The Jollyman Letters: a family treasure
There’s a family legend that a gold sovereign was hidden somewhere in our old house in Billericay, Essex.
We searched, of course, but we never found it.
But in our attic we found something infinitely more precious: an amazing collection of antique family letters, including:
Victorian letters between sisters Ann and Jane Young (married to Mr Phillips and Mr Baker) and their cousin Priscilla Young in Ryde, Isle of Wight;
A charming set of letters written in the 1870s to my great great grandmother Mary Hansford on the Isle of Wight during her courtship by George Millman, and some from other Hansford relatives, including Mary’s disapproving father William Hansford.
Letters to and from George and Mary Millman, my great great grandparents, while they were living in Islington, London, and a diary of their adventures while holidaying on the Isle of Wight in 1892 with their young family and friends;
An amazing series of almost 200 letters written during the First World War from my great grandfather Herbert Jollyman to his ‘darling little wife’, Hepsie in Billericay, Essex – a wonderful English story of love, war, gardening and cups of tea;
The Honeyspoon Letters
Twenty-five years after their marriage, Herbert and Hepsie Jollyman returned to the place of their original honeymoon at Lynton in Devon, writing home to their young adult children in Billericay in 1927. With various other family writings.
A few letters from Peter Cornock, a distant relative who travelled to Australia on the Chesterholme in the 1870s, and some letters to his daughter Alice Drew Cornock (who married James Jollyman) from her children, including my great great uncle Walter Jollyman’s letters and postcards from South Africa in the early 1900s.
This treasure trove of family history is too special not to share.
I’m in the process of transcribing all the letters and publishing them as books, starting with The Jollyman Letters. I’m researching the family history to accompany each set of letters and I’ve gathered a large collection of family artefacts which I’ll photograph to illustrate the books, along with parts of the original letters and postcards and some antique family photos.
If you’d like more information as the books are published, please join The Jollyman Letters mailing list. And if you know any family history of the Youngs, Hansfords, Millmans, Jollymans or Cornocks, don’t hesitate to get in touch using our Contact page.
