My grandfather was Benjamin Pike, brother of Peter, Joseph and
Bessie and other brothers and sisters. A very large family was the Pike family
and most of the young men and women moved (probably from the Abingdon area) to
find work. My grandfather made his way to Lancashire during the cotton boom to
work as a carter with the horses in the cotton industry. His brother Peter went
to Leicester and Jack to Stonesfield. The girls of the family left to go into
service: Emily to Rugby, Martha to Stafford, Jane to Nottingham. Joseph and
Bessie, the youngest, settled in Cumnor. Neither married. Joseph was for many
years a shepherd and was known as ‘Shep’.
Aunt Bessie appears to have been the kingpin opf the family, and all the
brothers and sisters would visit Cumnor with their families at some time. When
Peter’s wife died in Leicester in 1904, his children were sent to stay in Cumnor
with bessie as their guardian.
One of the younger generation, I too paid visits to Cumnor. Aunt Bessie and
Uncle Joe lived a small cottage, the first of a row of three, with a ginnel
running along the side of Wing’s post office. Aunt Bessie was a wonderful cook.
All the veg was home-grown. She cooked in a little out-house known as the
‘hovel’. Water came from the well at the other end of the row but we washed in
rainwater outside in the ginnel. There was a bucket toilet at the bottom of the
garden half a mile away (well, it seemed it to a little girl) and a sty for two
pigs. In the garden shed where we played when it was raining hung Uncle Joe’s
shepherd’s crook. He had died just prior to my first visit.
Two of my uncles died in the Great War. Ironically, one of them was killed on
the same day in 1917 as Benjamin, son of Peter Pike. Their units fought
alongside each other at the battle of Passchendale.
Doreen Hough, living in Bolton, wrote a letter in 2003 setting down her
memories.