In 1961-3 we lived at Canister Castle, Wyville, Grantham, Lincolnshire. My sadly missed younger Brother Ian was born here. Skegness is one and half hours drive so we used to go on holidays here. The featured photo above is of Grandma Lily and myself aged about 2 on the beach.
When I Googled this resort, it didn't help that I read "Skegness ranks bottom in Which? best seaside destination survey - but magazine says 'at least resort made 87th' ". As soon as I got there I wanted to leave! Sorry. It reminded me of Bradford where I grew up aged 15-18. I moved down to London to get away from this brash culture. And yes I sound like a snob. But even my Niece thinks the place is "rubbish" because there is nowhere to go out. Also, I had by now read Aunty Irene's book about the family history that had been hidden until a month ago. I now had very mixed feelings about 'Frank and Lilly', as I explain below. Anyway, I shook myself out of it, and proceeded to take photos to show the different sides of the resort (see towards the bottom of this post). Then I jumped back in to the car and headed over the beautiful Lincolnshire Wolds to visit Mum in Knaresborough.
So, I have been through something over the last month. Let me explain. My Aunty Irene is Gran Lily's eldest and she wrote a book about the Cook-Magerison family story, but it was deemed too painful for those who were still living and so nobody was allowed to see it. Dad tried, again, to get it for me in 2014 but had no luck. However, at the request of my Aunty Dot, a few weeks later in 2014 my Cousin Sue sent me a picture of Frank Magerison and Lily from 1925. This is the first time I had seen Frank, my Grandad. Indeed, in our immediate family, we had never heard anything at all about him until about 2005. We were Cooks. Or so we thought. Dad never talked about it. In the picture I was sent, Frank and Lily are in front of the Pier at Cleethorpes around 1925. James Hoey (my Niece Sophie's partner) solved the mystery of where this picture was taken in our WhatsApp family group. I confirmed it by finding a historical picture of the peer that looks the same. Today the tail end of the Pier is missing. When I showed this photo to my family on our WhatsApp group in August 2022, my Niece Grace commented (on seeing Frank her Great Grandad for the first time) that my Dad and Frank looked very similar.
As I have mentioned, Lily was my Grandma or Nana as she preferred to be called. See my 2022 photo blog post for the photo and a summary of what our family thought we knew a month ago: “Grandma Lily was quite the character, 22nd August”. Since this post on Gran, my Cousin Sue has sent me a copy of the book! Even though the book contents are still a sensitive for some living members of our family, I will summarise this piece of family history below.
A few months ago Cousins Sue and Linda came across a copy of Aunty Irene’s self published biography called "Between Two Wars" when they cleared Aunty Dot’s bungalow after her sad departure. Sue retyped it and sent me a copy, warning that it had affected her, even though she had read the manuscript before. This made me read it slowly, over a period of days. Sue also gave me permission to share the contents of the book as I saw fit. It is a fascinating family artefact. Lily’s father was horrible, it seems; but Aunty Irene (Lily’s eldest) seems to befriend him in later years. Harold is Lily's first husband and is the father of Irene, but he died in WWI. Lily was quite scandalous and self-centred. Indeed, Lily leaves the kids home alone sometimes, maybe often, to go out with Frank Magerison, who she saw on and off over many years and had three, maybe four children with. Joe Cook, her second husband, seems to get custody of Dorothy and Freddie for a while. Frank is a deserter and goes to prison a couple of times for stealing money. In 1936 Frank took advantage of an amnesty and went back into the army. Lily loves Frank, the same can not be said of her feelings for Joe, who was older than her but did seem to provide financial support over the years. Her total love for Frank meant she did some questionable things, the result was damage to all of her children. In WWII Frank ended things when he wrote to Lily “that he had got a woman pregnant; he loved her very much and had been married to her for the last three months" (p.35). This may have led to an attempted suicide by Lily. Dad used to tell Mum that he was a bastard! Uncle Neville, Margaret and Dad (Frank’s confirmed kids) were bullied at school because of being illegitimate and it may explain some of their “strong” character traits, but this is only part of the story.
Uncle Neville had to be taken out of the family home often when Joe came home as Joe didn't know about him; all very sad really. Dad does not figure in the book, only the fact he was born. But we know he also had to be hidden at an Aunty's when Joe came home. I have started to have very helpful email exchanges with Cousin Sue about this. Taken together, the book and connections with Sue provide a lot of new background information, quite a bit of it I didn’t know. So even if there is a lot of embellishment and bias in the book, it helps me understand what went on.
After reading Aunty Irene's book, and having had various talks with Mum and the above mentioned email exchanges with Cousin Sue, I reflected and realised that Frank Magerison was a bad influence on Lily; and that neither of them had been good for the wellbeing of my Dad and Uncle Neville; both of whom had to be hidden at Frank's Aunty/Aunties when Joe Cook came home for brief periods. Consequently, I decided not to follow up on my plan to visit the site of the 1920's photo of the two of them in Cleethorpes. It just didn't seem right. I finished off Trip 3 at Skegness and, as I said above, went to stay with at Mum's in Knaresborough.
Cleethorpes is pretty much the same as Skegness. Mum is from Grimsby so we went every year and the strongest memory I have is paddling through slimy, dark, mud, laced with peas that had been discharged into the Humber by the Birds Eye factory and wondering about the 2 iron forts in the entrance to the estuary.
I’m totally with you on feelings about these place, don’t know about you but I felt the same about them since childhood.
One of the things that struck me in the book, and makes me feel guilty, was how they were happy (when there was happiness) with so little because they had bugger all in every day life.
Opps replied below!
Hi Sue,
Great to hear from you. OMG, the image of you “paddling through slimy, dark, mud, laced with peas “, I can’t get it out of my head. Yorkshire has lots of natural beauty, and a lot of the people are lovely. But I think from the age of 14 onwards we discovered Cornwall, then a hotel in Jersey. But because Ian and I didn’t like dressing up for dinner we got a caravan and so it was then Scotland, Lakes. So, I agree about many of the resorts. Although Filey is lovely and until this year we had our side of the Cook family gatherings there; special memories were made.
About Aunty Irene’s book. It all took a few weeks to sink in. A friend also warned me that we shouldn’t judge by today’s standards. So yes, I take your point about people getting on with their life, particularly after WWII. You know, when I had posted this blog this morning it was like a big burden has been lifted.