ROB & VAL
HAYWOOD
of Leicestershire & Hull
welcome you
we are from: Griffydam ~ Coleorton ~ Coalville ~ LEICESTER ~ Hinckley ~ Blaby ~ Aylestone . . .connecting the family names Haywood ~ Stevens ~ Bennett ~ Swanwick ~ Fretter ~ Holt ~ Manderfield ~ Ison ~ Smith
view the
SIDE MENU
if not already visible
| Click for
LEICESTER MEMORIES a great site, hundreds of photos of decades past 
Mum's dad, Henry Holt, aged 61, in 1954, at his 2nd daughter's wedding in Coalville |
A poor animation of Leicester's Clock Tower, c.1960, and the old BOVRIL sign. Looking back, that was almost a 'welcome to Leicester' sign when walking down Gallowtree Gate towards The Clock Tower. |
Click for
HULL THE GOOD OLD DAYS a great site, hundreds of photos of decades past 
Mum's dad, Henry Holt, aged 78, in 1971, at a grandson's wedding in Aylestone |
JACK'S JOURNEY :: The Journey of one Royal Marine
Mne Jack Stevens 1916 ~ 1989
Lyness - Towyn - Durban - Suez MEF - Ceylon - Exton - Dalditch
mostly explaining MNBDO I & II and interpreting an RM service record
The Royal Air Force and
Military Matters
the photos of the late Norman Haywood 1948 - 1952 :: mostly Malta
the story of Able Seaman Jack Hill RN
26.6.1921 - 31.8.1942
of Ravenstone
and the loss of the 'S.S. Jack Carnes'
====================================================================
SUCCESS !!
We have found and made contact with the DOYLE family, directly intheir home town of Wexford. Their 'long-lost' photos and docs have now gone
home to Wexford itself. Thanks to all who saw the Facebook messages and helped.
Now, we still need to find the CROSBY family of Coalville
We'll see if Facebook and NextDoor can do the same trick !
The CROSBY family of Coalville, relatives of Beryl Crosby,
her daughters "Sara Jayne Crosby" and "Kathryn Claire Crosby" ....
we have photos for you! I've searched the web for both girls, to no avail.
See more details below .. ..
|
A MESSAGE FOR THE
CROSBY FAMILY
I hold a small number of
slides of the CROSBY family of Coalville, the
family of Beryl Crosby and her daughters.
There are many slides of holidays and trips
in the 1970s that I feel sure that younger
family members would like 'returned' to them.
I really don't want to have to 'skip' them,
they are this family's heritage. I'm sure
someone would treasure them, if only I can
find them.
We would be keen to hear from
a member of the family who would like to take
possession of this small collection, being
such a great shame they have been lost to
them for so long. The big problem for me has
been tracing them, and now with Ancestry, and
the help of Facebook and Nextdoor, we finally
have a chance.
I inherited them when my
father died in 1997, as he was Beryl Crosby's
second husband, and they lived for a while in
Coaville. Email me, and tell me your
connection to this family, give me some
assurance you are the right people, and I
will arrange something suitable to us all. I
really don't want to have to dump
these.
So there are three
boxes of family slides
This message was
first posted in early 2020
rhaywood@rhaywood.karoo.co.uk |
I can also now offer help with interpreting RAF and RN
records, as well as army.
Leicester City
Transport
a personal recollection 1968 - 1973 - mostly buses
Includes a full article, very long, on the fine details
of conducting a
bus. Carries a boredom warning!
Online Photo Repair and
Restoration service
scan and 'repair' cracked, torn, faded or damaged photos,
mostly b&w, military as speciality
RICHARD III
mostly nonsense : can't 'scan and repair' him, but we can
make a shrewd guess.
... his burial and what really happened. Maybe. Perhaps.
Who knows.
Genealogy and our own family
history
-->
An Admiration for Vine Weevils .
.
. . word 'admiration' is not to be taken too seriously,
but perhaps this extensive study and article will help you.
Dig even deeper and you will find a host of other interests
as shown on our Links Page.
We hope you enjoy your visit to our website.
If you have any queries, we would be pleased to hear from
you.
email: click the button on the
left
| ARE YOU IN NEED
of photos being restored? 
