Family Fairytales

The Granny Gatehouse Project

---

In my post a couple of weeks ago - A glimpse of sunshine… maybe! - I mentioned Granny G - Dads mum - and my wish to be able to travel back in time to learn more about her life, especially the early years.

Over the coming weeks and months I plan to write more about what Dad (and Mum) and his sister - Aunty Mary - have managed to find out about her. You’ll be able to spot each post as it will always have the sub-title ‘The Granny Gatehouse Project’. Today I thought I’d kick off the series by sharing a couple of the fairytales related to her that fascinated me as a child and as an adult.

I hope that someone out there will find the stories about her life interesting.

---

Every family has stories. Some fact and some fiction - whether the people in question realize it or not. Some stories have been consciously changed to sanitize the past. Sometimes to make what happened more palatable or socially acceptable. And to perhaps protect the perceived reputation of the family. Some have gradually evolved unconsciously. Embellished with new supposed ‘details’ - moving farther and farther from the truth over time. Ultimately they become pure fiction, even if nobody realizes it. But true or not these stories continue to be shared and passed down through the generations.

I was lucky enough to grow up with two grandmothers - Granny P and Granny G. And no, I’m not anonymizing their names to protect the innocent - they’re both long gone. Those were literally the names I called them, the letter denoting their last name - P for Phillips and G for Gatehouse. Maybe in the company of just one of them them I’d just call that person Gran.

Our family was small and these days is even smaller. Granny P had one child and Granny G had two - though it would have been three if her first born had survived. For both of them I was their only grandchild. They lived into their 90’s (my 30’s) and survived decades longer than each of their husbands who sadly died just before, and a matter of weeks after, I was born.

Granny P lived a few miles from us so we saw her more. She’d turn up every Tuesday evening to look after me while Mum and Dad went off to play squash. Or come over to help out when I was off school sick. Sometimes when Mum and Dad were going out then I’d go and stay overnight with her as long as I promised Mum that I’d be ‘good as gold’!

But Granny G lived much farther away in Caerphilly, South Wales. It was the days before the M25, and even a complete M4, so I remember the arduous three hour plus drive each way all too well. The dodgy motorway service stops to use the bathroom and stretch our legs. There were no tablets. No mobile phones. No entertainment other than perhaps the radio and Dad singing traditional Welsh songs as we crossed the Severn Bridge into his native Wales.

During my childhood Granny G lived in a ground floor two bedroom flat just around the corner from my god parents and their three sons. It was a reasonable size, but I remember it as dark and the bathroom as exceptionally cold in winter. And then there was the fact that I got to choose to either sleep in the same room as my parents, and lie awake listening to my Dad shake the entire room with his snoring, or sleep on a camp bed in the lounge listening to a whittering budgie all night! Definitely a catch 22 and I learned to sleep with my fingers stuffed in my ears.

In later years Granny G moved to a sheltered flat nearer my Aunt and closer to my parents. I still remember that she had a cleaner who came to help her one day and she wouldn’t even let her in the front door. If Gran didn’t want to do something, or understand what you were trying to say for that matter, she could be a defiant soul!

I already mentioned budgies, but Gran adored all animals and birds. She would shower any animal that she could get hold of with cuddles and big squeaky kisses. Our first cat, Chania, had an early warning system - as soon as she heard Granny G walk in the front door of our house she would rapidly exit out of the back door. Refusing to come in from the garden for multiple days in a row or until she knew Gran had left for home. As a cat she wasn’t that social with the rest of us either, preferring to sit by a door and guard whichever room we were in rather than sit and be stroked on a lap.

Image caption: Granny G in Mum and Dads kitchen circa 1983 - check out those mustard cupboards and patterned tiles! In this case she’s cuddling my little rabbit Sooty. My other rabbit at the time was white, with silver grey ears and bob tail, what was he called? Silver?! Yes, I tend to be a very literal person.

I knew as a kid that Granny G was different. I watched as she communicated with Dad by doing strange things with her hands and he’d reply by doing equally strange things with his hands. According to Mum, when I was little, I’d sometimes try to join in by doing some random flapping of my own hands and fingers!

As I got a little older I understood that this was sign language and would learn the sign alphabet on a rather (too) snowy ski holiday.

