Meet Resident Mollie

Mollie was the youngest of 4 children, she had a brother and two sisters. She went to a small private school but had to leave to look after her mother when her father joined the army, her sisters were already out at work and her brother joined the war towards the end so she helped her Mum.

When she left school she went to work at Green Brothers who originally built garden furniture but later went on to create canvas seats and bedding for the forces and dummy hurricanes. When the war started Mollie did ‘war work’ by making camp beds, chairs, and tables to be sent out to the forces. She worked in the canvas department and remembers that there were rows of machinists who prepared everything for the ‘tackers on’.

She remembers that her father never talked about the war, so she never really knew where he went or what he did. Her uncle was also in the war and lost his leg but he still went on to become a shepherd.

Mollie has fond memories of their cat Mickey (named after Mickey Mouse), he used to sleep on top of the bird table waiting for her father while he worked in the shed. In the evening Mickey would wander up to her father and get up on his chair. My father would move out of his way so Mickey could sleep and perch on the edge of the chair. My mother called my father a ‘silly apeth’, but my father said that he loved him.

Mollie met her husband Frederick at a wedding after they both volunteered to help with the washing up! I wiped, he washed and then he walked me home. He asked me out and on our first date he took me to Seaforth and we looked around the area and had a picnic by the river. Mollie and Frederick wrote frequently to each other during the war and they married soon after Frederick returned at the end of the war when Frederick became a builder. Throughout their married life he always helped with the washing up!

The collection of ornaments in Mollie’s room have come from friends and family and things that she brought when they visited places as she thought she may never go there again and it acts as a nice memory.
When Mollie and her husband used to go to the tea gardens there was always this one horse who would come over as soon as we appeared, eat all the food and then go off again. He frightened the life out of me the first time because he was a big horse and he came thundering across.