Herald - Issue 417

v SAY YOU SAW IT IN THE HERALD v 6th January 2022 • The HERALD • Page 5 MP Guttering & Roofing Services • Fascias, Guttering, Soffits, Cladding and much more PVCu work • All roof repairs, gutters, flat roofs, chimney repairs • Moss removal 15% Discount for OAP’s Established 30 years 07730 377114 023 8087 9135 mpgutteringservices@outlook.com DECORATOR INTERIOR & EXTERIOR PAINTING General Small Maintenance Works Reliable, Prompt with a High Standard of Work Fully Insured • Free Estimates NICK CROUCHER 023 8084 8154 or 07594 582194 ROOFING CONTRACTORS BAILEYS BUILDING LTD (Established 30 Years) UNIT 9, GRAHAM NORRIS BUSINESS CENTRE 114-118 HAMPTON LANE, BLACKFIELD Web: www.baileysbuilding.co.uk Email: sales@baileysbuilding.co.uk Tel: 023 8024 3538 • Flat Roofs including 20 Year Guarantee • Tiling and Slating including Re-Roofs • Leak Investigation • Emergency Repairs • Insurance Work • Leadwork • Timber Cut Roofs • Chimney Rebuilds • Lean to Corrugated Sheet Roofs • Fascias, Soffits & Gutters Find us on Facebook David and Annie Spedding of Lepe by Robin Somes, Fawley & Blackfield Memories Continuing the tale of the Spedding family in Exbury and Lepe, we’ll take a look at my grandparents, David and Annie. David Spedding was born at Lepe in 1866. Censuses in 1881 and 1891 record him as a general labourer; by 1901 he was a coachman for Baron Forster of Lepe. Forster’s government duties – MP, Treasury Minister, and later Financial Secretary to the War Office – required a chauffeur, so by 1911 David was living with his family in Lewisham, where the Forsters had property. David married Jane Bailey in 1901, and the couple had three children, Gladys, Alice and John, attending school in Kensington. Jane died in 1913, and David remarried in 1917, to Sarah Ann omas. Annie, as she was known, was from the Welsh borders, working in London as a nurse. A er the war, Forster returned to Lepe, and so did David Spedding and his family, living in the Coastguard Cottages; he and Annie went on to have six children, Richard, twins Henry and Frank, Ted, Audrey and Rachel. e story continues in my father’s recollection of his parents’ lives: “Just outside the back door, water for drinking, cooking and washing was taken from a cast iron pump shared with a next-door neighbour. A coal-fired cooking stove, oil lamp, and candle lighting added to the primitive conditions. Annie walked her young children to the local school at Exbury, two miles away, whatever the weather. At the same time she assisted local Nurse Williams with her patients. While the boys were at school, she developed TB and suffered a lung haemorrhage after helping nurse a neighbour. Her stepdaughter, Gladys, and David Spedding working as a chauffeur for Baron Forster of Lepe her next-door neighbour, Mrs Gould, helped the boys cook and clean while she was hospitalised for almost a year at Whitecrofts Sanatorium near Ventnor on the Isle of Wight. Annie joined the Red Cross in June 1938, and freely volunteered her services to the Royal South Hants Hospital in Southampton. Later, she rode a heavy three-speed bicycle to Hythe hospital five nights a week for night duty, as her war effort after her husband died of pneumonia in 1942. In 1945, she developed breast cancer, but recovered after a mastectomy. Surviving all these challenges in her life she saw her six children married, and eventually had electricity, hot water, a bathroom and toilet, and a small electric cooker. She took her trials and tribulations remarkably, despite their severity and sadness, and never once did we hear her mention stress. She passed away peacefully in 1975 at the remarkable age of 81.”