In the spring of 1914 it must have seemed as if fortune was smiling on my great-grandparents, Benjamin and Rosina Lane.After struggling for months to find regular gardening work, Ben now had a permanent position at a grand country house. More important still, his beloved daughter Mary, who had not been expected to survive after birth, was now a thriving one-year-old.
As they settled into their new home, the couple must have felt they were on course for the kind of steady rural life that came with domestic service. Working in tune with the seasons and the rhythm of a large estate, they could, with any luck, look forward to bringing up a family happy in the knowledge of a relatively secure future together.

But just as a single shot on June 28 1914 would signal the beginning of the end of Europe as they knew it, so less than three years later a sniper’s bullet would bring an end to all their hopes and dreams.Based on correspondence, a little notebook in which my great-grandmother in her 100th year recorded the major events of her life, and my memories of what she and my grandmother told me – this is their story.

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Ben had met Rosina Sleeman when she moved to Kempley, Dymock, to work at the Victorian vicarage, opposite the newly built church of St Edwards the Confessor.

He had been born in the village and spent most of his life in that area of the Gloucestershire/Herefordshire border where the Lane family can be traced back to 1770. The youngest of eight children, he lived at Cole’s Acre (now Cole’s Cottage) and later 400 yards along the old greenway, Broadmarsh. He received a basic education at the village school before going on to do farm work and, later, gardening. At the age of 14 he was already working as a farm servant, according to the 1901 Census.

By contrast, Rosina came from Cornwall where she had lived with her unmarried mother at her grandparents’ home. She loved school and taught as a Sunday school teacher before entering domestic service as a child’s nursemaid or nannie. Keen to see something of the world, she had worked for families in London and Teignmouth, Devon, before arriving in NW Glos to look after the only child of the Rev. Goodall, the Vicar of Kempley.

In the notebook in which she recorded some of her memories, she gives us a glimpse of her life in the village and the appearance of the landscape before the dawn of intensive farming: “It was all country and I used to go for long walks with the baby and I made friends with a lot of the village folk,” she wrote. “In the spring, the fields and lanes were covered in daffodils and the villagers picked them for dye.”

It is not certain when she started to work for the Reverend Robert Goodall and his wife Caroline Edith, but she is registered as living at the vicarage in the 1911 Census. Perhaps she was there as early as March 1908 when their daughter, Margaret, was born.

80% of the village was owned by The Beauchamp family, and with this medieval rite came the “living” of the Vicar of Kempley, effectively M.D. of Kempley PLC. He will have recruited Ben who was employed as a cowman and under-gardener at the 1868 built vicarage.

So, Rosina’s ‘situation’ by 1910 was within a household which included a cook, parlour maid, housemaid and “a girl called Lizzie whose job it was to wait on the nursery”. Thus came about the fateful meeting with Ben Lane (employed at the Vicarage in 1908).

“It was a good place and I was treated well and had all my meals sent up from the dining room,” she wrote.

The Goodalls entertained a lot and also travelled frequently, taking their nannie with them so Rosina had fond memories of a visit to Edinburgh and Lincoln where she had the luxury of her own flat during their stay.

Wherever she went, Rosina had the gift of being able to appreciate the best of the place – whether it was the architecture of the buildings or the flowers of the fields around her. Very proper but outgoing, she appears to have made friends easily and enjoyed exploring and learning about new places.

Clearly the role of a nannie offered opportunities and a standard of comfort not open to many in the “lower classes” and as such it must have been a difficult decision for Rosina to decide to marry and leave that life behind.

Indeed it seems that Ben was the one who was most keen to tie the knot. In a frank and rather unromantic account of their engagement, Rosina recalled that he had “worried” her for an answer after his mother had died because his sister was now keeping house for him and he wanted to get away!

Recollecting the way my great-grandmother would have used the term, there is certainly a suggestion of a desire for independence or at least not to be reliant upon his sister, yet it seems in order to achieve this he needed a wife of his own. Perhaps the two are linked. Maybe he had been inspired by this independent, young woman who had arrived in the narrowly parochial village with tales of her travels and time in the capital where, residing in Portman Street, she had often seen Edward VII’s carriage passing on its way to the house of his mistress, Mrs Kepple. Perhaps Ben had been content to live at home until he met Rosina.

Whatever his motivation, Rosina was obviously not a woman to be rushed, as Ben’s mother had been dead for 11 months by the time she married him. The wedding took place on the 24th of June 1912, but at St Paul’s Tupsley, in Hereford, rather than at St Mary’s or St Edward’s in Kempley. This must have been because Rosina was now working for the Greenland family in Hereford., Spinster of parish of Tupsley.

Perhaps it was for the benefit of my teenage ears, but she stressed that she gave it a lot of thought before consenting to marry Ben. My great-gran always projected a very proper identity in line with our idea of a Victorian nannie. Yet I could tell from the covers of the library books my aunt brought her that she concealed a romantic soul beneath the prim façade.

As it turned out, Ben made a very good husband; and their marriage was a happy one whatever reservations Rosina may have had about going ahead with it. Tellingly, she was to keep a huge photograph of him in a gilded frame on her bedroom wall until the end of her days.

