The Singers: A Potteries Tale

By Keith Stonier

The Singers has a dynastic, historical context. There are vivid descriptions of three generations of a family burdened with the drudgery of hard labour and poverty, having talents for singing and artistic pursuits and possessing a terrible secret which is whispered from generation to generation until, finally, it reaches a public conclusion. The complex family themes develop against the background of a changing Potteries environment and a fluctuating, dramatic series of international events.

Read this book and you will encounter characters from a different way of life. Immerse yourself in their stories of tragedy and eventfulness. Experience their unique language of expression, wit, humour and innate sense of goodness as they strive through the adversities and challenges of human life. Go on! Try it!

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Jun 12, 2018
• ISBN: 9781546293453

Keith Stonier

Dr. Keith Stonier taught in UK schools for thirty-three years, including eighteen-and-a-half years as a head teacher. This was followed by twelve years in departments attached to Derby University with the honorary title, principal university lecturer. He continues to teach and work with students online. He has written twelve academic articles for journals and edited an adult readability book (for students with learning difficulties). His first published book, Inspirational Ideas (Authorhouse 2009, second edition), received critical praise in the journal Education Today, vol. sixty-one, no. four. He is a regular reviewer for the British Journal of Learning Disabilities.

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© 2018 Keith Stonier. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 06/11/2018

ISBN: 978-1-5462-9346-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-9347-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-9345-3 (e)

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Contents

About the Author

Acknowledgement

Statement

Musical References

Introduction

Introduction

Part One

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Part Two

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Part Three

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Postscript

Postscript

About the Author

Dr. Keith Stonier taught in UK schools for over thirty-three years, including eighteen-and-a-half years as a headteacher. This was followed by twelve years in departments attached to Derby University as a Principal University Lecturer. He has written twelve academic articles for journals, edited an ‘adult readability’ book for students with learning difficulties (not in publication currently) and is a reviewer for the British Journal of Learning Disabilities.

His first book was Inspirational Ideas (Authorhouse 2009, second edition), consisting of thirty-five worship-time stories for teachers to use in schools. This received critical praise in the journal, Education Today (Vol.61, no. 4). His second book, Concerto (Authorhouse 2016), was a novel with a musical context, based on actual events and expanded into an epic, fictional tale.

The Singers (Authorhouse 2018), a modern history novel, marks a change in perspective and style for the author. This is based on research into people and a way of life which, he believes, merit representation before they are lost forever.

Acknowledgement

Staff in the Archives Department, Hanley Library, Stoke-on-Trent are thanked for their support in completing background research.

Statement

This book is a work of fiction, but the events used as its basis were drawn from research and the author’s knowledge of real people - all of this fortified by imagination. Street and place names have been modified to maintain the integrity of the area. People’s names have been altered to preserve the dignity of those from the past who cannot speak now for themselves. Any resemblance to persons living currently (e.g. in the streets and places named) is coincidental. Also, the hospital staff, referred to in this book, are fictitious.

Musical References

References occur in this book to the following musical items:-

Hymns

Abide With Me (Words H.F.Lyte 1847 Tune W.H.Monk 1861)

All Things bright and Beautiful (C.F. Alexander 1848)

Lead Us, Heavenly Father Lead Us (J. Edmeston 1821)

Love Divine, All Loves Excelling (C. Wesley 1747)

Piano Pieces

Moments Musicaux (F. Schubert 1828)

Rustle of Spring (C. Sinding 1896)

Songs

I’ve Been Working on the Railroad (Traditional, 1st copyright 1894)

Love’s Old Sweet Song (J. L. Molloy & G.C. Bingham 1884)

We Were Sweethearts, Heil and I (George Gaskin 1894)

Introduction

Introduction

November 1957

Christ Church Fenton, constructed in 1890 to replace the earlier Church of 1838, was an imposing, brick-built structure. The group of mourners walking into the Church on a cold Sunday evening received an experience comparable to entering a palace. The size and scope of the building which they encountered were different radically from the Methodist and Baptist Chapels to which many of them were accustomed. The wide Nave had a vaulted roof with a central aisle, complemented by side aisles. The tall, brick tower was added in 1899 and resembled a castle keep owing to its square construction, staggered, brick balustrade and small turret on one side. The tower was visible from many parts of Fenton and continues to be an inspirational landmark to the present day.

The surrounding wall and railings gave a commanding appearance. The entrance was imposing, consisting of a wide arch with a central, stone column and two sets of double doors. A stone relief, showing the figure of Christ the Good Shepherd, sat above the entrance column at the peak of the arch. Light shone out of the building through its tall, narrow, imposing windows.

