A Water Colour by Violet Seckington

One of the items recently catalogued at Rushden Museum is a water colour by Violet Seckington.  It is dated 1949 and shows Alix Bailey sketching at Manor Farm, Bedford Road, Rushden.

Violet was the daughter of Harry and Mary Seckington and granddaughter of Jonathan Seckington.  Jonathan was one of Rushden’s earliest postmen whose round covered Rushden and Wymington. On the 2 March 1873 he started work at Higham Ferrers Post Office as rural postman for Rushden and Wymington.  At that time he delivered all the letters in Rushden and Wymington twice a day.  He used to leave Higham Ferrers at 6 a.m. and after delivering the letters in Rushden, had to go to Wymington, arriving about 9 a.m.  He would then return to Higham and start all over again at Mid-day.  He retired in 1907 and was presented with a ‘Long Service’ medal.

Jonathan was also a seedsman and had a shop in Rushden High Street.  The business was carried on after his death in 1924 by his son, Harry, and daughter-in-law, Mary.  They had two daughters, Winifred, known as May, born in 1900, and Violet born in 1908.  Harry Seckington was one of Rushden’s firemen and there was a FIREMAN sign over the shop door.

Alix Marie Burrell Bailey was born in Rushden 1900, the daughter of John Burrell Bailey and Sarah Gertrude.  She had a brother, John Marshall Bailey, born in 1897, who had a distinguished army career, and became a Captain in the Northamptonshire Regiment during WWI.  In 1917 he was the first Rushden Officer to be awarded the M.C.  In 1923 he became Superintendent of the Rushden St. John Ambulance Division, during WWII he was A.R.P. Officer to the Rushden Urban Council and in 1941 he was awarded the M.B.E.

Alix’s mother, Sarah, ran a felt hat remoulding business from their home at 20 Moor Road, Rushden, and her father John, was employed in the shoe trade, but in 1921 was described as ‘out of work.’  There was a lot of unemployment in the town at that time, a miners’ strike was threatened and emergency measures regarding food control were being considered.

In 1921 Alix was a student at the Home and Colonial School Society’s Training College for Schoolmistresses in Wood Green.  This was a Church of England institution founded in 1836 ‘for the Improvement and Extension of the Infant School System at Home and Abroad, and for the Education of Teachers.’  In 1928 the trustees decided to close the college on account of ‘the unsatisfactory condition of the premises.’

Alix started working as a certified teacher at Newton Road Infants’ School, Rushden, in January 1922, and remained a teacher there until July 1963.  She never married, and died in 1969 aged 68 years.