The Ventnor & District Local History Society’s latest publication, Growing Up in Godshill: The Memories of Joy Draper (nee Thorne), 1907–1995, is now available.
From school at 13 to service at 14
Marjorie Nellie Joyce Thorne (known as Joy) was born in Godshill in 1907. There was nothing extraordinary in her life, except that the ordinary is extraordinary.
She left school when she was 13 and started work as a House Parlour Maid when she was 14, learning to navigate the rules of a household which seems to have been very old fashioned for its time. She worked there for ten years, leaving when she was 24 to get married.
Two talks to Godshill School
The book is based on two talks Joy gave to the children of Godshill School when she was in her 80s.
The first remembered a typical family Saturday during WW1, describing family life, her father’s work on local farms, her mother’s work at home, and how the children contributed.
‘It was no honour’
The second was about her life as a ‘House Parlour Maid’, describing in detail, and with good humour, what her work involved at a time when there were no vacuum cleaners, washing machines, or piped water in the house, and recorded her own quiet decision to stop wearing her maid’s cap because she felt “it was no honour”.
Photographs from the archives
These two talks have not been edited apart from some minor adjustments, but are supplemented with other information and photographs from the Society’s archives as well as photographs provided by family members.
‘One life among the many’
In his classic memoir also published by the Society, It Used to Be Like This: Life in Niton Undercliff in the Last Century, George R. Haynes, who was from the same generation as Joy, wrote,
“Already the lifestyle of my childhood is beyond the grasp of the young people of today. So here it is, one life among the many.
“I have written all that I thought should be recorded before it is completely forgotten, about things that are now totally gone.”
Two more titles in preparation
This latest book is presented in the same spirit. Two more books in the Society’s series on growing up in the South Wight, Audrey Joyce Chiverton’s A Whitwell Life and Kevin Digweed’s A Ventnor Lad, are also in preparation.
Where to buy
Growing Up in Godshill is available for £6 in the Ventnor Heritage Centre or £8 including P&P from the Society’s online shop.
News shared by Jeff on behalf of Ventnor & District Local History Society. Ed
