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A LARGE DISPERSED FAMILY
The Pike family, recalled by Mrs Doreen Hough

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.
 

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