GRANDMA & GRANDAD BATTY
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My mother's Mum was born Catherine Violet Harrison, in York, on August 16th, 1895.
Her parents were Helen Mc Cauliffe and Harry Harrison, who were both born in Ireland in 1866 and 1861 respectively, though we don't know why or when they came to England...

My mother's Father was Harry Batty, and alI I know at the moment is that he worked as French Polisher, and apparently had a somewhat 'spontaneous' attitude to money and finance...!

Catherine Harrison and Harry Batty were married about 1914, and although I know that they lived at various address's in Leeds - including Binks St., and Gloucester Terrace - the only house that I knew personally was the one in Parsonage Street, just south of Burley Park, to the west of Leeds city centre...

This is the house that I associate with Grandma Batty - and my own childhood memories of her - and also with the four children that she raised with Harry Batty, until his death in 1938 - a year after my parents first met...
Parsonage Street
Parsonage Street, Leeds, around 1940


Catherine Violet Harrison about 1911
I don't know when or why Catherine and the Harrison family moved from York to Leeds... And I don't know when or how she met Harry Batty...

But
after they were married they went on to have four children... and as far as I know, all of them were born while the family was living in Binks Street in Armley...

According to my brother, Grandma Batty used to move houses quite frequently, but the early links with Armley are interesting because one of my mother's oldest friends was a woman called Anne Greenwood...

Anne has - as far as I know - always lived in the Armley district of Leeds, and there is a rather wonderful image of her and her family - along with a 1960's Ford Zephyr - on the page for Alex and Helena...

Of the four children - two went on to have families of their own:
Helena - who married Alex Selina; and Joan - who married Jack Gledhill...

And two did not:
Maurice Batty and Billie Wood...

Harry Batty

Binks Street, Armley c.1940.


A group photograph of the ''Self-Help & Harmonic Society'': Burley, Leeds, c.1920.
Catherine and Harry Batty are sixth in from the right, both wearing hats...

Right: Catherine (Harrison) and Harry Batty around 1917


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Harry Batty, probably in Binks Street around 1922.
The older man on the left in doorway may be Harry Batty's father...

My cousin Helena remembers hearing of a fourth daughter called Ruby (or Ruth), who apparently died when very young... but I don't have any more information about her at the moment...


Harry Batty with the four children.
[Maurice, Billie, Joan, Harry, Helena]
Taken around 1924, probably in Binks Street.


Clockwise:
Maurice, Helena, Billie, Joan.
Taken about 1927
By the time I remember Grandma Batty she was living in Parsonage Street, and my main memories of the house are...

The smell of soot and the black soil between the flagstones in the backyard...
The walk with a torch at night to the communal toilets along the street...
Auntie Joan's pile of 'Picturegoer' magazines...
and...
The wind-up gramophone, with the enormous horn... and Frankie Lane singing 'Ghost Riders in the Sky'... or Spike Jone's 'Hawaiian War Chant'...

Left: Burley Road about 1930

Catherine Batty and Helena in 1941

This was the year that Helena married Alex Selina, having met him through her elder brother Maurice. Alex and Maurice met because they both worked at Blackburn Aircraft in Leeds...

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Grandma Batty and Helena in Burley Park, with my elder brother Tony, sometime around 1947 (A year before I was born).

Burley Park was an interesting 'playground' for me as a small child, as it had a rather odd 'covered footbridge' over the railway line... a 30' high slide... and an old wood and iron roundabout, that would bring on a seizure for today's Health & Safety Inspectors...

And it was also where I would take Soda - the surviving Scot's Terrier of ''Whisky & Soda''... - for walks... - and where he disappeared under mountains of leaves in the Autumn...!

Burley Park around 1954.
Grandma Batty is on the far left with, on the main seat:
Billie Batty (Wood), Tony Wood, Mrs. Gledhill, Mr. Gledhill, Helena Gledhill (baby), Helena Selina, Alex Selina, Joan Batty (Gledhill).
Jack Gledhill is standing, and I am in the foreground...

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If my early memories of Grandma Selina are based around her house in Oak Tree Crescent, and the chickens, and the smell of bread... and the old valve radio... - Grandma Batty is a mixture of house AND travels...

She used to take Tony and myself all over the place... quite often - and quite literally - at the drop of a hat...

Day trips to the seaside... with 'half a shandy' in the back of the bus - at one of the pub stops on the way back...

A 'works outing' to Blankenberge and Brugge for five days... - where we peddled 'racing cars' on the sea front, and Grandma brought back four watches at £1 each, hidden in her headscarf...

Tony, Grandma Batty, and me: Blankenberge, Belgium c. 1954
Left:
Me, Grandma, and Tony on a day trip to 'somewhere by the sea', about 1953...
Bridlington or Scarborough would be the usual contenders, but this doesn't look like either... - so it could be Morecambe or Skegness...!
- Not to mention railway lines that have disappeared...

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When Grandma's daughter Billie moved to Nigeria with her husband Tony Wood (around 1954), Grandma wasn't a long way behind visiting them...!

I can't remember the name of the boat she sailed on from Liverpool... but I do remember that it belonged to the Elder Dempster Lines...

The photograph on the right was taken on board her ship, the afternoon before it sailed for Lagos, West Africa...

With perhaps some irony, Auntie Billie was to undermine her marriage to Uncle Tony some twenty years later, by being unable to curb her own cargo-ship wanderlust and sense of independence...

Grandma Batty's last home in Leeds was in Leafield Towers, not far from our house in Stainbeck Road...

I
was 13 when she died...


Left to right: Tony, Grandma Batty, Helena Selina, and me. Liverpool c.1956.


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