The Amor femily


	My first recollections of the Amors is of Mr Arthur Amor (father of Keith) in the large grocer shop which extended from the east Rectory wall up to what was then Lloyds Bank (now hairdressers). It was more like a small warehouse than a 'ye olde shoppe'. In the house above and around the Lloyds, the Chards lived. I think all this may have belonged to Mr Amor. Mr Amor's mother kept the draper's shop (now Sustain). I remember going there for my mother for pairs of lisle stockings at 1/11¾d a pair. Dora Lane (later Mrs Tim Kington) worked there, and it was because she virtually told me what to choose that I won a large teddy bear in a guess-the-name draw ! She must have fancied me. She came to Evensong with her sister Mrs Smith until she died. She was very tall and upright. One of her brothers was goalie for Wrington 1sts (!) She died aged about 88, Mrs Smith 102. Before the Amors had the big bingalow built on the site of the present flats, they lived in the house at Branches Cross which Eleanor and John Hair lived in. On the site before the Amors' bunglaow was a large old house in ruins which we kids thought was haunted. I went there with the Amors' meat at the beginning of the war, and I remember the spinster live-in housekeeper very plainly, but not her name. She used to love the winter evenings because she didn't have to work in the garden. Mrs Amor was née Young. Her father was a farmer. Her mother had some kind of chronic condition and lived with them, and was obviously very handicapped. The schoolmaster told us not to make too much noise when we were working near the house in the school garden which abutted the Amor property. The field opposite Amors belonged to Lawrence Bros. butchers (hence Lawrence Road). Mr Amor must have bought it from them (they're buried near the great West door of the church) and sold it (or was it compulsorily purchased ?) to the Council in the early 50s (Lawrence Road dates from the late 40s). In the 1930s Mr Amor purchased the Chew Magna grocer shop from Miss Amy (or Emmie) Hutchings and put George Marshall, who married the Wrington district nurse Miss Welsh, to manage it. Later, he had a grocer shop in West Town after demob. King Crook (George King Crook - born 1910 obviously - the year of King George V's accession !), who had pre-war worked for grocer W.H. Cook, managed that. Mr Amor's mother's sister and husband, Mr & Mrs Stride lived in Mulberry Cottage. There are photographs extant of Derham House with the name Porter above the window. Miss [Lorna] Bathgate told me the house was so named after a Miss Derham who lived there. I know of an Amor grave on the west side of the north path. I have just been over to check and I find it is the grave of William Richard Amor d. 1915 aet. 57 and Lucy Amor d. 1951. Are these Mr Arthur Amor's parents ? I've no idea. There is also an Edgar Amor commemorated on the stone as "my dear husband" named below the aforementioned. The Great War memorial has E. Amor on it. I believe they are one and the same. Arthur Amor was for some long time a Director of Bristol City FC. I have no recollection of the death and funerals of either Mr or Mrs Arthur Amor.