Min & Fred Adams

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Ellen Brown with daughter Minnie outside Belle Vue Cottage no 1

Fred Adams born 1899 was the son of Horace & Rosina Adams

Minnie Brown born 1889 was the daughter of William & Ellen Brown

Fred and Minnie married in 1923

Fred and Minnie had one child, Phyllis Adams born 1924 married Bill Dell in 1948. click Bill & Phyllis Dell for their life story.

Hallmark 1975. "Tell Me About When You Were Young" Mrs F Adams, interviewed by Madeline Cleaver. (click Bill & Madeline Cleaver for more about Madeline).

Mrs Adams was born in Graham Cottages, now demolished, just below the entrance to Stocken Farm, but moved from there at three years old to the house she still ives in at 86 (Belle Vue Cottage no 1) Her father was a travelling chairman, travelling widely to obtain orders for chairs, but he died when Mrs Adams was not much over eight years of age and in order not to accept the Parish Charity and be known as a pauper, she and her mother made lace and did beadwork so as to pay their way, later turning one room of the house into a shop, when the village store next door closed.

Making lace one earned 1/2d or 3/4d per hour and supplied the cottons, but bead work paid more and Mrs Adams worked at that when younger and can remember the time she sat up all night with three others round a table all working on one dress which was required for a particular time for the theatre. A very small needle was used for bead work, made of steel but called a "straw needle" and Mrs Adams still has some in her possession. When young she used to suffer from toothache and found that if she stuck a needle into the tooth it used to ease the pain - or perhaps it was so painful doing that, that it seemed easier afterwards. Eventually she went to the dentist and had the tooth removed and the dentist showed her the tooth afterwards with half a beading needle still in it. She could remember breaking a needle one day and looked everywhere for the other half, but never found it!

Mrs Adams and her mother continued to make lace and do beadwork even when they kept the shop; they would sit in an evening in the room at the front of the house and just go into the back when the occasional customer came in. One night they prepared for bed after working all evening and when Mrs Adam's mother went to collect the cash box out of the counter drawer she found it gone, a terrible loss to people living on the bread line, but she did not want the culprit found as she was so worried about what might happen to him or her. However it was necessary to ask advice and the person turned to informed the police, although the money was never recovered or the thief identified. The cash box was found, however. It had been thrown over a hedge and Mrs Adams still has it. Time has softened that memory, no doubt, but the anguish the loss would cause at the time to two women struggling to make a livng alone in those days can be imagined.

Lace was made locally in the 18th century but eventually the "gentry" would not buy it because it encouraged girls to stay at home making lace instead of going to work in the big houses, so without big customers much less was made and, although there were still people living in the cottages able to make lace, it was hardly an industry. Then Mrs Tighe, who formed the Loosley Row & Lacey Green branch of The Womens Institute, came along with an order for 6 yards of lace, that is 2 yards for each of her three daughters. Mrs Adams was a child of perhaps 12 and this was her first order. She would come home from school at lunchtime and find time for adding a little to the lace, as she did later after school, telling her friends she could play only after she had done a little more. When it was finished she received the princely sum of 1/3d - 21/2d per yard and when a neighbour protested that Mrs.Tighe could have afforded to pay a child more for all that work, Mrs Adam's mother assured her that she was satisfied as that was the price set out on the sampler. Mrs Adams recalls buying a pair of woollen gloves for the winter with the money and being highly delighted with it all!

When in her teens Mrs Adams remembers taking on the making of 3 yards of scalloped lace while her mother was in hospital with a hernia, something which was extremely serious in those days. The pattern must have been very intricate and 400 bobbins were required in the widest part, while it took one week to work one scallop even when mother and daughter worked at it alternately after mother's return from hospital. Mrs Adams would do the household chores in the morning while her mother worked at the lace and then took over in the afternoon and evening. That this lace was something special can be seen from the price paid compared with the price of Mrs Adam's first order - 15/- per yard. Some lace which she made was shown in Oxford and won a prize, although Mrs Adams had not realised it would be entered in a competition when she made it, she only knew when told it had won her 7/6d, a great deal of money to her

1974 WI Golden Jubilee

1974. WI Golden Jubilee

Hallmark. A Tribute to Mrs Min Adams by Ted Janes

Mrs Adams was a life-long member of St John's Church, a founder member of The Womens Institute, a founder member of the 81st Club and one of the pioneers in getting a hall erected in the village in 1923; so there are many people more fitted than I to pen this tribute. But it is here, in the Village Hall Magazine that I want to concentrate on her devotion to the Village Hall, and as Chairman for 15 years I probably came to know her better in that respect than anyone. There can be no Village Hall in the county that could boast of a caretaker staying for 50 years - 1923 - 1973.

During the latter years from the hundreds of times I collected the hall key from her cottage, there was always a cheery word. I never heard her 'talk' about anyone, she got upset if anyone mis-used "her hall" and certainly the old coke combustion stoves tried her patience when they smoked and wouldn't burn.

Today when one goes to hall functions, it is different ladies in the kitchen for the various organisations. Not so in Min's days; she was always to the fore working, be it a Dance, Whist Drive, Concert, Child Welfare or Library Day.

In the war years of rationing and shortages she perfected making refreshments out of next to nothing. A lovely story was told to me of the newcomer who was buttering or more like "margerining" the bread, with Min supervising, she instructed - "spread it on once and scrape it off twice".

