Ray was a Leicester man who came to work here in wartime and has enjoyed living in Mathon and stayed ever since. Kath is one of a family that has lived here for hundreds of years. She has always taken an interest in village history, has saved photographs and newspaper cuttings, and although over 80 has a memory good enough to name the children on a school photograph taken 70 years ago.
The 1891 census shows her grandfather, Charles Jones at Tan House, his wife, Emma, his sons Thomas and Albert, (Kath’s father) and Charlotte Calder, his mother in law. Ann Calder is shown on the Tithe Award of 1840, farming Old Country, with 150 acres.
Charles Jones was a farmer and sand merchant, who owned Chapel Cottage, built the house called “Nidus” where Ray and Kath live, and rented Dobbins Farm from the Church Commissioners.
Albert, and Percy who was born three years later, joined the army in the First World War. They both returned in 1918, but sadly Percy was so badly wounded that his life was cut short. Charles persuaded them to work for him and Percy moved to Dobbins. Tom, an elder brother had been sent to work in the mines in South Wales instead of joining the army, and was killed by a runaway truck. Later Percy died at Yew Tree.
He was 59, and the family were sure that he would have lived much longer but for the war wounds
One early memory is the great flood of 1924. Sydney James lost his pigs
which were washed away, and Nurse Pitt had to abandon her bicycle and travel by horse and cart, to deliver Kath’s baby brother..
Sydney and his wife had a bakery, and village shop, and Kath remembers him riding down Southend Lane on his mare, with a huge basket on his arm full of fresh baked bread. Kath was a frequent visitor to the shop. One of her father’s men sent her to buy 5 cigarettes in a paper packet for 2d., Woodbines or Park Drive.. The trouble was that he would often want another packet the same day, and Kath wondered why he couldn’t buy two packets at the same time. The shop supplied all kinds of domestic needs. Block salt for preserving was often asked for then but rarely needed now. And many children must have come in and asked “What can I have for a ha’penny Mrs. James?” Sydney had suffered a very serious head wound in the war, and sadly his life too was cut short., a reminder that the war continued to add to its victims after 1918.
Some years ago, the W.I. asked members to write essays describing their village, and entitled “Within living memory”. Kath’s essay was chosen, and published in the book titled “The Herefordshire Village Book”
Kath Blood’s brothers, Tom & Albert, and a fine litter of piglets.
Mrs. Ada Jones, her son, & Mr. And Mrs. Davis hop picking