MY GRANDPARENTS - I - MY GREAT-GRANDPARENTS - I - MY GREAT-GREAT-GRANDPARENTS - I - MY GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GRANDPARENTS
KNOTT - I - BOWLES - I - WATERS - I - HARRALL - I - PAGE - I - WISEMAN - I - CROSS - I - CARTER
CORNWELL - I - HUCKLE - I - MORTLOCK - I - MANSFIELD - I - REYNOLDS - I - CARTER - I - ANABLE - I - STEARN
CHRONOLOGY - I - DRAMATIS PERSONAE - I - WHERE PEOPLE CAME FROM - I - CALENDAR
MAP OF ELY - I - MAP OF MEDWAY
MAP OF
CAMBRIDGE AND DISTRICT
WORLD WAR I - I - WORLD WAR II
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The
Cross family: at the heart of the Waterside
My
Father's Mother's Mother's Father's family
The narrative can be read in conjunction with the Page family tree. You can see
places significant to the Cross family on the site map of Ely.
This family story includes material from, and links with,
the stories of the Page, Wiseman and Carter families. My
direct ancestors are highlighted in bold
the first time they appear in the narrative.
Cross was the most common surname of all in the Ely Waterside district of the 18th and 19th Centuries, and while it is possible to trace my Cross ancestors back into the 18th Century through the Holy Trinity parish registers, there is also the opportunity for confusion. I can say for certain that my great-great-great-great-grandfather Thomas Cross married Mary Butty in the Lady Chapel of Ely Cathedral on 11th May 1828. He was 22 years old, and she was 26. Mary was obviously heavily pregnant, because their first child was baptised just six weeks later on 26th August 1828. He was my great-great-great-grandfather, and he was named Thomas Cross after his father. It is even possible that he was born before the marriage. The older Thomas was a labourer, as his son would grow up to be. They lived on Potters Lane, at the bottom of Back Hill. Some of their descendants would still be living in the same street more than a century later.
By 1851, the Cross household on Potters Lane had five children in it. The older Thomas was a porter, possibly at the nearby railway station, which had opened six years earlier in 1845. Next door lived Mary's mother, the ninety year old Alice Butty. The younger Thomas was 22 years old, but he recorded no particular profession on the census form. On the 20th January 1854 he married Mary Ann Chapman in the Lady Chapel of Ely Cathedral. Mary Ann also lived in Potters Lane. Thomas and Mary Ann's first child was a boy. He was called Thomas Chapman Cross, the first name that of his father and grandfather, and he was given his mother's maiden name Chapman as a middle name. Thomas Chapman Cross was my great-great-grandfather. In keeping with another apparent family tradition, he was also born just a few weeks after the marriage. He does not appear to have been baptised, although it is likely that the Holy Trinity parish records were not kept properly.
The 1861 census for Ely is lost, and so we next meet Thomas and Mary Ann in 1871. They were living on Waterside with seven children. Thomas Chapman Cross, the oldest, had his age recorded as nineteen (he must have been seventeen) and another child, his sister Martha, is also recorded as being nineteen years old. Of great interest is that two of the children, ten year old Richard and six year old Alice, are recorded as being born in London. This means that Thomas and Mary Ann may have been in London for the 1861 census, but if so I have not yet found them. Both Thomas Cross and his son Thomas Chapman Cross were working as water labourers, although it is not clear if this means working on the river or working for the Ely water board.
Next door to the Cross family on Waterside at the time of the 1871 census were the Carter family, originally from Prickwillow, including eleven year old Sarah Ann Carter. She would be my great-great-grandmother.
