The Critchleys and the Isle of Man

 

This is a picture of James Critchley, right, with three of his sons. They are likely to be Tom, my grandfather, and two of his brothers, Jim and William. The photograph may have been taken on one of their trips to the Isle of Man. Ancestry tells me that many of my paternal connections are with North West of England and the Isle of Man. Mollie and I spent a holiday on the Isle of Man more than ten years ago. It was then she described how her grandfather James used to let the Critchley children run wild in the glens and blow a whistle to summon them back to him. I also remember being told, as a child, that great uncle Jim Critchley rode his motorbike so fast, that he didn't need to take the ferry over to the island. My guess is that he enjoyed the TT races. When I visited St Helens as a small child, great uncle Seth, the youngest of the brothers, took it on himself to 'reform' my accent and teach me colloquialisms. He drew cartoons and wrote little ditties to remind me. I can remember them and I have kept them. For instance "Who powed thee,"  translates as "who cut your hair." When we visited St Helens we also learned to make small food items, to go on my sister's dolls' house dining table, out of flour and water paste which we painted. After my grandmother died, my grandfather, Tom Critchley, lived with us in north London from 1957 until 1961. He had a keen analytical and logical intelligence. He loved a political, religious or philosophical debate.  In his career as a chemist he patented a method for developing photographs safely at home. He used his knowledge of chemical processes when he cooked for my grandmother later in life. For us, he made the sort of brittle toffee you might crack your teeth on, but it was good for making toffee apples in the autumn. He made furniture, miniature furniture for my sister's dolls' house and fencing and animal pens for my toy farm. He was a brilliant chess player. I could never win. He would take the time to explain what I had done wrong, giving me the opportunity to put it right in another game, but I still didn't beat him. I was relieved, when I read in his memoirs, that my dad was never able to win against his father either. Playing chess with my grandfather, I learned to enjoy the challenge and not to worry about winning. He also taught us card games, such as pontoon. As he was a smoker (Players Navy Cut), he saved the spent matchsticks and we used them to "gamble" with. He was also generous with pocket money and would sometimes give us half a crown (two shillings and six pence) He encouraged us to study and rewarded our exam results with gifts from the royalties he earned from the Patent Office. Tom Critchley was an avid stamp collector. He concentrated on British, Commonwealth and Protectorate stamps mainly, but delighted in stamps which designated violent regime changes and had the features of heads of state blanked out. He followed sports on television, particularly cricket and rugby league. Particularly enjoyable was watching those "Derbys" St Helen's versus Wigan with him. When he died and I went with Dad to sort out his things in the nearby nursing home, his stamps and hinges had been laid out ready to file the following day and a book on cricket was open on the table, with the book mark in it, showing as far as he had read. He had expected to continue organising his stamp collection and reading the following day.

NB: Half a crown, two shillings and sixpence would translate as 12.5 pence in todays money. If we saved up eight half crowns, we could have a whole £1 to put into National Savings. But Woolworths was just up the road in the High Street and that's where we usually spent it.