Memories of the Reverend Awdry
A Lifetime in Rodborough Avenue
Oliver Wicks 1999
LOVELL (earlier Devonia – later Sodor)
The author (who lived next-door to the Rev and Margaret) said that Wilbert’s move to Rodborough constituted more semi-retirement than absolute retirement: with his ‘many trips to various parts of the country in support … of the days of steam. He was chairman of the Rodborough Endowed School Management Committee and had much to do with the Silver Jubilee Celebration in 1977 and the Rodborough Carnivals of 1978 and 1979.’
Mr Wicks went on to say that ‘He had a great gift as a preacher and often led the services at Rodborough Parish Church as well as those of other denominations. When at Rodborough he could no longer climb the steps to the pulpit, he would preach to the congregation from his wheeled chair.’
The chapter continues with Mr Wicks recounting a family member spotting one of the Rev’s books in Tokyo: ‘She saw copies in Japanese of “Oliver, the Western Engine” and “Tramway Engines”, in which Mavis appears. Assuming, correctly, the author had taken our names for the purpose, she brought a copy of each and presented them to us … Wilbert was happy to sign them for us.’
Mr Wicks paints a warm picture of neighbourly life: he ‘always received a warm welcome from Margaret and Wilbur’ when he brought books round for signing for friends and family.
But the Rev then had a good idea: why not charge a half-crown for each signing, with the funds going to the Tal-y-Llyn Railway? Oliver suggested, after decimalisation, that ‘perhaps £1 would not be out of place.’ Yet, Oliver added, ‘On one occasion three Avenue girls aged about eight or nine knocked on my door, each holding a book in their hand … too shy to knock on Mr Awdry’s door directly … When I took them next door, Wilbert welcomed them with a smile and not only signed each book without mention of any sort of charge but gave each girl a small gift.’
Oliver wrote more of Wilbert’s ‘many endearing qualities’, such as his generosity, which went way beyond the personal: ‘Among his favourite charities were: the Children’s Society, Barnardo’s, the Red Cross and Cancer Relief.’
Mr Wicks described Margaret as ‘a very pleasant person’ and ‘a good and helpful neighbour’ – ‘For instance, during the years when we had the one or the other of our elderly mothers living with us, she would readily come in and keep them company thus enabling Mavis and me to go out together for a time. It was a sad loss when Margaret died in 1989.’
But back to the railways: ‘As might be expected, the house contained many relics and memorabilia of the days of steam. I remember one of these which casual visitors would not normally have seen, it was placed prominently on the wall above the upstairs toilet. It read: Cheshire Lines Ltd These closets are intended for the convenience of passengers only. Workmen, Cabmen, Fishporters and Idlers are not permitted to use them.’
In 1996, Wilbert was awarded an O.B.E. for services to children’s literature. But ‘By this time he rarely left his bedroom. In spite of his declining health he never once complained about it when I visited him. He continued to be looked after at home until his death at 6.15 a.m. on Friday, 21st March 1997.’ A funeral service at Rodborough Church was followed six months later when ‘Gloucester Cathedral was filled to capacity for a commemoration service and exactly one year after his death … relatives and friends filled Rodborough Church again for the dedication, by the Bishop of Gloucester, of a memorial window to Wilbert and Margaret. The stained glass window in strikingly brilliant colours was commissioned and paid for by Wilbert in memory of his wife Margaret. The window is the work of Alfred Fisher, a stained glass adviser to the National Trust, who designed it and did the drawing for it in consultation with Wilbert himself. The figures pictured are predominantly of children and in the bottom right-hand corner is Thomas the Tank Engine in the engine-shed, whose doors Wilbert stands ready to close.
In a prominent place in the Rodborough churchyard, the ashes of Wilbert, Margaret and Wilbert’s brother George, have been laid close to one another. Wilbert’s epitaph, cut in stone is: “He helped people see God in the ordinary things in life and he made children laugh.” Margaret’s epitaph is: * “Her children rise up and call her blessed.” and George’s: “Uncle George was a simple man and kindly. None ever sought his help in vain.”
*A quotation from the Bible. Proverbs 31.28.’
Having read this book and The Thomas the Tank Engine Man (Brian Sibley), what makes them both even more compelling at their ending is that the authors didn’t meet. So, Mr Wicks comments on Wilbert’s epitaph: ‘(I am told that this was his response when someone asked him what he would like his epitaph to be).’ Not only did the authors not meet, it doesn’t seem as though Mr Wicks knew of the biography of the Rev Awdry. And that, I think, is a wonderful thing – an indication of the modesty of the Rev Awdry: his next-door neighbour never even knew …
Rev Awdry at Emneth, and true tales of Toby the Tram Engine on the Wisbech and Upwell Tramway
My father, William Budd, was born in 1927, spending his childhood frequently moving from one low standard rented house to another around Hackney and Dalston, being brought up by his father who had casual work at the London Docks. Like any working-class person in the 1930s my Dad was living in abject poverty, and to add to his personal challenges his mother had died from cancer when he was a young child.
