Rayner family timeline
Preface
Presumably JERS sent this to me; the file I have is dated 2004-03-19. JERS's niece Rosalind clarified the context a bit in 2022:
This is a timeline which Ben constructed for us (with some really nice photographs), after our cousin Rosamund had done family research and produced a detailed family tree. [...] You will see that it is mostly concerned with Daphne and Eric. Ben included some extracts from a handwritten memoir which Dad wrote and which my nephew Cassius now has. Unfortunately Dad did not keep it up and it goes not much further than the WWII sections you can see. I don't think I knew it existed until after he had died. The Sutclliffes and Du Canes are my cousins in Pilley Bailey near Lymington in the New Forest, nearby East Boldre is the small village where Ben was born and where Dad's ashes were scattered. Ben told me he had put this timeline on the net somewhere, which is obviously where Woozle came across it.
Text
1992 Catherine Ryan christened at St John's Boldre Hampshire 1996 Nov 22 Charles Edward Byron Du Cane dies at Forest Cottage Pilley Bailey Hampshire aged 86 March, Glenn & Louise Sutcliffe purchase Greenacre, Wooden House Lane, Pilley Bailey, Hampshire from Leslie John Du Cane.| 1861 | Montague Stephens born | |
| 1871 | Edith Bailey born | |
| 1892 | MS @Jersey&Gorey | |
| 1894/5 | MS @Rio/Montevideo/Belem | |
| 1896 | Montague Stephens marries Edith in Falkland Is. | |
| 1896-99 | M&E@Canobie Canada Maurice born | |
| 1899 Feb 2 | Biddie born in Esquimault BC | |
| 1902 Sept 30 | Eric Rayner born Thaton Burma Clive born (?) | |
| 1903 Oct 27 | Phyllis born at Saltash Cornwall | |
| 1905 | Stephens'@Bermuda | |
| 1909 July 23 | Daphne born Whitchurch Tavistock Devon | |
| 1918 October | E.'s father dies (Stella Lodge 49th.St.Rangoon)
"When I saw him I had a shock. I hadn't seen him since the previous Christmas holidays when I had made a bullock-cart trip with him to Shwegyin, to which he had just been posted - our last cart-trip together...now he was gaunt with a wasted smile and a weak voice.." "He was buried the next morning...in the Cantonment Cemetary. I carried one corner of the coffin. I remember that the sun shone and that I thought how odd it was that I should be helping to bury my father, to whom only the day before I had been reading the war news out of the morning paper. He was thirty-nine at the time of his death." [quotes from E's "Journal" written between 1939 and 1942] | |
| 1921 Jan | E.starts teaching at Church School in Mandalay then to family in Rangoon | |
| 1922 July 1 | Biddie marries Captain John Hamilton Maxwell Staniforth Leinster Regiment at Hayling Island, Hampshire. | |
| 1923 | Edith & Monty seperate | |
| 1925 April | E.to Calcutta to join "The Statesman" | |
| 1928 April 4 | Rosamund Ann Staniforth born | |
| 1929 October | E.marries Elma Glassup (Bonnie) in Calcutta | |
| 1933 |
"She came to me as an equal. I was 31 unsatisfactorily married with a consciousness of intellectual gifts that were wasting in a society I hated and despised...I sneered..inevitably.. I posed. But Daphne cut through all these barbed-wire entanglements that surrounded me..[we] wanted to be with each other always." "The obstacles seemed so great and we were seperated, that was the worst to bear, the seperation." "We had made a decision, she and I, and it was a decision that had to be carried out in the face of all obstacles...It never occured to either of us to think of wavering." "When I think of that time now[Sept 17th.'39]my feelings are a mixture of wonder and fear and gladness..."
Commisioner's House Trincomali Oct 1933 On the top verandah..it is fairly cool & undisturbed, though the people going by along the road are rather distracting. I can see the sea, a placid whitish blue & a hot strip of sand. The house is hemmed in by trees & mother has a regular jungle of shrubs in pots. I have had a bathe this morning before breakfast & Elizabeth has been sketching. She is very brave: the other day we went to the market with Augustine the cook & she started sketching. The whole market rose as one man & clustered round at her elbow! Augustine came along & let out a few oaths & the crowd thinned a bit.......We dined on board the Colombo their last night. Elizabeth & I feel like film stars trailing up & down companion-ways & in & out of launches with masses of handsome(?) white clad officers saluting all over the place! | |
| 1934 |
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| 1935 |
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| 1936 |
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| 1937 |
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| 1938 | B & M & Rosamund @ The Potteries Graffham nr.Petworth
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| 1939 | D&E&B @ Upper Park Rd
"I had visualised swarms of bombers, showering death and destruction on London and thought gladly of Benedick safe in SDomerset. We had waited in the hall downstairs, the apprehension in our hearts. A lorry driver had stopped his lorry in the street outside and came in to shelter in the hall. He had said, "I didn't think Hitler would start as soon as this". Later we had walked across Hampstead Heath to Jack Straw's Castle to catch the bus, feeling very self-conscious with our new gas-masks in their cardboard boxes slung across our shoulders. Hampstead Heath had looked much as it had always looked on a Sunday. The anti-aircraft guns, the allotments, the rubble of London's bombed buildings filling the sandpits by the Spaniard's Road were yet to come."
