FEATURE
A story
from a postcard Told by Jill Gibb It all started with an old postcard. I recently bought an interesting one from an internet seller. The photograph shows St. Guthlac’s Church in Market Deeping and Church Street before The Orchard and The Avenue were built. The houses opposite the church are thatched. The card was posted in Market Deeping on 10th January, 1912, to a Miss E. L. Rutland at Wood Norton Rectory in Norfolk and the sender was someone with the initials O.M.L. who was staying at the rectory in Market Deeping. The text was most interesting so I decided to do some internet research. The postcard, signed O.M.L. was sent by Olive May Lucinda Lipscomb, the wife of the rector of Wood Norton, East Dereham, Norfolk, one Charles Burton Lipscomb. She was then 28 years old, her husband was 20 or so years her senior. They had met when Olive’s father, the Reverend William Melville Pigot, was the incumbent at Eaton, on the outskirts of Norwich, and Charles was his curate. The recipient of the postcard was the cook at the Norfolk rectory, Emma Lavinia Rutland, then aged 31 years. From the text on the postcard, I deduced that the Lipscombs planned to stay in Market Deeping at the rectory for several days after attending a party there on the previous day.
All Saints Church Wood Norton The rector of St. Guthlac’s at that time was Paul Ogilvie Ashby. He had been born in Cobham, Surrey, on 14th January, 1867, and had married Ellen Maud George in 1899 at Horncastle. He was awarded the Military Cross in January 1916, for conspicuous bravery at Ypres (pictured left). Paul Ashby had volunteered for service at the beginning of the war and had been chaplain to the 4th Lincolns. The party at Market Deeping Rectory, to which the Lipscombs had been invited, was probably to celebrate Paul Ashby’s 45th birthday. His birthday fell on a Sunday, when both men would have been fully occupied in their respective churches, so celebrations took place a few days early. continued >
14
