Introduction

Charles Henry Phillips was born on January 26th 1868 at 225 Albert Road in the Aston district of Birmingham, England. Charles Henry’s grandfather, Thomas, traded as a green grocer in Edgbaston, Birmingham. His father (also named Thomas) was born in 1834 and started work as a journeyman gun stocker. In 1860, Thomas, married Maria (aged 22), the daughter of Joseph and Maria Ann Hughes (from Norwich) - and the census taken the following year finds them living with her parents at 76 Aston Street (1). Also in the house at this time were their two sons, John, 21,Joseph, 17, and a general servant, one Elizabeth Shuker from Wellington, Shropshire. Joseph was the proprietor of an iron and brass casting business employing "seven men and seven boys".

Thomas and Maria were to have nine children. These people were, of course, aunts and uncles to our parents yet hardly anything is known about them. Their first child Kate was born and baptised in 1861; the next daughter, Maria, was born two years later at Yates Street, Aston. Shortly afterwards the family moved to 252 Aston Road where Alice was born in 1864 and Thomas followed in 1866. Charles Henry, who was born at 225 Albert Road, was baptised from 115 Moland Road in 1869. In the census of 1871 we find the family living at 11 Gem Street, Aston Manor, Birmingham (2) - Thomas now a metal warehouseman - and employing a domestic servant named Emma Williams. They had four further children: Walter in 1870, Joseph (1872), Ada Louisa (1874) and Beatrice in 1877.

By 1891 we find them back in Albert Road but at number 327 this time where Jane Sheppard was working there as a domestic servant. Thomas was described as employed as a brass caster, Charles Henry a pattern maker, Walter an engineer’s turner. Joseph was working as an estate agent’s clerk and Ada Louisa a dressmaker.

Man and boy

We think that Charles Henry attended Bishop Ryder School, Aston, and then worked in the related trades of pattern making, cabinet making and general carpentry. At some stage he learned to play the violin and worked with orchestras at various Birmingham theatres including the Grand in the evenings. This caused a rift within his family, as they looked down upon people working "on the stage". Was this the reason for the lack of contact with this part of the family?. He also gave violin lessons and was well versed in the works of Shakespeare and the Bible, both of which would be quoted at the children.

Charles Henry remained a bachelor into his thirties and was still moonlighting as a musician. He continued working, possibly at the Hughes Brass Foundry, at it was there that he made a friend of one Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Yapp and their three children. Mrs. Mary Jane Yapp (nee White) was to become our Grandmother. On the 20th May 1905, following the death of Mr. Thomas Yapp, Charles Henry, (then 37) married Mary Jane, who was pregnant with his child, and he also took on her three children - Alfred , May Beatrice and Vivien (or Viola) - from that previous marriage. We now know that her oldest son, Walter White, was born before her marriage to Thomas Yapp.

By 1908, houses were being built nearby in Davey Road, Witton, by (we believe !) Charles Henry's brother, William John Phillips, who lived at Kenilworth Road. It seems likely that Charles Henry was able to put his carpentry skills to work on them. A couple of years later he purchased three of these properties from W.J Phillips for a total of £475.00 and rented them out for the sum of 7/6d. per week. By January 1911, one of the houses (No. 126) no longer appears in the rent book and is when, I believe, the Phillips family took up residence. (The property was later renumbered to No. 144 when more houses were added to the road.)

In 1921 Charles Henry sold the house next door, 142, but continued to rent 140 until 1927 where the rent book entries cease. The tenants, Mr.and Mrs. Parker, must have bought it and I remember them being there until at least 1959. (This reminds me that as an 11yr old, we had a cat called Monty (named after the Field Marshal) who was not the Parker’s favourite feline.)

Continued in column 2...

Please contact us

If you have any questions or comments about the information on this site in general, or you have further information regarding this article, please Get in touch by leaving a message in our Guestbook. If you don't want the message to be added to the Guestbook, just say that in your text. We look forward to hearing from you.

Page added: December 20th 2007
Last updated March 15th 2012

Family Reminiscences

As mentioned above, there was a rift between Charles Henry and the rest of the Phillips family. Uncle Edgar remembers a cousin called Joe (Hughes) who lived on Chester Road , who visited on a pony and trap, owned some houses on the other side of Davey Road and paid off some “debts” on the Davey Road properties. Aunt Ivy recalled him as Uncle Joe. He was the son of Joseph Hughes, the foundry owner, and Charles Henry's aunt, Jane Phillips.

