Doris BARKER (1909-1986)
Doris
BARKER was born in Birkenhead in 1909. At the time
her parents Wilfred and Emily Mary BARKER lived at 37
Upper Brassey Street in Birkenhead. They returned
to Chesterfield before the 1911 Census and lived at 148 and then
90a Sheffield Road.
Throughout
her childhool
Doris lived in the Sheffield Road area of Chesterfield
and went to school in Stonegravels. When she left school she
went to work in Rowells Shop in South Street, Chesterfield.
My Father
Harold Wilson LONGDEN met my Mother in Queen’s
Park on Easter Sunday in 1930, took her the next day to Nottingham
and used to hang around Rowells shop waiting for her to finish
work. They became engaged on Easter Sunday 1931 and married
in September 1931 at Christ Church, Stonegravels, Chesterfield.
My
Mother spent all her adult life in Chesterfield and refused
to join my Father when he went to work in Russia in 1934.
She also caused him to turn down other opportunities of work
abroad and never left the shores of England. She did, however, go with him to London in 1936-1937
when he installed the tunnelling shield in the Walthamstow
section of the Central Line on the London Underground. They
had three sons: Wilson (1936), David Michael (1938) and Clive
Wilfred (1944-2001).
My
mother could play the piano very well and particularly liked
to accompany singers at the Women’s Guild and at local
Chapels and Churches. However she was a very strict interpreter
of music and frequently criticised the style of people, like
me, who extemporised.
My Mother died in 1986, was cremated at
Chesterfield Crematorium and her ashes scattered there.
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