George was the first born of my Great Grandfather Henry Spilletts second wife, Sarah Emily Lynn. He was the younger half-brother to Henry Spillett, my Great Uncle who ran the bike shop in Oxted in the first half of the 20th Century.
Before long, the Spilletts had moved from Bognor in Sussex to settle in Oxted, Surrey where they lived as a family with six children and a granddaughter and went to school there, worked there, married, and died there. The Spillett family in Oxted was a significant presence in old Oxted. They painted and mended coaches and sorted the wheels. They ran a pub, The Wheatsheaf, for many years as tenants, and ran a bicycle shop.
The 1901 Census return shows the Spillett family living at High Street and George was four years old at this time. Ten years later at the age of 14, George was a scholar who probably attended the village school in Beadles Lane as did all the family during their early years. As did my Father, Bill Carver, who was the son of Ada, George’s older sister.
The 1911 Census return shows George living with his older half-sister, Ada, my grandmother, who at the age of 20 is a Laundry Hand. My cousin Sue, who used to live in Oxted, told me that Ada probably worked in a laundry in High Street which was still operating until the 1950’s. Also in the household with their parents were William aged 12 and Laura aged 4. There was also Henry Spillett Snr’s granddaughter, Gladys who at the age of 7 was being brought up by her grandparents while her mother, Mabel was working as a Domestic Servant in a house in Limpsfield. Although, when Mabel was still working there in 1911 is not certain. Mabel married Harry Winter in June that year. Gladys herself married in 1925 but between the Census returns of 1911 and 1921, she had left her grandparents house and had become a Nursery Maid living with the Constant family in Briars Cross, Limpsfield. This sows the seeds for another avenue of Spillett research.
The 1911 Census return for the Spillett family in High Street, Oxted. (1911, Spillett, Crown Copyright, National Archives)
The most dramatic part of George’s history takes place between 1911 and 1921.
At the age of 15 George joined the Royal Navy as a Boy and trained on HMS Ganges which was an onshore seamanship training school based in Harwich. Part of his training was on HMS Donegal, a cruiser class battleship. He was also based at HMS Vivid for short spells when not serving on a ship. This was another training base in Plymouth.
George also served for short spells on four other ships, until he was posted to HMS Valiant as an Able Seaman. He served on this battleship for four years between 1916 and 1920. This ship saw action during the Battle of Jutland and the ship came through this decisive battle of the First World War unscathed. George and all his fellow crew members survived the battle.
This information is based on some minimal research and his service record. I am certain that George would have been decorated for his service and it would be interesting to find out what an Able Seaman received and where those medals went.
George Spillett’s Royal Navy service record (UK, Royal Navy Registers of Seamen’s Services, 1848-1939 via Ancestry.com)
After George was invalided out of the service in 1920 with a War Gratuity (a payment of £1 for each year served during the War to ease a serviceman’s passage back into civilian life), he returned home to the Wheatsheaf to live with his parents. He was aged 24 and had got a job as a Fishmonger with Mac Fisheries.
This was an era of business amalgamation with companies such as Mac Fisheries taking over small independent fishmongers to sell fish product that was being processed and transported from the company’s own processing plants in major coastal towns in Scotland and England. The man behind Mac Fisheries was Lord Leverhulme and his company became Unilever. This was a similar case with dairies when United Dairies began buying up small independent dairies.
I suspect that this was the case in Oxted where there may have been an independent fishmonger that was taken over. Mac Fisheries was very new in 1920 and George may have struck lucky in getting a job there.
George did not remain a fishmonger for ever. In 1928 he had become a Warehouse Man. This was recorded on the Marriage Register when he married Eva Doris Faulkner.
George was still living in The Wheatsheaf, but his father had died. Sarah Spillett, his mother, was a witness. I believe she had taken over the licence of the pub.
Eva was always known as Doris and I remember her as a kind and warm hearted woman. She was the only relative on the Spillett side of my father’s family, albeit the wife of his uncle, who he had regular contact with. I last saw her at my parent’s, Bill and Grace, 60th wedding anniversary in the Nutfield Village Hall.
I have no idea if George and Doris had children, I don’t think they did, but they did have someone staying with them in 1939. Her name was Patricia Bodman, aged 12 at school, later known as Patricia McCallum in 1948 when she married. Who Pat Bodman was, I have no idea. The three are listed in the 1939 Register (not a Census but a record of everyone living in England and Wales at the outbreak of the second world war) as living at 1, Knights Hill, Hurst Green. George was working as a Window Cleaner and Carpenter at the outbreak of war.
There are other researchers on Ancestry who are noting Pat Bodman in their family trees, one of them associated with the Faulkners. Pat had several siblings. I wonder if she was an evacuee at the outset of the war.
George died in 1955. Doris lived until 1989.
When Doris died, she was living at 23 Hurst Green Road, Oxted. She was living at 1, Knights Hill certainly up until 1962 according to the Electoral Register. It would have been at that address that I remember as a child, visiting her with my mother, probably shortly after Uncle George had died.
In the Probate Register it shows that Doris left an estate not exceeding £100,000. This was the inheritance tax threshold for 1989, and so the estate was probably far less than this. I am intrigue about who she left her estate to and where photos, documents and most of all, Uncle George’s war decorations were left to. Doris and George had no children.
As a postscript, I have found several newspaper cuttings online that show George as a keen member of an amateur dramatics club that performed regularly at the Barn Theatre in Oxted. The local newspaper reviews were positive about his performances. This merits a post on an interesting aspect to Spillett life in Oxted.