AUNTIE GLADYS (1891-1985)

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Gladys out for a walk with Georgie and self abt 1977

About 1899? at Leagrave

.Gladys in 1914 at Leagrave Hall. During the 1st wld war she and her mother became nurses with the Red Cross

Auntie Gladys with another deer she rescued from the hunt.



Gladys, Georgie and self on one of our Saturday walks on the hills in 1979, almost til the end she walked several miles a day,
until a fall running for the phone
..


At the well with Georgie and Bella in 1979, dropping a stone down for Georgie to listen to the sound of the echoes.

The well 25 years after the death of Auntie Gladys.



At Leagrave in 1914 with her horse

Leagrave Hall

Mrs G. Mantle (1985)

........ lost a well known resident by the death in her 94th year of Mrs. Gladys Braithwaite Mantle of Glenhayes.

She was the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. W.T Lye of Leagrave Hall, Leagrave, Bedfordshire. Her father was a
highly respected magistrate and councillor and owned a hat manufacturing business in Luton.

Upon his death Gladys and her mother moved to Harlington Manor, an historic house in Bedfordshire.
During the First World War she became actively involved in Red Cross hospital work, nursing wounded soldiers.

Harlington Manor where John Bunyan was held before his trial and where Auntie Gladys ancestral cousin Edmund Wingate the mathematician, and tutor of Queen Henrietta Maria in Paris, resided during the Protectorate. The Parish of Harlington

A painting by Gladys at Leagrave Hall. Although it looks very similar to the sitting room at Harlington Manor as I remember pictures of it.
Particularly the centre piece at Harlington which had a detachable wooden rose. Painted always the winning colour in the war of the Roses.
(Source pf picture Parisel)

Subsequently the Mantles moved to a smaller residence in Leagrave, and it was from here that Gladys was married to
Mr. Lionel Mantle.

They then sought the county border between North Devon ............... for a small residence chiefly because of
her happy memories of a summer holiday spent as a child at Glenthorne occupied then by Mrs. Haliday.

It was whilst staying at Glenthorne that Gladys first discovered what hunting meant to wild animals and she became a resolute
opponent of everything connected with chasing an animal for sport.

1945 The contemporary review , Volume 175

She and Lionel were together for nearly 40 years and after his death she continued to reside at Glenhayes. Until quite recently
she used to set off every morning with her dog Georgie for a walk .......... - she loved the country around
and it's wild life.

She maintained extraordinary good health until a fall in her home. She had many friends and with her affectionate nature gave a
ready welcome to all callers.

The funeral took place at on Friday.

The poem by Wordsworth about Simon Lee the ruin of whose cottage existed beneath Auntie Gladys' vegetable garden at Glenhayes.

In the sweet shire of Cardigan,
Not far from pleasant Ivor-hall,
An old man dwells, a little man, -
'Tis said he once was tall.
Full five-and-thirty years he lived
A running huntsman merry;
And still the centre of his cheek
Is red as a ripe cherry.

No man like him the horn could sound,
And hill and valley rang with glee
When Echo bandied, round and round,
The halloo of Simon Lee.
In those proud days, he little cared
For husbandry or tillage;
To blither tasks did Simon rouse
The sleepers of the village.

He all the country could outrun,
Could leave both man and horse behind;
And often, ere the chase was done,
He reeled, and was stone-blind.

And still there's something in the world
At which his heart rejoices;
For when the chiming hounds are out,
He dearly loves their voices!

But, Oh the heavy change! -bereft
Of health, strength, friends, and kindred, see!
Old Simon to the world is left
In liveried poverty.
His Master's dead, and no one now
Dwells in the Hall of Ivor;
Men, dogs, and horses, all are dead;
He is the sole survivor.

And he is lean and he is sick;
His body, dwindled and awry,
Rests upon ankles swoll'n and thick;
His legs are thin and dry.
One prop he has, and only one,
His wife, an aged woman,
Lives with him, near the waterfall,
Upon the village Common.

Beside their moss-grown hut of clay,
Not twenty paces from the door,
A scrap of land they have, but they
Are poorest of the poor.
This scrap of land he from the heath
Enclosed when he was stronger;
But what to them avails the land
Which he can till no longer?

Oft, working by her Husband's side,
Ruth does what Simon cannot do;
For she, with scanty cause for pride,
Is stouter of the two.
And, though you with your utmost skill
From labour could not wean them,
'Tis little, very little -all
That they can do between them.

