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Archie Greenshields was born in 1920 and brought up in Chichester, West Sussex.
Piecing together the history on my Mother's side of our family has caused me some difficulty.
It was only comparatively recently that I discovered through my Aunt, Florrie Cook, that my maternal grandfather adopted the name Hall which is believed to be the surname of two of his Aunts, who probably raised him to manhood. His real name was believed to be Roberts. All of this information has been passed on to me by Florrie, who must rely on her memory for there is hardly any written documentation now.
On the 11th August, 1872, my grandmother, Sarah Ann Murrant was born at Stedham, Nr. Midhurst.
Her parents were Charles and Mary Ann Murrant neé Smith, who had five other daughters in addition to Sarah, their names being Aggie or perhaps Agnes or even Agatha, Liza and Nell who were both deaf and dumb, Rhoda, who subsequently left home to live in London and had three children named Willie, George and Kate and subsequently went to live in Australia, and then there was Betty the mother of Arthur (illegitimate) and possibly an older child called Eva.
Betty can be fitted closer into these memoirs because I can well recall being taken on more than one occasion on a bus to East Lavant by Grannie to visit Arthur who by then had been admitted to a Children's Home for the Poor of Chichester. To the best of my knowledge I never met Arthur's mother and eventually the visits to see Arthur were discontinued and wonder now that the reason may have been because he was discharged.
Recently I have searched records held in County Archives and have found no recorded entry of an Arthur Murrant being discharged during the 1930's and the home was closed in June 1935 when all of the inmates went to new premises, Woodlands, St. Paul's Road, Chichester.
My grandmothers father, Charles', occupation is recorded as being a gardener on his daughter's marriage certificate but became the licensee of The Prince Arthur public house in Little London, Chichester. I can remember my mother telling me that during the birth of one or other of her brothers, she was sent to be looked after by her grandmother at the pub and of the disgust she felt on being given a meal by her Grandmother and found the sweet course on the same plate as her main course.
There is no clue whether grandfather Charles was there at that time but whether or not he was the licensee I have not found out, for it was and still is quite common for the licensee of a public house to be a woman. However he must have become better off then as a gardener because he had become the owner of a pony and trap.
Florrie vaguely remembers her mother telling her that when her grandfather, Charles Murrant died in 1916 when she was two years old, in his Will he left all his money to Aggie and her deaf and dumb sisters Liza and Nell.
A friend of his, a Mr. Bowers was his Executor and an agreement was that he would be the guardian of the three girls named in the will. Bowers was a local bee keeper who had a shop in Southgate, Chichester. I can remember the shop, for it had a fascinating display of honey combs and wasp nests in its window. Little did I know each time I looked in at them that the owner had played an important part in the family affairs.
As the guardian of these sisters, he arranged for them to live together in a house in Washington Street and were hardly ever outdoors afterwards for Florrie believed that the family looked on their disability with shame. But not by my Grandmother apparently, as Florrie was taken to Washington Street by her mother to visit her aunties.
In the beginning of this century there were hardly any houses extending past Washington Street and open fields and farm land extended northwards. I can remember playing and exploring in those to. But Gran must have disliked being so near the open countryside and hurried Florrie home afterwards, because she claimed to her that she cold hear wolves howling. What a way to frighten a child!
Some five or six years later the three unfortunates were placed in the Chichester work-house by their Guardian, much to the disgust of my grandmother according to Florrie who remembers her complaining that the so called friend of her father, having got every penny out of the agreement, then committed a dirty trick on the poor girls.
It is known too that when the Chichester work-house was closed, the women were transferred to the East Preston work-house, a long distance for Sarah to travel and who could ill afford the expense. I am told that when they were moved from Chichester, her son Fred gave her the money on her one and only visit there to see her sisters, an act of kindness typical of him. Whether Bower's decision was part of their father's wishes can now only be conjecture.
Archie Greenshield, West Sussex, 2001
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