Maud Ethel (Olive) Bartlett (Willson)

Born 8th December 1910, her mother's 30th birthday at 13 Albert Place, Highbury, Islington, London. The fourth daughter of Edward George and Rose Ellen Willson. Her two immediately older sisters both tragically passed away. Lillian, born in 1908 died aged 16 months in 1910 (see profile), nine months before Maud was born. Doris, born in 1905, died in 1934 aged 29. Maud had adored Doris and never really got over her passing. Maud also got on famously with Winifred and the two of them remained in close touch throughout their subsequent lives. However, Maud was never particularly close to her two younger sisters - Alice and Elsie for reasons that are perhaps not clear today .

Maud left school at age 14, taking up employment as a confectioner's assistant on the (still existing at that point) original London Bridge, which then had shops on it.

One of her early boyfriends died in a motorcycle accident. Her nickname 'Olive' allegedly came from 'Olive Oil' fom the 'Popeye' cartoon strip.

Her parents both died when she was quite young, her father in October 1928 and her mother 15 months later, in January 1930 (both at age 50 and from the various inluenza epidemics of that era) when Maud was 17 and then 19. She became ill herself a few years later (1930s) and had to spend time in a sanitorium (located in a pine forest) suffering from double-pneumonia and pleuracy.

She married Stanley Thomas Hart (see profile) in about 1932 and had two children, Stanley George and Valerie Mary by him.

Living in the Downham/Catford area of SE London at the outbreak of WW2, Maud/Olive and her young family were exposed to the start of the 'Blitz' in the autumn of 1940 and were eventually evacuated to North Devon.

There she, Stanley and Valerie found a very different life. She became close friends with the Hunkin family who owned (and still do) West Ash Farm at Frithelstock near Torrington, a friendship that carried on long after the war and which has been carried forward by subsequent generations to some degree to the present day. "Uncle George and Auntie Lily" who had owned the farm, and taken Maud to their hearts during the war eventually retired and bought a large house on Mount Pleasant in Bideford, overlooking the town and estuary. Mum and I would frequently take our summer holidays there in the early 1960's, and visit West Ash, which was now run by their son and his family. I stayed at the farm one night after hiding in a tree with another boy (their son?) and missing the last bus back to Bideford with Mum. I remember Jam Roly Poly Pudding sitting at an enormous oak farmhouse table in their kitchen. Maud became post-mistress of the Frithelstock Post Office, a job she returned to in later years, when married to Fred.

It appears that they stayed in Devon for a period after the war finished. Stanley Thomas is recorded as dying in Taunton. I think his loss nearly killed Mum. He had been everything to her and from things she told me over the years I don't think she ever really got over it.

Moving back to SE London with Stan and Valerie she met Fred Bartlett (selling insurance) and they married on 16th December 1948. Their only child, Barry (me) was born on 4th February 1954. Maud was 43. They had moved into 7 Holburne Gardens, Kidbrooke, SE3 (although Mum, much to Fred's annoyance, would insist that it should be 'Blackheath' as this sounded a bit posher and was correct because our postcode was SE3) in about 1950.

As a boy I remember Mum working at the Post Office in the local newsagents around the corner in Holburne Road (and me helping her count coins after I had come back from school) and then in the late 1960's and early 1970's at a Post Office at the bottom of Blackheath Hill, near the junction with Greenwich South Street. She also worked as a kitchen assistant in the doctor's quarters in the Herbert Hospital on Shooters Hill Road (now expensive apartments) nearby. It was from there that she acquired "Smiffy" our cat. It had been born feral and then abandoned and had been looked after by a young resident doctor, who had been informed he could not keep it, so Mum offered to take it.

After Fred's death in 1994, Valerie lived with Mum at Holburne Gardens; and then in 1999 they both moved to a house that Valerie had purchased in Newton Aycliffe Co. Durham (where Val had lived before coming to stay with Mum & Fred a couple of months before he passed away). Unfortunately Mum was not very happy there and after a few months decided to move into a residential care home (Hollygarth) in Middlesbrough, close to Leslie (Val's daughter, and who largely took on caring for Mum in this period).

Maud passed away there on 14th January 2005, just over a month after her 94th birthday.