Ghosts

 

Went over to the White Horse, Clun for lunch - again - today, before Leo bailed out back to North Wales for a college lecture later this afternoon, and an exam tomorrow: the rest of us will follow on Saturday. Pictured in the grainy blow-up above, is the said establishment circa 1907. The publican's name on the licensee's plate above the door: one Elizabeth Graves, who, as I've mentioned before, was my great-great-great-aunt - I'd left out a *great* in the previous mentions: it's difficult to keep track of it all. However, we realised today, that the very Victorian lady in the doorway of the inn alongside the younger woman in servant's attire, was almost certainly said aunt. By the time she died at the age of 85 in 1922, she'd lived a colourful old life. Born in Fromes Hill, Herefordshire in 1837, at the age of fourteen she was living in as a servant in The New Inn, working for her aunt Agnes Hodges, sowing the seeds for a future career as a publican, learning the trade from the ground up.

A decade later found her working in service as a housemaid for the mayor of Hereford, and surgeon, Thomas Cam. Four years on, she met and married a Shropshire man, Charles Oldbury, landlord of The White Horse, and moved up there to run the place with him. After his death, she married the wonderfully-named Job Graves, who took the license for the inn, until his death in 1896, whereupon it ceded to her for the next quarter of a century. By the time she sold up in 1921, she owned a good chunk of the top of Market Square, including the butcher's shop and the house next door to the pub, selling it all at auction, along with a parcel of land just outside town. I can only say that I have nought but admiration for her tenacity and spirit, having made a modestly successful life for herself out of the very poor start she was born into, just a county away.