Port Adelaide

Fascinating what you find in old maps and can therefore plot the changes in a suburb.

Right at the spot C/4.2 on 1 Santo Parade is the spot where the Colac Hotel stood in 1929 on the wharves of the South Australian Company Basin. It still stands in the same place but the basin is radically changed in shape and there is no longer a bridged creek across St Vincent's Street. The basin from the Gawler Reach is a long rectangle which now laps Ocean Steamers Road, as that part of St Vincent's Street is now called.

The Colac belongs to the Labour Party in South Australia. It has had a long, long association with working men and women in Port Adelaide. The ALP Trades Union has closed the hotel for trading.

Siblings

Ridley was born in the Colac Hotel in December 1895. His brother William was born two years later. William and Catherine were married in 1888 and Ridley's prayer book lists a Doris Mary Reed in the lists of names where it had been used. This was before he was born, so the  initials "A.R.R." in the leather cover of the book were punched in later. Doris may have been a first-born sister who died as an infant.  Given in the time between marriage and Ridley's birth it is possible that Catherine and William had a still-born child before Doris.

Image from website http://www.weddingsa.com/churches

Ridley and William were both baptised in St Margaret's on Port Road, Woodville.

First go at a beginning

"Ridley did not die peacefully, drowning in the sinking hull of the MV Montevideo Maru in company with over one thousand Australians. A United States submarine had inadvertently torpedoed the unmarked ship, loaded with prisoners of war from Rabaul, in July 1942. Ridley lived 47 years set against mundane and momentous events in the 20th century. He left no heirs and passed into memory and a mystery."


Well! that sounds like nothing wonderful but the beginning is always the hardest, then ending properly...........

Lucy Jane Godfrey-Faussett

Lucy was the daughter of Henry Woodcock, of Wigan, Lancashire. There were 7 more children, the youngest in the 1881 census being listed as a daughter of one years age when the family was living in Bolnore House, Cuckfield, Sussex. By then Lucy was married to  Thomas  Godfrey Godfrey-Faussett (1829 –1877). Lucy's birthdate isn't listed anywhere I have yet found but I think she may have been considerably younger than Thomas. They married in 1964 and had one son, Edward Godfrey, in 1866. Thomas' father was the Reverend Godfrey Faussett, Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Oxford. The landlord of Ivy House, as well as a number of other land holdings, is listed with the one word "Margaret" in 1905. Lucy is listed as living in Cuckfield, Sussex. Must be a tie-up there somewhere.  By 1920, when Lucy wrote enquiring after Ridley's welfare and location, she would have been in her 70's.  Her family is listed in Burke's Peerage as claiming Plantagenet descent from Isabella Neville , Duchess of Clarence, 1451. On both her father's and her husband's side the families have been in the military, clerics and gaining income from land - minor aristocracy.

Reading about WW1

If you have to go to war, going in Summer when the enemy is very, very tired is a good idea.  Russia began to withdraw from the war after the Revolution, so Germany was able to send more troops and equipment to the Western front for a last big push. Ridley arrived in France in April 1918 when the Germans were making that last effort. Men and horses were still dying and being wounded but the horrors of the mud of Passchendaele and the miserable Ypres salient were past. In April 1918 one of Ridley's friends was listed as "Missing in action" and he was finally declared as "Killed in Action" in December 1918. The man was obliterated from the face of the earth, never being found. The routine of four days at the front line  followed by four days well behind the lines gave troops time to eat, sleep, read and send mail, sleep, sleep and sleep - and mourn the loss of fellow soldiers.

Ridley was in the Strazeele and Merris area but this map doesn't have a date on it.

War diaries

The war diaries of the 1st Field Artillery Brigade, which Ridley was in, are all digitised on the Australian War Memorial site. Daily lists of positions, orders, reports , firing rates, codes, signals, deaths and wounded. So many horses. Men have a choice, horses don't and they died like the men, or were wounded, or were sick, replaced and retired. Almost as many horses as men. Ridley's time in France was spent between Armentieres and Calais - sometimes at the front, sometimes marching or entraining and moving from one town to another. The base depots for 1st FAB were in Heytesbury England (near the Salisbury Plain) and Roulles in France.  

Depot at Lezarde Valley Rouelles near Le Havre

He went there in Spring and stayed until 1919 when he went back to England. There is a notation in the war diary for January 29th on Lieut. Lewis and 9 ORs  marched out as Special Draft "University Undergraduates". Ridley was granted leave with pay and subsistence allowance of 10 Guineas  from 17-1-1919 to 15-12-19 to go to Kings College London. I am guessing there were schemes of many kinds designed to ease the military back into civilian life and this would be one of them - more research to do. His address from 31-1-19 is given as "Kings College London Reasons Theology". The January war diaries list race days, championships, visit by HRH Prince of Wales, moving German guns,regular courts martial, 16 horses were evacuated "sick", 8 were "lost" and one was transferred. I wonder what life was like for the civilians in the area in that bitterly cold and snowy Winter. The land had been well-ploughed - grotesquely but not productively - and the debris of war was everywhere. Ridley left England to go back to Australia on the Argyleshire on 2-12-1919.