Few months of life has he in store
As he to you will tell,
For still, the more he works, the more
Do his weak ankles swell.
My gentle Reader, I perceive
How patiently you've waited,
And now I fear that you expect
Some tale will be related.

O Reader! had you in your mind
Such stores as silent thought can bring,
O gentle Reader! you would find
A tale in every thing.
What more I have to say is short,
And you must kindly take it:
It is no tale; but, should you think,
Perhaps a tale you'll make it.

One summer-day I chanced to see
This old Man doing all he could
To unearth the root of an old tree,
A stump of rotten wood.
The mattock tottered in his hand;
So vain was his endeavour,
That at the root of the old tree
He might have worked for ever.

"You're overtasked, good Simon Lee,
Give me your tool," to him I said;
And at the word right gladly he
Received my proffered aid.
I struck, and with a single blow
The tangled root I severed,
At which the poor old Man so long
And vainly had endeavoured.

The tears into his eyes were brought,
And thanks and praises seemed to run
So fast out of his heart, I thought
They never would have done.
- I've heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds
With coldness still returning;
Alas! the gratitude of men
Hath oftener left me mourning.

Walter Thomas Lye and Annie Lye (nee Blundell) ( Source of pictures Parisel)

Publications of the Bedfordshire Historical Record Society: Volume 3

Bedfordshire Historical Record Society - 1916 - Snippet view
At one time I thought the old Mill Head was Leagrave Marsh, but in that case the mill itself must have been in Limbury, which would be highly improbable. I examined the river course with Mr. Lye, of Leagrave Hall, who took me to a place ...

The history of Luton and its hamlets: being a history of the old ...

William Austin, Joseph Hight Blundell - 1928 - Snippet view
Edward Barnard, chairman of the Council ; Joseph R. Scroggs ; Richard Andrews, and George Morton, members of the Council; Walter Thomas Lye, of Leagrave Hall; and William Austin, clerk of the Council. ...

(1922) Straw Hats: Their History & Manufacture

The dyeing of straw plait in England, done individually some time on a small scale, commenced as a separate industry about 1845, when a Mr. Randall opened some for dyeing works at Sundon, a village about four miles from Luton. Black, and a very poor brown and dark blue, were the only colours then dyed. Shortly after Mr. Thomas Lye, who came from Kirkby Malzeard, near Ripon, Yorks, which was a plait making centre, started His gamut of shades business as a dyer in Luton. numbered only four or five, and the standard of colour then demanded was very low. Mr. Lye's first signal " success was a grey," which at that time no other had attempted. In 1857 his business was competitor transferred to its present site. Other colours quickly followed, and the invention of aniline dyes revolutionized " " the old vegetable dye processes .............

Messrs. Lye & Sons brought out a novelty on straw plait, particularly effective on the Japanese wide patterns, which produced the same iridescent effect that is " " obtained on shot silk. This, however, was bathdyed and not sprayed.

The National Archives | Access to Archives
The Thomas Lye Convalescent Home: register of patients; 1938-1950. HB/61 Royal Sussex County Hospital: papers of Charles Druce, solicitor, as executor of ........

Below her mother's family the Blundells with grandparents Henry and Sarah Blundell

Did Lionel have a daughter? Who was his first wife?

Gladys had been in Germany when the first world war broke out. As she and her parents and brother left
the country the bridges were blown up behind them. Her father died soon after - as a result of a further trip to
the Holy Lands - where he had drunk water from an animal bladder which had poisoned him. Gladys and
her mother left Leagrave Hall and moved to Harlington Manor, Harlington, Bedfordshire - a house which her
ancestors the Blundells had owned - and in which she had heard the ghost of a lady walk down the corridor
to her bedroom - the lady's silks dragging on the floor boards as she walked. A cousin (Wingate Pierce?) 60 years
before in the same bedroom had seen the same lady sit beside his bed when he had been ill in the 1850's.
It had been at Harlington that Gladys's ancestor had held John Bunyan before his trial..

In 1948 her actions saving a deer from the hunt on her land by grabbing it whilst her husband got the hounds off
made headlines across the world, even inspiring a cartoon in the Times in which she is depicted at Badminton House
and which says "Your Grace, this lady has come to ascertain your views on hunting ? "
it shows Gladys in sensible dress approaching the Duke of Beaufort who is attired in hunting gear with a whip.

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