But all the dykes and ponds are full and the fields are standing in water. Roll on summer!!!!
However the weather has given me time to spend some time on the computer answering local and family history queries. One of the most interesting has been from a gentleman in Bavaria who has been looking at German immigrant pork butchers in the 19th century.
He sent me a lot of information about the Hohenlohe area, a farming area from where several families emigrated. These were often second sons of farmers and were already skilled butchers but who could not make a living in their home area.
One family from the village of Hessenau were called Strecker and they ended up in Goole. Initially the business was run by sister and brother Barbara and John George but later by John George and his family.
Their shop was on Boothferry Road, near the station. The premises, number 78, is still there. It is almost opposite the Pasture Road junction and next to the present Post office, which is built on the former yard of builders Platt and Featherstone.
The Streckers had been in Goole 29 years when the war broke out in 1914. Mr Strecker was naturalised but the family was still subject to anti - German feeling and moved out of Goole to Wakefield. Their shop was later run by the well- known Goole butchering family of Willie Crapper.
The Strecker family still have descendants in Yorkshire but it is only very recently that they have been able to make contact with their German relatives as they had lost touch as a result of the war.
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| A pre-war view of Boothferry Road showing the Strecker name on the end of their shop. Much more recently the Morrill decorators had their name there. |
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| The Crapper family were 'English pork butchers' |
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| This was the shop in 2004 when it was a barber's |