The pleasures and perils of on-line research

Digitised material is so readily available it can be tempting to rely on it. MMMH! But what about those small mundane details in letters and lists and scraps of paper and on the back of photos which are in archives in boxes down in a dungeon somewhere. Drawing the line between useless minutiae and that one illuminating detail you find as an archive ferret will be a constant problem. Having to physically go to archives means an airfare, place to stay and time to hunt, none of the results of which might end up in written words. Definitely will not be able to go to the UK to chase up Ridley's stay before being sent as reinforcments to France in WW1.  Google Street view lets me look at places he stayed, in a generic not specific sense.  There is a letter in his WW1 records from Lucy  Godfery-Faussett seeking information about his whereabouts and was he well. Lucy is listed as living at Ivy House in Heytesbury and I can look at that house, on the corner of a street in a  pretty English village in Wiltshire. Salisbury Plain, long associated with the army, was a place where many WW1 soldiers trained or were in camp waiting to go to France.

Ivy House, Heytesbury 

Description: Ivy House
Grade: II
Date Listed: 11 September 1968
English Heritage Building ID: 313286
OS Grid Reference: ST9253142589
OS Grid Coordinates: 392531, 142589
Latitude/Longitude: 51.1825, -2.1082

Location: Tytherington Road, Heytesbury, Wiltshire BA12 0ED
Locality: Heytesbury
Local Authority: Wiltshire
County: Wiltshire
Country: England
Postcode: BA12 0ED

HEYTESBURY HIGH STREET
ST 92 SW
(south side)
9/65
Ivy House
11.9.68
GV II

House at end of row. c.1800. Flemish bond brick, mansard tiled
roof, brick stacks. Two storey, 4-windowed; sashes. Four-
panelled door with arched panels in case with moulded pilasters and
segmental-arched hood to left of centre, 12-pane sash to left and
two 12-pane sashes to right; all with segmental brick heads and
reveals. First floor has four segmental-headed sashes. Right
return has 1-light casement to attic. Rear has margin-pane French
windows and 2-light and 3-light casements. Attached to rear is mid
C19 two storey wing in brick and rubble stone, 4-pane sash and 2-
light casements, tiled roof with ceramic ridge cresting.
Interior has stairs with stick balusters and turned newel, 4-
panelled and 6-panelled doors with moulded architraves, plain
marble fireplace surround and shutters to windows.


Listing NGR: ST9253142589   Source: English Heritage

Listed building text is © Crown Copyright.

Can't save the picture to this post and anyway - is the approximate address only?

Where do you start when you aren't a professional writer?



Colac Hotel Port Adelaide

I mean- so much material in hand, so much to discover and so much to create, then shape it into a good read. Some of it will be profound, some will be mundane but it has to be put together in a way which will hold a reader's attention and interest.  Put in a picture - that's a good start.

Ridley's office at Irwin House

Why would I write a book about Ridley? From what I know of him and can deduce from his life choices he was energetic, a pious Anglican, adventurous, made friends readily, intelligent but probably not a deeply critical thinker, attracted people but wasn't "charismatic".

I have to find out if he was not only born in a pub but lived there for the early part of his life, and did that have any effect on his upbringing, his life and his attitudes? His father was listened as "Licenced Victualler" but was that of the Colac Hotel?  Easy to assume as Ridley was born there, is it the truth?  The Colac is right on the docks and newspaper reports from the late 1890's and early 20th Century are pretty colourful - fights, murders, and shock horror playing Euchre on a Sunday!! Sailing ships, and sailors in a port well-supplied with hotels, what a mix.

Arthur Ridley Reed 1896 -1942

ARTHUR RIDLEY REED IN 1927 at Irwin House WA

Born in the Colac pub on the docks of Port Adelaide South Australia before Australia federated, went to WW1, to "Irwin House" near Dongara WA in 1926, back to SA sometime after 1927, then off to "New Britain" in 1933. In Rabaul in 1942 when the Japanese invaded, listed as one of the civilians who died on the "Montevideo Maru" in July 1942. This man lived through many of the big events in Australia's history.  He was the friend of Victor Lindsay Clyde Brougham, my Father-in-Law. Over however much time it takes I would like to tell his story, sometimes as a biography, sometimes  as a history-based fiction as close as I can be to "truth".