Uncle Frank and Auntie Flo

Gaynor Branford's memories of Frank Cornes Deakin

He was married to my maternal great aunt, Florence Amelia Deakin (nee Jarrett) and he died when I was seven.] Odd snippets I can remember are:

- that Uncle Frank was very deaf which made him shout as an old man, so that I was rather scared of him

- that he was a master baker

- that he was very strong from kneading the dough. (My father used to do a thing with his hand on our oak dining table, wher hewould splay it out flat, palm down, and then tap first his thumb and then his little finger very, very fast over and over. I remember my mother saying that Uncle Frank was so strong that if he did that it would break the table. I used to try to picture it - would the table break in half, clean across the middle? Would the leg fall off? Would there just be a hole in the wood underneath where his hand was tapping?)

- I have the fabulous picture of him showing off his amazing muscles and I suspect he had been doing a bit more than kneading bread to achieve that look!

., - his friendship with Uncle Harold (Harold Worth, who was not a blood relation). The story as I understood it was that Uncle Harold came to
stay with Frank and Flo for a week at the end of the First World War and then never left! Whether it was some kind of menage-a-trois, no-one ever really knew but it worked for them. I think Uncle Harold had lived near them in Northwich earlier on, before the war, so they had known one another for years

- the fact that they had the baby son who died at birth, that it was a case of saving the baby OR the mother (I have no idea whether it was the doctor/midwife who made that decision or whether poor Uncle Frank had to make it) and there was no chance then of any more babies.

- that they built 'Windy Harbour', a lovely house down near the beach and golf-links in Prestatyn, possibly with much of the money supplied by Harold Worth (not sure about that at all)

WORK IN PROGRESS

Deakin Demolin Connections