Businesses

Christmas Eve at the Front

An interesting letter has just been received by Mrs Packer, of Broadclyst, from her husband, Corpl Packer of A Company, 1st Battalion Devonshire Regiment, who is serving with the Expeditionary Force in Northern France. In the course of a letter he describes a remarkable incident which occurred on Christmas Eve between the British and German trenches.

Mr Reg Backway joined the staff of Bideford motor firm Heard Bros, in November 1919 as a temporary relief clerk.

He has just retired after having served for almost the whole of the intervening period as company secretary. That ‘temporary’ job lasted 53½ years.
It was in 1921 that he was made company secretary to Heard Bros Ltd. He continued in that position after December 1938, when the company became Brindley’s Garages Ltd, through to last November when the firm merged with N B L Holdings Ltd of Taunton.
Mr Backway, who, with his wife, lives at 25 Elmdale, Bideford, will be 78 in October, and that is something difficult to believe. He attributes his looking no more than middle aged to the fact that since he joined the Amateur Athletic Club as a coxswain around the age of 10 he has mixed with young people.
Mr Backway has seen many developments in the car industry but the biggest he considers is the close attachment there now is to government departments.
What were the popular in the early days when distributors were not so tightly tied to manufacturers? So far as Heards were concerned they were Buick, Ford and Maxwell.
The full Gazette article is dated 11 May 1973

Leaving ‘The Bell’ After 48 Years

Only woman licensee in the district, Mrs Sarah Powe, landlord of the Bell Inn, New Quay, Appledore, is retiring.

It was 48 years ago that Mrs Powe, then a girl of 16, came to the Bell Inn when her father, the late Mr H W Lesslie, became landlord.
As she stood behind the bar this week, Mrs Powe, who has held the licence of the house for the past nine years, talked of the old days at the Bell, days when the pub was full of sailors off the vessels trading into Appledore or from ships that had come to the nearby shipyards for repair. Beer was 2d a pint in those days; a penny would buy five cigarettes and 3½d a bottle of stout or a nip of whiskey.
As she goes into retirement to live in Meeting Street, Appledore, Mrs Powe takes with her memories grave and gay from a lifetime spent at the Bell. One regular will not be forgotten. He was Billy, the swan, who used to come waddling from the river up the slipway opposite the Bell to peck on the door of the pub each morning for his breakfast and then every night would return to the slipway and flap a good-night message with his wings before he went off to roost. For three months Billy never missed his daily visit to the Bell but then off he went and he has only come back once since.
Mr and Mrs Powe have two daughters, one of whom is married and lives in Exeter, and the other, Miss Ruby Powe who has helped her mother run the house in recent years.
Gazette article dated 7 March 1958

Arms In Stained Glass

The two stained glass panels which are proposed for the upper halves of the two-light window facing east above the Corporation pews in the Parish Church, bear the Borough arms and the coat of arms of the Grenville family.

Mr Paterson has been at considerable pains to ensure the authenticity of the Grenville arms and was advised by the College of Arms. Mr Paterson’s work in stained glass has been further recognised, his design for a Church memorial window having been accepted for display in the ‘Art in the Churches’ section of the Festival of Britain exhibition at Lambeth Palace, London. It was from this design that Mr Paterson made the Royal Air Force memorial window which is now in the Church of St James, Castle Eden, Co Durham.

Gazette article dated 30 March 1951