10 days with my Grandparents, Alfred George Wallace and Hester Elizabeth Hagger. Taken from an autobiography of Robert George Beatson Blair Wallace (my husband's mother's brother)

Bakewell was the home village of Alfred George and Hester Elizabeth Wallace, our father's parents, our grandparents never seen before.  Memories of this 10-day visit are dim, but the highlights still very vivid.

Wallace children: Peggy, Campbell, Beatson, Jeanne (Paul's mother)

Alfred George was the jolliest man I had ever met.  He is said to have been about six feet, slender, with a long thin face topped by rusty hair and the bushiest handlebar mustache imaginable.  My sisters would remove his ever-present, curved-stem pipe, grasp both ends of the mustache and lift them to get a kiss.  His wife, Hester, was  a small, quiet woman with dark hair brushed back into a bun.  I remember only that she was a doting mother and a loving wife.  Her kitchen and home were her domain.  Our Uncle Frank, Dad's youngest brother, still lived at home with his parents.  The welcome for these four strange Canadian grandchildren, nieces and nephews could not have been more loving and unrestrained.

Alfred George Wallace (A red head, there's hope, Erica)

Our grandparents lived in a large stone house with kitchen and parlor front windows overlooking a flower and shrub garden inside a stonewall fronting on Monyash Road.  Monyash Road runs northwest of the town square and is the main route from Bakewell to Buxton, some 00miles away.  There was an even larger flower and vegetable garden back of the house and an approximately 30 foot greenhouse which, according to Dad's sister Minnie, made it possible to have fresh vegetables year round.  The house is about 110, or so, yards up a steep hill from the village square.  Along the way you pass the Anglican All Saints' Church where each Sunday Grandmother would be found in the second pew on the left and Granddad would be 000limestone steps up a circular turret stairway in the bell tower with the other 11 regular bell ringers.  Also above Grandmother's head was a tremendous arched, oak ceiling, one of woodworker Granddad's still standing monuments.  Halfway between the house and the church on the opposite side of Monyash Road was grandfather's workshop above a working forge owned and operated by a friend and business partner.

That first evening was a children's delight.  After a late tea--dinner then and now was served at mid-day, we were all gathered in the large kitchen dominated by a cast iron double oven stove fired by slow-burning coal in a side firebox and a small open grate with firewood in the middle.  There, of course, was no such thing as central heating or radiators, or electricity.  When doors to either the house's front hall or cold pantry were opened, the chill air was evident.

Granddad sat in his big chair by the fireside while we in turn sat on a knee or cross-legged on the floor circling him.  For the longest time he played one musical instrument after another; his silver hand bells, his bugle (he was a Territorial soldier in the "Notts and Derby Regiment"), his violin, his mouth organ, his Jewish harp, his large and small wooden flutes.  Some times the music was interspersed with folk songs and ditties.

Meanwhile, Grandmother was taking the metal shelves out of the ovens, neatly wrapping them in newspapers, and then sliding on cloth covers.  What are they for, we wondered?  We got our answer when told it was time for bed.  We were led upstairs behind a candle bearer to the bedrooms where the wrapped hot shelves from the ovens were inserted between the cold sheets and would stay warm long enough until we fell asleep.  We were told to bring the shelves back to the kitchen in the morning.

In the ensuing days we visited the workshop across the road, climbed the bell tower at the church, and trekked to Burton Closes, an estate where Dad worked as a boy and teen-ager.

The workshop was a Rube Goldberg delight with big, metal wheels hung from the ceiling, belted pulleys, different size lathes and foot pedal boards to provide the power in the absence of electricity.  The floor was strewn with shavings, various ropes and hooks attached to the ceiling held pieces of work in progress from chair and table rungs to other furniture parts.  Behind the work benches were row after row of bracketed boards with small and large holes through which dangled every size and shape of wood chisel.  We were allowed to try our hand at "turning spindles" with Granddad providing the foot power,  It later was said that most of the hardwood used was salvaged scrap from commercial jobs, such as the church ceiling, the Banqueting Hall ceiling at Haddon Hall restored by Granddad for the Duke of Rutland, and the Cricket Pavilion on the Village Green.  These were mostly small furniture pieces such as end tables to be sold or given as gifts to family and friends.  The real exhibit of Granddad's woodworking was the parlor in their home.  Every inch, even th3e ceiling, was covered with wood.  This room, which ran the full depth of the house, rarely was open except on Sundays when relatives and friends visited.

Candlesticks made by Alfred George Wallace

After a few days we realized that Granddad disappeared at precisely the same time every day after tea, about 6 p.m. as I recall, and returned promptly sometime before 7 p.m.  The villagers said they could set their watches as they saw Granddad walk by.  It turns out he was on his way to the Wheatstaff Pub down by the River Wye, presumably for his pint with the neighbors.  He returned home with a small bottle of Guinness Stout for his wife's bedtime sip.

Another day we were allowed to climb round and round the stone steps to the church belfry where the twelve, very thick pull ropes were hanging in a circle through holes in a flatboard ceiling.  Another few feet hanging in a circle through holes in a flatboard ceiling. Another few feet up a ladder and we were shown the various sized cast brass bells dangling from huge beams.  Thursday was practice night, so I'm guessing that's the night we went up.

Another day we all trekked to a nearby estate named Burton Closes.  This was the country home of two bachelor brothers who owned and operated a marine shipping business out of Manchester.  One was named Alexander Campbell Blair, for whom my young brother is named, and the other, George Beatson Blair, after whom I was named.  Various members of the Wallace family, including Dad's sister Minnie as a young girl and later as a widow, had been employed by the Blair brothers.  My father as a boy did odd house and garden chores for them and after World War * he worked as a chauffeur and we lived at the Blair's home, Whalley House, Whalley Range in Manchester.  That is where my two sisters Margaret and Jeanne were born.

After these ten fun-fulled days, Dad and Mother came back from London to collect us for a new home, a New Year and a new school.  Before leaving, Dad asked his Mother is he could have electricity which he had learned was newly available in the village installed for them.  Her answer, it is said, was:  "I don't want that strange stuff running around my house."  She was quite content with the kerosene lamps and candles she had always used.

This was the one and only time that I would be with my grandparents.  She died May 17th, 1939.  He died, in Dad's words, "Three lonely years later," on February 27th, 1942.  Both are buried on a hill in Bakewell Cemetery not far from their home and church of nearly 50 years.