Further Interesting Notes about Win Greenfield (1940-45), who died last year
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I first met Win, on the day I started work with the Inland Revenue (now HMRC), and, about a year on, it was decided I should sit next to her, as I completed my initial TOHG (tax officer, higher grade) training. By chance, I was in the ladies – and discovered the acoustics were such that I could hear every word being said, in the office next door. I heard Win expounding, at great length, so that the young, effete management inspector was left in no doubt of her displeasure at having to look after a trainee, when she had so much of her own work to do! Diplomacy was needed, I decided!
When, a few days later, Win was explaining the lay-out of my new desk, I saw an opportunity to remark, “I believe we have a mutual acquaintance”. Win was intrigued – and delighted, when I then explained that one of my close Guiding friends had seemingly started work at the tax office, with Win. That was the key which unlocked a friendship which continued until Win’s death last year, and, while I only sat next to her for a little over a year or so, before moving off, to start my inspector training, we always stayed in touch and, whenever my work commitments allowed, we would meet up for lunch, with other old colleagues.
At one such lunch, about 8 years ago, the talk was of family history, and I spoke of tracking down some distant cousins. Win wondered if I might be able to help with a small family mystery: a poem, written by JB, on 22nd February 1866, to his wife, on the occasion of their golden wedding anniversary. I undertook to see what I could do – and, a few weeks later, was able to show Win, and her sister, Heather, the family tree I had drawn up, and to advise that JB was Joseph Barker, their great-great grandfather, a bricklayer, who had married Susannah Kingsbury, at St Mary’s at the Walls, on 22nd February, 1816.
In 2014, Liz White investigated further and the poem appeared in the Lexden History Group’s newsletter. The Barker family had lived in Rose Cottage, Lexden Heath, on the north corner of Heath Road and Straight Road. Joseph died, on January 21st 1870, but Susannah lived on in the home, until her death, on 16th May 1885 and was shown on the 1881 Census as an 83-year-old laundress. The couple are buried together in Lexden churchyard, near the corner with Church Lane and Lexden Road, although their headstone has been lost.
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Lexden Rose Cottage – February 2nd, 1866
A few lines on entering my Fifty-first year of marriage and my Seventy-fifth year of my age.
Bless God He has preserved us
That we might live to see
Fifty years a married life
And keep the Jubilee.
Thank God we are both in good health
Though I am very lame
I’ve suffered much for years past
And I still remain the same.
Thank God our children are grown up
And are all of(f) our hands
And some are living far away
Though not on foreign lands.
The Oldest one is forty-nine
The youngest Twenty-five
But of all the Children we have had
There is but nine alive.
We have twenty-eight Grand Children now
Without going any further
And if I live before long
I shall be a Great Grandfather.
I little thought the day we married
That we should live to see
So many happy years together
And keep the Jubilee.
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Tina Powell (1968-75)
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