Ten years later, in April 1881, the twenty-seven year old Thomas Cross was lodging in the Royal Oak public house at the bottom of Back Hill, where his occupation was recorded as a labourer on Board of Health works. Across the road in Broad Street lived twenty-one year old Sarah Ann Carter with her mother Ann and her brother James (her father was not at home). Two important events in their lives would occur in the next twelve months: On Christmas Eve 1881, Thomas Chapman Cross married Sarah Ann Carter in the Lady Chapel of Ely Cathedral. Sixteen days later, on the 9th January 1882, their first child was born, my great-grandmother Sophia Chapman Cross. Sophia was born in Broad Street, quite probably at the family home of the Carter family. Her father's occupation was given as a railway labourer. Sophia was baptised privately on 24th February, suggesting that she was too ill to be brought to church, and perhaps even that she was not expected to live. She inherited the middle name Chapman, her grandmother's maiden name, from her father, and it was also given as a middle name to most (although not all) of her siblings. Another child, Alice Chapman Cross, was born on Broad Street a year later, but after this Thomas and Sarah Ann moved to Potters Lane, where they would live for the rest of their lives. They would have nine children altogether:
Sophia Chapman Cross Born Broad Street, Ely on the 9th January 1882. My great-grandmother. see below. Alice
Chapman Cross The Dewsberry family were friends of my mother's family in Little Thetford when she was a child before she met my father (even though the Crosses are on my father's side of the family, not my mother's). Alice died in 1958, and her grave in Little Thetford cemetery is marked by a simple metal cross. Thomas
Chapman Cross James
Chapman Cross Herbert
Chapman Cross The Official History of the Suffolk Regiment continues The 11th Battalion remained in Cambridge until May 19th 1915, when it was sent up to Yorkshire, a large crowd assembling at the station to give parting cheers. At one point the 11ths were intended to take part in the action at Galipolli, but the retreat from Suvla Bay by allied forces put paid to this idea. Instead, it appears that the 5th Suffolks, who had taken part in the assault on Galipolli and suffered terrible losses, were reinforced from other Suffolk Regiment batallions, and so, probably before the end of 1915, Herbert Chapman Cross had been transferred to the 5ths, and was soon engaged in the defence of the Suez Canal in northern Egypt. With the War in the east turning in the Allies' favour, on 1st February 1917 the Battalion left Egypt for Palestine. In April, they took part in the short but furious Second Battle of Gaza. They spent the first week of June at rest in an encampment by the sea, and the second week behind the Gaza line providing working parties for filling sandbags. During the third week of June, the Official History of the Suffolk Regiment records, the battalion moved to Samson's Ridge, the most prominent feature in that Sector, and offering an extensive view of the country beyond Gaza. Every afternoon the white houses of that town caught the sun, making them look like fairy dwellings to sand-weary eyes. Samson's Ridge naturally received a good deal of attention from the Turkish Artillery. And so here it was on June 18th that Herbert Chapman was killed. He died of wounds, and was buried in the Gaza War Cemetery in what is part of the Palestinian State. Unfortunately, the cemetery, though well-maintained, is currently not visitable from the West. He is remembered on the City of Ely war memorial and on the memorial boards in St George's chapel in Ely Cathedral, although his name is curiously omitted from the Holy Trinity parish war memorial, also in Ely Cathedral. Ann
Chapman Cross Sarah
Ann Chapman Cross John
William Chapman Cross Violet
Eleanor Chapman Cross |
Sarah Ann Cross's mother Ann Carter died in the Broad Street house in March 1884 at the age of just forty-nine, and was buried on 10th March in Ely Cemetery in plot Cb231. Her father Elijah Carter, who was not at home on the night of the 1881 census, does not appear to have been in Ely any longer. Thomas Chapman Cross's parents were also living in Broad Street, but he and Sarah Ann were by now on Potters Lane, and by the time of the 1891 census they had five children. Thomas's occupation was given as a gasworks labourer - the Ely gasworks were immediately behind the terraces of Potters Lane. It is interesting to note on the census schedule the occupations of other occupants of this typical Waterside street. As well as the expected gasworks labourers and railway labourers (Potters Lane was also near to the railway station) there are printers, cow-keepers, lamp-lighters, shoe-binders, farmworkers, and those on parish relief.
Thomas Chapman Cross's mother Mary Ann died at home in Broad Street in February 1899, and was buried in Ely Cemetery on 25th February. She was 68 years old. The last of the Cross children, Violet, was born early in 1901, and on the 12th January of that year, a few days before a remarkable period in English history drew to a close with the death of Queen Victoria, her big sister Sophia Chapman Cross married my great-grandfather, the labourer Arthur Page, in the Lady Chapel of Ely Cathedral. Arthur Page was also from the Waterside, and was Ely-born, but his father Henry Page had moved to Ely from Great Shelford, a village to the south of Cambridge, in the early 1870s. Henry was a stone cutter, and probably moved to Ely to work on the restoration of the cathedral at that time. He married Alice Wiseman of Victoria Street in 1874, and stayed in Ely. His son Arthur was born in Annesdale on the river front in 1882.
A few weeks after their marriage, at the time of the 1901 census, Arthur and Sophia were living in Bull Lane, today called Lisle Lane, off of Waterside. The 22 year old Arthur gave his occupation as a baker's labourer. Sophia was already pregnant with their first child, a boy, who was born on 22 November 1901. He was named Arthur Thomas Harry after his father and his two grandfathers. Soon after their son Arthur's birth, Arthur and Sophia moved to Broad Street, where their eldest daughter Violet Eleanor was born on 6th August 1904.
Soon after Violet's birth, Arthur got a job as a railway porter with the Great Eastern Railway, and the family moved some 30 miles to 7 Goodyers Yard, Narrow Street, Peterborough, where their third child Beatrice Sophia was born on the 30th January 1906. Arthur and Sophia were back in Ely and living on Back Hill for the birth of Florence May on 28th May 1907. It was recorded that Arthur was still a labourer for the Great Eastern Railway. Arthur and Sophia's second son, Percy, was born in Back Hill on 10th May 1909.
