#2251, Helena Winefride Morley FLETCHER

Helena was born on 6th March 1891,the eldest child of Herbert Morley Fletcher and Ethel Frances Crossley. She was educated at Birklands School in St Albans. The family resided at 98 Harley Street, London, adjacent to Dr W S A Griffith and his family at number 96.

As Helena grew to womanhood, so did Herbert’s concerns grow regarding his daughter’s friendship with Harold, the son of Dr Walter Griffith. This was despite chaperones and the conventions and etiquette of the day. He was not prepared to consent to their marriage and insisted that Helena be sent to finishing school in Dresden. On her return, Herbert consented to pressure from his wife and to Harold’s request for permission to marry his daughter. They were married on 6th June 1914 at Holy Trinity, St Marylebone and it was a grand occasion with police brought in to crowd control!

Harold and Helena’s first home was 2 Cavendish Road, London. Harold’s mother Mary Anne Kinder, known as Minnie died in 1915 and three years later, his father remarried Isabella Fairweather Kennedy who had been born in 1887. In time, they learned that they would be unable to have children and this caused tensions between them and Harold and Helena, who by that time had two small sons.

Harold and Helena made the decision to move to Devon and they bought Roydon, a former hotel in Asheldon Road, Wellswood, Torquay. It was at this house, that Helena gave birth to three more sons and a daughter. With the need for a larger home, they moved to a house on the opposite side of the road and took the name Roydon with them. Their former home reverted to a hotel again, under the name of Ardmore.

Helena was a devoted mother and one who suffered most terribly when her son Peter died aged fourteen and again when she lost Michael aged twenty whilst he was serving in the RAF during WW2. Being a Quaker, she was exacting in how she expected the home to be run and considered to be quite a formidable woman.

For the final two years of her life, she was nursed by her only daughter Mary who had given up her home and career to care for her mother. Helena died at home from cancer on 21st September 1961, and was cremated.

Vanessa Griffith and Anthony Cobbold
August 2013.