The ‘Summer House’ Gardners
The Gardner family identified on the Mission Church Photo: From the collection Alan Smith
Last December we posted an article with this photograph and identified most of those who appear. We were able to date the image to autumn 1894. We recognised James Gardner in the centre who was tragically to be dead within weeks of the photograph being taken. Here it is again with only his family members named.
We asked Kris Needham, the granddaughter of Maud from the photo, and who had been a great help to us in constructing the article, if she would tell us more of the family story.
It’s important to know there were two large but unrelated Gardner families living at the Point in the late 19th and for most of the 20th centuries. The Gardners in this story are the descendants of Thomas Gardner, born 1807, a labourer and fisherman originally from Middleton.
In the census records for 1881 we see an unusual and complicated mix of generations living together in the Summer House - the small house at the top of the Lane dating from the early 1700’s when it was used as a lookout for merchants watching for their ships entering the river.
They were –
Luke Gardner, a fisherman born in Overton who was 51 (we remember his smiling face in old photographs). He is listed as head of the household.
Margaret Gardner, Luke’s half-sister, and housekeeper, aged 31.
James “Shirley” Gardner, the 12-year-old son of Margaret (from here on referred to as Shirley).
And another James Gardner, also a fisherman who is 19 years of age - a half-brother to Luke and Margaret.
Three half siblings, and a son, 40 years apart in age. Let me explain.
A family history
Luke, Margaret, and James were all children of Thomas Gardner, a fisherman of Overton who was twice widowed and thrice married. Luke is the son of Sarah Braid, Thomas’s first wife. Margaret is the daughter of his second wife Ann Woodman and James the son of Esther Kellet, Thomas’s third wife.
Esther Kellet, who had two daughters of her own - was already a resident at the Point on First Terrace (Perhaps number 10). In 1859, shortly after the death of her first husband William Kellet, she married Thomas who moved from Overton to live with her, bringing Luke and Margaret.
Esther was 41 and Thomas 55 when James was born at Sunderland Point.
Thomas Gardner died a few years later in 1867 and in the 1871 census we find Esther, her daughters, her son James (now 9), and Luke (now 42) living together in the house on First Terrace. Luke is listed as head of the household. Margaret has left to work as a servant in Blackburn.
Ten years later when we come back to the census of 1881, Esther had died and her two daughters had left home. Luke and James have moved from First Terrace into the Summer House. Margaret has returned bringing Shirley, who was born in Blackburn, and joins her step brothers in the Summer House.
The Summer House in the 1880s as the family would have known it before the extension was built later by Shirley: From the collection of Wilton Atkinson.
James and Betty
In November 1883, James married Elizabeth (Betty) Airey, from Capernwray, in the church at Overton. They were both 21 and without surviving parents. The witnesses to the union were his cousin William Townley (Junior) and Bessie Woodhouse - who later became William’s wife. It’s very likely the evening skies would have been a spectacular red and orange after the eruption of Krakatoa two months earlier.
James brought Betty to the Summer House and they started a rapidly growing family and by the time of the 1891 census the family had left the Summer House, probably in search of more living space. James and Betty, together with their children and Uncle Luke, moved into Cotton Tree Cottage on Second Terrace.
Margaret had become ill and began a long stay in hospital. Shirley went to board temporarily with the Bagot family on First Terrace (Number 4).
A John Walker photograph dated c1894: From the collection of Wilton Atkinson
In the photograph above, evidence from other images suggests the man on the extreme left is James Gardner with perhaps two of his children, Maud, and Mabel. Uncle Luke is in the centre - always easy to spot. Looking carefully behind him, is James’s wife Betty holding baby William. The other children may also be related but we have no proof. The man at the back is James ‘Rising Sun’ Spencer (due to his ruddy complexion - and temper).
Three years later at the end of 1894 James and Betty’s life together was brought to a tragic end when James died from a ruptured ulcer when out fishing at sea, aged only 33. His death will have been ghastly news for Betty who was pregnant with her eighth child.
Maud Gardner was just five years old, with three older siblings and three younger ones.
The story of Betty and her children was typical of many single mother working-class families of the time, a life of great hardship and survival.
It must have been grindingly tough for Betty. In the struggle to make ends meet she worked as a housemaid and farm servant. Fortunately, three of the children, Annie, Maud, and Luke, were admitted to Ripley School in Lancaster, beneficiaries of a fund set up for fatherless children.