Sophia's grandfather Thomas Cross, the father of Thomas Chapman Cross, died in the Ely Workhouse in July 1909, and was buried in Ely Cemetery on 31st July. He was eighty. Arthur's father Henry would also die in the Workhouse four years later. However, all of Sophia's brothers and sisters survived into adulthood, an unusual feat in the Waterside at the start of the 20th Century.
By the time of the census in April 1911, Arthur was a general labourer working for the Co-op. A few months after the 1911 census, Arthur and Sophia had a sixth child, Dorothy Louisa, known as 'Doll', who was born in Back Hill on 26th August.
On 26th April 1913, Arthur and Sophia's last child was born, a girl, my grandmother Phyllis Alice Page. These are the seven children of Arthur and Sophia Page:
In October 1913, their father Arthur was recorded as a bricklayer in an article in the Cambridge Independent Press which recorded an accident which had befallen his daughter Florence:
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Soon after my grandmother's birth, Sophia and Arthur and their family moved to a house on Waterside. But storm clouds were gathering across Europe. Sophia's husband Arthur was 35 years old when the First World War broke out. He volunteered, signing up as a Serjeant in the 2nd Battalion of the Suffolk Regiment along with his brother Herbert. His medal record shows that he arrived in France on the 26th January 1915. Meanwhile, Sophia's brother Herbert Chapman Cross also volunteered, signing up with the 5th Battalion of the Suffolk Regiment.
Arthur Page and the The 2nd Battalion spent their first winter and spring bogged down in the trenches of the Vierstraat area of Flanders, before being part of the force which attacked and consolidated its hold in the woods to the east of Ypres. In general, the 2nd Suffolks seem to have spent an uneventful 1915 in Flanders, with few casualties. However, in March 1916 the attack south of Ypres began in earnest, and Arthur's brother Herbert was killed at St Eloi on 2nd March.
Sophia's brother, meanwhile, had sailed for Gallipoli and taken part in the ultimately fruitless assault at Suvla Bay there. After the battle, in which so many young men lost their lives, the surviving 5th Suffolks were transferred to Alexandria in Egypt rather than being returned to Europe, and placed on protection duty at the Suez Canal, which at least gave them a respite from battle.
In June 1916, Arthur Page and the 2nd Suffolks were also removed completely from the fighting and returned to depot at St Omer for training in open warfare. On July 1st, the first day of the Battle of the Somme, the 2nd Suffolks set out from St Omer for the Front. They arrived on July 8th, and were placed in reserve, and then on July 14th they were moved into the southern end of Caterpillar Wood, to the east of Albert. Not far off, on July 18th, the Germans attacked and, at great cost to them, overran Delville Wood and part of the town of Longueval. Two companies of the 2nd Suffolks were sent to support the counter-attack, and among them was Serjeant Arthur Page. The casualties in the 2nd Battalion were heavy, and among those killed in the attack was Arthur Page. He was thirty-seven years old. It seems to have been a spectacularly foolhardy action: the two companies lost no less than ten officers in the attack, one of them, a Major Congreve, later being awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross. Arthur's body was recovered, identified, and buried at Delville Wood cemetery in Longueval.
The Ely newspapers reported the Page family's plight. On 28th July the Cambridgeshire Times, which was incorporating the Ely Standard for the duration of the War, reported that Yesterday (Thursday) morning Mrs Page of Waterside, received a letter from the Chaplain to the 2nd Suffolk Regiment, informing her of the death in action of her husband, Sergt A. Page. He leaves a wife and seven children, for whom great sympathy is felt. On the same day, the Cambridge Independent Press reported that Mrs Page, Waterside, Ely, has received news that her husband Sergt A. Page, of the 2nd Suffolks, has been killed in action. The Chaplain of the Regiment has written a letter of sympathy to the widow, who is left with seven children.
It is said that when Sophia opened the letter from the Chaplain telling her of her husband's death, she immediately lost her hearing, and was deaf for the rest of her life. Every street in the Waterside would have had members of the Page and Cross families living in it, and the whole district must have felt a reaction to Arthur's death. Seventy years later, Sophia's son Arthur, who had been fifteen at the time, told me it was 'a terrible time, just terrible'. My grandmother, who was three, and who had in any case probably not seen her father for a couple of years, was too young to know what was going on. The oldest girl, thirteen year old Violet, looked after her, and between them there formed a strong bond which lasted for the rest of their lives.
