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This story recounts how my mother and father set up home in Lincolnshire during the war. It is based on stories told to me, Patrick Conway, as a child by my mother, Sabina Conway and Harry Frankish.

It might have been ‘Wild Colonial Boy’ a favourite song of Hugh Conway. Possibly he was entertaining regulars at the Cross Keys Grasby, with ‘Master McGrath’ a ballad that recounted the achievements of a famous Irish greyhound.

But whatever he was singing, Hugh’s bass voice was responsible for him and his wife Sibby putting down roots in a North Lincolnshire village just before Christmas 1940 and staying there for the rest of their lives.

For, after days of fruitless searching, Sibby knew she had found her husband. Hugh’s voice was unmistakeable, drifting out of that Grasby pub in December 1940

Born and raised within three miles of each other in Erris, County Mayo, where the next parish really was New York, both had been immigrant workers since their teens. Sibby had been in domestic service to a rich Jewish Family in Cricklewood, Hugh labouring on building sites and farms from Scotland to London. They regularly ‘went home’ and in March 1939 married - a typical Irish wedding in Shanvogroomeen, Sibby’s home, some ten miles from Belmullet. She, a Barrett, was the eldest of nine surviving children, Hugh the oldest boy in a family of seven.

After marrying they came to London, living in a flat and both working. At the outbreak of war Sibby started working in munitions and recalled nights in tube stations as the Luftwaffe targeted the capital city. At some point the munitions factory was bombed and a number of workers, Sibby included were directed to a similar establishment in Coventry.

Meanwhile, Hugh had spent the first two years of war working on the land in Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire. From time to time they would meet up but economic necessity dictated a life apart.

In Coventry, Sibby shared a flat with her cousin Mary Gaughan. Apparently they worked opposite shifts, often 12 hours and would only see each other on an occasional shared day off.

But November 1940 changed all that. A new verb, to coventrate, entered the English language. The midlands city was flattened by enemy bombing, its historic core and cathedral destroyed. Sibby, working as the German bombers flew overhead, spent the night in an air raid shelter. When she came out in the morning the devastation was apparent. Rubble, burst water and gas mains, and people anxiously looking for relatives. Her own street and house had been flattened. There was no sign of Mary Gaughan. Happily she survived as Sibby discovered later.

The Authorities, anxious for people to leave Coventry offered free travel permits out of the city. Knowing her husband had just moved to North Lincolnshire for the ‘beet campaign’ Sibby caught a train to Brigg. She did not know Hugh’s precise location but understood it was in that vicinity. He had promised to write when he had secured lodgings.

Arriving at Brigg she asked the whereabouts of Irishmen over to ‘pull beet’. Eventually after a couple of days searching, Sibby got a lift in the Caistor direction; being told some Irish lads were in Grasby. Getting out at Grasby Top in the early evening she saw the Cross Keys. As she came closer Hugh’s singing confirmed Sibby had found her husband — drinks all round!

Then, Harry Frankish, village carpenter and wheelwright took Hugh and Sibby to his home. His wife Jessie insisted they stayed and that night the Irish couple slept in Harry Frankish’s own bed.

That generosity of spirit resulted in a lifetime friendship and indeed Hugh’s final days as a labourer, were spent working for the son of Harry Frankish in their then building business.

The Frankish’s had a cottage for rent on Front Street. Jessie gave Sibby and Hugh the keys and a few sticks of furniture, including a rocking chair, made by Harry Frankish’s great grandfather in the 1860s. That rocking chair in 1980 moved to Durham with Hugh and Sibby’s son. They later moved up the hill to another cottage and in the mid 1940s rented the house in Blacksmiths Yard, that for the next 30 years would be the first port of call for many a young Irish lad from Erris, seeking work in Lincolnshire

Hugh and Sibby lived in Blacksmiths Yard until his heart attack in June 1974 whilst in the garden. After his death on July 28th, Sibby moved to a flat in Caistor where she remained until her death in February 1976.

So a lifetime in Grasby for a couple from Erris, resulted from the German Luftwafte, a one way ticket to Brigg, the friendship of a local carpenter and most of all, the distinctive singing voice of Hugh Conway.

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