One of my most abiding memories of my
childhood in M’bro is the matza ramble organised for the
children in 1954. I was around eleven at the time and my brother
Stuart around nine. The route was along the North Yorkshire
moors near Roseberry Topping, above Great Ayton and Stokesley.
Inevitably, the younger children could not
keep up and, at some time during the walk, smaller groups
formed, with the slower ones getting left behind. I was in
a group with my brother Stuart (my brother Geoffrey, who was
about fourteen, had elected to stay at home - wisely, as it
turned out), Pamela Cohen, one of my best friends and Bernard
Vyner. Somehow, we got separated from the others and totally
lost, without any map or directions.
It started to get dark and we were frightened.
We did not have a clue where we were. We plunged along in the
gathering dark and cold. It was March/April time and there were
still snow patches on the moors. The ground became very boggy
and we were sinking into the mud with each footstep. We came
upon a sign that we could just make out. It read "Beware of
snakes". What we didn’t know was that there were a number
of deep potholes in that part of the moors and we could easily
have fallen down one of them. But we didn’t, so some guardian
angel must have been watching over us.
Suddenly, we saw, far below us in the
distance, a light moving about in the darkness—it was
completely dark by this time. We started to yell at the top of
our voices and began clambering down the slope towards the
light, on our feet and on our backsides, not caring how, as long
as we reached the light. At the bottom of the hill, we came to a
fence, which was obviously the edge of the property belonging to
"the light". We climbed over and jumped down into a
ploughed field on the other side. I lost a shoe but didn’t
care and splodged on towards salvation.
We were on a farm belonging to a couple called
Winsome and Bill, on the edge of lngleby Greenhow, not far from
Great Ayton. We were taken into the warm farm kitchen and given
some milk, then Bill took us into Great Ayton in his farm cart.
We thanked him profusely. I phoned home, told my parents where
we were and, just too weary to go any further, sat down on the
kerbside outside the phone box. After a while, a car swept into
the square and, in my brother Geoffrey’s words, "little
bedraggled figures came stumbling out of the dark, towards the
light of the car headlights". Later, after a hot bath and
much special treatment, we were given the answer to all ills -
some chicken soup!
I left M’bro in 1961, to go and study
Interior Design in London and went on to work, for many years,
as a scenic designer at BBC TV, under the name of Rochelle
Selwyn. I married Douglas Specter in 1976 and we have three
sons. For the last ten years, with my sister-in-law, I have run
a magazine for businesswomen and a magazine for women drivers.
With my brother Stuart and his wife, Valerie,
Geoffrey and husband Douglas, I attended the final service at
the M’bro shul. I had not been inside the shul for over thirty
years and had forgotten how attractive it was. I sat in my
mother’s seat and felt very emotional, as I remembered the
High Holidays, Chanukah and Purim parties and looking down on
the men from above. I saw many faces that I recognised and they
all looked more or less unchanged to me but, of course, they
weren’t. It was just that I have changed along with them.
We stayed in a village on the Yorkshire moors
and the weather was fantastic for the time of year—brilliant
sunshine. The moors looked stunning as we drove into M’bro on
the Sunday. The whole weekend was like some magical moment out
of time and I am very glad that I made the effort to go.
Rochelle Specter (Selwyn,
Schmulewitsch)
London, England
You can’t possibly know how excited I was
when I first read the M’bro Newsletter; it is such a brilliant
idea!
My great grandparents, Bertha and Jacob Wilks,
married in 1871 and settled in M’bro. Jacob was one of the
original founders of the "old" shul. Bertha died in
1906 and Jacob married someone known in the family as "the
second Mrs Wilks," a lady called Rebekah. Jacob died in
1916.
Bertha and Jacob had 11 children. At least 4
of them lived all their lives in M’bro: Lil, who married Phil
Simon; Rosie; my grandmother Beck, who married Jonas (John)
Richardson from Sunderland; and also Carla.
My grandfather, John Richardson, was one of
the founders of the "new" shul. He and my grandmother
Beck (Rebekah) had 4 children—Eric, Theo, Marion and Phyllis.
Theo, apart from a short period while he was in London training
as an articled clerk, spent his whole life in M’bro. He
married Brenda Posnansky (Simons) from Bolton and they had one
child, Julie. For some time before his death 4 years ago he was
secretary of the M’bro shul.
My mother Marion and my father Ralph Segal
(from Glasgow) were the first couple to be married in the
"new" shul. Although my sister Barbara and I were both
born in M’bro, we grew up in Plymouth. However, most of our
holidays as children were spent in M’bro, visiting the
plethora of relations. In fact, for many years after I qualified
as a Special Needs Teacher, I came regularly to M’bro to visit
my grandmother. I could have listened to her stories for ever.
Of all the four Richardson children, Aunt
Phyllis survives and lives in Australia. I have sent her a copy
of your newsletters and also to Ruth Shemesh, Brenda
Richardson’s sister, who, like us, was a regular visitor to
M’bro as a child, and who lived in Marton with her Israeli
husband for a while after they were married.
Joyce Lucas (Segal)
London, England
