MADAM,

No doubt many of your readers will have been interested in the current spate of television programmes to mark the 100th anniversary of the death of Queen Victoria on January 22nd 1901 at Osborne House, Isle of Wight.

The Boer War and the death of Queen Victoria made a deep impression on the young teenage Eric Coates (the famous musical composer) who was born at Hucknall Torkard, Nottinghamshire, in August 1886.

Hucknall Torkard was the burial place of the poet Lord Byron and, interestingly enought, a chapter on the Byron Vault at Hucknall Torkard by Major AELawson Lowe, FSA, of Shirenewton Hall, near Chepstow, Monmouthshire, was included in J PBriscoe's Old Nottinghamshire, published in 1884.

The chapter by Major Lawson would hav been of great interest to Eric Coates's mother, Mary Harrison Coates, whose father was a well respected Monmouthshire clergyman.

Described by Eric Coates as "a man of iron will and impeccable morals" he "reigned in supreme and unchallenged authority over his large family and still larger stragling lock, his castle being an old and draughty rectory standing back from the road midway between Usk and Raglan."

"His daughter he guared in a manner which was comparable to the keeper of an Eastern harem, not even trusting them in the care of a chaperone."

Mary, Eric Coates's mother, was never allowed to go into Monmouth for a music lesson without her father accompanying her (even sitting in the room during the session).

Tantalisingly, Eric Coates does not reveal the actual name of his grandfather in his autobiography Suite in Four Movements, so perhaps some of your readers might be able to shed some light on this query.

What Eric Coates does reveal, however, is that his mother made a run-away marriage with his father, Dr William Harrison Coates, who studied medicine at St Thomas's Hospital, London. Possibly the marriage took place in the 1870s.

In his book Suite in Four Movements Eric Coates gives a vivid account of the entire population of his native town, Hucknall Torkard, going into mourning for Queen Victoria in January 1901. "Black hats; black gloves; black ties; black shoes, black everywhere."

It was a scene with which my own young Welsh grandparents, living in Monmouthshire at the time, would have also been only too familiar!

Mavis Ellis

Papplewick,

Near Hucknall,

Nottingham