Grandparents In Service At Kirkham Hall

A Memory of Kirkham.

Both my grandparents were in service at Kirkham Hall in the 1920s and 30s. My Grandma, Annie Morris, originally from Newcastle, joined her Aunt Annie (who was cook) there when she was in her teens and started as a scullery maid and later progressed to work "upstairs". My Grandad, Albert French, came orginally from the Yorkshire Dales, and worked at the Hall as a footman. His brother was also a footman at the Hall. We have a photograph of Grandad and other staff from the Hall holding a wreath that we think was for Lord Brotherton's funeral, maybe in the early 1930s. Grandma and Grandad met at Kirkham Hall in the early 1930s and although she then worked elsewhere, they married in 1938, living first in Welburn and then, for many years in Whitwell-on-the-Hill. Grandma ran the post office there and Grandad was the postman. One very cold winter in the late 1940s Grandad broke his hip falling off his bike in the snow on Kirkham Bank, waiting many hours to be found. I have many happy memories of them taking me to Kirkham Abbey as a child. Both Grandma and Grandad died in the 1990s, Grandma in Westow Croft nursing home, which was a maternity home in the 1960s and was where myself and my sister were born.