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My great aunt Kate Frances (sometimes Frances Kate) Roberts was born on 8 August 1882, at either Dedham or Ardleigh, Essex. She attended Ardleigh school, before entering domestic service at the turn of the century.
In March 1901, aged eighteen, Kitty was working as a housemaid for the Peache family. (James) Courthope Peache (1852–1931) was a well-known civil engineer of the day and is remembered for the Peache engine, an early device for generating electricity. He was the son of Rev. Alfred Peache (1818–1900), a wealthy evangelical benefactor who in 1869 had acquired land at Layer Marney, near Colchester.
In 1879 Alfred Peache and his sister Kezia became lord and lady of the manor at Layer Marney Tower, a large Tudor building with an impressive gatehouse. It suffered considerable damage during the Great Earthquake of 1884 and the Peaches undertook the repairs, re-flooring and re-roofing the gatehouse and creating the garden to the south of the Tower.
Courthope Peache purchased Layer Marney from his father in 1899 and continued the restoration work, closing the Tower to visitors, according to a notice in the Essex Standard of September 1899.
It was to this house that Kitty came as a housemaid at the turn of the century.
There is a story that my grandmother, Alice, worked at Layer Marney Tower too.
Layer Marney Tower, from an article in Country Life, April 1903. This is how it looked when my great aunt Kitty was in service there.
It was (maybe is still) supposedly haunted by the ghost of Sir Henry of Layer Marney. In the summer of 1900 one Helen Shaftesbury saw the apparition at the parish church, St Mary’s. Others have seen him in the Tower itself.
During his short time at Layer Marney, Peache installed the smallest size Peache engine, to generate electricity for lighting his home. The engine was despatched to Layer Marney in February 1901.
When the census was taken a month later, on 31 March 1901, the Peache family and six servants, including Kitty, were at 10 Oxford Road in Colchester, so perhaps this was temporary accommodation while the electric wiring and installation was completed at the Tower.
Once it was habitable, Peache moved back into Layer Marney, presumably taking Kitty and the other servants with him. The prospect of electric lighting must have been quite exciting for Kitty, who perhaps would not have experienced this before.
Peache sold Layer Marney Tower in 1904, by which time Kitty had left to marry Tom Ebbs.
Tom Ebbs
Also working at Layer Marney in the winter of 1902–03 was Thomas Edward Ebbs (born at Melton, Suffolk in 1883). He must have only recently joined the staff as in 1901 his occupation was gardener and groom at Milden Rectory, Suffolk.
One family story is that Kitty fell pregnant by Tom before they married and that consequently the pair were dismissed.
The wedding was on 19 August 1903 and their first child (Edward Francis) was born three months later on 29 November 1903 (his birth not registered until the new year). So he was indeed conceived before their marriage, presumably in the early months of 1903. Sadly Edward died before his first birthday.
When the 1911 census was taken Tom recorded that he and Kitty had been married for seven complete years and had had four children – and that, indeed, one had died.
They went on to have twin girls in 1914; however, one of them also died.
Charles Edward and Thomas jnr at back and George Frederick- Thomas Edward in uniform- Kitty and Katherine on her knee
Kitty and Tom lived at Woodside Cottage, Horse Shoe Lane, Garston, Hertfordshire,
During the First World War, Tom was in the Army Service Corps (MI). As he could drive, he entered the Motorised Transport Company R.A. (Royal Artillery).
Tom worked as a chauffeur for George Aley Cobb, a butcher with shops in Knightsbridge. Initially he drove a horse and cart, although Cobb sent Tom to Crossley motor works in Coventry to learn to drive a car. When he died in 1926, Cobb left Tom £200 in his will: a considerable sum in those days.
Tom Ebbs died aged sixty-seven in 1950 and Kitty Ebbs died at Watford on 10 December 1973, aged ninety-one.
Their surviving children, all born at Garston, were:
Charles Edward Ebbs (at the back in the photo above, with Thomas junior) was born 8 July 1905. He married Alice Hill at Watford in 1934 and died at Watford in October 1996.
Thomas Ebbs was born on 15 December 1906 and married Ellen Smith at Watford in 1933. He died in Gloucestershire in May 1998.
George Frederick Ebbs (at the front in the photo above) was born in 1910 and married Ivy Wilcox in 1936. He died at Watford in September 1993.
Kitty and Tom also had twin girls, Katherine Mary and Frances A. Ebbs on 11 January 1914. Frances only survived a few days. Kate (with her mother in the photo above) married Percy Dimmock (died 1956) at Watford in 1940 and died in Hertfordshire in August 2005.
Kitty (left) in later life with her sisters Jessie (centre) and my grandmother Alice (right).
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