BRING YOUR OLD DAMAGED PHOTOS TO LIFE AGAIN! Do you have any old photos which are crinkled, scratched or damaged in any way? Perhaps after flood or other accidental damage. Don't throw them away - they can be restored. Maybe I can help ... see my full page on our PHOTO REPAIR & RESTORATION SERVICE Just click the link or menu button to go to a new page displaying many before-and-after examples of my work. military - naval - transport genre photos a speciality Also slides, glass or film, card or plastic mounts, and negatives either loose or in strips. |
|
OUR FAMILY 
|
|
FAMILYHISTORY
Genealogy is one ofthe fastest-growing hobbies on the world wide web. Rob and Val have researched most of their families and you will find more details here. For more general genealogy links which might prove helpful if you're just starting out, click here. The table below shows some of the main names in our respective Leicestershire family trees. We moved to Hull in 1978, but we have no family here. OUR JOINT FAMILIES
We are members of the Leicester & Rutland Family History Society. H0789. A firm belief: "EveryEnglishman should know and be aware of his own history." Here's a quote by another Englishman: "England has become a dwelling-place of foreigners and a playground for lords of alien blood. No Englishmen today is an earl, a bishop, or an abbot; new faces everywhere enjoy England’s riches and gnaw her vitals, nor is there any hope of ending this miserable state of affairs." So said William of Malmesbury around 1130. William's father was Norman, but he was English through his mother. He lived in the early 1100s, just half a century after the Conquest, and was a monk at Malmsbury Abbey. He's famous now for being one of our very earliest historians. It seems he told it how it was. And he didn't get into bother with 'the authorities' for saying it. No PC brigade in evidence back then. We forget our own history and heritage at our peril ! |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
MEMORIES OF LEICESTER CITY TRANSPORT 1968-1973 I joined Leicester City Transport in 1968 as a bus conductor and later trained as a driver. The image above was my cap badge! Local public transport was important in those days as fewer families had cars. There were more buses around 40 years ago – and certainly many more than are seen today. Some people are actually interested in all old forms of transport and there is an abundance of photographs here to interest any present-day bus enthusiast, and especially those with a specific interest in LCT. Go to a 5-page photo montage of LCT vehicles and journey back in time! LEICESTERSHIRE BUS MEMORIES Grantham to Leicester to Coalville to Coleorton .. c1955 a text article originally posted on LEICESTER OVERSEAS, now modified and updated and posted here. A child's-eye view of rides on the Midland Red and in Leicester, training days on LCT, and now also a short article on ticket machines.  Leicester City Transport : Leyland Atlantean PDRA/1 : PBC 115G Their first, and very flowery, overall advert bus, in 1971, on what was then the relatively new service 62 to South Wigston. LEICESTER TRANSPORT HERITAGE TRUST was formed in 2007, and now has a new website. They have an interest in, and preservation of, all manner of road transport over the decades in and around Leicestershire, with a special focus on the Midland Red and LCT. |
T.S. TIGER Leicester Sea Cadets and Royal Marines Cadet Unit in honour of my time there 1965-1972 This is a link to an organisation that gave me some of the best 7 years of my life. Click the Tiger badge above to go to their site. But please read on first. For any lad in his mid-teens, with nothing particular to do and seeking adventure and a wider interest in life, I can't recommend joining a cadet unit highly enough.
Sea Cadets or Marine
Cadets, the adventure and fun and mates are
the same. It's all part of our same Royal
Navy, and it's all a question of
preferences. I originally joined the Sea
Cadets in 1965, but was quickly 'poached'
by a Marine Colour Sergeant, and that was
that. I stayed on as a sergeant-instructor
till, aged 22, I and my wife left Leicester
to go and live in Hull. I always intended
to offer myself as an adult volunteer to
the local Sea Cadet Unit in Hull, but shift
patterns forbad, the chances passed, and to
my regret, I never
did.
