Returned to hear of death

In a recent issues of The Berwick Advertiser I read an article about my great-grandfather's death in his butchers cart on Holy Island.

To add to the story of Thomas Foreman’s death my mother told me at the time her father, my grandfather Victor Foreman, had been wounded in the First World War.

With his wrist wound my grandfather had returned home to Lowick. He got off the train at Beal Station and walked up through Kentstone to Lowick.

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Walking up the main street of Lowick, he saw a funeral taking place and asked a local man who had died. The man replied “Victor, your father was drowned on Holy Island” (December 1916). The horse was found gasping its last, still in the traces, at Seahouses.

Incredibly, Holy Island took my grandfather too. He had a bakery business in the village and had customers around the countryside. Just back from a Holy Island trip in 1951, he was feeling unwell. His cousin, a lady butcher asked if he would return to the island to deliver a meat order.

He returned to the island and on the way back his vehicle (a Ford van) became stuck in the River Low. In those days there was no bridge across the Low. He was unwell and was soaked from his efforts to get the van out of the water. He had to walk to Beal to phone for help then returned and waited for a tow out of the river.

He never recovered from that day and died April 11, 1951, aged 55.

I have my grandfather’s name Victor and my Scottish grandmother’s name Stewart.

Stewart Victor Inglis

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