John Alan Marfleet

My uncle John Alan Marfleet [A.017C-026] was born on the 11th April 1917 and his birth was registered during the second quarter of that year in the district of West Ham (4a 523). My father (Harold Frank Lawrence MARFLEET [A.017A-025], his elder brother) was born on the 29th March 1910 at 6 Millais Road, Leyton, (which is in the district of West Ham) in the east end of London. The birth of the eldest daughter, Bess, on the 4th April 1915 was registered in the district of West Ham but my father used to tell of starting school in 1915 at Slade Green, a hamlet and parish of and adjoining Erith in north-west Kent. They lived here between May 1915 and October 1916. However, this move to Kent was very short and the family soon returned to Leyton where they lived in at 13 Goodall Road before they moved to the top floor flat at 47 Frith Road. This was the address my grandfather gave when he enlisted in the East Surrey Regiment in October 1916. It is whilst they were at this address that John was born. John and my father both attended Goodall Road School and in 1930 John was awarded a scholarship at Leyton Technical School where he started on the 9th September, 1930 when he was 13 years of age. It is not known when the family moved back to Goodall Road, but they lived in number 33 where the rear yard backed onto Leyton railway station. It was here that two more daughters were born, Eleanor in 1920 and Joyce in 1923. The family lived in the downstairs flat, consisting of two rooms, front and back, which were used as bedrooms. The two boys slept in the front room with grandfather (Thomas Albert Lancelot, born 1862) TIDBURY who moved in after his wife (Fanny Eliza STACEY, born 1862) died (c.1925), and the three girls shared a double bed in the back room with their parents in a single bed. Other accommodation consisted of the kitchen which was used as a living room, and the scullery. The FULLERS lived in the flat upstairs. These cramped conditions were endured for some twelve years until sometime around 1932 when the family moved again to 2 Rochdale Road, Walthamstow, the address of my grandfather when he died in 1941 and still the address of my grandmother when she died in 1966. After my mother met my father and began visiting the household in 1928, her visits were eagerly looked forward to by the girls especially. It meant that their mother would buy a quarter pound of butter for the bread, in honour of their guest!