William Arthur Hudson

• Dates: 1884.8.22 – 1976.2.2.
• Born in North Rode, Congleton; the fifth of seven children of
  • George Hudson (1846 – c.1915, gardener, born in Cartmel, Lancs (on the edge of the Lake District)
  • Elizabeth Parry (1849 – ?, born in Crabtree Green, Bangor-on-Dee, Wrexham, so Welsh-speaking)
• A  27-page account (written by him in his eighties) of his childhood in
  • North Rode, Cheshire where his father was the gardener for the Carlisle family at The Grange
  • Macclesfield, Cheshire, where
    • they moved in the early 1890s for his father to work as gardener in the corporation cemetery,
    • he attended Mill Street Higher Grade school
    • he had his first jobs as a gardener’s boy and a post-office clerk.
• Family:
  • wife: On 12 June 1909 he married Bertha Pilkington (1877-1969), daughter of a coal merchant from Buxton, Derbyshire, at the Wesleyan Chapel, Buxton.
  • a son John Pilkington Hudson (1910-2007)
  • a daughter Margaret “Molly” Pilkington Hudson (b. 1912).
• In the 1911 census he was at POST OFFICE HIGH STREET CHAPEL-EN-LE-FRITH, where he was sub-postmaster; age 27.
  • He also ran a stationery shop (shown in the photo below)
• In the First World War he enlisted in 1915 and was posted to Kenya as a telegraphist (see photo of Roll of Honour below).
• One of his many interests, photography, produced a series of self-published picture postcards of Derbyshire scenes and people.
• Later life:
  • William and Bertha retired to live in Buxton
  • They later moved to a bungalow next to Molly in Perth, where Bertha died in 1969.
  • Soon after her death, William moved down to temporary accommodation in Eastbourne, on the south coast, and then moved to a Methodist home (Morrell Court) in Penarth, Wales.
  • He died in 1976 in Penarth, at the age of 92; his son John (who lived in Somerset) had been caring for him and was with him at his death.

Gallery

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