Lovely old recipe book

 Good morning all.  I don't know why I bothered to go to bed last night.  I was so tired by 9 p.m. I went up, but came down again at 12.30 and was STILL awake at 4 a.m. with shoulder pain that paracetamol didn't touch.  My neck and shoulder were aggravated when I had my MRI scan, and lifting boxes (I couldn't let Pam do it all) yesterday made it bad again.  This morning I can barely croak, so have clearly picked up a bug over the weekend.  I had to cancel my asthma review appointment and put it back a week. 

Anyway, here is the interesting old recipe book I bought yesterday.  A quality book with marbled end papers and margins, made and sold by Pawson and Brailsford, Sheffield.  I have found Edith Davy in the 1901 census at 10 Belvedere Road in Scarborough, which is a lovely big period house - the sort you need money to own, and the use of this expensive book means they were comfortably off.  She was born in Sheffield in 1865 and married to Charles, a retired mechanical engineer.  Age-wise, she would probably be Ruth's grandmother.  Anyway, from Scarborough they moved to Devon, and in the 1911 census they are living in Knoll Cottage, Woodbury, Devon and a Maude Hosford (born Leeds, 1870, DiL, widowed, private means) and her son William 8 (b. Kensington) are staying there/visiting.   I have found a picture of the beautiful manor house Ruth/her family  lived in (now divided up into flats).  Ruth Eleanor Hosford doesn't appear to have ever married.  She was born 2nd November 1910 and died 13th May 2005 - so made it to 95.  Her death was registered in the Torridge area of N. Devon and she is mentioned in Companies house 2002-05 as a director at a Barnstaple address, along with various of the Hartnoll family.

There is a picture from the paper of Afton, the little hamlet on the doorstep of the manor house.

This page from Vogue magazine was slipped into the front of the recipe book.  A little snippet of history.  Can't find out anything about Sheila Eastleigh, let alone the enigmatic "Sue", but doesn't Mrs Eastleigh look a kind lady?  Perhaps that is Sue in the photo too.

 

The first recipes in the book.  There seemed to be a lot of ones using breadcrumbs, so perhaps these were 1920s/30s recipes - the other ingredients were too difficult to source in wartime.

This must have been a much earlier recipe, note the instruction to cook it "over the fire".

I think the earlier writing is Edith's, and have included this page as she seemed to have made these recipes, owing to the splashes on the pages.

Towards the end of the book the hand changes, and is similar to the writing that put the address and year 1950 on the front page.

Of course, the moment I saw a Totnes address I thought of all my dad's family tree hefted to that area (and around Dartmoor) so knew the book had to stay with me. It "had my name on it". . .

Right, going to lie down on the sofa now, and have a Time Team nap . . .