Edith Irene Greenfield (GG)
On the weekend of 1/2/3 September 2000, the Greenfield family convened at Nairn and drove to Lochindorb, a former stronghold of the Clan Comyn, to meet the last wishes of Edith Irene Greenfield, who had died aged 100 years in June 1999.
This brought to an end a life that had started when Queen Victoria was still on the British Throne; which had spent some 69 years living in the Isle of Man as a respected and indefatigable resident; which took place some 39 years after the sad death of her beloved son of Scotland, Tom, a death that she had solemnly marked for him in the same way as we were to do for her.
A musician who found the work of Debussy, Ravel and Vaughan Williams ‘a bit too modern’. A competitive tennis player (Sheffield Daily Telegraph – Saturday 11 May 1929, p 13, col. 3), a daughter of the Vicar of Beaufort, Rev. D.J. Llewellyn (1858-1927 – see Merthyr Express – Saturday 24 December 1927 p.16 col.4 for obituary ), a proud member of the Llewellyn tribe, with her own Celtic ancestral roots deep in the Welsh Valleys. She and Tom were thus able to give us our own memories and place our own childhood roots into the Celtic throne of Manannan, whose stronghold was on the top of Barrule, and who had, by tradition, held his court from Manannan’s Chair in the Parish of German at Cronk y Voddy on the Isle of Man.
GG was born into a large family in 1899 at St David’s Vicarage Beaufort, Ebbw Vale, in the ‘Head of the Valleys’ coal mining area in South Wales. She first appears on the Census for 1901 at that address aged just 2 years. (Interestingly, modern maps show ‘Greenfield Crescent’ and Reservoir Road’ as nearby street names.)
GG’s sister, Annie Llewellyn, who died in 1921, is remembered by a Memorial Plaque in the Church
GG and her husband, Tom, himself from a large family in Scotland, married on March 5th 1920 having first met in Beaufort South Wales where Tom was managing the Blaen-y-cwm reservoir, and eventually moved to the Isle of Man from Barnsley (which had been Tom’s next post) in 1930 – Tom had been seriously injured in the shoulder and lung, on November 19th 1915, by a ‘stray bullet’ in the Great War, and he needed the fresh air that the Island life provided.
Tom became Chief Water Engineer to the Douglas Water Board, and built and developed many of the installations that are still used on the Island. GG was a pioneer in many fields – the first woman Magistrate, involved in the British Legion, Inner Wheel, Red Cross, a founder of the Douglas Tennis Club, a pillar of the (now permanently closed) All Saints Church.
The family – first her children, then her grandchildren, all came to regard GG’s Island as their own, and spent many Summers and other holidays exploring the delights it offered.
GG was a sociable person, and the family developed friendships with people not connected with the family which remain.
GG eventually moved from Greylands with the help of her daughter Helen, to 73 Port-e-chee Avenue (a bungalow she named as ‘Beaufort‘ in memory of her Welsh birthplace), and later to Sunnydale Residential Home. Margaret Love, her eldest daughter, husband of Brian Love, himself a Manxman, moved to the Island, and cared for GG until late 1998 when she died. Liz Maskell, Margaret’s daughter, took up the responsibility, including organising GG’s 100th Birthday celebrations, until GG sadly left us in June 1999.
The Greenfields 