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Chapter Fifteen

ERNEST GEORGE LEA   1908 - 1983
QUEENIE MAY GLASS   1911 - 2004


Born at Tythe Farm, Longcot on the 15th of May 1908, Ernest George Lea was the sixth and last child born to Albert and Fanny Lea.   There was some doubt initially as to the location of his birth which was eventually verified by his eldest sister Edith Emily, some eleven years his elder.   Edith recalled her surprise when arriving at Tythe Farm during a family move to find her mother there with a new baby.   “Where on earth did he come from?” she asked, “Under the bush in the garden” her mother replied.   Edie, believing her mother, actually went into the garden to see if there were any more there.   Armed with this information I wrote to the registrar of Berkshire and confirmed this to be his place of birth and a copy of his birth certificate followed.

Apprenticed as a bricklayer, he was regarded by the building fraternity of the Swindon area as an exceptionally good tradesman.   He was inseparable from his half brother Bill Gladwin, often working together and just as often drinking together until an unfortunate accident in 1952 that Bill did not survive.

Queenie May Glass, daughter of Albert and Daisy Glass, was born at 1 Church Street, Old Town, Swindon on the 22nd June 1911.   Her father died during the 1914 - 1918 War and her mother remarried, to her husband’s brother Ernest.   They had three children, Ernie, Joan and Ivy.

Queenie and George were married at the Registry Office in Swindon on the 24th of October 1931 in the presence of Fanny Lea and Arthur William Lea.

Their first home was at the old toll house in Shrivenham Road, Swindon, although the address on the marriage certificate reads Oxford Road, Stratton St. Margaret.   The toll house was more commonly known as the 'Pike House' and was pulled down many years ago for road widening purposes.   Sadly no photographs have emerged of this fine old house that I understand had stood on its own in beautiful countryside since 1830 until it eventually found itself surrounded by redevelopment that made its own position rather precarious.   The only illustration of the Pike House is in the form of an old painting.   The first child of George and Queenie was Anthony George who was born at the Pike House and I myself was conceived at this house before they moved to 107 Bright Street, Gorse Hill some two miles away.

Following Anthony George the next born was myself, Donald Edward and then my brothers and sisters, Dennis Percival, Vera Joan, Brian, Margaret Ann, David Richard, Valerie Jean, Diana, Barbara Joyce and Linda Doreen, eleven children in all.   Everyone being born in the two bedroom terraced house that sadly has also fallen foul to redevelopment.

Anyone who was brought up in Bright Street and Gorse Hill itself, knew only too well of the community spirit that existed there and was indeed needed to carry them through the Second World War.   Those dark cold nights when the sirens would go meant another visit to the air raid shelter until the all clear.   Queuing for food, particularly rabbit, at the weekend meant pocket money from the neighbours.   Saturday morning was usually a visit to the coal yard.   Pictures were the treat of the day at the Palace Cinema if you could get someone to take you in during the evening performance, and Saturday morning when all hell broke out at the children’s club.   I wonder how many of us remember Jimmy Linton, (I may stand corrected on the surname), the tiny chap who was manager at the time and whose unenviable task it was to get four hundred of the most unruly, noisiest children in the world to sing ‘Land of Hope and Glory’.   I remember him very well threatening to close the place down if we didn’t sing the correct words instead of ‘Land of soap and water, mother wash my feet’ etc.

All of the children of Queenie and George are still living in and around the Swindon area with the exception of two daughters.   Diane and Barbara, who for many years have lived in Sydney, Australia.   Their return every few years is reason enough for many family get-togethers and outings.   Not that this family needs any excuse for a party!   It has been an ongoing event for many years to go on a double-decker bus outing to the seaside each summer, a Christmas party with a band or disco to help the one hundred or more family and friends enjoy their evening.

Weddings are also fairly frequent as each generation grows up and are cause of more family meetings, which everyone looks forward to eagerly.

At the centre of this family is my mother, Queenie, she is now eighty one years old.   She has eleven children, thirty nine grandchildren and twenty eight great grandchildren to date.   And this does not include the in-laws.   One amazing thing about Queenie is that every child and member of the family receives a birthday card from her every year and has done for many years past.   The latest marriage planned is that of my own daughter Tracey Anne-Marie to Neil Donald Loader, giving Queenie one more name to add to her birthday list.


Ernest George Lea, 10 years old, youngest child of Albert and Fanny Lea.
Photograph taken from wedding group of sister Edith’s wedding to Fred Woolford on 23rd January 1919.


Missing copy of Ernest George Lea's birth certificate

I collected my mother from her home in Cricklade Road at 11 am on boxing day 1992 to take her to my own home in Toothill where we were to spend the day together with my family.   Thinking that a short ride around the town may be a change for her I made no effort to hurry from home to home.   I drove the car into Church Road where my mother was born, and asked if she could remember the stone cottage in which her Auntie Rose lived.

“Oh Yes” she replied.   “It stood at the end of the road on that piece of wasteland pointing to the corner of Church Road and Little London.   I turned the car around and into the narrow road that would take us down the hill to Cricklade Street, but half way down my mother stated that my father and Bill Gladwin, his half brother, had built the wall along side the cottage.

“Is that how you met?” I asked.

“Well yes and no, I would sometimes see him when I was playing ball with my friends at weekends and evenings, he only lived in that house there.” She pointed to the rear of the house in front of us.

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.   “Do you mean to say that dad lived in that house there with granny and grampy Lea?”

