On 30th March 1900, in readiness for his move to Malton Farm, Meldreth, between Cambridge and Royston, Joe Marr held a sale of which must have been much of his equipment at Park House Farm. The list is too long to give in full, but included 13 carts of various kinds, 2 binders, 2 reapers, 5 seed drills for turnips and corn, 4 rollers, 14 ploughs, and so on, ‘from a well tilled 560 acre farm’. There were 56 beasts including a fat short horn bull, 21 pigs and a 100 couple of fowls. In addition, marked as of interest to threshing tackle proprietors, were a large oat crusher, a Bentall pulper and a saw table for steam power, plus a large Albion chaff cutter.
Malton is not far from Catley Park, Henry Green`s farm at Linton from 1894, nor from William James Green at Childerley Gate and prior to that at Manor Fram, Knapwell closeby since 1890. Malton, some 640 acres, was owned by Christ`s College, Cambridge, and held on a tenancy which continued up to 1978.
When Jo moved south he was paid £368 by S. Southwell for Park House tenants rights and also £171 for Cansdale by W. Carter, so clearly he held 2 farms together.
In 1901 it was necessary to seek a legal judgment in the High Court (M No. 1477) to sort out who was to benefit from the liquidation of the trust set up by the first Henry Marr, in his Will of 18th September 1865, to care for Janey, who had died around the turn of the century, but I don`t know the date. Nor am I in possession of the details of the trust, or the outcome, but 6 names were quoted as examples perhaps of different categories of those who might be regarded as being eligible to benefit. They were Arthur Norrison Marr, of 53 Brudenell Rd., Leeds, Gentleman, May Abigail Marr, spinster (who later married Louis Beale) of 20 Bramshill Gardens, (home of Michael Shillito), Charles Marr of Richmond, Yorkshire (presumed to be son or grandson of Henry of Willerby Wold), Wine Merchant, Charles Michael Goodlass of 52 York Road, Battersea, Surrey, Gentleman, John Marr Corner of 25 Young St., Doncaster, infant, and George Henry Marr, Kingston-on-Hull, Bag and Mat manufacturer. The Corner child would be explained if one of Henry Marr (of Willerby Wold)’s daughters (Mary or Ellen) had married a Corner, as I suspect. But the Goodlass baffles me, for Richard Marr`s son Richard Alexander married, as his second wife Mary Jane Goodlass, and their son was of course a Marr. Even if she were a widow with a son by a previous husband, this step relationship could hardly have warranted a claim to money left by Henry. Perhaps another Marr girl married a Goodlass. Ellen or Mary of Willerby Wold would have qualified.
In 1909 Muriel was invited to help the Rowntrees , at Folkton Manor, neighbours at Flotmanby, with their young daughter Esther, and later Muriel went with the Rowntrees to Switzerland, where Mrs Rowntree`s sister Alice lived, married to Emile Vatter, a Swiss citizen. Both Mrs Rowntree and her sister were born in Geneva of British parents. At 20 the girls could choose which nationality they wished to hold. Alice chose Swiss, Mrs Rowntree chose British and later married her English cousin. Through that connection Muriel became a nursery-governess to various families, as described in her autobiography, which I don`t intend to duplicate, but it has seemed necessary to summarise it as part of this family history, under the heading “Muriel`s Story”.
In January 1910 Alec emigrated to Australia, and as many of the letters which he wrote home from the boat, and after he arrived, have been preserved, a later section tells his story. The letters were found in a shed in Muriel`s garden, in a shoe box. Some, which had been used to make a mouses’ nest had to be written off.
My mother Kitty escaped from the ties of household duties for a time and gained a qualification (Royal Society of Arts?) as nursery-governess, started a job, but was soon recalled to run the house because the other children had measles and her mother Ada was becoming increasingly unfit, I suppose suffering the early symptoms of diabetes, from which she died in 1928. Nevertheless Kitty became engaged to my father in 1909, and they were married on 27th July 1911. That year was one of the hottest on record, yet their wedding photograph, taken in front of the house, does not suggest great heat inspite of the formal garb worn. Some of the smaller group pictures were taken in the road from Barton to Comberton; it would be unthinkable to block that road for photographs now. The main group picture had been invaluable in identifying faces which appear in other photographs; it is included because it pictures many of those named in this history.
In those days local newspapers printed lists of people attending weddings, the presents received and by whom they were given. We have these cuttings which make interesting reading, especially as we can recognise some of these presents still in use in our hands. My father had been a member of Trinity College choir, had learnt to play the organ, and every Sunday did so in Barton church. Local families gave him lunch afterwards so about once a month he ate at the Marr`s table.
Lily Sanderson Marr, Harry`s surviving daughter from his first marriage, lived with Rebecca Raper at Sunny Bank, Westwood, Scarborough, and on 4th June 1912 married her cousin Joseph Waide at South Cliff Wesleyan church, Scarborough. Their daughter Lily Rebecca (Lilyanne) was born at 13 Park Road, Oldham on 4th May 1915 (it was a fruitful year for this family with Betty arriving in Australia, Lilyanne and me). Later they moved to Bramhall, Cheshire because Jo was transferred to work in a branch of his bank in Manchester. Rebecca Raper had to abandon her Scarborough house after a shell hit the house next door, when the town was bombarded by German cruisers on 16th December 1914. She and Ettie evacuated themselves on the same train the following day, she to join her brother in Pontefract, Ettie, I think to her sister Sallie at Garforth, Leeds. Aunt Raper died in June 1915, her death perhaps hastened by the shelling.