Church Street was to the West, Albert Square with its Cenotaph, to the North, facing the entrance, the old Christ Church School to the South (beyond the graveyard) and Glebe Colliery and Brickworks to the East, behind the Church and the School. The long, outer wall of the Town Hall ran along the side of Albert Square, at right angles to the Church.

On entering the Church, the first impression received by the mourners was of darkness and grandeur. Runners of red carpet wove across the red, tiled floor and along the central and side aisles. Wider sections of carpet were visible in the Transept. The altar was a resplendent, visual focus at the head of the Chancel beyond the wood-carved Rood Screen. Although Anglican, this was ‘high church’ with a strong smell of incense, distinctive priestly robes and a large, dignified congregation.

This Evensong doubled as a Memorial Service for Dennis Lawbridge, the late husband of Peggy. She was the Woodford family’s oldest daughter and had been left with four children when Dennis died. The oldest was eleven and the youngest three. Two of Peggy’s sisters, Helen and Loretta, and her brother Patrick formed the nucleus of the mourners with their families. The Church was crowded as Dennis had been a popular member of the workforce of a factory specialising in the manufacture of sanitary ware. This factory had a remarkably high percentage of workers who had died from various forms of cancer.

The vicar announced that the first hymn was Abide With Me, one of Dennis’s favourites, as he had been a keen football supporter and this hymn was sung at FA cup finals. The organist played the introductory bars and the congregation began to sing, supported by a large Choir.

Annie, another of the Woodford family’s daughters, sat in the Choir stalls rather than with the rest of the mourners. Her fine soprano voice blended with the contraltos, tenors and basses, displaying her musical talent. In addition to her gifts as a singer, she played piano, painted skilfully and nursed at the local hospital.

The widowed Peggy sat near the front of the Church, weeping. Three of her children tried to sing, while the three-year-old stood on the seat of the pew. He looked sadly at the heaving shoulders of his distraught mother and began to play with a small toy, oblivious to the sense of loss and tragedy taking place around him.

The situation required a diversion, especially one which would lift the spirits of the bereaved relatives. This came in the form of a remarkable voice. The powerful mezzo-soprano voice sounded near the back of the group of mourners, many of whom turned in amazement. The voice seemed to soar above everyone else’s, echoing from the high ceiling.

Richard, Helen’s husband, was a long-standing fan of opera. The sounds of Madame Butterfly and Tosca, played on 78rpm and the new 33rpm records, could be heard frequently in his house especially on Sunday afternoons. This voice, in the Church, was of the same operatic standard. Every note could be heard clearly, invoking a thrilling sense of quality which rendered the words of the famous hymn more meaningful.

Who had such a voice? The astonished mourners became aware that the singer was the matriarch of the family, known to the many grandchildren as Nana Martha. She could be heard, every day, humming and singing tunes in her small, terraced house as she busied herself with her household chores. On these occasions, her voice seemed always to invoke a sense of the frivolous and fanciful. She warbled and even crooned a little at times, as the housework took its course. Now, she was singing as if she was standing on the stage at Covent Garden.

She was a small woman, in her late sixties with dark, greying hair, tied and pinned back. She had borne ten children, including two sets of twins who had died soon after birth, and lost one of her sons when he was twenty. Severe depression had resulted, from which she had made a remarkable recovery. Two World Wars and poverty had dominated much of her life. Despite all of this, her singing and appearance in the Church, on that Sunday evening, surpassed all expectations. She wore a small hat, perched on top of her head, with a single feather sticking out at an angle at the back. Her dark-rimmed, NHS glasses rested near the end of her nose. She held her hymn book at arm’s length and the glowing, operatic notes flowed over the top and up into the rafters and vaulted ceiling of the splendid old Church. Annie’s fine soprano voice emanating from the Choir Stalls and Martha’s ringing tones in the Nave formed a duet, but the power of Martha’s mezzo-soprano voice dominated the stirring sound as it reverberated around the Church.

The many grandchildren who visited Nana Martha, in the days after the Service, formed an unspoken conspiracy because only one question dominated their conversations with her.

″Nana, was that you singing in the church with that voice? ″

She would laugh and give a puzzling reply. ″Oh! That voice! ″

She would pause and sigh. ″Yes. I don’t use that voice very often. ″

Tears would come into her eyes and begin to run down her cheeks. She would brush them away, remove her glasses and wipe her face. The small handkerchief which she used for this task displayed the embroidered words, Otto Schweitzer and Young Arthur in the corner. The meaning of the words was never explained. Other questions would follow.

How did you get a voice like that?

Why don’t you sing like that in the house?

Uncle Richard’s got these records, with opera singers. Their voices sound like yours, but you don’t sing their type of music. Why not?