The house at Davey Road must have been crowded with our grandparents and their six children. Mom (Beatrice) told me that the girls slept with grandmother in one room, the boys in another and grandfather slept in the bathroom. Somehow they all fitted round the kitchen table at meal times. There was a piano in the sitting room which was played by Edgar and Beatrice. Did the others also play? They had an early radio (in those days , wireless) and grandfather was always amazed that music from London could be heard from a box in the corner. Its DC voltage came from accumulators (wet batteries) which Edgar had to take to a garage to be charged and the aerial was a wire strung between poles the length of the garden. As far as I know, all the Phillips children attended Canterbury Road Junior School, the girls moving up to the Senior School while the boys moved to Birchfield Road Senior School. In those days there were fields between Davey Road and the school. Mom said they climbed a stile and walked along a lane (Broadway) to school.

In the first World War, both Alf (Yapp) and Walter (White) were enlisted in the army. Aunt Olive remembers the arrival of a telegram saying Alf was missing, believed killed. One evening after she had been put to bed, the back door opened and in walked Alf. Olive recalled he had brought her a box of chocolates. He had been a Prisoner Of War and had somehow escaped.

According to Mom the house at Davey Road was always busy with the comings and goings of the family, various boyfriends, girlfriends and neighbours. This would be between the years 1920 to 1935 and prompted grandfather to refer to it as the ‘Do-drop Inn’. During this time we find Alf marrying Rosie and working in an attic workshop in Lichfield Rd. Aston, building bicycles with two brothers named Crane who would go on to found the Hercules Cycle Company in Aston. The brothers Crane were later to be knighted. Edgar went to work at Hercules as did Beatrice, after a short spell in service for some evil old bat in Sutton Coldfield. Leslie, always known as Bob to the family, (this, apparently, came from Bab, which is a Brummie expression), also began work at Hercules.

Finale

Charles went to Australia when he was 21 and returned when he was 24. Olive remembers that this prompted Viv to break off her engagement to a reporter in London and leave for a new life in Australia herself. Ivy worked at Kynock’s on ammunitions at this time.

We see from a letter found in the back of the rent book that in January 1922 Charles Henry had offered an old violin to Hawkes & Son of Denman St. London, to be valued and sold. It was deemed to be German, of little merit, in poor condition and worth £5.00. It was returned forthwith. Were they short of money at this time? There is a story of a violin being sent to Viv in Australia to be used by her daughter, Margaret-Ann, and a photograph seems to confirm this story.

I know little else about Charles Henry until his death on 28th March 1939. Olive remembers travelling to his funeral in cousin Joe’s posh car. The house was sold in accordance with his will but grandmother remained as a tenant. This was at the beginning of World War 11 and with the family having married and moved on and with Beatrice’s husband Ted away in the Navy it was decided that she would move back to Davey Road with her son, Roy for the duration.

After the war, grandmother went to live with Aunt Olive in Northfield where she died, leaving Beatrice and Ted (Mom and Dad) renting No.144 with their two sons, Roy and me. They were later able to buy the house with the aid of a loan from Mom’s sister,Ivy.

Footnote 1

Joseph and Jane Hughes had five children in all. The youngest daughter, Ida, was born in 1884 shortly before Joseph died. Ida married a German industrialist, Hugo von Grundherr, in a big society wedding in Birmingham in 1908. Among the guests was a Baron von Richthofen - a well known socialite and racehorse owner of the day. A look at the dates, however, scotch a long term fondly held family tradition that he was the Red Baron of World War I fame. After the war, Hugo and Ida were divorced. She remarried in 1921. Her husband was Nelson Norman Wimbush who had been received severe gunshot wounds during the war and whose face was reconstructed by the pioneering plastic surgical work of Dr Harold Gillies at the Queen Mary's Hospital, Sidcup, Kent. Their daughter, Mary, voiced the part of Julia Pargetter for 13 years in the BBC Radio series, "The Archers".

Footnote 2

All the addresses mentioned here are very close to each other in what is now the Aston Cross area of Birmingham. Albert Road runs parallel to Victoria Road from Six Ways in Aston down to King Edward’s Grammar School. At the time of writing (137 years later) the road is still lined with the villa type Victorian houses and now has a high immigrant population. The houses today look to be in a fair state of repair and No. 225 still there. It is quite possible that houses were renumbered between the ten-year censuses, rather than the occupants moved. The same family (the Clews) occupied the two houses to one side of them in both censuses even though the numbers were different (1871,1881). The brass foundry now in Woodcock Street, Aston, is next door to the swimming baths which are still there. Gem Street and Aston Street are still identifiable within the campus of Aston University, where, coincidentally, my work has taken me to the buildings that now occupy these sites on numerous occasions.

References

1. England and Wales Census 1861: Birmingham St Mary: RG9 2155 Folio 30 Page 6
2. England and Wales Census 1871: Birmingham St Peter: RG10 3108 Folio 81 Page 16
3. Post Office Directory for Birmingham 1867, Kelly's Directory: "Historical Directories": A University of Leicester Project.
4. "Adams Street", Birmingham (about 1905): "Slum Collection", Birmingham Library Services

Derek Evans is Charles Henry Phillips grandson

Return to Top of Page