Image caption: I think this was the ski holiday in question where I learned the basic sign alphabet. We took ‘the Grans’ with us a number of times, especially when I was young. In this case it was April 1974 so I had turned 7 years old days before - I just love that look on Granny G’s face! None of us look like we’re having a good time, including me, which is a surprise considering the picture is being taken by Mum with my camera. And what about that matching check lampshade?! The height of 1970’s fashion.

I understood pretty quickly that if Granny G wasn’t looking at me then I couldn’t communicate with her. In fact she was profoundly deaf and only had a small amount of hearing left right at the top of her range. To get her attention, if she wasn’t looking at you, then you’d have to do a high pitched whistle and generally she’d react - if she felt like it!

I don’t remember what questions I asked or precisely when or how I was told the story about her. I think that I knew that she hadn’t grown up with loving parents like me. At some point I was told that she’d been dumped on the steps of a church when she was around two years old. The assumption was that her family couldn’t deal with her deafness. And she was then raised by the vicar of that church and his sister. Right?

I think I just accepted the story. I don’t remember questioning it. Yet I couldn’t imagine it. How would it feel to have been left behind like a bag of old clothes? Then again I’m not sure that I thought it through that far. The story fascinated me. Wasn’t she lucky to have found the vicar and his sister who took her in and cared for her?

But the whole thing couldn’t have been more fictitious. There wasn’t a grain of truth in it - other than that Gran was indeed profoundly deaf and didn’t grow up with her birth parents. We now know that it was our biggest family fairytale, of anything identified thus far, and very different to the true story.

Nobody seems to be sure exactly where this fictional story came from - it may perhaps have been created and shared by her husbands mother. Used to sanitize what must have been a very hard start to her life as an illegitimate child, of a widowed mother, who was living in probably extreme poverty. A child who at almost seven years old was legally removed from her mothers care by a court, who sanctioned that no further contact was to be allowed with her mother. More on that true story in a later post.

My second fairytale was all of my own (childhood) making. And relates to Grans last name - her married name - Gatehouse.

I was and always will be a romantic. I can’t help myself. As a child I dreamed of big houses and castles. Of romances between masters of the manor and female servants. In my mind I created a story about the man that lived in The Gatehouse to a large estate with a drive that went on forever, rolling green lawns, and a spectacular house. A man who took his name from his trade - as many people did at the time. And married the prettiest girl from the neighboring village.

Another dream. Definitely fictional. But I perhaps a possibility?

These days you can go on Google and search for information on the origin of a name to your hearts delight. One website told me that the name Gatehouse comes from the Germanic personal name Godhard, composed of ‘god’, which means good, and ‘hard’, which means brave or strong. Hmmm, I quite like that.

Another site suggested that Gatehouse is derived from geographical locality - OK that’s a little closer to my dream. It could have been 'at the gate-house' of the monastery, church, country house etc. Another similarly described it as a topographic name from Middle English gatehous, taken by someone who lived in the gatehouse at the entrance to a park, city, or other enclosure. Well, that fits with my story, maybe?

But as it turns out, not even close, and definitely no cigar. When Dad delved into our family history he found that our original last name wasn’t Gatehouse at all. In fact we’d been called Gittoes. One ‘t’ or two - I’m not sure.

At some point, well over a hundred years ago, someone thought they’d make it prettier or more attractive and changed it to Gatehouse. Though at the time a whole bunch of people called Gittoes all changed to Gatehouse, so perhaps we were trying to out run the law (!) or were trying to get away from some kind of blemish to the family reputation? Maybe we had a highwayman in the family?! There I go again… Whatever happened, there was definitely no fairytale castle or gatehouse for that matter.

Two family fairytales. Two different sources. And one that I’ll expand upon in future posts. The Granny Gatehouse Project has officially gone for lift off…

---

If you liked this post then I’d love it if you would click on the heart and add a comment about what resonated for you – it means a lot to me to hear from each of you.

---

In case you missed it, I published my book - Hold My Hand: A Journey Back to Life - here on Substack last year. If you’d like to read it then you can find each chapter by clicking HERE and it will take you directly to the webpage dedicated to the book where you can read or listen.

If you would also be kind enough to share it I would be eternally grateful as it will help more people learn about these deadly infections. Maybe one day that knowledge will save a life.

Thank you!

---