Memories of Dorothy Ann Entwistle (Nee. Lyon)

Memories of Dorothy Ann Lyon. Date of Birth,  July 8, 1933. Baptised in Mawdesley in 1933.

Reverend Edmund and Margaret Thomason were my maternal grandparents, my mother, Dorothy was the fifth of the seven children, Richard, Robert, Catherine, Margaret (Peggy) Alice and Nancy, born between 1893 and 1905. Margaret died on January 19, 1907 and Edmund, following a bicycle accident on April 21, 1912.

Although my mother was only eight years old when her mother died she told us a great deal about her childhood. For instance, her mother churned butter and sold it to villagers as the Rectory family had a cow and a heifer of which she was very fond!

Following her father’s death the family were cared for by the extended family; although I do not know who cared for Richard and Robert who were late teenagers.These wider family included Edmund’s brother,  Ernest and his three sisters (non-had children of their own). They lived in a house called ‘The Stocks’ in Whaley Bridge and their graves in Taxal were cared for for many years by my aunt Peggy Williams who lived in Kent with her husband and three daughters (my first cousins).

My mother Dorothy married Colin Sinclair Lyon in 1924 and during adult life they visited St. Peter’s and were in touch with the Rector, Reverend David and also Whaley Bridge. I remember flowers being taken to my grandparent’s grave. I was only 12 when my mother died after suffering a very short illness of Guillain-Barre syndrome.

When the curb-stones around the Celtic Cross memorial for my grandparents were removed, my late very dear husband Tony and I planted bulbs around the edge of the memorial (unfortunately the daffodils had finished flowering before we took the picture) and my brother Stewart and I obtained help to clean the stone a few years ago.

Also of possible interest if not already known:

Margaret Winstanley Thomason was the only child of the Reverend George and Sarah Winstanley Proctor and Rev Edmund served as a curate at Saint Cuthbert’s Church in Darwen where the Reverend George Proctor was the incumbent!

Following the death from cancer of his wife, Sarah, Reverend George moved to Rufford, probably to be near his daughter and family (prior to her premature death)

My godparents in the summer (?August) 1933 were Catherine Feinnes Clinton nee Thomason, Margery Johnson and Dr J.M.H. Smellie.