My maternal grandparents, Mildred Howe and William Jack Cullingford (always known as Jack) were married at St Peter’s Church, Yoxford in Suffolk on 22 October 1925.
No one in the family knows how or when they met, but the hospital where Mildred worked as a nurse from 1919 – 1925 was in Woodbridge, just a few miles from where Jack’s family lived in Butley, and his Royal Navy service record suggests that it must have been sometime in either 1920 or 1923 as he was otherwise away at sea. They must certainly have become engaged before 1 May 1924 as Jack was serving aboard HMS Benbow from that date until shortly before the wedding.
In this photograph, the bride and groom are flanked by bridesmaid Ada Howe, who was Mildred’s sister, and the best man who my mother believed to be Raymond Howe, my grandmother’s brother. The tall gentleman in the church doorway is Mildred’s father, Walter Howe, and from the age and facial features of the other man it seems likely that he is Jack’s father, Samuel Cullingford. The lady is unknown – she does not resemble Mildred’s mother so she is possibly Jack’s mother, Esther Page.
My grandmother was well known for never throwing anything away, and thanks to this habit several receipts survive that provide a few details of the occasion.
My grandmother was always interested in clothes, and her dress with its raised hemline and dropped waist would have been at the height of fashion in 1925. I still have the dress, which is made from white silk embellished with now-tarnished silver bugle beads – my grandmother told me that Jack brought the silk back from China, although I have not been able to reconcile this with his Navy records.
Sadly, there is no picture of the two-tier wedding cake, which at 16lbs must have been substantial – it’s interesting to note that it cost twice as much as the dress ! The special design battleship ornament does survive, however, and is in the possession of my cousin – it is made from pressed silvered cardboard and has cotton wool smoke issuing from the funnels. The drinks order from the Griffin Inn in Yoxford is unusual to modern eyes – champagne would have been a luxury item at this time, well beyond the means of a gamekeeper’s daughter, so it looks like port and whisky were used to toast the happy couple.
Shortly after their marriage, Mildred and Jack went to live in Portsmouth, lodging first with the Cooper family in Telephone Road and later moving to their own home at 10 Evans Road, Southsea. They had two daughters: Ruth in 1926, and Patricia in 1931. At this time, the ships Jack served on were often away at sea for two or three years at a time, so Mildred effectively raised their daughters alone as he did not retire from the Royal Navy until 1945.
The Cullingford family in 1935
After the war, Jack worked as a rigger in the Royal Dockyard in Portsmouth until his sudden death in 1964, aged 64. Mildred lived on in their house in Evans Road until shortly before her death in 1988, aged 91.
Sleuthing Notes 