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| 1940 |
"that was a wonderful summer, it was difficult to imagine the horror of the war. But the army had taken over part of the New Brighton beach, there were hundreds of French sailors in Liverpool's streets looking a bit forlorn; there were tank barriers and barbed wire on the roads to Chester and into Wales and later in the streets of Liverpool itself, round the docks and the Mersey Tunnel entrance. We went to a fire station to hear a short lecture on fire bombs and to learn how to use a stirrup pump. (Benedick liked working the hose!) One night the sirens went and we sat in the cellar of the house - Benedick enjoyed that too! - feeling a little tense and helpless and not knowing quite what to expect. A plane droned somewhere and we waited...and then the sirens sounded the all-clear and we went to bed. Yes, the sun shone that summer on the yet unmarked face of England. The force that had smashed the face of Europe was gathering for the crowning blow.. but we did not know... the vicious strength of that blow nor the inadequacy of our own strength. How could we? The sun had shone on England so long and we were warm with it, drugged. Our awakening was to come." (April 25 1942)
"The next day the Germans flew up the Thames and set the London docks ablaze...There were sometimes vapour trails patterning the London sky, and once or twice we stood in the streets and watched British fighters flying regimented and purposeful in the autumn sunlight." Staniforths @Bognor Regis | |
| 1942 |
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| 1943 |
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| 1945 | Rosamund @Well Walk
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| 1946 Sept 22 | Rosalind Rayner born; Staniforths @Bexhill | |
| 1947 Feb10 | Applebys move to "Windyridge" Reigate | |
| 1948 Feb 28 | Linda Appleby born | |
| 1949 Sept | Ben to Bryanston; James to Eastbourne College | |
| 1950 |
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| 1951 | Staniforths @Sixpenny Handley
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| 1954 |
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| 1955 |
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| 1956 |
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| 1957 |
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| 1958 May 29 |
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| 1959 | & Summer of the 17th.Doll | |
| 1960 | James to Philippines
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| 1961 |
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| 1962 June 29 | E&P move to "West Point" Reigate Hill | |
| 1963 July | B to Lonsdale Sq. Islington | |
| 1964 |
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| 1965 April 30 | Emma born to RR | |
| 1966 Sept 3 |
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| 1967 | D&E move to Maze Hill Greenwich | |
| 1968 | B&K "on location" in Paris; R&C to Knockholt | |
| 1969 |
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| 1970 |
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| 1971 |
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| 1972 Jan 6 | Vanessa Appleby born | |
| 1973 | B&K&C to South Street Greenwich | |
| 1974 | J,E & V move to Pound Hill Crawley | |
| 1975 |
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| 1976 |
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| 1977 | B.to Glenton Rd. | |
| 1978 |
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| 1979 | James starts at Honeywell Hemel Hempstead and moves to Caddington nr Luton Rosalind & Chris divorce | |
| 1980 July | B starts "Dance Craze" | |
| 1981 Feb? | B.back to BFCS | |
| 1982 May 1 | Louise Sarah Du Cane marries Glenn Sutcliffe (of Mansfield Woodhouse) at Boldre | |
| 1983 | Annabel marries Daniel Swain @ Limehouse | |
| 1984 | Ben to Deptford (and "Blue Pearl" bought) | |
| 1985 |
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| 1987 July | B.leaves BFCS | |
| 1988 |
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1989
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1991 Nov 7 | Jane Du Cane marries Terence Michael Ryan at St John's Boldre, Hampshire. |
| 1995 Jan | B.lvs.Lex.Post and moves(partly)to The Gambia | |
| 1997 Jan | Rosalind moves to Albert Rd Ramsgate | |
| 1998 Oct. | B.returns to UK | |
| 1999 June 8 | Esther dies | |
| 2000 August 8 | Phyllis dies |
Footnote
- ↑ Changed from birth name in 2021 or 2022; Rosalind is not sure of new name.