurately he was probably still working for his father at Ship Inn.   In fact in the census of 1871 the family were staying or living at Egmanton with his mother's father, Robert Price.

However Granddad said he lived 'down the lane' until he was two when his father moved to North Park.

North Park Farm is in Ossington Parish, some three hundred yards from Ship Inn and granddad said he lived here for about nine years.   He could remember the bridge being built over Boland Bee.   It has a coping stone dated 1881.   From what I have been able to check, these recollections have proved to be very accurate.

In 1885 when he was about fourteen he moved with his father to Firs Farm, Elston, but by 1893 he had taken his own farm at East Stoke Honies, half a mile or so away.   The two farms were probably still farmed together.   He most likely lived here with his sister, Hannah Elizabeth, as a housekeeper, until his marriage in 1897.

In 1888 or 1889 he met Elizabeth Moody whose father had just taken a nearby farm. The two farms at Elston had fields which ran side by side and it is here that he is said to have first met Elizabeth Moody as a young girl, when she brought food and drink to her father and brother and their men in the field.   By 1891 the Moody family had moved away but it is possible that her brother, Dixon, returned to Elston with Elizabeth as housekeeper since he married there in 1895.   In any case by 1896 her father had taken a farm in the next village of Sibthorpe, probably managed by her brother, Dixon, since he lived at Farnsfield.

Whatever the case Tom renewed his aquaintance and courted Elizabeth.   They had plenty of opportunity to get to know one another and it was a relationship that would have been approved of and allowed to develop. After their marriage in 1897 they both lived at Stoke Honies for a couple of years and their eldest child, Annie, was born there.   They moved to Elston in 1899 when Tom's father moved out to go to Car Colston.   It was here that the rest of their large family was born and christened.  

The Hallams were chapel people and so the first children were christened there. The chapel records have been destroyed so it is impossible to ascertain just how many there were, but certainly six.

After Tom's encounter with the vicar in the churchyard, when he said that if he had sons they could be christened in church, the next two were boys and, so as promised, they were christened in church, with the family names of Thomas and Joseph.   After that there were three more, Mona, Alec, Alma and Peggy.   The daughters were christened in chapel, Alec, the son, in church.

During his time at Elston Tom did his bit for the community.   He was a councillor for many years and travelled to Southwell with Mr. Doncaster by pony and trap, by bicycle, by motor bike and later, on by car.   It was a long way to go round by Newark.   At least when they went on bicycles they used to shorten the journey by putting their bikes on the ferry at Fiskerton and were rowed over the Trent.

Tom had his first car in 1922 so that made his journey easier.   Granny said that the village children always used to chase after him.   They had hardly ever seen a car.

Tom was a very good runner and I still have the cup that he won for winning the one hundred yards race he won for three consecutive years.   It was in 1897 and coincided with Queen Victoria's Jubilee so he was allowed to keep it. He was also a very good cricketer with both bat and ball but was particularly renowned for his hitting.   He was captain of the cricket club for several years, during which time his team were very much feared.   The villages around knew they had little chance of winning when they played Elston.   He also captained the football team.

Grandmother Elizabeth followed in her mother in law's steps when she had left Elston and each week she went to Newark with butter and eggs to sell in the Butter Market.   For many years she had a stall at the side of Mrs. G. Saxelby of Egmanton Hill Farm.    After her own husband had retired, Mrs Saxelby had carried on with her stall for her son. George, who had taken a farm himself at Moorhouse.

Violet Hallam often used to help or replace her mother at the stall and she met George when he came to see his mother.   Eventually he asked her father, Tom, for her hand in marriage.   Violet accepted and they were married in 1926 and came to live at Church farm, Moorhouse, where they had three children.

Tom farmed over one hundred and fifty acres at Elston, which was a big farm in those days, so, although it was a bad time for farming in the late twenties and early thirties, he decided on a move to Gotham Grange, which was some three hundred acres. This was mainly in order to have work for his sons who were now growing up. He rented the farm very cheaply off a Mr. Waddington because times were bad but it still turned out to be a bad move as times got worse.  