“Yes, and Bill lived with them as well.”

Of all the conversations I have had with various members of the family, no one has ever mentioned that my father lived at Cricklade Street, Old Town.   I was very surprised, to say the least, but sensing that I was close to finding out how their lives became entwined I pursued with the questioning.

“Well how did you start going out together?” I asked and in the next few moments all was revealed.

“The first job I had was working for a Mr Brown at 69 Croft Road as a maid and one day when I was busy in the front bedroom I happened to look out of the window and saw your father working on a house that was being built across the road.   He waved his trowel at me and I waved my brush at him.   He later offered to take me to work each day on the back of his motorcycle and that was the beginning of our going out together.   We were courting for four years before we were married.”

Whilst taking in this revelation and looking at the front of the house from a now parked car, my mother asked if I remembered the little shop next door.   Indeed I do, not only do I remember it being there, I can almost see the face of Mrs Winter, who owned the shop at the time, when handing me a bottle of lemonade with some kind of explanation about the removing of the glass stopper that was stuck in its neck.   Even more vivid is the memory of the aroma given out by the jars of sweets lined up on the shelves, so much so that the memory of the little shop is one of my earliest childhood recollections and has stayed with me all my life.   There was also another shop on the corner of Belle Vue Road at the same time and owned by a Mrs Tunley, I am told that this has long since gone and is now a plumbing and heating business.

During the time my mother and father were courting, my father had an accident with his motorcycle and was found lying unconscious by a soldier on the Highworth Road.   He was taken to hospital in Swindon and after recovering vowed never to ride a motorcycle again and to my knowledge, never did.

I well recall the time my father, a little worse for drinking, had to return to the pub he had just come from in a taxi to retrieve his bicycle which he had ridden there earlier that evening.   His bicycle was often the subject for humour because of its rusty condition but his answer to that was his bicycle would take him anywhere a new one would take him, and he could leave it without fear of it being stolen.   A valid comment I think.


Tythe Farm, Longcot
The Toll House and birthplace of Ernest George Lea, 15th July 1908.
The house stands just off the main Swindon to Faringdon road, near Shrivenham



1 Church Street, Old Town, Birthplace of Queenie May Glass, 22nd June 1911



Queenie, my mother, with my sisters Valerie, right, Dianne left and Linda being held.
Photo taken in Bright Street, Gorse Hill, Swindon (now partly demolished), approximately 1951



Mother and Father, Queenie and George, with my brother Tony.
Photograph taken just before they moved from the Pike House, Shrivenham Road to Bright Street, Swindon, in 1932



A school group taken at King William Street School, Old Town, Swindon, approximately 1921.
Fourth from the right on the back row is Queenie May Glass



Queenie May Glass, approximately 16 years old


Missing birth certificate of Queenie May Glass
Missing marriage certificate of Queenie May and Ernest George Lea


TURNPIKE GATES AND TOLL HOUSES

The founder of the “Swindon Advertiser” William Morris, who published his first 1 penny monthly on the 6th February 1854, states in his book, “Swindon” Reminiscences Notes and Relics of Ye Old Wiltshire Towne, published in 1885, that “turnpike gates were for some years now a thing of the past”.   Just how long he does not say, so it would perhaps seem fair to assume that the last ten to twenty years previous had seen the general use of turnpike gates decline, bringing to an end what had been a very important period for the movement of people, transportation of livestock and food.

I use the term ‘general use’ lightly as I know my grandfather managed a farm at Longcot near Shrivenham in 1907 that had a toll road enabling its users to save a journey of three or four miles to the same destination for a small sum of money.

And, of course, this was the principle of all turnpike gates with their toll houses displaying the tariff for anyone wanting to travel over roads built on private land.   And such was the importance of these establishments that in their heyday it would take a good size book to cover and record the management, trusts, acts of parliament, the lives of gatemen and gatewomen.   The bidding each year for what would today be called a franchise to run the toll gate.

In the Borough of Swindon there were six toll houses, one of these stood in Stratton Road, almost opposite where the car body repair company Bamptons stands today.   My grandmother, Fanny Lea, lived in the old house that was built in 1757-58, prior to my mother and father getting married in 1931.   My eldest brother was born during the next year whilst my parents stayed with her, and I was conceived at the house but born in Gorse Hill in 1933.

I’ve always had an interest in the toll house since finding out of our family connection with it and am proud to be a part of its long and historic history.   Other members of the family to live at the house was Bill Gladwin, and my cousin Violet Johnson, who as a child would visit her Granny Lea.

The house was taken down in 1952 for road widening purposes.   Another landmark gone.

Missing picture of Toll House

Pike House, Stratton Road

Painted in 1997 by W Stockman, a Devon artist whose studio, known as The Strand Art Gallery, is in Brixham, The painting was copied from a picture that appeared in the Evening Advertiser in 1954.   The picture, by an unknown artist, was probably painted at the turn of the last century.

Missing sketches of 4 Toll Houses

Fredrick Large wrote an excellent book on Swindon during his lifetime called “A Swindon Retrospect”, included in it sketches drawn from memory of the toll houses that were on roads leading into Swindon.

~~oo0oo~~

Additional material in the folder, not showing on this page due to copyright regulations:
Ernest George Lea's birth certificate.
Queenie May Glass' birth certificate.
Marriage certificate.
Pictures/sketches of Toll Houses.
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This page was last updated on 10th April 2007.