The approximate world as I knew it 1963

A combination picture I created for a now defunct website, showing approximate locations of our house, the local pub, our shop and Clint Road School.

The Botanic Gardens

This old aerial photo shows Botanic Road on the right with Edge Lane running along the bottom from left to right. There is clearly quite a large pond seen at the top of the picture.

The ordered square area is the botanic gardens, paths and flower beds, walled off from the rest of the park and the gates were locked at dusk.

Botanic Park

In those days, Botanic Road wasn’t a busy road, not a main one. It was (and still is) a link between Wavertree Road and Edge Lane. We lived at number 53 and owned number 51 which mum and dad rented out. I never thought about them being landlords as we, the kids, were never included in any talk about money or business.

So, here I am, standing still in a nappy and rubber pants in the park in front of our house on Botanic Road. In was probably spring or summer 1959 and I was about 20 months old.

It was a fantastic park, plenty of space for mothers walking prams and kids, a botanical gardens area.

The maps I will add show a water feature in the park, but I cannot recall that being there as I grew up.

There was a rock garden in the botanical garden area, this was walled off though. In later years we would climb into the botanical garden area to play as it was locked up at night.

John Edwards

John Edward Edwards (centre) or 'Jack" as he became known to family and friends went to School in central Liverpool. In 1919, at the age of 13 years he was attending Tiber Street Council School.

He was born on May 27th, 1906 in West Derby, Liverpool.

Tiber Street School, Liverpool

This is the oldest photograph I have of my Grandad on my mums side.

John Edward Edwards, who was born May 27th, 1906, attended Tiber Street Council School, Lodge Lane, Liverpool.

This photo was taken in 1919, I will add a close up of John, who at that time probably was still called by his real name, later to be replaced with Jack.

Rachel Hardman

This is another photo of Rachel Hardman, assumed to be taken around 1916 when Frank Weldon was about ten years old. She was born in 1861 so she would have been 55 years old at the time.

The woman looks older than what we would believe to be 55 years old today, but these were different, harder, times and Frank was the youngest of her 15 children, 11 of which survived.

Rachel would die around six years later in 1922, probably heartbroken about the loss of one of her eldest children, Richard, who was killed in the Battle of Cambrai, France in November, 1917

The chair is similar, but not an exact match to the one shown in the young Frank Weldon picture.

Joseph and Rachel Children (list)

A secondary review of the children of Joseph Welding (Weldon) and Rachel Hardman. with the addition of who they married.

I have on record twelve children, here is a simple list :

William Hardman (Billy Weldon) born (abt) 1884 and married Lillian May Turner from the Whiston Pottery.
Arthur Sandiland Weldon (my Grandfather) born April 25th, 1886 and married Margaret Rebecca Edwards (born March 14th, 1890) on August 5th, 1911
Alice Welding born (abt) November 1887. Died very young. TBD
Richard Welding, born December 30th, 1888 who died on the battlefield at Cambrai on November 30th, 1917
Amy Gertrude Weldon, born (abt) September 1890 and married Alexandra Davies (born abt January 1892) around June, 1916
John Welding, born (abt) 1893 married Ellen Overend born (abt) June 1896
Ellen Weldon, born (abt) March 1894, married George Travis.
Jane Weldon (Jinny) born (abt) March 1896 and married James Lunt (born abt March 1892) around 1932
Rachel Weldon, born September 28th, 1899 and married John Wright, born February 2nd, 1894
Joseph Weldon, born (abt) September 1901 and married Margaret Cox (born abt September 1904) on February 5th, 1927
Alice Weldon, born (abt) 1903 and died September 21st, 1945 : never married
Frank Weldon, born June 25th, 1906 and married Doris Byron (born August 8th, 1909) on December 23rd, 1930. Frank and Doris emigrated to Canada.

Bob and Alda

Another Picture from Bob and Alda's wedding.

Back row: Jennie (Ginny) Lunt, Margaret Rebecca Weldon (nee Edwards), Unsure but possibly Thomas or Phoebe's mother (late 1930s, both Arthur and Margarets mother were deceased), Arthur Sandiland Weldon, Thomas Lewis, Phoebe Lewis.
Front Row, unknown guests.

Alda and Bob's Wedding

A little bit more research required as I do not know the date of the wedding, I estimate this was in the late 1930s based on their firstborn, Ann, who was born December 1938

Back row: Best-man (unknown), Arthur Sandiland Weldon (brides father), Robert Lewis, Alda Lewis, Thomas Lewis (grooms father)
Front row: Nelly (Ellen) Corns (nee Lewis), Phoebe Lewis (grooms mother), Margaret Rebecca Weldon (nee Edwards) - (brides mother), Violet Priscilla Weldon (later Phillips)

Thanks to my 1st Cousin, Gary Walton, for the excellent photographs and information.

