Connections

On my mother's (Bird) side


My 5 times great uncle was William Wilberforce, the slave liberator.


His son was William Wilberforce Bird was MP for Coventry.


His son (my grandfather's great uncle) was another William Wilberforce Bird (1784-1857) who completed his education in Geneva and then spent 41 years in the service of the East India Company, being four times Deputy Governor of Bengal and for a short period in 1844 Acting Governor General of India.


Isabella Bird (1831-1904) was one of the 19th century's most remarkable and intrepid travellers, visiting and writing about America, Hawaii, India, Kurdistan, Iran, Tibet, Malaysia, Korea Japan and China. She wrote many books which are still available in print and it is extraordinary to read just how far she did travel when the only means of long distance travelling was by sea, taking with her countless pieces of luggage (including her camera).


Isabella's cousin Mary Bird (1859-1914) was the first female medical missionary to work for the Church Missionary Society, and spent almost her life in Iran


My Bird great grandfather was in the Indian Army


My grandfather was born in India, the youngest of four brothers who were all sent back to Jersey for their schooling at Victoria College. They then all went out to Chile where my grandfather was manager of a nitrate mine inland from Iquique. There he met my grandmother who was half Spanish and in the late 1920s they returned through the then new Panama canal to Jersey, being the only place in the UK that either of them knew.






On my father's (Nation) side
The Nation family is said to have originated in France (Nacien?) but the first concrete evidence of them is in Cornwall in the 1600s where most were Presbyterian Ministers.
My great great grandfather was a barrister in Exeter and was a founder member of a bank. He had two wives and nine children.
My great grandfather was in the church and was at various times in Grantham, Barrowby and Buxton before retiring to Lindfield in Sussex
My grandfather was in the army and was wounded in WW1
My father was first an accountant and then a stock broker.

South American Connection

My mother's father Bill Bird (William Norvel Wilberforce Bird) was, like his three elder brothers, educated at Victoria College in Jersey. Jersey was considered to have a warmer climate than England and was popular with Indian Army officers. At the end of his schooling in 1895 he and his best friend Frank Collas went by boat to Buenos Aires and then on horse back across the Andes to Chile. All four Bird brothers were out in Chile although Bill was the only one to stay, becoming the Manager of a Nitrate mine in the Atacama desert inland from Iquique. There he met his wife Ruth Blake, whose father Arthur Blake ran the port in Iquique (huge in those days with often over 300 vessels waiting to load copper and nitrate and bringing in supplies). Ruth's mother was, we are sure, Chilean so we all have some Spanish blood.


Bill and Ruth had four children in Chile, Mary (Q) who married Jan Kent, Bill who left aged 10 to go to Cheltenham and then went out to Australia to work for his uncle, thus not seeing his parents for almost 13 years, Walter (Piggy) who was a Mosquito pilot during the war and the youngest Squadron Leader and who was killed in 1944, and finally my mother Beatrice (Beatle). There was a big age gap between Q and Bill at one end, and Piggy and my mother at the other. Q was pretty much married when my mother was born in 1922.


Life was obviously good in Chile and they had numerous staff including a driver for their large Chevrolet; my grandfather and Piggy played polo a good deal.


In 1928 nitrate crashed and my mother, being the only one left, came back with her parents through the 'new' Panama canal to Liverpool. Neither Bill nor Ruth new England at all, neither ever having been there, so they journeyed down to Southampton and caught another boat over to Jersey.

Scottish connection

My maternal grandfather's mother was a Hay. There were Highland Hays and Lowland Hays and she was a Lowland Hay, although the only photographs of her that I have were taken when she was living in Moscow Mansions in Kensington.

My maternal great aunt Romer married Jock Sprott who lived at Spott, and had two children Kenneth and Sheila. Kenneth inherited Spott and later divorced and went to live in South Africa, and Sheila married John Lindsay Macdougall who lived at Lunga.

Lunga is glorious, situated south of Oban on the coast. After John L-M died Sheila remarried Aubrey Gibbon and had a son and a daughter. Louise married Paul Ramsay who lives at Bamff House in Perthshire where they hunt wild boar,

My first cousin Sue Kent married Norman Galbraith whose father Lord Strathclyde had been PPS to the then Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. The current Tom Strathclyde was leader of the House of Lords.

Early years in London 1949-1955

Although I was born in Jersey my father continued his accountancy training after the war and we lived at Park Mansions on Prince of Wales Drive in Battersea. I can remember the flat being quite large and all painted with grey 'distemper' which was the emulsion paint of the day. We were on the second floor with no lift and I had a long suffering nanny called Winifred who used to spend her time going down to collect my toys that I threw over the balcony onto unsuspecting passers by.