His eldest son, Thomas, left home after an argument and went to live with Uncle Joseph Hallam for a while. When his parents went to visit him at Gamston they found that his uncle's housekeeper, Miss Collins, was keeping him so short of food that he was reduced to eating pig food, probably not as bad as it sounds since pigs at that time were mostly kept on leftovers.

The quarrel was patched up and they brought young Thomas home and Granddad set him up in a small farm of his own in Elston, when he was twenty one.   A prodigal son! These were bad years for farmers, but just as things were starting to get a little better as far as farming was concerned, because of the talk of war, the owner wanted the farm for himself and Tom had to move.

He found a farm, the Turn Post, at Wymeswold in Leicestershire and moved there in Spring 1932.   Joseph, Alec, Alma and Peggy went with him.   Mona stayed behind in Elston to be a housekeeper for her brother, Thomas.   She was only seventeen but she was quite glad to get away from home.

By late 1932 Tom's second son, my Uncle Joe, had met Nancy Dunthorne who lived at a near by farm.   Before long she was expecting a baby and, as was the custom in those days, they decided to get married.   The marriage took place at Wymeswold in Spring 1933.   It was the first big outing in my father's new car, which mother and father had learned to drive in time to attend the wedding.   It was used to ferry guests from the church to Turn Post.

Tom then set up Joseph and Nancy up in a farm at Adbolton.   Joseph had two wives, ten children, many farms and several trades.   He died of throat cancer and other drink related illnesses at the age of fifty one.

Tom had also taken the Priory farm at Shoby, several miles away, near Melton Mowbray. and farmed it together with Turn Post. However, his daughter Annie, lived in part of the Priory told him that his manager was cheating him, despite the fact that he was a relation and that Tom had given the job to help him out.   So when Alec, his youngest son in turn had a row with his father and also went to live with his Uncle Joseph, at Gamston, he decided to leave Turn Post and move to Shoby.

Alec too, was not very well fed by Miss Collins but was looked after by some friends he had in the village.   He was not there very long though.   Shortly after, Tom, who was hasty tempered but not one to bear a grudge, gave Alec  500 to set himself up with some land on Gamston aerodrome where he lived in a caravan for a while, there being no house to the land.   It belonged to Notts. County Council, who promised to build one, but never did.   Alec married a girl he had met in Shoby, and rented a house in Tollerton not far from his land.   They had three children.

Mona had returned to Turn Post after her brother's death and it was not long before she had met and married a local farmer, Ronald Sheppard and went to live in the village at Church Farm.   She had five children, one of whom died.   Mona was always full of when one visited her.   She enjoyed a good laugh.   However she smoked too much and could not be persuaded to give it up and so at fifty-nine, she died an early death.

After Mona had gone Alma was not long before she went, she too quarrelled with her father.   At Mona's wedding party she had smuggled bottles of beer to her young man Douglas James and his mates and Violet had removed them from the table. A few days later this was reported to her father and, of course, there was an argument. For some reason Tom and Douglas' father had had a disagreement over some straw so the relationship was frowned upon and this exacerbated the matter.  So Alma left home at seventeen,  She was offered a job in Grantham and took it.   She was going to make her own way in life.

Alma used to visit us on her half days off, coming by train to Carlton and then biking up to Moorhouse. It was not long before she was manager of the shop, but she did not forget Douglas.   In 1942 she married him and went back to Wymeswold to live as a farmer's wife.   They had two daughters and despite some sorrows and tribulations it remains one of the happiest marriages I know.

Now Tom had no sons at home to help and only one daughter so he decided to give up Turn Post Farm and just keep Shoby Priory.  This was much nearer to his two oldest daughters.   Annie was housekeeping at Shoby, Mary at nearby Welby. Annie's story had a happy ending,   Mary's was tragic. 

