Hunstanton Lynn News column: grandfather William Garner a lumberjack in Canada and Peterborough pub owner
Turnstone by John Maiden
It has been my good fortune to have encountered a large number of very interesting people over the course of a lifetime, which currently spans the period from February 1938 to February 2023.
I was born into a household that included my grandfather, William Garner – a fascinating connection with the Victorian era – which had seen the birth of my home town as well as my grandfather. He died before I reached the age of six, but by that time I knew he had been a lumberjack in Canada for a short time, prior to the birth of my mother in 1904.
He had also been an engine driver and the owner of a Peterborough pub prior to moving to Hunstanton before the Great War! I make this point, because it supports my belief that in the case of most family trees there is a wealth of interesting knowledge, which often remains hidden for one reason or another.
Sadly the same is true of local council correspondence and documents that get mislaid, or are locked away in strong rooms and dusty cupboards!
Sometimes it takes a school project to unlock information, by requiring students to interview relatives in order to find out what life was like for them at a particular time in their lives. When it comes to local councils there is always the Freedom of information Act!
As the youngest member of my own family, I frequently found myself asking my parents, or older siblings, for information on events that occurred before I was fully aware of what was happening around me.
This makes me wonder if I really remembered events, such as the bombing raid on Hunstanton in 1941, or if I absorbed the information from hearing the story retold by others.
Perhaps, this goes some way towards explaining why I have always been interested in establishing the facts, particularly when they are relevant to the decision making process.
In 2007, for example, when West Norfolk Council was asked by a new owner of CHS Amusements Ltd to release the Hunstanton Pier Company from an obligation to provide the ‘Pier’, specified in the 999-year lease for ‘Hunstanton Pier’, the council’s legal services manager defied logic by claiming it could be done!
The fact that she was wrong in making this assumption had been established in 2003, by an experienced local solicitor acting for CHS Amusements Ltd.
In a letter to the council he pointed out that it is not really possible to remove the Pier from the pier lease, because in effect it would require the surrender of that lease. It would be interesting to learn if the new leaseholders of Hunstanton Pier are aware that the purported Deed of Variation to their Pier Lease could prove costly...
