Thomas Norrison was still very much in the saddle having a weekly meeting with his sons Harry and Joe, and I believe his son-in-law Joseph Shillito too (DWG m. Sallie Marr,) to discuss the week`s results and next week`s operations. He was also much involved in the provision, design and construction of a chapel, which is known now as Trinity Methodist church in South Elmsall. At a meeting held on 8th June 1883, attended by TNM, Harry, Joe and Jo Shillito, it was announced that £480 had already been subscribed towards the project, £230 by Mr Banks, £100 each by Messrs Hinchcliffe and Marr, and £50 by Mr Moxon. They decided that the chapel should have space for 300 people, and the cost, to include vestries, boundary walls, warming and lighting, was not to exceed £1,000. The foundation stone was laid, by Thomas Norrison and Abigail, on 19th June 1884, and it was opened in 1885. I now possess the silver trowel presented to TNM on that occasion. TNM`s grandson Jo Waide Marr was in the Chair at the 50th Anniversary on the 19th June 1935. When we visited the church in 1987 to see the memorial plaque on the wall, we were given a mug issued to commemorate the 100th anniversary. Peggy Miller has a similar trowel which Thomas Norrison was given when he laid another chapel foundation stone at Lockton, 5 miles north of Kingthorpe, in 1876. I had thought that meant that, by then, he must have retired to Scarborough, but the South Elmsall chapel erection scheme discounts that suggestion, and for the 1881 census he was still at Wrangbrook.
At the time of that census Joe was still unmarried, living at Grange Farm (DWG – Wrangbrook) with his parents. In fact he married Polly Linton Shields, just a week before his brother Harry`s 2nd wedding on the 19th June 1883. If Polly had been housekeeper to Harry perhaps she immediately preceeded Ada. Perhaps when Jo married, Thomas Norrison and Abigail went into virtual retirement at 7 Londesborough Rd. Scarborough. Railways provided quick easy passage, so they could have gone back for the laying of the Elmsall foundation stone in 1884. Scarborough was their home when Abigail died on 12th March 1888, having been “60 years a member of the Methodist Society”. The house is very close to Scarborough railway station, which could have made possible frequent visits to Wrangbrook, and which might have influenced the choice of the new farm to which both Harry and Joe were to move at the beginning of the next decade, both of which were close to the Bridlington branch line to Scarborough.
As I have mentioned already, Harry`s first family was virtually adopted by the Hagues. This may not be quite true. Joseph Waide Marr was looked after by the two bachelor brothers Tom and Henry Hague, and he became a draper, succeeding them as head of Hague Bros in Pontefract, but I have no information to suggest that Thomas Norrison (Tom), who became apprenticed to a butcher, was similarly taken care of. As an apprentice Tom wrote from 83 Broad St., Parkgate, Rotherham on 28th April 1900. He set up his own business at 32 Bellevue St., Filey in about 1901. Perhaps there was a financial provision by the Hagues, because when Harry died, he noted in his Will that he left nothing to his first family as they were all adequately provided for. Gertrude Florence, one of the 2nd twins, died at the age of 4 on 23rd June 1884, so perhaps she needed no ‘fostering’, but Lily the survivor, came under the wing of Rebecca Hague who had married James Raper, solicitor and coroner of Pontefract. Aunt Raper seems to have been a formidable woman, with, I imagine, little idea of how to nurture a motherless child, for she was childless like all her brothers. From Lily`s postcards to home, which means to my mother, her half-sister, she sounded as though she longed for the companionship of her siblings.
(DWG) Below is a repeat of some photographs covering Harry Marr’s 1st and 2nd family for ease of following the story
(click on images)
There seems to be little to say about the upbringing of the 2nd family in the 1880s. Alec was born in 1884, my mother Kitty in 1885, Muriel in the year her Marr grandmother Abigail died, 1888, and Horace in 1890. My mother recounted how she hated to have to tie his red spotted handkerchief round the neck of her Marr grandfather (Thomas Norrison) when he came to meals, though that might have been in the next decade, for the old man died in 1894. She also recalled how he would say ‘take away them hippins’, when he saw linen table napkins on the table, and also his maxim that young couples had no need for mustard for their meals during the first years of marriage.
Joe Marr`s family developed alongside Harry`s. The two houses at Wrangbrook, isolated from others, stand on either side of a dead end lane. Children`s details are given in the section on Joe Marr of Malton.
After the death of Mary (TNM jnr`s wife) in 1885, some of their daughters went to live with TNM snr in Scarborough, but I think this may have been after Abigail`s death, because one of them, Vi, told her daughter Olive, how strict the old man was, how she was sent to her room without supper if she were a few minutes late home from school, and how Ettie and the maid would smuggle food to her.
By the end of this decade Harry and Joe were planning to move again, and in a letter from TNM to Joe on 2nd November 1889 he said how glad he was that he ‘had decided to take the farm’ (which was not named but I presume was Park House, Hunmanby). ‘It is a bit run down but could be brought back, and it has a reputation for excellent sheep’. He offered to lend money to help the transaction if needed. He added that ‘Arthur could go look at it’. Arthur was presumably Tom`s son, only 17, so I don`t know how much they might have relied on his judgment?