Aunty Annie lived next door, in a part of the priory that had been sectioned off from the main farmhouse.   Here she kept house for Mr Frisby and it was here that I first really got to know her when I went to stay with granny in the summer holidays.   Later, after she had married Frank Wright, I spent a lot of weekends with them. In 1939 Annie went to keep house for Frank Wright at Stoke Rocford in Lincolnshire.   It was not long before a child was on the way and a son Alan was born.   Annie was 42 years old.   Winter started early in 1940 and Alan had been born prematurely in a big, cold farmhouse.   In order to keep the baby alive Annie said that she stayed in bed for three weeks hugging him to her chest.   She said that she dared not go to sleep. The only respite she got was when her husband could take a break from trying to keep his stock alive in such terrible conditions and hold the baby for a while and, even then, she hardly dare hand him over.   Her husband was so cold, but they lived happily ever after!

It was here too, that I got to know Aunty Mary when she came over on visits to her parents.   We went bike rides together and she took me to Welby to see her Mr. Hanbury. I thought it very romantic. Mary had gone to work as a companion to Mrs Hanbury on a farm at Welby.   There she met and fell in love with the son and he with her. Unfortunately he suffered from an inherited disease and after much soul searching they decided not to marry.   This was in the days before contraception and in this case, no sex out of marriage, but their loving relationship continued and Mary stayed there for many years.   She was about the nicest person I have ever met, always with a sunny disposition and a smile. Their decision had not embittered her, but her end was indeed, bitter.   At the age of forty two she developed liver cancer, a condition for which there was no hope in those in those days.   After several months of pain she was taken to Melton hospital to end her days but she missed Mr. Hanbury so desperately that she got out of hospital in her night-gown and then they found her she was well on her way back to see him.   She died a day or two later and is buried in Welby churchyard.   Mr. Hanbury was later buried at her side, there are monumental inscriptions to both of them behind the church there.

It was from Shoby that Tom and Elizabeth's youngest daughter (Peggy) also left home when she was about seventeen. She too had had words with her father, this time over her mother, whom was shouting at Elizabeth and Peggy got angry and pushed the kettle she had in her hand, in his face. She came to stay at Moorhouse and found a job in a shop in Newark. After about a year, when she was nineteen, she came home and announced that she had joined the W.A.A.F.   I can still remember the look on her face.   I was sorry to see her go.   She spent five years in the forces as a driver and her service is commemorated in Saxton church.   Soon after she was demobbed she married George Wilcockson.   They had three sons.

Tom and Elizabeth spent about a five years at Shoby.   It was a lovely place to spend an holiday.   The old priory farmhouse was very interesting and very big with the inevitable two staircases.   It also had a priest hole, which granny discovered when taking off some wallpaper halfway up the back stairs.   This concealed a door, which when opened, gave on to a hidden chamber behind the great kitchen chimney.   There were some artetacts remaining there.

Tom retired from the Priory. He looked for a smallholding, but not being able to find one, he and Elizabeth, took rooms in a large farmhouse at Kirby Belloe.   They spent about a year here but granny hated it and one day Tom went out and found what he wanted, a small place with some buildings and thirty acres of land at Willoughby, not far from Wymeswold.   Here he ran a few beast despite the fact that he was nearly eighty years old. They lived here until Tom died in 1950 and he was taken back to Elston to be buried. This is where he had been the happiest?  

In his will he left everything to his wife with power to dispose of everything as she saw fit.   

** Margaret Saxelby's Notes continued **

Tales of Granddad Tom - 

Tom is remembered very differently by different people, especially by his children and grandchildren.   Though many tales are told about his deeds and misdeeds nearly everyone remembers him with great affection, even by most of his children, who stood in awe of him when they were young.   The tales are told with laughter not malice.

As grandchildren we only saw the loving and fun loving side of him.   We used to love when my grandparents to come to stay or to go to stay with them.   As small children he could tell us the same jokes over and over again and still make us laugh.   He kept a straight face but had a twinkle in his eye.   Even his daughter Violet's Methodist friends used to laugh at them.

He could be hasty & bad tempered when he had had too much to drink.   I think his children used to keep out of his way whenever possible, especially on market days. I am sure he must have embarrassed them, as is the way with parents, on more than one occasion.   Once, when there was a concert in the village Granddad arrived late, having stopped off for a drink.   Nevertheless he got up on the platform to sing to everyone's huge enjoyment, except his teenage daughters.   He had a very good voice and used to entertain at village concerts with both song and monologue.   He had some very funny ones which I wish I could remember.

