My Great Grandmother Mary Eve

A Memory of High Easter.

Mary Ann Eve was from this area. She was my great-grandmother and joined her husband Robert Chilvers in South Africa after the Boer War. she died when I was sixteen years of age and I knew her very well. A feisty little Victorian type lady. I still have her family Bible and sewing machine and other nick nacks, my mother has always been meticulous with family history. In fact my great grandparents were my godparents. My Aunt Eleanor (in SA) has a beautiful framed picture of Mary Ann Eve as a single woman posing in her dress with a beautiful bustle.

Mary Ann was an amazing cook and apparently worked in one of the great houses in the area as a very young girl.

My mother joined her husband who was away in Germany with the RAF in England just before the end of the Second World War.

She was 18 years old when she left S Africa, newly married, and travelled alone all the way on one of the Castle lines - quite scary as the war was still on. She recounts the Doodlebugs in Pleshey as well. Upon arrival in England she travelled straight up to Pleshey to stay with Uncle Fred and Aunt Harriet. She initailly stayed with her great-uncle - Frederick Eve - and his wife Harriet in Pleshey. She loved her time there and has recounted many happy tales, especially the end of the war party in the great barn in Pleshey. My dad was still in Germany and she did not see him for some time.

Mom also had her 21st birhtday in Pleshey.

In fact Uncle Fred and Aunt Harriet wanted her and my dad to stay and take over their house in Pleashey as they had no children. However three years later she returned to SA with my dad where they settled close to my grandmother Elvera Eve Concannon in Pretoria.

I visited Pleshey in 1972 and stayed with Aunt Vera Stock at a farm they were managing - I remember the Roman Ruins and the barn was still there.

I am returning to the area in June this year - I am so excited as I am now widowed and have a daughter in Dublin, my mother is still alive and she well remebers the little viallage with the two pubs, the Wite Horse and The Leather Bottle also The Street.

I remember visiting my second cousin who had bought the house my great-grandmother was born in - it had just been re-decorated and all I remeber is the great big red Aga and the sloping ceiling and little door upstairs - I do not remember her name, her maiden name was Stock - Aunt Vera's daughter. My South African granny was also Vera - same as her cousin.

Mom in fact would love to visit but she is too old now - pity.

Susan Mary Jones (nee Farrell)