The Black Metal Tin

Where clues to a complicated family history lie. I want to piece them together so that I can better understand my grandmother and build a picture of the grandfather I never met.

I found this black metal tin in my dad’s bedroom when he died coming up for 10 years ago. It’s this black metal tin that sprang to mind when I was reading

Anna Wharton

post about how her post turned into a book deal a few weeks ago. I’m genuinely not thinking book deals but I do want to find a way into pulling together this family story rather than just talking about it on the phone with my sisters.

My dad was born in 1927 so I want to focus on that post-WW1 period. His maternal grandfather was known as the King of Tea John Joe Bunting, he founded Plantation House in London and had houses in Highgate and a country estate called Coghurst near the Kent coast where my dad and his cousins would spend their weekends and holidays. All lakes and chauffers and eating in the servants quarters.

I also want to know more about my great grandfather, Sir Thomas Brodrick’s knighthood and his role in founding the Co-operative movement as we know it today in Manchester. We’re talking big blended families, nuns, priests, children born out of wedlock (a Catholic family too). I discovered only after my dad died that his mother had a brother called Jack (I think). This was never mentioned, not even hinted at during his life or hers.

I want to delve into the pile of in sympathy letters written to my grandmother after her husband, my paternal grandfather died suddenly when my dad was 19 so that I can understand her a little better. I want to make sense of all the mortgage deeds, bank loans and wills in the tin that had her name - variously Rose Marian, Mary and Rose Mary.

What stories are they telling? I want to know who’s who in the photos and I’d love a floor plan of Coghurst, the country estate near Hastings where my dad and his cousins all holidayed. The family estate that’s now Coghurst Hall Holiday Park.

My grandmother's driving licence and my grandfather's passport

I grew up knowing that my maternal grandmother never drove, and up until last week thought my paternal grandmother didn’t drive either. Then I took a closer look at the name in this dinky red driving licence, and it’s her name, her signature. So this, my friends, is my maternal grandmothers driving licence from October 1939-1940, 1942-1943, 1945-1946 and 1946-1947. This final year being the year her husband Richard died suddenly leaving her a widow aged 44 with four children, my dad the eldest at 19.

When I was growing up she was never a warm, cuddly grandmother like my mum’s mum. We used to groan at the thought of driving to see her in Banbury, where she lived alongside her step sister Betty, who has a heck of a story I’d also love to delve into. Betty was rumoured to be able to drink anyone in London under the table in the 1920s and was subsequently sent to Canada, somehow came back, when and how and why I do not know - yet.

Dad played rugby for Saracens amongst others, and as a young child visited Coghurst a lot

But growing up we’d sit awkwardly in her living room, the table groaning with sandwiches covered in clingfilm waiting for the sign that we could tuck in, while mostly mum would try to make conversation. I can’t say that I have a sense of who she was, what her character was like. What she was like as a mother to my dad beyonf the filial duties he performed as the eldest son. What did she like and what didn’t she like. Did she ever cook? Did she like music, reading, TV?

Grandma was illegitimate, born Rose Marian Gamble but because her mother, a dressmaker, married John Joe Bunting and became his second wife (I think) she was thrust into a world of privilege. She became part of an enormous family with half siblings and step siblings from his other marriages. Did she always feel the outsider compared to her half siblings? Not part of the blood line. And then widowed in her mid-forties.

You see, this is why I want to delve into this story. It’s not about completing the jigsaw, fixing pieces into place but turning over these clues to try and at least get a feel for what life was like for her, and therefore, for my dad. I want to get a feel for what the jigsaw is trying to show me .

And so I’ve started logging what’s in The Black Metal Tin and noting down the questions and thoughts that arise from these clues.

Please forgive typos and mistakes in this hastily cobbled together post. It’s based on some Notes I’ve shared on Substack and thoughts I’ve had sitting here on the sofa this evening. This is a live project that I want to write and share in a more organic and raw way than I do with my other writing. I’d also love some help as I go, so if you see or read something and you have any insight, please share. I’d love to hear from you!