36 Elmfield Road

Frank Ewart Marshall

Grandad circa 1975 ~ a Family Photograph only recently found in the Archive.

MY STORY

WINDSOR STREET DAYS ELMFIELD ROAD DAYS

Introduction

Taking Up the Pen Again

September 2025

Regaining perspective on the family story is hesitant. It can only be through my perspective. Shared individual memories of an event are often quite divergent. Time marches briskly alongside, gone is that youthful narrowmindness that I have side-stepped the universal rule of Finity. In May my way forward was to concentrate on my story through the perspective of Windsor Street Days, my first home. Over the summer, ancestry com has thrown up some hints that finally enable me to write of my maternal grandfather’s eldest brother. And with this is the understanding that whilst 25 and 20 Windsor Street played the leading role in my first thrteen years, from then on until 1978-79 the emphasis shifted to the maternal family home, my grandparents Frank and Martha Marshall.

This is much better. It enables me to neatly divide my story into two parts, Windsor Street Days and Elmfield Road Days. I had many conversations with Grandad, because Number 36 was just 450 paces away from the Waterloo Road Police Station where, despite my youth, I was the Area Constable for the St Paul’s Parish, Cheltenham. That was quite something in 1975. I remember the day Temporary General Orders (TGOs) [a] were posted, there was much muttering by constables far more senior to me who rightly expected that the illustrious post of Area Constable would be theirs, especially as St Paul’s Parish was not, say, like Area 4 Leckhampton and Area 5 Charlton Kings ~ the posh end of Cheltenham. St Paul’s required a Constable who knew how to deal with the robust St Paul’s Parish.

I admit to being thrilled and also overawed. Fortunately, our father (Desmond Budd Webb) was also a serving senior officer of police and I benefitted greatly from his wise counsel throughout my time as Area Constable Area 1.

Where I can draw upon independent perspective, as with our father’s short autobiographical account written for his granddaughters Suzie and Caroline, then I do so. Likewise, the large family correspondence that stretches back into the 19th Century and touching upon the shores of the 18th Century.

Here, I follow our father’s example.

I use the tools available to me to write a small part of our family history, ongoing, of no interest beyond the family, but centred upon MY STORY. I have no desire to publish. Rather, owning this website enables me to create a platform that the future family might hold on to or close down. That decision is not mine to make.

*

Earlier this year my brother-in-law asked me why I attached so much importance to Windsor Street.

That’s where I started life along with my elder sister. Successive house moves did not break the bond with Windsor Street because, for me, it was safe haven, it was also where I spent much of my time from the age of eight until a month before my thirteenth birthday.

I recall vividly Grandad Webb bringing me a cup of tea in the mornings, having firstly taken a cup of tea to Grandma. I recall life vividly with Grandma, after Grandad departed unexpectedly in September 1961.

Fast forward to this unpleasant century. In Liverpool, my passport had expired. I had only the flimsy piece of paper issued in 1953 confirming my birth ~ a certificate of the registration of birth. The flimsy is not, however, a birth certificate. It gives only the briefest detail.

Many times I have tactfully explained to clients, yes, that is a certificate confirming that your [relative’s] birth has been entered in the Register of Births. But it does not have any weight with, for example, a life assurance company. If you’re sure you do not have a full birth certifcate, almost identical to your [relative’s] death certificate, then we must apply for this.

Looking at my folder, I giggled. I too must now obtain my full birth certificate! It came within a week.

Ah, good!
I’m a person again.
I have an identity.

I then just sat there. Silent. For quite a while.

I could hear the pilot boats going up and down as the large tankers were entering or leaving the Port of Liverpool.

Born in Pittville Circus Road, my first home is 20 Windsor Street. This was akin to the final pin in a complicated mechanism engaging and releasing the lock to life’s door.

The Webbs occupied 20 Windsor Street and across the road at 25 Windsor Street. Everything began to fall beautifully into place. Looking back, I can also see that it was on that morning, at that point, that I realised that I would in time return to my home county ~ Gloucestershire.

*

This is my story, then, across a lifetime counting seven decades, centred upon the two grand-parental homes in two roads a mile and a half apart in Cheltenham ~ Windsor Street and Elmfield Road.

Portrait by James 2020

Kenneth Thomas Webb 209246
Leckhampton
Gloucestershire

Portrait by Hicks 1941

Kenneth Ernest Webb 1315766 at RAF Babbacombe just outside Torquay, Devon just prior to embarkation by troop ship to Canada and onward to Alabama, America for pilot training

I was very aware that my name was somehow linked to the portrait on the wall of my father’s brother painted by Hicks in 1941, and I knew much about all the RAF photographs on the mantel piece in the front room.

If I visited my Grandma and Grandad across town at 36 Elmfield Road, the identical scene played out, with my mother’s brother’s portrait and a similar line of RAF photographs on the mantel piece.

Informal Portrait 1944

Flight Sergeant (temporary) Flight Engineer, Harry Alfred Marshall 1337884, Pathfinder, on leave October 1944 Cheltenham, Gloucestershire

*

So! My life started in Windsor street at Numbers 20 and 25 Windsor Street across the street from each other.

