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These memoirs of Frank and Emily Loxston, late parishioners of St Joseph's Parish in Bridgwater, were written at the request of Fr Ryan, parish priest during the Fifties. Their existence was first brought to my attention by Mr Wilf Drum, who used them for his researches into the history of Catholicism in Bridgwater, but I did not actually read them until 1981, when they were lent to me by Fr McReynolds as a source of useful information for the souvenir booklet produced to mark the centenary of St Joseph's Church. They were written in five exercise books and the handwriting was so legible that it would have been no easier to read had it been typescript, such was the emphasis on the three Rs when the Loxstons were at school. There is no indication of whether the handwriting in these exercise books is that of Frank or of Emily, but Mrs Mary Carter, a friend of the Loxston family, read the books shortly after they had been written and she told me that it was Emily's. The work appears to be mainly Frank's, as much of it is written in the first person singular and there are many references to boyhood memories, but presumably Emily had no small part in it, even though there is nothing which can be positively identified as coming from her. Human memory is, of course, fallible and the reader should be on his guard against treating memoirs, such as these, as absolutely accurate. An instance of an inaccuracy that arises from a trick of the memory is the statement that Fr Harding was the first curate at St Joseph's. The original exercise books, which had been most carefully preserved after Fr Ryan's time by Fr Morrissey and Fr McReynolds, disappeared during the few months that Fr Dee and Fr McNullty were in the parish. However, while they were in my possession for a few months in 1981 - 82 I decided to photocopy them, just in case some future custodian did not share my appreciation of their special interest and value. These memoirs deserve a wider audience than they have hitherto had, and the fact that they were almost lost for ever prompted me to publish them here. J.C.D. Smith (Spaxton, October 1984)POST SCRIPTUM: No attempt has been made to emend the punctuation of the original manuscript. |