Glennys Jean
I am sorry to bang on about this very minor aspect of the Foden history - and move away from Special Constables - but there is now the suggestion that it impinges to within about 20 yards of the house where I was born.
That is, if we are talking about the right 105 Chester Road.
The occupants of "my" number 105 were, I am 95 percent sure, there in 1939. (If not they must have moved in not more than a year or so later, but I have no recollection of such a momentous event as the moving-in of a new family so close to us). They were a couple in their mid to late sixties, Frederick and Alice Lyon/Lyons. I am pretty sure about their Christian names and absolutely certain about their surname. They were childless. Mr Lyons had retired from a job in a leather goods shop in the Great Western Arcade in Birmingham and had used a large area of land behind his house, beyond the garden, to create a small market garden. There he raised chickens in a series of ramshackle sheds and grew large quantities of vegetables which were regularly shipped to Rose's, the greengrocers on Kingstanding Circle. I spent much of my spare time as a young child "helping" him – he was a kind and, obviously, a very patient man!
I am of course suffering from the Fodena virus and it causes me to have the strong feeling that there was, somewhere or other, a Foden connection in one of these houses. I went off on the wrong track with Mr and Mrs Richards and am now wondering whether there was something connecting the Lyonses. A relative perhaps? Although the only relative I recall was the sister of one or the other of them whose married name was Eldred.
What is critical is the correct identification of the number 105 house. Is the name of any of the neighbouring families readily available from the 1939 census so that we could pin it down? It is fascinating that there is a Lyons/Foden connection here somewhere. I feel that the Fodens are closing in on me......
Chris