A partial response was obtained, but some questions remained unanswered with a mysterious quietness interrupted by tears and sighs.

"I couldn’t go to music college for proper training, but I must have inherited that voice from my Father. I can remember him, just about. I was only five when he died. He was a fine singer; a bass-baritone.″

The time has come to tell the story of several generations of a family bound together by the drudgery and toil of hard labour, poverty, a love of singing, their considerable artistic talents and a terrible secret whispered from generation to generation. They lived within the context of the boiling cauldron of a changing Potteries environment and their futures were forged upon the anvil of world events.

The motto of this extraordinary family was, ‘a bit of help is worth more than sympathy’. There were occasions when this was accomplished in extreme circumstances. Their stories are a mixture in equal measure of tragedy, eventfulness and the wit and humour which stem from a goodness striving to emerge through the adversities and challenges of human life. Did the events described in this book really happen? Often, the truth is stranger than fiction!

Part One

1896

The Allerton Family

 Chapter One

7thMay, 1896

Number Five, Challinor Square was a small, two-bedroomed terraced house situated in the Potteries town of Fenton. William George Allerton, aged thirty-nine, stood in the downstairs bathroom of the house at two o’clock in the afternoon. He washed and shaved then walked into the adjacent kitchen, with his braces hanging over his bare shoulders. He was greeted by his wife Anne, who was busying herself by adorning the back of one of the old, upright chairs with his freshly-washed vest and work shirt. They smiled at each other and kissed.

Your dinner’s here, love, she said, or is this your breakfast as it’s your first meal of the day?

Bill loved to tease Anne by appearing to lapse occasionally into Potteries dialect and then converting to plain English, which he spoke well.

Oh aargh! (Oh yes!) he exclaimed, smiling as he spoke. Whatower it’s cowd, it’s owreet if ‘t cums frem thay! (Whatever it’s called, it’s very welcome if it comes from you!)

She laughed and replied, Did you sleep well?

I managed three hours, said Bill, before he reflected grimly on previous events. Phew! That night shift was hard. We placed the ware and fired the kiln-oven two nights ago. The saggars must have been at least fifteen feet high. The first night we had to ‘smoke’ the kiln.

What does that mean? enquired Anne.

‘Smoking’ means heating the kiln-oven slowly, so that the moisture is dried out of the clay, explained Bill, but we’ve had to draw it to full heat, since then. He paused, before concluding his account. We’ve got to stack saggars, tonight, and get more ware ready. Then, we’ll have to work on cooling down ready to take out ware, maybe tomorrow night if it’s ready. He paused, before musing, It’s going to be hot in there and dark; just the one lamp. That’s all we dare to use in that heat.

What else did you do, last night? enquired Anne

Oh! Fred had us stacking the new ware in ‘The Shed’.

Well, you be careful, love, said Anne. We don’t want any accidents. You come back in one piece.

Bill reverted to his version of the Potteries dialect again.

Aargh! (Yes!), he said. Marnst thay! Ar’d sowner bay thur than darn pit (Mind you! I’d sooner be there than down the pit).

I’m only just managing for money, said Anne ruefully. I’m going to ask if they’ll give me some extra time at the factory.

Ar nowst tard, duck (I know it’s hard, dear), acknowledged Bill, before reverting to plain English. Mind you, this time next year I could be starring alongside Marie Lloyd at the Theatre Royal!

They laughed. Bill began to eat his meal, while Anne watched him with a cup of tea held between her hands and her elbows resting on the table. She smiled again.

If the girls or William were here, I’d be telling them off for putting their elbows on the table.

Dunna weret, he said with a smile. Ar shasna tel ‘em.

(Don’t worry, he said with a smile. I shan’t tell them.)

They continued their affectionate dialogue as he ate.

Hannah will be old enough to start work, in another two years, he said. but I wish she didn’t have to do that. He paused and continued thoughtfully. Do you think we might be able to afford to let her go to Art College"

Anne replied, Well, let’s see how things shape up. There’s time yet, before we have to decide.

Aargh! Bill responded. Thay’st reet. Way con’st towk abart it’n tarm ter cum. (Yes! Bill responded. You are right. We can talk about it in time to come.)

Anne continued, There’s only William who seems to have a good idea about his future. He’s always messing about with bits of wood.

Bill replied, Both of us know what he wants to do; it’s joinery or nothing else! He adopted a firm tone. I’m not letting him leave school unless he finds a firm that works on houses. He’s not going down the pit, putting in pit-stays. That’s dangerous work!

Anne nodded her agreement and sighed. You’re right Bill. I’ll keep on at him about that. She paused, but with Hannah, let’s cross that bridge later. We’ve got another two years, yet, otherwise we’ll be talking about little else.

