Nellie's Story

A Life in Service: Nellie’s Story

 Elizabeth Ellen Osborne, Nellie, was born in 1914 in a cottage tied to Shipbrook Hill Farm (now home to Riverside Organics) and her life was very typical of children born in this rural village area. 

Her father worked as an agricultural labourer at Shipbrook Hill Farm and her mother worked at the Farm house and helped to milk the herd of cows.

Nellie’s first memory was of being a small child (wearing white frock with a yoke and a pinafore) and holding the hands of a man and a woman whilst walking along a cobbled path.

Her early childhood saw the First World War, 1914-1918, and the Spanish Flu epidemic, but being only a young child at the time her recollections were hazy but she remembered both her mother and sister being ill.

Nellie recalls a trip to the market where her dad bought sweets from the toffee stall. (Devon toffee in a tin with a small hammer to break it up, pear drops, humbugs and striped balls) At other times she would visit the village sweet shop for aniseed balls, liquorice sticks and love hearts.

Nellie started at Davenham School at the age of 5, she would walk to the village from their cottage in the morning, run home and back for lunch and walk home again when school finished for the day.  Nellie recalls playing in the Bluebell wood down Whatcroft Lane where cowslips, primroses, bluebells, campion, harebells, ladies smock and marigold grew.

Swallows, wrens and swifts, cuckoos, wrens and robins, thrushes, blackbirds, chaffinches and hedge sparrows all lived around the farms.

At the age of 6 Nellie caught scarlet fever, which is highly contagious, and she went to stay at the isolation hospital at the top of Hartford Road. (This became the maternity hospital and later an elderly care facility before closing during the Covid epidemic) The drive to the hospital from Hartford Road was flanked at the entrance by two large trees.

At the age of 14 Nellie left school and began working at the Davenham Rectory as a between maid.  This was a low paid job doing work that fell between that of the kitchen staff and the above stairs staff.  Nellie worked from 6am until 10.30pm and all for seven shilling and sixpence a week. Nelle wore a long, blue ankle length dress and huge white apron for her work in the mornings.  Two years later her apprenticeship finished and she had to find another position.

Nellie found a new job at Hartford Hall where she worked as a kitchen maid cleaning and cooking for the family who lived there.  Here her job involved making sauces and custards, cooking vegetables and preparing game, (rabbits, venison etc)  It was in this kitchen that she discovered that the cook was stealing food from the kitchen by parcelling it up and taking it to her sister. Nellie began to start playing tricks on the cook by hiding the cooks parcel of food, of course the cook couldn’t complain about it because she would have had to own up to what she was doing!

In 1941 Nellie married a young airman during the war, Ralph Osborne, who was posted abroad to North Africa, Italy and Austria finally returning after three years.  During this time Nellie worked as a nurse for patients with mental health problems, many of them were from the forces.

Nellie and Ralf had two daughters and in 1963 they volunteered to take foster children into their home and care for them as if they were their own.  At last Nellie and Ralf were allocated their own council house on Charles Avenue and Nellie became the Women’s Welfare Officer for the Davenham British Legion, this involved driving around the countryside on a 90cc Honda motorcycle visiting members.  At the age of 80 Nellie gave up the job and riding the motorbike too!

Nellie sadly passed away in 2005.

Nellie was persuaded to record her reminiscences in a book and so we know quite a lot about her life. (Nellie’s Story, A life of Service Anne Loader publications ISBN 1-901253-15-5)