After Jo Waide retired they moved to Hartington Grove, Cambridge where Muriel continued to live after Harry`s death on 24th March 1933. Agnes also moved there from Gt. Yarmouth in the 1930s. Lily died in Cambridge in 1966 and Jo in 1970 in the Isle of Man, to where Lilyanne had moved some years earlier. Lilyanne married Eric Samuel Freeman on 12th July 1941 and had 3 children, Susan, Hugh and Stephen. (I wonder how it came about that Eric Samuel were chosen as names for both Lilyanne`s husband and for Jo and Bertha`s second son? An odd coincidence.)
Jo Marr of Malton, Meldreth, after several weeks of illness died on 10th February 1912. He had written to man called Taylor who had once worked for the Marrs as an engine man at Wrangbrook and who emigrated to New Zealand in 1882, to ask about current farming conditions there. His sons answered and their replies, written in October 1909, speak of starting with wheat and switching to sheep when frozen mutton began to be sent back from the district in the late 1880s. Farming was no more prosperous there than here, it seems probable that the enquiry was based on what to do with Linton. This is no more than gossip and it is said that he got a girl in Orwell into trouble and his parents wanted him removed from, if not temptation, at least from their doorstep (David Marr alleges that in Orwell there is a man who looks very much like Linton, so perhaps the rumour had substance. Linton died on 19th September 1951 so this allegation can do him no harm now). Alec in one of his very first letters home said ‘tell Linton not to bring his girl out here, it is no place for a married man starting out, conditions are too rough for a woman’. However the die must have been cast already, for we have a wedding announcement card which says that Joseph Linton married Beatrice Pearce in Sydney, Australia on 25th April 1910. He returned after his father`s death.
Horace was still a schoolboy when they reached Barton, so he was sent to the County school in Cambridge, travelling from Lords Bridge Station every day. In the spring of 1914 he went to Canada perhaps just to strike out on his own, but possibly to leave the way clear for Douglas to take over the farm when Harry retired. A cutting from the Griffin Gazette, a Canadian paper, of 21st May 1914, reports that ‘Horace Marr arrived last Tuesday and has secured a situation on Arthur Watkinson`s Spring Bank Farm’. He was Wotma`s brother. The War broke out; no doubt Horace felt that his place was back home and he returned, in the Lusitania, allegedly on the voyage immediately prior to her sinking, torpedoed by a German submarine, on 7th May 1915. He joined the Yeomanry, but he had a gammy knee and was not fit for overseas service.
Tom and Jo were both in the Army during the War, Tom driving trucks in France. I think Jo was in the Home Defence Volunteer Force.
Douglas was said to have been a very quiet boy. He also had gone to the County school in Cambridge and had done some sort of farming course at Apsley Guise. When he was called up, an attempt was made to keep him at home “because his father farmed 400 acres, he was the only son at home, he was foreman and engine driver, 3 other sons were serving one in the Army and two in the Volunteer Corps and there were 12 working horses.” Douglas was given a 3 month “stay”, but it was ruled that an older man must be employed in his place. Barnes, the second horse keeper, had to go too. Douglas went to France in 1916 with his great friend, his cousin Duncan, also an Infantry man, whose life is said to have saved by getting him sent home with pneumonia. Douglas died of wounds while serving as Rifleman in the King`s Royal Rifles, on 29th April 1917 during the Battle of Arras.
Charlie Marr joined the Royal Naval Air Service, (we have a photograph of him in that uniform), and Norrison was a chemist in the RAMC. A great friend of Harry at this time was John Marsland Brooke of Childerley Hall, whose son Lt. Arthur Goulbourne Brooke was killed flying in the RFC on 10th September 1917. His photograph, taken in the Royal Flying Corps uniform, must have hung on the wall of a dark corridor in Muriel`s bungalow for years, though I never noticed it until the day of her funeral. One wonders if this were the shadow of a romance. He is not mentioned in her autobiography. Another son was a friend of Horace`s. John Marsland Brooke was another Yorkshire farmer who had moved south to Cambridgeshire around the turn of the century. As a close friend of the famous agronomist at Cambridge University, Professor Sir R H Biffen, he farmed 2,000 acres “scientifically.”
My father also served in France for the second half of the War as a soldier. My mother preserved all his letters from the front. He died in 1934, when my mother also moved to Hartington Grove, Cambridge to be near Muriel. My brother Jack, (who reverted to being called John when he got there), went to an Agricultural College at Buluwayo in Rhodesia in 1928, under a scheme sponsored by the Boy Scout Organisation. Mother went to stay with him for a year, by sea of course, in 1948. In August 1939, just before the outbreak of WWII he married a nurse, Joyce Bullock, and they had 2 children, Michael in 1946 and Barbara in 1948. John started as a manager of other men`s farms but after several years set up on his own, north of Salisbury at Bindura, growing tobacco, citrus and mealies. He retired in 1976. Michael chose to ‘return’ to this country to work as an accountant. Barbara is an international hockey player and business woman, who was involved in the machinations of UDI, the Rhodesian reaction to Britain`s difficulties in granting independence to the white minority. Joyce died in 1986 and John married again in 1989 but died in 1990.