With the Second World War underway, Dad was evacuated to the country, to a distant Fenland village called Upwell on the Cambridgeshire/Norfolk border. His standard of living instantly improved as he settled in with a kind family who had a smallholding in the austerely named Pius Drove, Upwell. He enjoyed the best food and freshest air of his life in this windswept corner of pancake-flat rich-soiled farmland.
When he was old enough he was called up by the Services to play his part in the war effort, and he joined the Royal Air Force. He trained as a mechanic, repairing fighter planes that had been damaged in aerial battles with the Luftwaffe.
His father stayed in London as he was an essential worker, at the docks, and sometimes at the Ordnance depot at Enfield. Travelling home from work one day, he was on the top deck of a London bus that got caught in the blitz. William’s father and several others died in this explosion, so William was orphaned as a teenager.
When the War was over William had no reason to return to London. He liked the Fens, had settled there, and, as a digger and dreamer, he tried to make a simple independent living by working on the fertile farmland. His ambition was to find security and stability in life by buying a house of his own. He realised he wasn’t going to achieve this as a labourer so he gave up farming and chose to work at desk jobs in Upwell village businesses. He studied finance and accounting to gain qualifications.
The nearest big town was Wisbech and in due course, around 1950, he found work at the local paper, The Wisbech Advertiser, as a clerk. He walked from his digs in Pius Drove to the nearest bus stop in Town Street, on the main road through Upwell to Wisbech. The bus stop was outside the Police House, and at the bus stop he met the Village Policeman’s daughter, and their destiny unfolded as they got married and she became my mother, Janet Osland.
The morning bus was full of commuters from Fenland villages, bound for employment in Wisbech. For over twenty five years the buses had been the main artery for travel to Wisbech. Before the bus era people could travel to Wisbech on the Wisbech and Upwell Tramway, opened in 1883, mainly as a six-miles long freight line to take local produce from the fen farms to the markets at Wisbech, and further on to the big cities by the national railway network from the mainline station.
The railway also took passengers for forty-four years, but they could no longer compete with the convenience of the newly introduced motorbuses. The trams were very slow, partly because they had a 12 mph speed limit, as much of the railway ran unprotected alongside public roads. The railway was closed to passengers in 1927 but remained open for freight until closure in 1966.
Being an observant chap, my Dad looked out of the the bus windows and had been fascinated by the Trams trundling along, pulling a string of railway trucks.
But my father was not the only person who had been curious about this strange railway running by the road, with its odd looking box-shaped steam tram locomotives. In the next village beyond Upwell and Outwell was a newly arrived vicar of Emneth, the Rev Wilbert Awdry, who served the parish from 1953 until his retirement in 1965, when he moved to Rodborough, in Gloucestershire. By the time Rev Awdry arrived at Emneth, the characterful steam trams with side plates enclosing the wheels and brakes had been withdrawn, but he had seen these distinct locomotives in use at other locations in East Anglia. For the enthusiast, I can inform you that Toby the Tram Engine was based on the Great Eastern Railway Class G15 0-4-0T standard gauge tram engines formerly used on this line. The Emneth Vicarage was only a mile from the Wisbech and Upwell tramway, and the Rev Awdry must have closely observed the trains for the last thirteen years of the railway’s life.
Rev Awdry had invented the first Thomas the Tank Engine series of stories in 1942, to tell them to his son Christopher. His first book was published in 1945, with the last of his 26 books in 1972. His seventh book was “Toby the Tram Engine” published in 1952, just before his arrival in Emneth, though Awdry had served in other Cambridgeshire parishes from 1946.
Over a decade ago I asked my father if he had any recollection of Rev Awdry. William had enjoyed sharing the Thomas the Tank Engine stories with me as a young child, and it contributed to my lifelong interest in being a railway enthusiast. When I found out that Rev Awdry and my Dad had a common interest in the Wisbech and Upwell tramway, I wondered how the Vicar was received in his village, for his successful children’s books about railways. My father’s possibly unreliable recollection was that some local people thought Rev Awdry, from the next village, was a bit of a haughty character, and that his persistence with writing all this children’s literature was a bit frivolous for a man of the cloth. Clearly, the worldwide popularity and pleasure of his books across the generations has vindicated the Rev Awdry’s choices!
The Church of All Saints Odiham Hants Curate 1936
Holy Trinity Elsworth Cambs Rector 1946
St Edmunds Church Emneth Cambs 1953
‘My father and my uncle were both christened by the Rev W Awdry in 1947 at the church in Elsworth, Cambridgeshire. The Rectory was to the left of the church when viewed from the front, while the house that my dad and uncle grew up in was to the right. I remember having a friend who lived in the Rectory when I was young, and we spent many happy hours playing in there. This was obviously long after the Rev Awdry had left Elsworth but I do remember there being a collection of the Railway Series on the book shelves in the Rectory,
All photos taken by myself while on a nostalgia visit in 2023.’
(Kevin Rault)
This Facebook post on a Thomas the Tank Engine group includes a photo of a blue plaque:
The Rev W Awdry
1911-1997
Creator of
Thomas the Tank Engine book
Lived and wrote at this rectory
1946-1952