Min & Fred Adams

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 daughter

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 Min & Fred Adams and Bill & Madeline Cleaver for more about Min and 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 Cottages 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 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 shp, 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 inform 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'sfirst 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 ntered 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

Phyllis’s 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.