The Story Of The Ring

THE STORY OF THE RING

There is also one other interesting event that happened at the time of William’s family’s emigration. They lived in Number 3, Loudon Villas, Ashby-de-la-Zouch and my father, Harry Wheatcroft, lived with his parents in Avenue Road there. Loudon Villas are opposite the end of this road. He had become engaged to William and Ellen's daughter Maggie and when she was going to emigrate with her mother, she had wanted him to emigrate with them. However, he could not be persuaded and so he stayed behind. The engagement came to an end. she returned her engagement ring to him. At this time my mother would have been perhaps 15 years old and would have met Harry when she was staying with her aunt and cousins

At some time later, a friendship must have sprung up between them, which developed over the years, through the first war, until they got married in 1922, probably 16 years and more after Maggie emigrated.

Maggie subsequently married Will Aston, probably in New Zealand.

The engagement ring had three rubies in a bar along the ring. Now, at some stage, Harry gave my mother this ring although she would never admit that it was her engagement ring and she had the bar of rubies turned at right angles to the ring and that was of course how I always remember it. When my mother died, the ring passed to Mary, my wife, and at that time neither of us knew of the rings origin. With the rubies at right angles it was impossible to wear another ring with it and so we decided to have the bar of rubies turned back in line with the ring, as it had been originally, although we did not realise it at the time, and that is how the ring is today.

There is one small item to mention at this point that shows how different things were then to how they are nowadays. There is a card from my mother to her brother George, which is undated but would have been after the first war and before she married my father. He was a cabinet maker and carpenter and had caught his finger on a nail and it had "gone wrong" so that he had to go to hospital. The card reads :-

" Had Harry over last Thursday night, and he had only come out of Ashby Hospital that day. He has had a poisoned hand and has been there ten weeks, he did look bad"

The hand was subsequently paralysed and eventually he had to give up woodworking by hand.

The Ring