The Royal Marines Cadet
Unit, at TS Tiger in Ross Walk, Leicester,
was the saving of me, and gave my life
direction and focus at the time of a family
break up in my mid-teens. I could have so
easily 'gone in the other direction', and
as people say, become a wrong'un. Instead,
I went camping, rowing, caneoing, rock
climbing in North Wales, and made a great
load of mates. I learnt pride in myself, my
uniform and the Corps, and got some badly
needed discipline.
I can't thank them enough.
Except to put a link here and wish the CO
and all the lads and lasses down there, who
work so hard for each other and their proud
unit traditions,
great good fortune for the future. I still remember the 28th October every year, and last year, 2024, was a special celebration.
1664 is what we
celebrate.
To go directly to their website for more information, address, contacts, etc, click the fearsome tiger above. Or ring them direct on 0116 266 2865, Tues or Thurs evenings, 19:00 to 21:30. (I see now there is also a Sea Cadet unit at Wigston. A quick call to the above number should get you the details.) For guys n' gals in Hull that have an interest in the sea and would like to take part, T.S. IRON DUKE is Hull's own unit, based in Argyle Street. They can be contacted by clicking the link, or email tsiron.duke@yahoo.co.uk JACK's JOURNEY is an account, from his memories and his RM service record 1940-45, of my father-in-law's travels to the Middle East and Ceylon by troopship during those dangerous years. It tells how we mangaged to piece his story together, long after I had been told and forgotten a lot of it. Above all, it explains what an MNBDO is. |
Past devotees of Tim Airey's LEICESTERSHIRE OVERSEAS might be forgiven for
blinking on sight of this logo! Unfortunately
Tim's site has not returned, but much of it
is still available at the remarkable WAY BACK MACHINE. This
website is unsurpassed when searching for old
web information. More correctly known as the
Internet Archive, it is a brilliant and largely
unknown resource which also includes old media,
music and image sites. I might have also
recommended a similar archive, called
SCREENSHOTS. Although that site has worked for
me in the past retrieving other lost websites,
for some reason, it doesn't work with this one.
By and large, most of Tim's surviving material
that can be found is on the WAY BACK MACHINE,
even if that is no longer updated.
|
|
THE BATTLE OF
BOSWORTH
and what happened to King Richard III Below is a quote from the 1813 account of William Hutton's tour around the Bosworth Battlefield, which includes some of the written and local knowledge of that time, some 350 years after the battle itself. William Hutton's book is now online, at Google eBooks, and can be read here on my Sutton & Wawne website where I help out at the local museum. It's hard going, but here is an extract towards the end, page 220 I believe: "Richard it is universally acknowledged performed prodigies of valour. Desperate, perhaps, at the last, he rushed furious into thickest of the fight, slew numbers and among them the standard-bearer of Richmond, with his own hand; and fell at last, ingloriously (if tradition may be credited), by a treacherous blow from one of his own followers. His body was thrown across a horse and carried for interment to the Grey Friars at Leicester. After revenge and rage had satiated their barbarous cruelties upon his dead body, they gave his royal earth a bed of earth, honourably, appointed by the order of King Henry the Seventh, in the chief Church of Leicester called St Mary's, belonging to the order and society of the Grey Friars." So there we have it. Folk going back even to before the Battle of Waterloo knew exactly where Richard's body lay. And all these years, every time I drove over West Bridge, I believed it was down there, under the bridge and deep in the mud under the river. Shucks! So, now he is re-interred in Leicester St Martin's. Appropriately, that is now the chief church in Leicester, just as the lost Grey Friars had been in medieval times. And as someone pointed out on the very long, ill-informed and frequently ignorant discussion on the BBC blog, it is somehow fitting that the birthplace of DNA fingerprinting should also host the remains of an English monarch only positively identifed by exactly that modern-age technique. And that re-interrment is literally only feet away from where he was originally buried .. and back then, in great haste and lacking some ceremony, I've no doubt. Whatever the rights and wrongs of where he should have been re-interred, this short story is my take on what happened over five centuries ago, and may solve the mystery of what happened to his feet. Maybe. Or not.
JUST TWO FEET --
a likely tale
Of course, if I'm wrong and an alliance of certain 'distant relatives' find out, it could cost me an arm and a leg ! |
The first stop for news, sports and features
for Leicestershire and Rutland.