He was generous to his friends with help or money.   Very unusually for his day and age, he and granny had a joint account.   Whatever else he never kept her short of money, when he had it. It is said that he made and lost more than one fortune as market conditions changed and he probably drank or gave away another.   He used to go into the Midland Hotel in Newark on Market Day and treat everyone there.   The regulars used to love it and him. He was the life and soul of the party.

Great granddad George Moody spent his latter years at Farndon.   Granddad Tom used to call there every Wednesday on his way home from Newark, after he had had a drink, to give George a good hiding for letting him marry his daughter.   I am sure this tale suffers from exaggeration but there must have been some argument on at least one occasion. The story still persists.

One Wednesday he was coming back as usual from Newark Market in the pony and trap and was, as usual, well drunk.   Just after Farndon granny fell out the back.   Left to its own devices the pony had been going too slowly for granddad, who flipped the reins, making the pony lurch forward.   Granddad did not know what had happened until he got home.   He sent one of his sons back to retrieve her.

They had a cat, which used to pee under the sofa.   Granddad said, "I'll stop the b*******" and proceeded to saw the legs off the sofa.

He was once banned from driving for an incident he had reported himself. He had apparently bumped into some one. The policeman said, "You silly buggar, Tom.   Why didn't you just pay him off?"

Granddad and Mr. Doncaster had attended a meeting to which they had gone in granddad's car.   On the way back they were kept waiting at the level crossing for fifteen minutes. When the gates were opened granddad drove on to the line and stopped.   "What are you doing, Tom?" asked Mr. Doncaster.   'They kept me waiting.   Now I'll keep the b********s waiting."   And he did.   He was later fined  100 for keeping the express waiting for half an hour.   I do not know what age he was at the time but the magistrates banned him long enough so that he would not get his licence back until he was ninety.

Granddad always kept a spirited horse or pony for the trap and used to visit his mother's relations in Egmanton.   Old granny Price, that is Bill Price's granny, used to dread his visits.   George Laughton, and granddad used to race each other to Kirton and back for a  50 wager.   She thought they would kill themselves.    Tom never kept a pony unless it could beat everyone else's.

When Aunty Alma was christened, she was said to be his fourteenth child. The vicar asked for her names.   Granddad said Alma Enough.   The vicar refused to accept it and when granddad kept insisting, he baptised her Alma Eniff and that is what is on her birth certificate. She is probably the only Eniff to be so named.

I remember visiting Granny and Granddad at Gotham in a pony and trap.   We called at Granny's former farmhouse in Elston to pick her up to take her to Gotham.   I can still recall her coming down the steps, the journey to Grange Farm and my first visit to her new home, where I was to stay for a few days.   I was only just turned three.   The house added to my impression that all houses were big and had two stairs cases and all had attics and cellars.

Tom's daughter, Violet, used to tell the tale that Mary and she were doing the milking one day, while the men were harvesting and had not got on fast enough for Tom.   He said, "I'll show you," and proceeded to fill the bucket with milk in record time.   When he got up to come away from the cow, it lifted it's tail and messed in his bucket of milk. Violet and Mary had to stifle their laughter until he had gone back to his harvesting.

From Walter Kirkland.   Elston : 

Tom was a very good farmer. He broke horses, kept them for five years and then sold them on.   He always had a frisky horse in his trap

On one occasion, when taking a horse across the Trent at Fiskerton, to some land he had on the other side, the horse jumped out, but swam ashore.

He was willing to help others.   One hay time when Walter's dad was in the fields on Sibthorpe Road he came to him and said, "Your hay's about ready.",  "Yes. I'm getting it tomorrow."  "I don't want my waggons till Friday.   You had better come and borrow them and get it all in before it gets rained on."

Walter's dad had only a few acres and only a cart with which to cart his hay.  Tom had a waggoner who said that he was always fed well and with 'such good bacon,' but it was always bacon.   He said that if the lasses were at home he always got a bit of butter.   "It tasted grand."

Even in my young day one never ate meat and butter together.   It was considered the height of extravagance.