20 Windsor Street was the home of my Aunt and Uncle, Bette and Arthur Webb. Home life started up in the top of the house, in the attic.

Even now, I recall its layout. Thus, it irritates me when people, family included, insist I could not possibly remember anything now that happened before I was aged 3 years.

I beg to differ.

My sisters and I have three different start points.

Carol               1950   36 Elmfield Road, Cheltenham
Kenneth          1953   20 Windsor street, Cheltenham
Vanessa           1957   32 Libertas Road Cheltenham

32 Libertas Road was formerly 8 Orchard Terrace and I always loved, even before, school age, living at Orchard Terrace.

Orchard Terrace sat upon a piece of land along which Libertus Road ran. St Mark’s estate was developed in the late 1930s and then resumed immediately post-war.

8 Orchard Terrace was owned by the Gloucestershire Constabulary and that was our address when Carol and I moved there ~ Mum and Dad’s first of four police houses before they put down the deposit on their home of fifty years on Pittville Mount Park.

To me, a toddler, Orchard Terrace was grand, huge in comparison to the attic flat when seen through an infant’s eyes, as too was its large back garden with several apple trees.

Four houses, four moves, disrupted schooling.

The move signified that our parents were making steady progress. I've always loved the sound of those five syllables ~ eight orchard terrace. Sixty-five years later a gentle warmth enwraps, standing or sitting within the orchard, newly planted, within a property on the Old Stow Road in North Gloucestershire, Cotswold.

A silent nod to very happy times ~ Eight Orchard Terrace.

By the time Vanessa arrived on 10 December 1957, the terrace had been incorporated into Libertas Road, now number thirty-two opposite the junction with Devon Avenue. Of course, I’d have been unaware apart from the excitement that we lived in a police house.

Part II

I fast-forward to this present century. I am driving on the motorway, M6 northbound for the city of Liverpool in May 2003 to commence a three-month locum attachment with a firm of solicitors in Southport.

I had been booked into a pleasant hotel near the pier and I had no idea that my whole life was about to change. I remember meeting the senior partner and learning that whilst I would attend the Southport office regularly - it is the firm’s head office - I would actually work 12 miles down the coast road in Waterloo, a large district on the edge of the Port of Liverpool, adjoining the upmarket village of Crosby ~ we are not a town Mr Webb ~ and the beautiful Blundellsands. And we are not a village Mr Webb. We are Blun-dell-sands!

Three months metamorphosed into fourteen years. Liverpool is part and parcel of me. I am indelibly linked with Liverpool and Merseyside. Liverpool gave me the freedom that I did not have in Cheltenham and Gloucester in the last century nor in this century.

I have, though, very happily returned to my roots for the reason stated. Liverpool is still a central part. I have Liverpool friends. Liverpool gave me the sense of freedom, independence and safety that even today, twenty years on, Gloucestershire simply cannot achieve ~ BUT… I am from the shires.

From City Boy to Shire Lad

Liverpool allowed me to live in plain sight with many friends like me.

To my surprise my regular returns to the city witnessed a city’s transition, and the wide open spaces of the Liverpool Waterfront are still pleasant, but the signature for architects in fierce competition with each other. Obviously, this happens in every decade, every century.

The beat of the city is now too fast for me, simply because I am seventy-two, whereas when I arrived at age fifty-two, I still felt as I did a decade and two decades earlier.

Part III

In reviewing Windsor Street Days, I can balance the books. I’m returning our father’s chapters, and adding images and a video. We both have different writing styles. It is not right for me to change that, but I can illustrate them.

We all, in the family, wish to hear the voice of our father and grandfather ~ Desmond Budd Webb. I am not rushing any of this. I go at my pace.

Footnotes and Citations

[a] In the Gloucestershire Constabulary Force General Orders were issued weekly, these being Temporary and Permanent. TGOs and PGOs. TGOs were the tabloid press. Movements, Promotions, Postings and such like ~ gossipy. Have you seen TGOs? He’s being posted pronto to Temple Guiting, back of beyond. Wots ee done rong!! I noo ee were a wrong-un! Permanent General Orders were part of the fabric of the Constabulary’s administation and organisation. A declaration with the status of a PGO (black print on light blue) meant that it was akin to an act of parliament or a military directive. It was in force until rescinded or amended. A TGO (black print on yellow) was just that. Temporary, until such time as a situation or a person’s position changed. That is my definition from memory. The source in much greater detail is The History of the Gloucestershire Constabulary by Harry Thomas 1839-1985

[b] The History of the Gloucestershire Constabulary by Harry Thomas 1839-1985 gifted, and dedicated, to my nephew Jack Marshall Martin, when I gratefully hand over the baton on that final lap to the gentle hand that is the Hand of Time.

[c] My author name, my mother’s maternal name and I remember with affection the day I asked my parents if I could use the name Marshall. Mum was tough. I had to argue my case, much to my father’s pleasure, and we celebrated with a pot of tea and many laughs.

[d] I then published Idle Thoughts An Anthology of Poetry and Prose through Spiderwize Publishing in September 2009 upon return to Liverpool. The Cover is the Portrait of my Aunt, Mrs Florence Emily Bette Webb ~ Aunt Bette (pronounced as one syllable) the wife of Dad’s eldest brother, Arthur.