Pickering Family

Pickering Family

Tan Yard’s Footballing Sunday School Teacher

 

Pickering Family Tree

Kath Pickering was the fifth child of John Ashton Pickering (known as Jack).  John was the fifth child of Samuel Pickering’s first marriage to Ann Johnson, read more in The Johnsons of Belmont Terrace which was also known as Bull Row, being the row of houses to the left of the Bull’s Head on Main Street, Swannington.

Kath’s mother was Sarah Ann Moon, whose father William Curtis Moon was one of 38 coal miners who died in the 1898 Whitwick Pit Disaster.

Kath Pickering – Tan Yard’s Footballing Sunday School Teacher

Kath’s story of growing up in 1920s and 1930s Swannington is amazing:

• Born into Tan Yard poverty, her rheumatic coal miner father rarely worked a full week.
• The sheer enjoyment of growing up at Red Hill farm when her brother Bill became manager.
• The disappointment of not attending grammar school because her father could not afford to send her there.
• Kitty Wright, the kind school teacher who taught her brother Walter how to overcome his illness induced speech impediment.
• The overcrowded tiny house next to the Railway Inn.
• Six weeks at Markfield isolation hospital with scarlet fever.

Read more in Kath’s Story

In 1945 Kath married Sidney James and they set up home in St George’s Hill.  Kath is bottom right in the 1952 ladies football team photo.

Kath ran the Sunday School at the Wesleyan Methodist Chapel for 30 years until they closed in 1998.  Kath’s last entry into the Sunday School Minute Book on 24 July 1998 is tinged with sadness, “My Sunday School finished the last Sunday in May.  My scholars and myself were very sad not to be able to meet together again.  I have taught at this Sunday School since 1968 and have enjoyed every minute of my time with the children through the years…”