For five very difficult years Betty remained a widow, then in 1899 she remarried, to a local fisherman William Butler who was seven years her junior. William was a widower with one child, Lucy. After their marriage William and Betty went to live in Glasson Dock. Two more children followed – Elsie born 1900 and in 1901, Hilda.
Uncle Luke
Uncle Luke never married, yet his contented face beams out from three well-known photos with a child on his knee - an indication of a much-loved relative. He was one of the last Sunderland Point fishermen to use the board method of netting before moving to drift nets. Luke, with his friend William Townley (Senior) were also among the last fishermen on the Lune to use traditional fixed baulks - a net fixed to stakes driven into the sands - before it became illegal. He continued living in Cotton Tree Cottage until his death in 1898.
Luke Gardner in the centre, smiling with children at his knee. At the top of the Lane: From the collection of Alan Smith
Shirley - and a return to the Summer House
Shirley became a fisherman and a pilot and was on the river for nearly 50 years. He is one of the better-known faces of Sunderland Point appearing in photographs taken by John Walker in the 1890s and Sam Thompson in the 1930s.
Belle Gardner: From the Gilchrist family collection
James ‘Shirley’ Gardner: From the collection in the Lancashire Archives
Shirley married Belle Jackson in 1893, the daughter of Thomas and Margaret Jackson who lived on the Point in Gravel Cottage. They moved into Summer House and lived there together for more than 40 years until Shirley’s death in 1939. They had one surviving child, a daughter whom they named Nancy, and her middle name was, of course, Shirley.
The front of the Summer House in the 1930s, much improved by Shirley and Belle: From the collection of Wilton Atkinson
Margaret, Shirley’s mother never recovered, and after a stay of more than a quarter of a century, died in hospital in 1924.
Postscript
We are moved by the hardship faced by Betty after James' tragic death; we asked Kris if she could tell us what happened to the eight children?
James and Betty’s oldest child Thomas served in Scots Guards in WW1 and came back to the Point in Gravel Cottage, to be known locally as Captain Tom. Of the other children (in order of birth), Annie died aged 26 just two years after getting married. Nellie was only 9 when she died.
My grandmother, Maud was 29 when she died leaving three small children. Young Luke was killed on the Somme in 1917. Mabel married but had no children, William who was also childless migrated to Australia. Young James also served in WW1 and later became a policeman.
Maud Gardner now as a young woman: Photograph Gainsborough Studios Lancaster, from the collection of Kris Needham
Luke Gardner, Corporal, Field Artillery. Photograph Gainsborough Studios Lancaster, from the collection of Kris Needham
Captain Tom Gardner in the uniform of the King's Own Regiment: Photograph Gainsborough Studios Lancaster, from the collection of Kris Needham
Mabel Gardner. Photograph Gainsborough Studios in Lancaster, from the collection of Kris Needham
Betty, now a Butler, continued to live at Glasson Dock until her death in 1948, aged 86. Four of her children to James Gardner and one of her children to William Butler predeceased her. She always had a love of children, was hard working and kept a spotless house. She was remembered most by her grandchildren as a wonderful cook who won prizes for her baked bread, cakes and biscuits and set a generous table with choices of main course.
Betty Butler (formally Gardner) and her granddaughter Alice (Captain Tom’s daughter), near the Memorial Hall in Glasson Dock about 1936. Collection Kris Needham
We asked Kris to finish the story with her connection to the Gardner family
My father George Gregson Parkinson was one of the three small children left without a mother when Maud died. Maud had married Bob Parkinson who owned a sports outfitters shop in Market Street, Lancaster.
George married young and had two daughters Florence and Alice, he lost his first wife Alice shortly after little Alice’s birth.
He joined the Navy in WW2, as a radio mechanic on aircraft carriers and met his second wife Alva in Sydney, Australia. He came back to marry her after the war, and I am his third daughter. My childhood was enriched by his stories of Lancashire, and I feel a strong connection.
For me Sunderland Point speaks of the life of this large extended family, their happiness, their many hardships and those of other fishing families in this unique village.
Kris Needham is the great granddaughter of James Gardner (1862-1894) and lives in Australia.
We are very grateful to Kris who has taken the time to write this article describing three generations of the Sunderland Point branch of her family. It is a great and moving read and adds important information to our village knowledge.