Walter's sister was in hospital a long time.   One day his parents were offered a lift home by Tom, as they often were.   Aunty Annie was with them.   He asked her four or five times if she had picked up his boots from the cobbler.   Each time she said "Yes." However when they reached East Stoke he turned the trap round and went all the way back to Newark.   Nothing would convince him.'

When Tom took the farm at Wymeswold the previous tenants had no where to go at first So Tom allowed them to stay.   The old lady would sit on one side of the fire the old man on the other.   One night he asked, 'Why is your face so wrinkled?' To which she replied 'Have you looked in the mirror lately?.   Granddad was highly amused at her quick fire repartee.

Tom was cricket captain at Elston.   They played on the park in front of the Hall where the Darwins lived.   On one side was a dry moat.  Tom once hit such a mighty six that it cleared the moat and hit the wall of the Hall.   No one had ever reached the moat before. It was talked about for years afterwards and is still remembered by old timers today.

During his captaincy Tom went to see Mrs. Lee to ask if her son, William could Play cricket. Mrs Lee was a grand old Victorian lady, dressed up in the high collared, beaded frocks of those times.   "Can Billie play cricket on Saturday.?" Tom asked.   To which she replied "I haven't got a Billie, but I do have a Willie." Tom could hardly contain himself and it became a saying around Elston for long time.

Tom was a district councillor for many years and frequently travelled with his very good friend, Mr Doncaster, on his motor bike to meetings at Southwell. After going to Newark on a Wednesday Tom would call at Elston to collect the rents. One day he called at Walter's home, as he often did.   Walter asked him how he was going to get home to which he replied, "I'm going to sleep on your sofa."   Walter's mother made up a bed for him and he went home next day.   His wife did not know where he was,   I expect she was used to it.

On at least two occasions Tom was 'well merry' and Granny would not drive with him from Newark back to Wymeswold, some twenty miles,   When he got home he sent Uncle Alec back to fetch her but she was already at the Barracks, that is nearly home.

On one occasion Tom had been to the pub with Walter's dad.   There was no nicer man when he was sober but not so when he had had a few whiskies.   Walter's dad took Tom home and saw him in and all was quiet, so he must have gone to sleep.   He often shouted when he had drunk too much.

On several occasions, on Tom's return from market, his workers would not please him, So he would sack the lot.   The next day they would all turn up and nothing was said. He was a good employer so they did not want to lose such a job.   His workers stayed with him for years.   They even moved with him when he moved.

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Elizabeth Moody (1876 - 1959)

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** Margaret Saxelby's Notes **

Elizabeth was the second daughter of George Moody and his second wife, Hannah Oliver, born while they were farming at Annesley in Derbyshire.   She had two half-brothers, two half-sisters, a sister and a brother, George, who died as an infant.   As far as I am aware she only ever had contact with one half-brother, Dixon and one half-sister, Sarah Ann and her own sister, Mary Ann.

Her father moved about a lot and his family, including Elizabeth, with him.   She lived in Annesley, Farnsfield, Sandiacre, Long Eaton, Elston, Sibthorpe and Stragglethorpe before she was married and at least eight different villages afterwards.

Her mother, Hannah was ill for some time at the end of her life and died quite young. Elizabeth, in particular, did not get on at all well with the housekeeper whom George employed before his wife's death and she and her sister went to housekeep for their brother, Dixon.

One of George's moves brought him to Elston where Elizabeth met Tom Hallam and then to Sibthorpe.   In 1897 they were married in Sibthorpe church and lived, at first, at Stoke Honies where Elizabeth had her first child, Annie.   Two years later they moved into The Firs at Elston, where she had at least nine more children.   The story is that there were fifteen altogether but Granny was reluctant to talk about this.  Perhaps some of them were miscarriages or still births.

The life of a farmer's wife was a very hard one in those days.   She was expected to look after all the indoor work, milk cows, rear calves, churn, make butter, rear chickens and keep hens and geese as well as other outdoor work in busy times. Then there were the journeys to Newark each Wednesday with the butter she had made and eggs and any other produce there was for sale.  