Alda Weldon, Golden Wedding

Golden Wedding celebration for Bob and Alda Lewis, circa 1987.

Left to right – back row: John Phillips, Robert (Bob) Lewis, Arthur Herbert Weldon, Dorothy Margaret Weldon (nee Edwards), Nelly (Ellen) Corns (nee Lewis)
Front row: Mary Hennin (nee Wright), Alda Lewis (nee Weldon), Violet Priscilla Phillips (nee Weldon), Rachel Wright (nee Weldon), Margaret Anne Marshall (nee Weldon)

Robert Lewis was born december 8th, 1913 at Sydney Mines, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada, he married Alda Weldon who was born (abt) September, 1916.

Alda, Violet and Maggie were my dads (Arthur Weldon) three sisters. This was probably the last time all four would be together.

I knew Jack

Jack Edwards was my Grandfather, well, one of them anyway. He was a good man.


Jacks real name was John, I've noticed this was a common thing back in those days. Jacks being Johns, Nellies being Ellens, Dots being Dorothy. A name change epidemic.

His full name was John Edward Edwards.

He courted and married his sweetheart, Betsey Cottrill, in those years between the World Wars and in 1930 they had their first and only child, Dorothy Edwards who was my mum.

She was the best mum I ever had.

In World War 2 he volunteered for the Liverpool Fire brigade, attending many of the fires during "The Blitz" which destroyed a lot of Liverpool and the docks. He also worked in various trades as a driver and then an export clerk at a Liverpool shipping company.

They travelled around England and Wales, from Lands End and maybe even to John O'Groats. Betsey would be Jacks "love of his life" as after her tragic death in 1961 he never remarried.

I was only four at the time and never knew her.

In the 1960s Jack moved in with the family in Botanic Road and loaned my mum and dad almost a thousand pounds so they could buy the house next door. They converted it into flats and rented them out.

Oh, they had some fun with tenants.

He often babysat my older brother Robert and myself, he'd take us to the Presbyterian church on a Sunday morning and off for a Tizer at Capaldi's Soda bar afterwards if we behaved ourselves. I only realised in the last few years that it gave my mum and dad a break, to have some "quality" time alone at the end of a long week.

But we won't think about that.....

In the years that followed he took us on holidays to Wales, the Isle of Man and afar. Allowed us to shoot cigarettes out of his mouth with our Astroray guns, suffered rubber sponge balls bouncing off the top of his head and was a constant source of cash and chocolate.

A few of his interests were woodworking and gardening. He worked at W.Boot & Sons as a clerk, as they dealt with a lot of exporting and custom wooden box building it was here that he gained a good knowledge of carpentry. This would result in numerous home projects, garden sheds, fences, greenhouses and even a home for the dozen or so chickens that my dad would introduce into our family in the early 1970s.

He was a super Granddad and I still miss him.

I miss them all.

Foot Steps

There are similarities between generations, it was only after my dad, Arthur, died that I was actually interested in those previous generations, only after the prime source of family information had passed away was the boy genius prepared to research his lineage. I'm certainly not the brightest bulb on the tree and the simple lesson there is, talk to your mum and dad if you have them.

The family information was difficult to come by, but two of my dad's sisters were still alive and I made contact with them, one of which had good information, the other quite vague and forgetful. It was through the pair of them that I found my full grandparents names and approximately when they were born, once a few pieces of information were found the detective story grew exponentially.

In late 1975 me and my first steady girlfriend got slightly pregnant, we were eighteen years old and frightened. I thought for the longest time that I was a disgrace to the Weldon family, an outcast, a black sheep for doing this terrible thing.

In reality I was just following a family tradition, which was uncovered through my family tree research. My great grandfather, Joseph, met his girlfriend Rachel in 1883 and within a few months she was pregnant. At the time it was probably a more shameful experience than my own, the social stigma of a child out of wedlock in the late nineteenth century.

What was uncanny though, besides the echo in time, was the location of that echo. I was born in Liverpool and we moved to Whiston when I was eleven years old, I moved to Romford, Essex when I was sixteen but was still coming home to Whiston at the weekends. I met my girlfriend in Liverpool, she lived in Kirkby a few miles away and I'd see her at weekends, mostly in the front room of my parents house on Pottery Lane.

A short walk away from the house was an area called the Whiston Pottery and it was here in 1883 that a young girl called Rachel Hardman lived. Rachel, who was a potter there, somehow met Joseph, who was a potter at the Prescot pottery a few miles away. Rachel was soon very much pregnant which resulted in baby William Hardman in 1884.

Ninety-two years later, my daughter, Susan, was probably conceived within five hundred yards of the Whiston Pottery. the birthplace of her great-granduncle.

It was a difference in time of nine or more decades, but we were all fundamentally the same people, in the same situation and it amazes me how, even though we all move about on the planet, we unknowingly travel in similar peoples footsteps.

Echoes.