My Mothers Memories

Hello, my Great Grandmother, who I believe passed away in 1955, some time before I was born, was Norah Dingley, from Cropthorne. She lost her husband Frank Edward Forrester in WW1. I wonder if and what relation she was to your mother?

Hi Antony
Norah was my mother’s aunt. She died before I was born but she was a legend in our household because she was very dear to my mother. My mother was born in 1917, the first living child of Kathleen Rose Dingley, Norah’s youngest sibling. Kathleen was busy building with the businesses she had just started up with her husband in London and wasn’t terribly maternal so she gave my mother to Norah who was widowed and lived in a little cottage with Reg and who very much wanted a daughter. However when my mother was 2 years old, her sister was born and my grandmother wanted my mother back because by then she could afford a live in Nanny. My mother remembered the trauma of the separation until her dying day. Norah would travel weekly up to Streatham from Cropthorne see her. When my mother was older she would regularly make the journey to see Norah. They remained close and the last time she saw her was when Norah was dying of breast cancer and she took my elder brother, born in 1949, to see her. My mother died in 2021 aged 104 and I promised to put some of her ashes on Aunty Norah’s unmarked grave in St Michael’s Churchyard but I am yet to get round to it and not sure if I need permission. Aunty Norah was a shining light in my mother’s childhood. I think we are a DNA match on Ancestry, which isn’t surprising really as my mother’s cousin Reg was your grandfather. They were very close friends too. My Grandmother adored him and he would often come to stay in Streatham.