[Susan Silvester left school aged twelve, 1890, and after a brief stint in service, worked for Miss Hughes as a live-in assistant and baker. Miss Hughes, a close family friend, ran ‘the shop’-- the village grocery, blacksmith’s and bakery that Silvester eventually took over, marrying the blacksmith] 

One other memory of the 1890’s inseparably linked with the shop is of the handbell ringers who used to come round at Christmas to the houses where they could be sure of refreshment. There was Tom Hailstone, my mother’s brother, Joe Wyatt, the parish clerk and my mother’s uncle, and Joe Kimberley. They used to come to my parents’ house and to the shop. They usually came to Miss Hughes’s last, when they would have already been well refreshed, and I have seen them trying to carry on their ringing while supporting each other or with one or more of them sitting on the floor unable to stand.