Dear Jane
I've just been looking at your Cottingham
website. What a brilliant job you have made of it. Congratulations.
I was surprised to find that my family CANNAM
is nor listed along with the other old Cottingham families. I know that
no-one of that name lives in the village these days and that that branch
of the the family died out with my generation. The CANNAM name goes back
many centuries to the time when the village church was being built. Lots
of CANNAM names are to be found in the church records of births, marriages
and deaths both in the church and in records stored elsewhere. Although
weather damaged, there are old grave stones still to be seen in the
churchyard.
I was born in COTTINGHAM and lived in the
village until I married in 1958. I lived in Church Street, two doors away
from my grandfather who had a smallholding with a paddock which now has
modern houses built on it.. He lived most of his life in Cottingham
although he was born in Middleton.
CANNAM HOUSE in Middleton once belonged to the
family,but through marriage passed to the BURGESS family of East Carlton.
CANNAM CLOSE in Middleton is named after my grandfather as he used to farm
the land where the present housing now is. My father GEORGE CANNAM was one
of seven children, four sons and three daughters. George was to only one
of the sons to have a child, so with me being a girl, the name died out
when I married.
I attended the village school until I was
eleven when I went to school in Kettering. I travelled on the bus every
day with Rosemary Kisby whose father was headmaster at Cottingham School.
I often revisit the village and recall the names of all the people who
lived in the houses. It's alarming that now I'm as old, if not older, than
the 'old' people I remember as a child.
If I can supply you with any information about
those days, please let me know. I would be delighted to trawl back in
time.
Yours
Sylvia Ruth Cannam
25 May 2008
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