CAN any readers please offer any assistance with some research that a friend and I are currently undertaking regarding the late Miss Margaret Carr?

Margaret Carr died in January 1998, aged 95, in Ferndown, Dorset. She had lived with her friend Elsie Parrett at the Lodge, Deans Court, Poole Road from about 1947 until Elsie’s death in 1982. After Elsie’s death Margaret lived with Hilda Wheeler in Ferndown until she died. Miss Carr and Miss Parrett were well-known in Wimborne. Miss Carr ran the school dinner service in Wimborne and Elsie was the headmistress of Wimborne Minster Infants School.

My friend and I knew Miss Carr in different ways – through working with Hilda Wheeler, as a colleague of her mother in the ATS and as a child living in Wimborne. We thought that it would be an interesting project to look back at her life. Little did we know just how interesting and frustrating this research was going to be!

After having difficulty tracing Miss Carr’s birth certificate, we turned our attention to her service with the ATS during the Second World War as a means to obtain her birth date through her service records. After many months the service records arrived and there was the first surprise – on November 5,1942 Ivy Margaret ENOCH had married Harold John Carr! The reason we couldn’t find her birth date was that she was registered as Ivy Margaret Enoch and Carr was her married name (although she was always known as Miss Carr in Wimborne).

Once we had this we could start searching for the correct certificate and after that information about her family.

Ivy Margaret Enoch was born on December 7, 1903 at Harkness Villa, St Mary’s, Newmarket, Suffolk daughter of Annie Maud Day, now the wife of Joseph Enoch. There is no father listed on the birth certificate but her surname is Enoch. On January 16, 1904 Annie Maud Day married Joseph Enoch at St Mary’s Church, Newmarket. On the 1911 Census Ivy Margaret is living with her parents and her brother Joseph William, aged 6, at 8 Hillside Terrace, Laceys Lane, Exning near Newmarket. Her father’s occupation is listed as Head Man at the racing stables. So far we have been unable to trace any further information on her until 1936. On November 7, 1936 Ivy Margaret travelled as a children’s nurse to Australia with the Scobie family who lived at the Manor House, Whitsbury, Fordingbridge. On February 11, 1937 the family and Ivy Margaret arrived back in Tilbury after sailing from Brisbane. On the 1939 Register Margaret is living at Fordingbridge with the Scobie Family.

On November 15, 1940 Ivy Margaret enrolled at Salisbury in the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS), E Company Bucks and Herts Group. Her occupation on enrolment is children’s nurse. On her service record it states that her corps trade was as a mess steward. She served mainly in the south west of England including Portsmouth, Honiton and Salisbury.

At the end of the war Ivy Margaret was demobbed after exemplary service and came to live at 13 Hillbrow Road, Boscombe, Bournemouth, which was a house for “service” people for 6d a night.

Can anyone throw any light on the Scobie Family at Fordingbridge or how Margaret ended up in Wimborne around 1946? Any memory, however small, may help us with our research and would be greatly appreciated.

Please contact Carole Dumbleton via c.dumbleton@sky.com or Jan Marsh at janette.marsh@ntlworld.com.

Thank you

CAROLE DUMBLETON AND JAN MARSH