Presumably, upon marrying, Nannie had to give up her job in Hereford and returned to Kempley to live with her husband: “Our home was at Broadmarsh and we had a large garden, a paddock with apples, plums and pears and damson trees.”

Lying in a hollow on the east side of the parish, the cottage (demolished in 1960s) was apparently prone to flooding. However this fact does not feature in Rosina’s account of it; if life here was hard then that’s not how she remembered it, although her description of it as lonely hints that she may have missed being in the heart of the village.

It was at Broadmarsh that their daughter Mary, my grandmother, was born on March 31, 1913. Medical opinion at the time was that she was too weak to survive and Rosina was advised that it was best to “leave her on the bed to die”. I don’t know whether it was a doctor or midwife who gave this advice (I thought it was a doctor but whether I was told or just assumed that, I can’t say). Whatever the case, Rosina dutifully did what she was told. That might have been the end for the poor child had she not heard her crying later in the day and, following her instinct, picked her up and fed her.

Mary was the apple of Ben’s eye and it is through her eyes that our picture of him was really formed. She remembered him as a lovely, gentle man who would let her climb through the bars underneath his wooden chair then up under the armrest onto his lap and into his arms. The chair was a family heirloom for decades until it finally succumbed to woodworm.

Mary was in no doubt that her father was the “softer” of her parents, whereas her mother was every inch the strict Victorian nannie – an epithet she laid claim to for the rest of her life. Everyone knew her as “Nannie”.

Why she left the Goodalls’ is not clear. Perhaps it was because Margaret was no longer a baby or because she knew that the family would soon be moving to Bristol. Whatever the reason, she remained on very good terms with Rev Goodall who continued to write to her well into the 1930s.

“When Rev Goodall left the vicarage, Ben could not get a gardener’s job and had been answering adverts without success when he saw an advert for a gardener at Penoyre and he was lucky to get it,” she wrote.

More of Ben’s character is revealed in the reference Rev Goodall wrote for him. In it he says:

“Benjamin A Lane was in my service as under-gardener and cowman for nearly six years. He is steady and obliging and takes great interest in his work. He has good knowledge of ordinary gardening. I have confidence in him and feel sure he will do his utmost to give satisfaction to his employer.”

Rev Goodall also took the opportunity to highlight Rosina’s skills and qualities: “His wife was formerly nurse, in our employ, and she is an excellent needlewoman and was always most exemplary in her conduct.”

The reference must have impressed Mrs McClintock, the owner of Penoyre, because Ben got the job and with it the kudos of being put in charge of the house’s fashionable Italian gardens. So it was that, with Mary just 12 months old, the family left Broadmarsh for a new life in Wales. It must have seemed that everything was coming together for them.

In any case, his career was on the rise in step with Edwardian society and the creativity of the Arts & Crafts movement. What is more, the job came with accommodation in Battle Lodge: a cottage with good facilities for the time plus its own vegetable plot; an idyllic spot to bring up his beloved daughter. A letter from Rev Goodall reveals that it must have been somewhat more comfortable than Broadmarsh – with running water among its benefits.

“Dear Ben, I was very glad to hear from you this morning and to have such good news of you – you can write a very good and interesting letter.

“It is very nice to think of you all in your new home and fresh surroundings and I feel sure the change will be good in every way and you must feel that God has ordered your lot and brought you where you are.

“It will be a great convenience to you both to have water laid on in the house and not have to fetch it 100 yards or more! And it is nice to have a modern cottage and a good garden.”

The reference to God ordering their lot would come to have a ring of irony, but for now the couple, both regular churchgoers, must have felt blessed.

Penoyre certainly was a stunning location. Built of Bath stone and commanding the most majestic view of the Brecon Beacons, the house was Italianate in style and its estate was sizeable. And it was only a summer residence!

“Penoyre was a lovely place and the gardens were kept beautiful,” Rosina wrote. “There was a butler, a footman and hall boy. Mrs McClintock had a lady’s maid, Mrs Middleditch the housekeeper, a kitchen and scullery maid and three housemaids, but she was only in residence for four months a year and a few weeks at Easter. She employed 14 gardeners with four on the home farm Penscodyn, three woodmen, a carpenter, a mason and handymen.”

Penoyre can be translated from Welsh as golden headland and it appears the family’s early days there certainly had a golden glow, but dark clouds were on the horizon. Within months of them moving, the First World War broke out.

At first they may not have been overly concerned about the war – like many they probably believed it would be ‘over by Christmas’ but as the fighting went on their fears for the future must have grown.

Ben was not like the young men who rushed to join up at the beginning of the conflict. He was a mature, family man who would have harboured no illusions about the realities of warfare. There is no doubt that he did not want to go to fight and, indeed, it seems he signed up only when it became unavoidable – he joined the South Wales Borderers.

To read more about Ben and Rosina’s story read Part 2 “Duty and destiny in a desert land” (below), and to hear Angela’s introduction click on the audio player here…

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