The Maunder family

GEOFF'S mother Muriel was born in 1921, the third of five children. The Bailiff's Uncle Arthur is the only one of those children still alive.

Muriel met her future husband, Percy, at a Valentine's Day dance in 1938. She was not yet 17 and Percy was 20.

Life was carefree in those days and there were no thoughts of war and occupation.

By June 1940 much had changed on mainland Europe. On 22 June 1940, aged 19, Muriel evacuated with her elder sister Ethel and her children on the SS Duke of York, a week or so before the German forces occupied the island.

Muriel, like so many fellow islanders, left after agonising for a few days. She had only a small suitcase, no wealth and no known destination. The train allocated at Weymouth stopped at Stockport.

She and other members of the Maunder family were eventually to make the town their home until 1945.

Soon afterwards, Percy, who had evacuated to Exmouth, received a pre-arranged letter from Muriel. It was written on notepaper headed the Reform Club, Stockport.

Being unfamiliar with the origins of the club, he wondered what his girlfriend had been getting up to. He hastened up to Stockport and there linked up again with Muriel.

Marrying there and bringing up their first child, they loved their time in Stockport; weekends walking in the Pennines and north Wales, visiting brother Sam in Windsor, and Percy watching Manchester City when he could.

Before going into the Army, he worked for Fairey Aviation at Ringway Airport, building bomber aircraft under contract to the Government. Manchester, in particular, often suffered from air raids.

In May 1945 Percy, still in the Army, agreed with Muriel that she and Rick would return to Guernsey as soon as possible.

So Muriel, in late July 1945, left a charming rented dwelling in Hazel Grove, Stockport, and a community in which she and Percy had been made welcome and had made their home together, to return to an island that was in a run-down state.

'She would recall how sad the shops in the High Street looked soon after Liberation. There were few goods in them, some shop windows were cracked and they were dusty.

'Beghin's shoe shop had only a few shoes in the shop window and most of them Dutch clogs,' said her younger son all these years later.

She wrote to Percy from her mother's home in Victoria Road, where she was living in cramped conditions, suggesting that she should return with Rick to Stockport or London, where Percy had been posted.

Percy told her to stay in Guernsey and although she obeyed with some reluctance, it took some time before she came to terms with living once again in the island.

The Bailiff's Maunder connection goes back to the late 18th century, when William Maunder married Anne Riley.

His roots were firmly in Cornwall but he died in Guernsey in 1806.

His son, William Maunder, was born in 1775 in Mevagissey, to the south of St Austell, Cornwall.

He married Grace Oliver at the Town Church in 1800 and was working as a shoemaker here in 1827.

William and Grace's first born was named Maria, but sadly she died soon after birth. Four further children were born – Anne, William, John Oliver (born in 1811) and the youngest, who was also to be named Maria.

John Oliver Maunder married Priscilla Crang, who had been born in St Helier, Jersey, in 1819.

The Bailiff has not had the time nor, he smiles, the inclination, to ascertain whether his great-great-grandmother Priscilla's family connection with Jersey was transient or deeply rooted.

He notes that whatever may have been her ancestry, she did have the good sense to leave Jersey and come to live in Guernsey, and that she and John were married at the Town Church in 1838.

John and Priscilla had seven children: John, William, Priscilla, Henry, Henrietta, Geoff's great-grandfather Arthur James, and the youngest, Susannah.

Arthur James Maunder was born in Guernsey in 1854 and he married Christina Maud Lockyear in St Pierre du Bois in 1878. She died in 1892, aged only 39.

Christina's mother, born Christina McKinnan in the Isle of Mull in 1818, had married Artimus Lockyear, a Guernseyman, at the Town Church.

Her parents were Esther Le Conte of the Vale and John McKinnan from Tobermory on the Isle of Mull.

Arthur James had begun working life by learning the art of printing at the office of The Star newspaper, then owned by the late Mrs Ellen Le Lievre.

He remained there for only six months before emigrating as a young man to Chicago. He was employed in that city as a van-man and also worked in stockyards.

In an obituary in The Star of 19 July 1934 it was stated that he was in Chicago at the time of the Great Fire, which practically destroyed the city. He had witnessed the terrible scenes both during and after the fire.

Arthur James stayed in Chicago for four years but returned to Guernsey when his father was seriously ill. He then took charge of the family business, which his father had developed.

He saw the possibilities of the cycling trade and established himself selling bicycles, first in Le Marchant Street, later moving in 1920 to Le Pollet.

Together with one of his sons, Clifford, and until his death in 1934, he carried on business at 18-20 Le Pollet, until recently the site of the Guernsey Press shop.

Arthur James Maunder and Christina Lockyear had eight children. William had died soon after birth. His other children were Albert, Archibald, Wilfred, Geoffrey's grandfather Leonard, Arthur William, Ethel and Clifford.

Leonard had been born in 1885 and was to marry a Guernsey girl, Elsie Smith.

He was employed from 1910 by the London South-Western Railway Company, which became Southern Railways, and retired in Portsmouth soon after evacuating and before moving to Stockport.