Part One
George Henry Parmenter is a man that has before now not been commemorated with an article here in the Woodhouse Warbler however his influence on Mansfield Woodhouse over the course of his life was significant. Among other things he was a farmer, a local politician, a businessman and the founder member of the Old Mansfield Woodhouse society.
In 1984 he wrote a short history of his life entitled; ‘Green Fields Beyond’, a copy of this small slim volume sits on a shelf in the library and I was struck first by the preface which tells us what Henry envisioned the aim of his memoir to be, he tells us that his object was to ‘…give inspiration to the youth of today. With careful forethought, good health and hard work one can survive. What man hath done, man can do…’. This simple encouragement to ‘keep going’ was both poignant and timely for me and I knew immediately that he was worthy of a mention here.
George was born on the 6th of October 1897 in Mansfield Woodhouse. Descended from farm labourers his father, Henry George Parmenter, originally hailed from Brentwood in Essex.
George gives us some information on his father’s start in life by telling us that he began his working life as a child. Most working-class children of this era would be sent to work at a young age, to contribute to the family income. George tells us that his father’s first job was as a bird scarer and then as he grew, he and his brothers became navvies. Moving from place to place to find work often hard manual labour on railways and in construction. The term ‘Navvy’ was a derogatory colloquial name for an itinerant worker and actually derives from their work digging canals, otherwise known as ‘navigations’. According to the National Railway Museum ‘…by 1850…’ itinerant labourers such as this numbered over ‘…a quarter of a million…a force bigger than the army and navy combined…’. They worked backbreaking jobs for long hours often living and sleeping in poor conditions and walking miles to find work. However, the Railway Archive tells us that a successful labourer of this kind had the potential to earn ‘…up to thirty shillings a week…three times more than an agricultural labourer…’.
Georges family came to be residents of Mansfield Woodhouse purely by chance. As a navvy Georges father Henry had to move around to find work and George tells us that typically his father would walk ‘…three miles per hour, ten hours a day, thirty miles in all…’. In the mid to late 1800’s as the industrial revolution gathered pace, it became increasingly common for people like Henry to travel large distances from where they were born to find employment in heavy industry and factories.
One day along this journey across the country for work, Henry was faced with a choice, he could continue his walk north to Manchester or instead to the Midlands ‘…where the mining industry was beginning to flourish…’. To make a choice he took a stick from a nearby hedge and held it aloft, whichever direction the stick pointed would be the way he would walk. The Midlands it was, and he continued on his way, eventually finding lodgings in Mansfield Woodhouse, where he would come to build a life and raise a family.
The Midlands at this time was a thriving centre of industry, mills, mines and factories were appearing all over the district and therefore work was much easier to find. When he arrived, Henry started work at Langwith Colliery which had been founded in 1900.
George’s mother was a local girl called Jane Dawes, and she had begun her working life just as early as Henry, at the age of twelve, as a mill girl at Hollins Mill.
Mill work was hard physical labour, with long hours and plenty of dangers from the machinery and poor air quality. George tells us that his mother would start her work at ‘…6.30am with little or no breakfast…’. Despite living and working in what George describes as the ‘…lovely dale of Littlewood through which ran the river Meden…’, she and her family were ‘…not living on the fat of the land and their poverty was very real…’. He goes on to tell us that one result of this grinding poverty was Tuberculosis. TB was very common both in rural and urban populations at this time. Caused by poor sanitation, it was the responsible for of an average of 2000 deaths per year and every family would have had their own experience of Tuberculosis. George writes that in the early years of his mother’s life there were four deaths in her family alone caused by TB.
The early lives of both George’s parents were characterised by poverty and hardship. These experiences go some way to explaining why George developed the work ethic he carried with him through his own life and why hard work and perseverance were the key not to joy or success in his mind but to survival.
George was the first of four children and tells us his early years were spent in the house of his grandmother while his parents were saving for a home of their own.
At four years old George began school, attending the Church of England National School. It was at the age of six however, that his ‘farming-life’ began when his father started to take him regularly to the farm of a local farmer, sadly unnamed, who George proudly tells us was ‘…a bit of a tyrant to everyone except me, who was his blue-eyed boy…’. He would regularly travel with this farmer on his pony and trap, taking the title of ‘…gate-opener and general helper…’. This formative and loving relationship with this farmer and his wife, ‘…an angel if ever one lived…’, and the work he undertook there set him on a path he would follow for much of his adulthood and he fondly describes these days as ‘…some of the happiest…’ of his life.
George’s memoir though short provides us with some incredibly valuable and personal insights into the life of Mansfield Woodhouse in the early 20th century. From his recollections of outings and feasts held by the bellringers club, feasts with the members of the pig club, and even events held by the Duke of Portland. The duke’s dinner was held each year for the old folk of the village and meals were also sent to the homes of any older people too frail to attend in person. Through these memories George paints a picture of Mansfield Woodhouse as a community who came together on a regular basis to share produce, celebrate the seasons and pool resources. He even mentions the village having a ‘blanket fund’, ‘…where for the price of a shilling you could loan a pair of blankets for the winter, a real godsend for the poorer families…’.
The Horticultural society was another pursuit that George took up during his early years that would have an influence on his future work. He became involved because of his father’s interest. Henry quickly became ‘…one of the best in the district…’ at exhibiting his produce and George followed in his footsteps, winning first prize for his peas in the July Show 1907.
While George did not consider himself an able student, eventually with the help of a friend of his parents he won a scholarship to the Queen Elizabeth Grammar School. This school was built in the late 1870’s in Mansfield. Victorian Grammar schools such as this placed great emphasis on self- improvement and based their curriculum on that of public schools. Having this calibre of education behind him would drastically improve Georges prospects and potential and he considered this opportunity to have been ‘…the secret of…’ his ‘…success in life…’.
Like many working-class students, however, George was unable to continue his education as long as he might have liked. During the Cambridge entrance exams George considered it more prudent to find work to support his family, saying that he ‘…suddenly realised that because of the poverty my family was in that it was time to earn some money…I was very conscious of my parents’ position…’.
Despite his grammar school education and his mothers’ best efforts to secure him a position as a chemist’s apprentice, George still struggled to find profitable work. As a result, his early working life was characterised by low paid positions. He took a job at a colliery, h does not mention which, first as a pony driver before becoming a weigh clerk, following his father’s footsteps into the mines. Though small, his wages were a much-appreciated addition to the family coffers.
He would supplement this income by growing and selling produce from his garden, planting;’…four to five thousand celery plants for sale at three old pence per score…’. This small side business would be something he would go on to develop later in life.
By this time in his life the First World war had begun, and George enlisted in the 4th Lincolnshire Regiment and stayed a soldier till his discharge in November 1918.
After his discharge George returned to the pit for a short time. In the years he had been away improvements to working conditions and safety had taken place including the introduction of electric light. It was an opportunity to develop land as part of the Service Mens’ Settlement Scheme that would begin the next chapter of Georges life and come to be his life’s work…
Sources
Green Fields Beyond by George Henry Parmenter