Bill ate another mouthful before his next query.

What about our two little ’uns? What are they going to do when they’re older?

Sarah loves dressmaking, but little Martha takes after you. She’s musical. I don’t know what she’ll do when she’s older.

She diverted the conversation away from careers by continuing, They’ll be home from School soon.

The discussion moved on to another topic which was close to Anne’s heart as she asked, Are you singing this weekend? Tension crept into her voice. We don’t see you at nights, you’re asleep in the mornings when the children get up and you’re singing when you get a weekend off!

I know. I’m sorry, but it’s a better hobby than drinking or gambling.

Bill gave Anne the type of wink, followed by a grin, which she knew was leading to a big request.

Have you got time for some practise, duck, before I go to work? I’ve got a lot of tunes to learn.

A time-honoured barter followed this request.

On one condition, Bill said Anne in her strongest voice, you take the kids to the Park, before you go on night shift. She paused, before adding, Otherwise, they won’t see you again until tomorrow afternoon.

He had expected this condition and was more pleased to accept than he showed, because he loved going to the Park and playing with his children. So, he appeared to grimace before both broke into laughter again.

They moved, arm-in-arm, sideways through the doorway and into their small living-room with its lead-blacked fireplace (complete with oven underneath and hob plates to each side), old sideboard and two, old, tattered armchairs. At this point, Bill grabbed Anne around the waist with one hand, faced her, began to hum a popular tune and propelled her into a dance. They laughed, hugged and kissed before he guided her over to the main feature of the room – the upright piano which stood in the corner, between the fireplace and the window. The piano appeared so big, or perhaps the room was so small, that one quarter of the window was blocked-out by its presence.

Anne sat at an old, cut-down organ stool, begged from the nearby chapel, placed her hands on the piano keyboard and played some chords. Bill stood by the piano with one arm resting on the top and the other by his side. Then, the routine of practise began. Anne played various notes on the piano and, each time, Bill sang the notes of the rising octave in his fine bass-baritone voice. Eventually, as expected, Anne went too high for Bill’s range, but then played the same note two octaves lower. After ten minutes, Bill shuffled through the papers on top of the piano and handed the first song sheet to Anne. She had a brief practise, then played the Introduction. Bill began to sing the ever-popular melody, Love’s Old Sweet Song. He began:

Once in the dear, dead days beyond recall,

When on the world the mists began to fall,

Out of the dreams that rose in happy throng,

Low to our hearts love sang an old sweet song,

And in the dusk where fell the firelight gleam,

Softly it wove itself into our dream.

He turned to Anne with one hand on his heart, the other resting on the piano and called-out as if he was standing in the middle of the Lounge at the Victoria Public House: Altogether now! Anne took the part of the pub audience by joining-in with the famous chorus:

Just a song at twilight, when the lights are low;

And the flick'ring shadows softly come and go.

Tho' the heart be weary, sad the day and long,

Still to us at twilight comes love's old song,

Comes love's old sweet song.

The second, and final, verse was followed once again by Anne’s participation in the chorus and a rousing cheer from both as the final chord sounded.

More songs followed: the traditional I’ve Been Working on the Railroad and George Gaskin’s We Were Sweethearts, Heil and I. Bill delivered this latter song to Anne on one knee, gazing up into her face and obstructing her view of the keyboard partially. In response, she played while giggling, fluttering her eyelashes at him and giving occasional smiles as if to a large, shuttered camera. Anne almost fell off the piano stool, laughing. Bill stood above her, caught her by the shoulders and kissed her forehead, gently.

Reet! Pub doings is oer. Naar! Let’s git Chapel stuff dun!

(Right! The pub work is finished. Now! Let’s get the Chapel work completed!).

This consisted of two famous hymns. After the piano introduction, Bill began the first verse of Abide With Me:

Abide with me; fast falls the eventide …

The five interim verses, interspersed with piano interludes played skillfully by Anne, were delivered in a sombre tone by Bill with his splendid, ringing, bass-baritone voice. The final verse, sung with the accompaniment of thuds on the wall caused by the next-door neighbour hammering with a shoe, ended:

In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.

That’ll be Mum, said Anne. She’ll have been taking a nap.

Bill cupped his hands next to the wall and shouted, Sorry, Martha. Can we do one, final hymn before we stop?

A muffled voice sounded through the wall.

I think she means ’yes’, said Bill. Quick! Let’s do it before she changes her mind.!

Anne began to play the introduction to Edmeston’s Lead Us, Heavenly Father, Lead Us. Bill delivered the three verses briskly. He sang the final line, Nothing can our peace destroy, made a gesture of cupping his ear towards the wall and wagged a finger. This time,