George Simson
(1850-1934)
George Simson, son of Edward, was born at Ardleigh in 1850.
In the summer of 1885, George married and moved to Denton Villa, a large house with adjoining stables on the main Colchester road out of Ardleigh, where he carried on his veterinary practice, in his whiskers and jodhpurs, and where my mother remembers staying during school holidays in the early 1930s.
George’s wife was Charlotte Mahalah (née Barber), ‘Aunt Mahalah’ to my grandmother and her sisters.
When the census was taken on 5 April 1891, my grandmother’s sister, Lizzie Roberts, aged about eleven, was at Denton Villa, presumably helping her aunt with her new baby, christened Charlotte Adele Hilda.
In 1911 George was sixty-one and still working as a vet. He was obviously doing well as he had a live-in chauffeur, according to the census: one William Warren. This suggests George was an early owner of a motor car in Ardleigh.
Aunt Mahalah died in 1916 and George’s sister Maggie closed her Felixstowe guest house and moved in as housekeeper.
When the 1921 census was taken there was no longer a chauffeur at Denton Villa, but instead a sixteen-year-old maid of all work, Kate Pettican. Also part of the household from 1916 was George and Maggie’s nephew, Tom Scammell, son of their late sister Emma. He helped his uncle, fetching and carrying as required.
George died of pneumonia in March 1934 at the grand age of eighty-four, leaving about £5,000 to his daughter. His funeral at Ardleigh brought together many of the surviving Simsons, including C.W. Cater (presumably Uncle Cater’s son), his nephews Jack Simson (probably John, son of E.J. Simson) and Charles Simson (son of William Simson) and nieces Kitty Morley and Bessie Bennett. Also among the mourners were a Mr Littlejohns and George’s junior partner Robert Crawford.
Denton Villa was presumably then sold. The house is now called Windsor Lodge.
Charlotte Adele Hilda Simson
Uncle George and Aunt Mahalah’s first daughter, Lilian May, died aged two in 1888. Their second was Charlotte Adele (or Adeline) Hilda (1890–85) – known in later life, I believe, as Hilda.
Hilda married a farmer, George Fergusson Woodburn, in 1915. Their son, George Alexander Woodburn, was baptised at Ardleigh in August 1924, when they lived at Blue Barns Farm, in Harts Lane, not far from Whaley Farm.
Hilda Woodburn was my grandmother’s cousin. I am not aware that they remained in touch in later life though.