An Edmonton Odyssey: Stoke Newington

Wednesday, 26 August 2009

Stoke Newington

To paraphrase Jane Austen: 'One has no great hopes from Stoke Newington. I always say there is something direful in the sound.' Maybe it's the word 'Stoke', with its connotations of furnaces and boiler houses. But Bessie and Kathy went shopping in Stoke Newington so I too shall go shopping in Stoke Newington, and report back, in due course, on what I have found.....

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Introduction

In January 1912 my great-uncle Reginald Hobbs was eleven years old. He lived with his family at 3 The Green, in Edmonton in north London. His father Robert was a butcher and dairyman, and had a shop at their home premises, where he also kept livestock. Reggie’s mother Elizabeth Ann (known as ‘Bessie’) helped in the shop on busy days.
Reggie was the middle one of five children. The eldest, Kathleen (my grandmother) was nineteen, Stanley was seventeen, Nancy was nine and John three. Also living with them was Edith Robinson or ‘Aunt Edie’, Bessie’s unmarried sister.
For four years from 1912 to 1915, Reggie kept a diary. Apart from the last four months of 1912, there is an entry for practically every day. He details family life in Edmonton, as well as recording his school days, Scouting and church activities, sporting achievements, his short-lived attempt at office work, and world events such as the sinking of the Titanic, and the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo, leading to the outbreak of the First World War.
In 1915 Reginald joined the Royal Flying Corps and trained as a wireless operator. In May the following year he was sent to the battlefields of northern France, where he was killed by a shell on 29 August 1916. He was just sixteen years old.

His diaries provide a fascinating insight into the life of a young boy growing up in suburban London in the early 1900's (although it would have been Middlesex in those days). I thought it would be interesting to retrace Reggie's footsteps, and visit some of the places he mentions, to see how they have changed over the intervening century. Maybe 'odyssey' is too grandiose a word for what I have in mind but what the heck, it sounds good. And who knows but that my travels might turn out to be epic in their own way!

I do hope that you will follow me on this blog. I will do my best to post regular updates and interesting snippets of information. Please feel free to add your comments.

NB Reginald's diary entries are in italics; everything else is mine.

An Edmonton Odyssey

Wednesday, 26 August 2009

Stoke Newington

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Reginald Alfred Hobbs

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