A Pilgrim in Spite of Myself

By David E. A. Coles

This book traces the authors family history from Elizabethan times, and explains the origin of his surname, Coles.
It then tells of the authors lively pilgrimage with shafts of fun, pranks, and occasional terror, from birth to present times. It covers his childhood, education, wartime experience, training, and military service sandwiched between his times in industry.
As he was baptised into the Church of England within the Christian churches, with all their variety of practise, he was exposed to a wide range of belief. The book recounts his movement within the churches, where he eventually finds a fine church. There he now finds great happiness and challenge. He leaves you, the readers, to find out for yourselves which church it is, and there is Welcome in that church to all of you.
This lively mix of every sort of experience, in marriage, at home and at work, in the pilgrimage that is life, must prove completely interesting, reflecting such experience in many readers lives, to which they can mirror their own.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Oct 24, 2015
• ISBN: 9781504991360

Book preview

PROLOGUE

A s the Sacred and the profane are mixed in life so it is in this story, and even the Pilgrim has to start from the profane and then be drawn, step by step into the Sacred. It is with the roots of life, Genealogy if you like even before birth, then with the development of life as a child, an adult, and ultimately as an old Christian reaching forward to that final quietus. All through this time, periods of wonderment come as the Sacred impinges on ordinary life, like starlight, music or a brilliant homily, which then comes out of the blue, whether it is invited or not.

There are many pilgrims on their way, not only to sacred sites, but in Brighton, Glasgow, London, and Liverpool. And this is my story, as I find myself as an un-intending pilgrim, where the origin of my journey starts 500 years back, and travels over rock-falls and tree-roots to suddenly encounter superb days of beauty. And unchronicled the pilgrimage will finally arrive at that marvellous wonderment of veneration, the discovery of Eternity with my last breath, when my last moments of life can glorify the Saviour Jesus Christ our King and Lord.

CHAPTER 1

Early Days

M y story starts way back in Elizabethan times, and I am sure you will remember Fire Dogs. Those fire irons generally stay hidden in antique shops, and that makes them hard to find these days. I can’t remember when I last saw them, but they were first made in Sussex from iron ore and oak, then in plentiful supply. This fine timber was converted to charcoal, the carbon needed to reduce the mineral to iron. Just imagine the scene four hundred and fifty years ago as a charcoal burner breaks open the cooled stack of newly burnt wood, and then focus your mind’s eye on this man with his dirt darkened children looking on, as their mother calls them to breakfast. This leader of a nomadic tribe, wandering anywhere between Mid-Sussex and the Hampshire border, was naturally nick-named Coles, as you would expect with the complexion of his face flecked with charcoal. The name stuck, and is now to be found over most of southern England. Unfortunately its genealogy doesn’t go further back than 1650, as Parliamentarian forces used to destroy Anglican churches and their records with them.

Just as much as a certain preacher was proud of his smuggler ancestors, I am as proud of my surname, and as proud of my native land of Hampshire, with its naval history. The finest part of the next county, North Sussex, has now re-established its countryside after all the destruction of those dense native forests back in history, which are only marked by their mediaeval power source, the Hammer pond

In this story, there are quite a few episodes, some bizarre, some sad and some amusing. Three centuries ago, one of the children in the Coles family, named George, was very sick and close to death. His parents didn’t want to lose that favourite name from among the family’s children, so they christened their new baby ‘George’. But to their great surprise the older George recovered his health. Now the family had two brothers named ‘George’, senior and junior, and as far as I know that is unique.

Ultimately the Coles family firmly and finally settled, still with many branches in Hampshire, usually inside the triangle with Selborne to the north, the Meon Valley to the west, and Clanfield to the south east.

My grandfather David Coles, whose name I was given, became a carpenter on the North American railroads in Canada and the USA, but most notably on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fé. The railroad later became part of the Burlington Northern & Santa Fé Railway on December 31st, 1996. Here David reached giddy heights both literally and metaphorically, as a foreman of Bridges and Building, where he threw tall, picturesque trestle bridges with such marvellous style across dangerously high ravines.

Territorial squabbles between Canada, the USA and Mexico still continued, and he was said to have had breakfast in Canada, lunch in Mexico, and dinner in the USA. That would be impossible now with the trains no faster than 40 M.P.H. over that distance, but California was then lightly governed from Washington, nearly surrounded by Mexican territory, and Oregon territory was in dispute between Britain and the USA. While visiting a local town, he was admonished by a friend, David, don’t walk on the sidewalk. Walk in the road! Why? he replied. Back came the answer, If you take the sidewalk, you’ll get sandbagged! This was a rough area in rough times, later pictured so accurately in Hollywood Westerns!

He was well paid. People like him worked hard and never lost their brains or bank balance in hooch in those days, so when he returned home at East Meon in Hampshire, he was rich enough to buy much of the village. This included a beautiful house, ‘Glenthorne’, facing the river Meon. And, more to the point, he met and married Frances Gaite, a top housekeeper working for the Somerset aristocracy! They had two sons, Cyril and Eric. Cyril was a prankster and once blew most of the front room fire out on to the carpet with a sealed tin full of water he had put in the fire. Eric was more serious and looked into new ways of making a living. He swore by his mother’s brilliance as a cook, and his future bride must have gnashed her teeth with envy and annoyance. Given her due, she was a good cook too, and was followed just as brightly by her daughter, Ann, who now turns out tasty food for the local Church of England, not so far away to the west in Bournemouth.

Both Cyril and Eric went to Churchers College in the Hampshire market town of Petersfield. Eric at 16 can be seen smiling in a 1920 group photo. Humorously, one pupil had slicked his hair down over much, only to be told by the headmaster, Go and wash it off!

There Cyril lightened those days of heavy discipline by pumping water into the gas main, and the college gas lights turned into fountains. Nobody discovered who the prankster was. Maybe they blamed the local gas supplier so Cyril got away with that bright effort, which should have merited a good caning.

David’s wife Frances met Eleanor, the wife of Alfred Archer, the local station-master at Petersfield, just before 1930, and they became good friends. Their two families intermingled, so Eric met Constance Archer (Con for short).

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Constance (Mum)

With their parents’ approval, this became a love match and they were married at St. Peters parish church in Petersfield, Hampshire on 25th September 1932. Not long after the wedding Alfred Archer was promoted to station-master at Haywards Heath in Sussex, 17 miles north of Brighton. To reach that status he had worked for all three main parts of the Southern Railway, the South Eastern, London and South Western, and finally the London, Brighton and South Coast. He must have been bright, this good humoured man with such wide ranging interests. ‘Elmore’, his lovely new house at Haywards Heath was memorable, in a fine garden with a greenhouse, its windows shrouded with a fully developed vine, giving us tasty green grapes. In his large bookcase there was a heavy tome