Unlike many 'true' villagers, she never showed any resentment to newcomers even if she had any suspicions, she certainly made me very welcome.

Her early life was very hard, she was born Minnie Brown in the now demolished Graham Cottages just below Stocken Farm. At 3 years of age the family moved to Bell Vue Cottage no 1, but before she reached her teens her father died, and so for Min it was no playing with the children from the school, but helping her mother to survive in the harsh world without a breadwinner, by making lace late into the evening or beading dresses sometimes all night if a particular dress was required, or looking after the shop which was one room turned into a village shop . . again for pure survival.

In the early years of the first world war she married Fred Adams. Unfortunately on his 19th birthday he was captured and taken prisoner when his health suffered which marred the rest of his life. Between the wars Fred and Min were an inseparable couple in Church and Village Hall affairs. Fred died in 1977 and soon after with Min's mobility failing she moved two doors down the road to her only daughter Phillis's home.

So in her 96 years she had lived in three houses and devoted her life to two public places; the Church and The Village Hall all on the Main Road of Lacey Green.

Min was a big woman, all her greatgrand-children affectiontely called her big-gran, but she also had a big heart.

In the last couple of years, when she went into Thame Hospital to give Phyllis a break, she became loved by the staff and inmates as she had by people all her life in her beloved Laey Green.

The Village Hall has lost the greatest champion it ever had. On the opening day of the new hall, it was to Min that I looked for approval that the new hall would justifiably take the place of the old one; I knew from her face that she thought her Bill (son-in-law, builder) had done us proud.

Our deepest sympathy is extended to daughter Phyllis, and all the very close-knit family around her.

Phyllis’s (Min & Fred's daughter) memories as told to Rosemary Mortham :-

As a small child, Phillis Adams, used to sit in the choir stalls with her parents at evensong.

They had previously attended the Methodist Chapel and Phyllis can remember that they had very good outings and picnics in the field opposite, where there was a pond.

Phyllis's mother Min Adams, told her that in 1929 her father Fred had a sudden calling telling him to go to church.  He felt he had to obey, and Minnie decided that she should go with him.   They were to become lifelong supporters of the church.   Fred was Vicar’s Churchwarden for 40 years.   Fred Martin was the people’s Churchwarden.   Phyllis believes that they may have been founder members of the choir under Reverend Steward.   She cannot recall there being a choir in the time of Reverend Gee

At that time the organ was hand pumped by one of the boys.   The organist was Nancy Hawes, and when the organ was running out of air she would wave her handkerchief to indicate that it required pumping.   The adult choristers enjoyed choir suppers with games in the vicarage.

Both Fred and Minnie were quite musical.   Fred played violin in Harold Williams' dance band with Ted Tyrell and one other member.  Min played the organ at the Methodist Chapel and did all the church washing.

Hallmark July 1977. A Tribute to Fred Adams. 1899 – 1977. By Vicar Bernard Houghton

Some infants seem to be chosen by God for special tasks in this world. Such was Fred Adams born in 1899, who soon after his eighteenth birthday was pitched into the vile trenches of Flanders in 1917, where he managed to survive at least one assault by a German who nearly strangled him; and at his nineteenth birthday was captured by the Germans and kept as a prisoner until the end of that grim war.

By 1953 he had joined the group of nearly twenty thousand Churchwardens of the Church of England and was soon coping with the duties of the job, when the Rev. Moreton moved and five years later when Robert Sharpe moved. He met me on a cold February afternoon in 1961, showed me round the Church and the empty Vicarage, and said that it would be good to have a Vicar's wife, and even some young children in the house after twenty-two years.

Although he hinted that a few of the congregation had been pulling in different directions, I soon realised that he was being very loyal to the whole parish, and very modest about the way he had shouldered many responsibilities in the village over the past twenty-seven years. On my first Sunday in May he came at 8.00am. to serve at the altar, I then found him next to me in the choir at 11.00am. and again at 6.00pm. and I learned he had repeatedly taken over the Sunday School when there was no Vicar; and that he and Min had usually put up at weekends the visiting clergy, and fed them, for months at a time. I also met him at the Guild meetings of the Servers nearly every month, and again was meeting with him with the School managers when we had to build a new school at Speen, and face £86,000 of new building at Lacey Green in the next fourteen years.

For a lot of this time, he had been Secretary of the Village Hall, and I believe had been helping in the Sports Club, so that almost every day of the week Fred was forwarding the work of the Church and the village, with the tremendous help of a dedicated wife. She, I discovered, had also been washing the Church albs, the altar linen and many surplices for many years, with no rewards; and saving for, working for and cooking for many Mothers' Union efforts over the years.

For 40 years Fred was also a Special Constable in Risborough. During my years here I have met many men who in the last war went through more grim experiences than I have ever had to face, and so I have tried to understand their feelings, with respect. This I have learned about those few who came back from the war in 1919, and who, like this later generation, mostly dropped out of Church life for good. Fred has done my faith a power of good, because I have seen him take on jobs that few men wanted, putting his faith in God into practice with a quiet courage, cheerfulness and unselfishness which over sixty years, since 1917, would not be easy to match. May his soul rest in peace: and he will be another good friend I shall look forward to meeting again.