Childhood
Cradock’s family background was one of respectable middle-class trade; her ancestors included the Pecheys (corn merchants and churchmen), the Vallentines (distillers) and the Hulberts (cabinet makers). She was the daughter of the novelist and lyricist Archibald Thomas Pechey and Bijou Sortain Hancock.
Cradock’s birth was formally registered in London, in the district of West Ham. Fanny was given the name ‘Phyllis Nan S. Pechey’. The ‘S’ was for Sortain, a name that had been passed down through her mother’s family.
A plaque, with her name misspelled in the London borough of Leytonstone records at Fairwood Court, Fairlop Road, London E11: "Fanny Craddock 1909-1994. On this site until 1930 stood a house called Apthorp, birthplace of the famous TV cookery expert Fanny Craddock; born Phyllis Pechey." Her birthplace was named after Apthorp Villa, in Weston, Somerset, where her grandfather Charles Hancock had been born.
Cradock’s parents did not manage their money well, her mother, Bijou, spent extravagantly, and her father, Archibald, had sizeable gambling debts, many run up in Nice. In attempting to keep their creditors at bay, the family moved around the country, going to Herne Bay in Kent, then to Swanage in Dorset, and on to Bournemouth (which was then in Hampshire), where Archibald’s brother, Richard Francis Pechey (1872–1963), had become the Vicar of Holy Trinity Church in 1912. Whilst in Bournemouth the 15-year-old Fanny attended Bournemouth High School (now Talbot Heath School).
Archibald moved the family again to Wroxham in Norfolk, c. 1927, where his creditors caught up with him and by 1930 he was appearing in Norfolk's bankruptcy court faced with debts of £3,500.
Read more about this topic: Fanny Cradock
Famous quotes containing the word childhood:
“Modern children were considerably less innocent than parents and the larger society supposed, and postmodern children are less competent than their parents and the society as a whole would like to believe. . . . The perception of childhood competence has shifted much of the responsibility for child protection and security from parents and society to children themselves.”
—David Elkind (20th century)
“Indeed, my mother’s beautiful face still shone with youthfulness that night when she so softly held my hands and sought to stop my tears; but, precisely, it seemed to me that this should not have happened, her anger would have saddened me less than this new sweetness that my childhood had never known; it seemed to me that, with a hidden and impious hand, I had just traced the first wrinkle and made appear the first grey hair in her soul.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“Adolescence is a border between childhood and adulthood. Like all borders, it’s teeming with energy and fraught with danger.”
—Mary Pipher (20th century)