Just to prove that this web site, and this page in particular, actually does work, I was delighted to receive the following from Andy Morley:
I thought you would like to know that since you forwarded James Pettit's contact details to me earlier in the year, I've been in touch with both James and another cousin once removed, Mel Pettit.
From them I had a scan of an obituary from the Bury Free Press dated around 1930. It relates to an earlier James Pettit, my own great-great-grandfather :
Another link with the local past has been severed by the death, on
Sunday, at his residence, "Jesmond," Sparhawk Street, Bury St Edmunds, of
Mr. James Pettit. Mr Pettit, who was in his 89th year, will be recalled by
the older generation of our readers as the proprietor of the coach-building
business in Mustow Street, which had a great vogue years ago, when the horse
and carriage was a familiar sight in our streets...
Mr Pettit, who was a genial and generous man, was born at Glemsford, and he
was one of four brothers who have each lived to be over 80 years old. Mr.
Pettit started work at eight years of age, and as a young man he obtained an
appointment in Bury St. Edmunds and used to walk home to Glemsford on
Saturday nights and return by the same means the following evening.
Afterwards he built himself a bicycle with wooden wheels and iron rims, and
on this weighty machine he continued his week-end journeys to his native
place. He used to relate that on one occasion he had a mishap when
descending Chedburgh hill, which ended in the need for a new suit. He
forsook his bicycle for a three-wheeler of the same type, which he also
constructed. After steel tricycles came into Bury, he took to one of these
for many years, and he was a familiar figure riding it through the town
until he was over 84 years old.
Mel Pettit tells me that the diversion to Chedburgh, cause of the tumble, would probably have been to visit my great-great-grandmother who came from there, and who James was courting at about that time.
Mel and I have since been to look at a ralli cart (similar to a trap) built by James and Clement Pettit at their workshops in Mustow Street, for the then Rector of Hartest cum Boxted.
It is still in that family, but is for sale, and I would cheerfully buy it if I could find a suitable place to keep
it. If any of your website readers have any ideas on that score, I'd be grateful to hear their suggestions.
Over to you, dear readers.
Labels: Morley, Pettit
