Introduction
Albert John Hawkins was born and raised at Hardington Mandeville but spent much of his working life adapting to the changing industrial economy of nearby Yeovil. His career took him from manual labour in the building trade to engineering at Petters Ltd and finally to aircraft production at Westland Aircraft, reflecting the opportunities created by the town’s expanding engineering industries during the first half of the twentieth century. His adult life was also shaped by the First World War, in which he served while his elder brother was killed in action.
Early life
Albert was born on 23 February 1895 at Hardington Mandeville, the youngest of eight children born to John Henry Hawkins and his wife, Frances (née White).[1] His father worked as a stonemason, and the family lived at Hardington Moor, where Albert spent his childhood.
Like many village boys, he entered employment at an early age. By the age of sixteen, he was working as a stonemason’s labourer, possibly for his father or one of his older brothers.
First World War
Albert and his elder brother, Frederick Reginald Hawkins, enlisted soon after the outbreak of the First World War and were serving with the Grenadier Guards by January 1915.[2] Their military careers soon took very different paths. On 27 September 1915, Frederick was killed in action at the age of twenty-eight, a loss that must have been deeply felt by the Hawkins family.[3] Albert survived the war and eventually returned home to resume civilian life.
Marriage and working life
Following his discharge from the army, Albert found employment as an oil engine fitter with Petters Ltd at Yeovil, one of the town’s leading engineering firms. The move represented a considerable change from his earlier work in the building trade and reflected the growing attraction of skilled engineering employment for men from the surrounding villages.
On Christmas Eve 1921, he married Annie Mary Evans at Yeovil. Annie’s early life had also been marked by adversity. She was the daughter of Daniel Evans, a South Wales coal miner who died while she was still a child. Between 1911 and 1915, her mother, Mary, trained as a midwife before moving with her three children to Yeovil, where by 1921 they were living at 37 Southville Road.[4]
Albert and Annie made their home in Barry Lane, Yeovil, where they raised two children: Leonard Kenneth, born in 1924, and Marion Edith, born in 1926.
Albert’s father died in December 1922. Albert and his brother Ernest proved his will, under which their mother received the family home for five years. Thereafter, the property passed to Ernest, while the remainder of the estate was to be divided equally among the children after their mother’s death.[5] Frances Hawkins survived until December 1935, when the estate was finally distributed in accordance with her husband’s wishes.
The family’s fortunes continued to improve during the inter-war years. In June 1937, their daughter Marion won a free place at Yeovil High School for Girls, an achievement that would have opened educational opportunities unavailable to many children of her parents’ generation.[6]
By the time of the 1939 Register, Albert had become an aircraft fitter, almost certainly employed at Westland Aircraft, whose expanding workforce drew many skilled engineering workers from Yeovil and the surrounding district. His son Leonard was already following a similar path as an apprentice aircraft turner, learning the precision machining skills needed to manufacture aircraft components. The family’s working lives therefore reflected Yeovil’s emergence as one of Britain’s principal centres of aircraft production on the eve of the Second World War.
Later years
On 22 May 1953, Albert’s sister, Annie Maud Hawkins, died at the age of sixty-three. Having spent much of her adult life in domestic service as a lady’s maid, she died intestate, leaving an estate valued at £4,577 12s. 6d., from which her four surviving siblings may have benefited.[7]
Albert died in 1964 at the age of sixty-nine. Annie survived him by twenty-eight years and died in July 1992 at the age of ninety-two. Together, their lives spanned a period of profound social and economic change, from the world of rural craftsmen and agricultural villages to one increasingly shaped by engineering and aircraft manufacture, a transformation reflected in Albert’s own working life.
References
[1] 1939 Register; family reconstitution.
[2] Western Chronicle, 5 February 1915, p.6.
[3] Soldiers Died in the Great War, 1914-1919.
[4] Western Gazette, 7 January 1916, p.2.
[5] The will of John Henry Hawkins, dated 2 April 1921, proved at Taunton on 2 February 1923.
[6] Taunton Courier and Western Advertiser, 3 July 1937, p. 9.
[7] National probate calendar.