 I remember her saying that she had sat in the Butter market with her wares for more than thirty years.   I think she looked on these visits to Newark, busy though they were, in the nature of an outing and a change from the hard work at home.   I wonder how she found time to look after the children in her first family.   I am sure she would have had the help of a maid but even so life was very busy.

By the time her 'second family' came along her eldest daughter, Annie was thirteen and would have had to help to look after them.   I do not know how old Annie was when she left home or indeed Mary, who would have had to help in her turn.   The older one had to go out to work as the younger one was old enough to help.   They were employed as companion helps as it was called in those days.

However my mother, Violet, said that from the time she left school at fourteen to the time of her marriage at twenty one, she was the main one responsible for bringing up the younger ones.   She did have a short while working in a hat shop in Newark and was happy there but was hauled out one day by her father who said that she had to come home to help her mother.   I expect another baby had been born.   She never escaped again until she married.   There was many a time when she wanted to go out of an evening but could not until they were all asleep.   There were times when she wished them anywhere.

On one occasion Elizabeth had gone to Newark on a carrier's cart.   The carrier dismounted to load some goods and something startled the horses, which bolted.   Granny managed to scramble to the front of the cart, grab the reins and bring the horses to a halt.

When she was in her forties Elizabeth had a serious ear operation on both ears for mastoids.   This saved her life but left her profoundly deaf and I am sure she felt cut off from the conversation when in company.   Even on a one to one basis conversation was very difficult.   There were many more things I would like to have heard, especially about her early life, if it had been possible.

Even her younger daughters knew very little, not even their grandfather's name. Granny did not talk about him because there had been some trouble before and after her mother died.   The girls could not remember their mother when she could talk to them naturally.

Granny and granddad came quite often to stay, especially on occasions such as harvest festivals anniversaries and at Christmas times.   My brother used to like to tease granny and was always undoing her pinafore strings.   She was never without a pinafore except when she was going out, even having best ones for the evenings.   We used to love her to visit even though talking to her was difficult because of her deafness.

I do not know whether she did not like to stay too long, or whether she thought they might overstay their welcome for, after a few days, she used to say, 'We had better go home or we shall not be able to come again.?

After her husband's death in 1950, Elizabeth stayed a short while in Willoughby and then found a small cottage at Wymeswold (Betty & Rod Hardy's House on East Road), where her three youngest daughters lived. 

Unfortunately she had to sell much of her lovely furniture.   She had been used to big houses and the furniture just would not fit into a cottage.   It was at a time when no one wanted big houses or big furniture and it went for next to nothing.   It nearly broke her heart.  She said she would rather have given it away or seen it burned on a bonfire.

Elizabeth lived for about nine years at Wymeswold during which time she had the support of her three daughters who lived close by and frequent visits to her other children.   She died in 1959 at the age of eighty three and was buried with her husband. Tom, at the side of their eldest son, also Tom, in Elston churchyard.

I remember granny as an old lady with long white hair, swept back and done up in a bun. She always wore long dark clothes, either black or grey, even when she was only in her' fifties.   She did not seem to change for the next thirty years.   I always recall her with a smile on her face. She was a gentle lady but had a strong personality, even though one of her favourite expressions was "You'll have to ask your dad."  Her daughter, Peggy said, that even after she came out of the forces and was going to a dance, Elizabeth could not realise that times had changed and repeated the time-honoured phrase.   Her dad only laughed.

Elizabeth also had great physical strength and courage.   Even after bearing so many children she hardly suffered a day's illness, apart from mastoids. Until the end her deafness however, must have been a great trial to her and not to be able to hear her young family talk must have caused her a good deal of distress.   I never heard her complain. She needed great mental strength as well.   The loss of several young children and of her eldest son, Thomas, at twenty-one must have been hard to bear.   Her second son, Joseph, caused her much heart-ache as did the many arguments between her children and their father.

She spent much of her life acting as peacemaker. Tom' s quarrels were explosive but short-lived and she encouraged her children to keep out of his way.   She used to say, "He will have forgotten by morning."   and he often did, but it was not always in time to stop their sudden departure and granny must have grieved as she watched her children depart one by one.   In time they all came back and, such was the affection in the family, that their children all ran away to one another!.