My maternal grandmother was very embarrassed that her daughter lived in Battersea and always referred to it as South Chelsea, but it was a lovely part of London to live in with Battersea Park and all that that offered right opposite us. Around the corner in Albert Bridge Road lived Dad's aunt Dorothy Bishop and I remember going there to watch the coronation on a television with a screen about the size of a postage stamp. The family down below us were called Ankaster, he was the caretaker, and they had a daughter called Angie. They also had a car, an original Ford Popular. Very few people including us had a car.

Before the war my father and uncle had shared a flat with Johnny Birt in Elizabeth Street, and he and his wife Mairi lived further up Prince of Wales Drive until they went to live in Jersey. Mairi gave us our first dog, a daschund called Biffer. Mum and Dad's other great friends were Brian and Pauline Johnson, Brian was then an early commentator at the BBC. Pauline was a photographer and used to take endless colour photographs of us all which took months to develop!

My mama hated living in London with the dirt and the smog, and when Pooh was due, a great friend of hers Peggy Graham was living in Milford where her husband Bill Graham was the doctor. Peggy's father Frank Collas had also been at Victoria College in Jersey and had gone out to Chile with my grandfather. Peggy suggested coming to look at a house and again I remember Dad hiring a car and us driving, with Aunt Dorothy but not with Mum, down to Milford in a thunderstorm to see a part of Milford Cottage that was for sale. It was lovely, a large house that had been split up and our part had beautiful high ceiling rooms and access to the huge garden.

So it was that after Pooh was born in 1954, we moved down to Milford the following year.

Spott House Dunbar

  

My paternal grandmother was called Ivy and her eldest sister was called Romer.

Romer married John 'Jock' Sprott who lived at a lovely house outside Dunbar in Scotland called Spott House. The Sprotts from Spott!

Spott is very old and reeks of Scottish history and is quite close to Gifford where the Galbraith cousins live. Jock and Romer had two children, Kenneth and Sheila and Kenneth sold Spott to go and live in South Africa. By chance he sold it to cousins of the Galbraiths. Sometime after Sue and Norman were married Sue's mother, my aunt Queenie (Mary Kent) went to stay with them, and, for something to do, Sue suggested going over to Spott to see the old cousins. Whilst looking around Q saw a stained glass window in the house with a coat of arms on it and exclaimed 'Good Lord, that's our family coat of arms'. She was quite right and it turned out that the house had for hundreds of years been in the Hay family. Queenie's grandmother was a Hay and was brought up there.

So Spott went from the Hays (maternal) to the Sprotts (paternal) to the Galbraiths (maternal link).
In 2011 the house was for sale for £4.75m

If you go to www.lunga.com there is an (unfinished) history of Spott House.
Kenneth's daughter Fiona was a dancer in the first stage production of My Fair Lady and married Michael Spring-Rice. Sheila, Kenneth's brother is still alive (2014) and living in Edinburgh.

Winnie the Pooh

There are various family connections

My uncle Barry Nation was at prep school at Ashdown House with John Godley (later John Kilbraken) and through John knew Christopher Milne (Christopher Robin from the books) since his father AA Milne lived in Ashdown Forest. Supposedly John Godley was 'John with the great big waterproof boots on' in from When We Were Very Young.

John Godley married Anna's aunt Penelope Reyne and their son Christopher, the current Lord Kilbraken, is Anna's first cousin.

Barry married for the second time Anne Townson who lived at Hatch Court near Taunton.

She inherited the house from her uncle Hamilton Gault who was part Canadian and before the 1st World War raised with his own money a Canadian regiment, The Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry. The regimental mascot was a brown bear from Winnipeg. When the regiment came over to England to fight in the war, their mascot was put in quarantine at the London zoo. So the story goes, AA Milne was at the zoo, saw this bear from Winnipeg and so came about Winnie the Pooh.

Jersey connection

I was born in Jersey where both sets of grandparents lived after WW2.

My maternal grandfather Bill Bird was educated at Victoria College and, like his three elder brothers, then went out to Chile where he was manager of a nitrate 'officina' and where he met my grandmother Ruth Blake (half Spanish) and where his four children were born. When nitrate crashed he and my grandmother and my mother (the youngest) came back to England. Arriving in Liverpool, none of them knew England at all and so they made their way to Jersey. Both my Bird grandparents are buried in the cemetery at Grouville.

My paternal grandmother Ivy Bishop has a much greater claim as her great great grandfather was Edward Dupre who was Dean of Jersey. Through him my grandmother was related to the Bolitho and Robin family, two of Jersey's oldest clans. She married my grandfather in St Helier parish church in August 1914. My grandfather Sidney Codrington Nation was in the Devonshire Regiment and they were stationed in Jersey prior to going to the Somme where he was badly injured, loosing his leg. After WW2 they lived at La Haule Manor in St Aubin (now a hotel) before moving to Norfolk