News about Alfred Ebenezer

Quite out of the blue I had some more background on my great grandfather, in the form of an email from my second cousin, Brian, who tells me he was at Cambridge at the same time as my oldest brother. He'd hit upon this blog.

Alfred Ebenezer Wenham ("AEW")

"AEW had three sons. William, Basil and Douglas. Douglas's elder daughter, Barbara, was my mother. My brother, sister and I all grew up in and around the Lickey; so I knew, and still know, The Old Rose and Crown. I was at school at the building higher up the hill, now known as Hillscourt. But it closed as a boys' school and now is the HQ and training centre for NAS/UWT.  I called in there recently and little has changed with the original buildings.  The Union has put up many extra buildings, but kept the main house. 
"The Old  Rose and Crown is now the clubhouse for the municipal golf course as well as being a pub/café.
"AEW is buried in the Lickey churchyard where the headstone refers to him being ‘of the Lickey and Oban’ where he moved to in 1918. He died at Oban in 1933. I have been shown round Kilbowie, Oban, by the caretaker. It is an outdoor recreation centre now, having been for a while a boarding house for schoolchildren coming in from the Isles each Monday-Friday." Fascinating - and various of his descendants have nursed fantasies of buying Kilbowie back as a dream holiday investment!

The old Kilbowie blighted by utilitarian council architecture
but still with the magnificent view over the Sound of Kerrera

Strangely enough when we first moved to Stanford in the Vale we found that one of Basil's daughters, Marcia Williams (if I remember right), lived in Great Coxwell about six miles away. In fact we still have a beautiful* horse rug with Basil's initials on it which she gave us. It rides around in our car! (*Jane protests that it's not beautiful, merely useful!!)

Funny old world, as one of my sons would say....