[Susan Silvester attended village schools near her home in Minworth, north of Birmingham, from 1883-1890]

By the time I was at school my Hailstone [maternal] grandparents had come to live in the village in a house in the Bull Ring. They had an acre or two of garden and they used to grow great quantities of flowers. They used to make them up in tight bunches with the different flowers arranged in rings, after the fashion of the times, and a few moss-rose buds in the centre. They would then sell them to the people who came through the village from Birmingham in ‘brakes’ and carriages at the weekend. A brake was like a high wagon with rows of seats, and was drawn by two horses. They often came through five or six at a time taking parties of people further into the country. They were always very merry parties no doubt well supplied with refreshments. Sometimes they had a band with them and we always used to run out to listen to it. The carriage parties were quieter and more genteel, two gentlemen in top hats or bowlers perhaps, and two ladies with parasols.