As 1916 became 1917, there was more bad news for the Cross and Page families. Herbert Cross and the 5th Suffolks were moved north from the Suez Canal to engage in what would become known as the First Battle of Gaza in Palestine. There would be three battles in all, but between the First and Second there was a minor skirmish involving the 5th Suffolks and on 18th June 1917 Herbert Chapman Cross was killed. He was twenty-seven years old. He was buried in the British War Cemetery in Gaza City, which is today in the Palestinian State. The death of Herbert seems to have had a terrible effect on his mother Sarah, and she died at home in Potters Lane just three months later at the age of 57. She was buried in Ely cemetery on 9th October 1917 in plot F1148. Arthur and Herbert Page and Herbert Cross are all remembered on the City of Ely war memorial, and Arthur and Herbert Page's names were also proudly inscribed on the Holy Trinity parish war memorial now reset in Ely Cathedral, but Herbert Cross is not mentioned on this or the Ely St Mary memorial.
The years after the First World War were difficult times for Sophia and her family. The loss of the family's breadwinner plunged them even deeper into poverty. In 1924, Florence died in Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge. She was just seventeen years old. In 1925, Sophia's father Thomas died in Addenbrookes Hospital at the age of seventy-four. He was buried in Ely cemetery on 14th October in plot G582. The same year, Phyllis's sister Beatrice gave birth to an illegitimate child in London, where she was presumably in service. She returned to Ely with the child, where she married Frederick Pepper in 1928, who may have been the father. At about this time, Beatrice and Phyllis's older brother Arthur left Ely looking for work in Yorkshire. In 1926, he married Ethel Gertrude Elizabeth Payne in Wortley, to the north of Sheffield. Ethel was pregnant at the time, and their son Arthur Percival was born in Peterborough on 24th September 1926. Arthur kept this marriage and child a secret from the rest of the family, and they did not find out about it until many years later.
By the end of the 1920s, Phyllis was living with her mother at 29a Fore Hill, a short distance from the Waterside house. They lived behind a shop called Oxford House, and shared a yard with the Clark family. Sophia and Phyllis both worked as fruit factory hands. Beatrice appears to have left Ely and Frederick Pepper behind, because in 1931 she had a child with Wilfred Midwinter in Wandsworth, London. Beatrice married Wilfred Midwinter in 1935. Two more Midwinter children would follow.
In the early 1930s, Phyllis's brother Arthur was still in Yorkshire, working on a road-building scheme. There, he met the Kent-born Vincent Helgia 'Joe' Knott, and brought him back to Ely where he met Phyllis. Joe went to work for British Sugar at Cantley in east Norfolk, but he married Phyllis at Ely Register Office on 15th August 1932, when he was 24 and she was just 19. The witnesses were Phyllis's brother Percy and her sister Violet. Joe and Phyl went to live at 9, Council Cottages, Cantley, and then in 1933 they moved to Ipswich, Joe firstly living in lodgings in Tacket Street in the town centre, before they both moved into rooms in Cavendish Street, the same street that I would live in almost exactly half a century later. They moved to 20 Fletcher Road on the new Gainsborough Estate in Ipswich, where their first child and only daughter was born.
They returned to Ely in 1935, where they would remain. They lived in Willow Walk off of Waterside, where Phyllis's grandmother Alice Wiseman had been born almost eighty years earlier. My father and his brothers were born in the house at 25 Willow Walk, but it has since been demolished. Some of her siblings were nearby. Violet married Bill Cooper; they lived at Stuntney, where he was a farmhand on Cole Ambrose's farm, and later at Ribes Court in Ely. Violet was the cook at the Bishop's Palace for many years, and Phyllis worked around the corner at the Palace School. Their sister Dorothy married Ken Long, and they also lived nearby, first at Stuntney and then at Nornea. Their elder brother Arthur eventually returned to settle in Ely. Phyllis's brother Percy died at 31 Silver Street, Ely in 1937; this house, almost opposite the Prince Albert public house, has also since been demolished.
In 1937, a great street party was held on Waterside to celebrate the Coronation on George VI. The official photograph of the occasion shows Sophia and Phyllis among the smiling crowd, as well as two of Phyllis's children: her daughter and her eldest son, my father, aged two. And then the Second World War came. It must have been with some trepidation that Phyllis waved goodbye to Joe, who went to serve as a motorcycle dispatch rider in Italy. After he returned at the end of the War, the family moved to a new council house at 37 Chief's Street in 1947. Phyllis and Joe lived in the house for the rest of their lives. Several of their children married in the late 1950s, and their first grandchild, a girl, was born in 1958. And that year Phyllis's mother Sophia died, at the age of seventy.
Phyllis is remembered by my parents' generation for being ahead of her time. Although she came from an extraordinarily poor working-class background, one where few families had aspirations, she was a great believer in education, especially for girls. She ensured that all her own children worked hard at school, all five of them winning scholarships to grammar schools. She was very proud when the first of her grandchildren went to university.
Phyllis Alice Knott née Page died of a heart condition in Addenbrookes Hospital, Cambridge, in 1990, a few weeks after she had attended my wedding. She was seventy-seven years old.
AT A GLANCE: DETAILS FROM REGISTERS AND CENSUS DATA |
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