George Beardmore was born in 1908 in the Potteries, in Staffordshire. His father’s family were ‘small farmers on the Derbyshire borders but about 1780 they took to industry’ as ironfounders. The second son of a well-to-do ironmonger in Burslem, his father Frank served his apprenticeship as a potter and then, anticipating his inheritance, bought a partnership in a firm which eventually bore his name, in Fenton. Frank married Sissie Bennett, eldest daughter of Enoch and Sarah-Ann Bennett. Sissie’s brother Sep was employed by Frank Beardmore ‘in the design of vases featuring peacocks, tall ladies in flowing draperies, and gloomy cypresses . . . what became known in the trade as “Old Greek”.’ Her eldest brother was the writer Arnold Bennett.
In 1913 Frank Beardmore went bankrupt and had the furniture of his home bought for £500 by Arnold Bennett, who then handed it back into Sissie’s care. It was for this reason that George and his brother were sent to the local Council school, rather than educated privately. George progressed to the Middle School at Newcastle-under-Lyme, ‘a provincial boy with the broadest of accents and narrowest of outlooks’.
George’s first job was a five-year stint in the offices of an insurance company in Hanley. In 1931 he and his family moved to North Harrow, and he transferred to the City office of the firm. In the same year his first novel, Dodd The Potter, was published under the name Cedric Stokes. A succession of unsatisfactory jobs and unpublished novels followed.
George married Jean Annie Edith Wolfenden (Jinny) on July 20th 1935 in Pinner. His mother refused to attend the wedding. George and Jean went to live at 18 Minster Road, Camden until sometime in 1937/38 when they moved to 45 Pinner Park Avenue in Harrow. There they had two daughters: Victoria Helen, born on 31 May 1939, and Anthea Frances (Tiffa), born on 28 July 1944.
Married life must have suited George. Writing as George Wolfenden he produced his second novel, The House in Spitalfields, published in 1937. For the next forty years George’s output was continuous and varied. He wrote as George Wolfenden; as Cedric Stokes, and finally as George Beardmore.
Jinny
Vicky
Tiffa
In the late fifties George and his family moved to 32 Chiltern Avenue, Bushey Heath. By then he had developed a successful sideline writing for two popular comics: Eagle and Girl.
In the early sixties the family moved again; this time to Four Marks in Hampshire. Here George wrote a string of successful children’s books, The Hebridean Stories, and two adult novels: Waldo Rush 48% and Charlie Pocock’s Indian Bride or Charlie Pocock and the Princess as it was known in the USA.
George and family with Jackie from Girl magazine
In 1972 George and his wife Jean worked together to edit and publish a collection of letters between Arnold Bennett and his French wife Marguerite under the title Arnold Bennett in Love. George clearly didn’t much enjoy this project; he called it “easily the most distasteful book I have ever had to deal with.”
Jinny died very suddenly at home from an aneurism on June 15th 1973. George stayed on at Burchfield in Four Marks. He was still writing and in December 1975 he reported to his nephew: “Tomorrow I take up to the publishers a new adult novel which is as rich as a walnut fruit-cake, all about a bank manager of 45 who is looking for a wife to replace the one he has lost.” This novel was never published.
Tiring of Four Marks and unable to manage the big garden at Burchfield, George moved in May 1977 to Trim’s Cottage, West Stour, Somerset. In 1979 he suffered a heart attack and was admitted to the Westminster Memorial Hospital in Shaftesbury. He was discharged but died soon after. He is buried at Four Marks.
In 1984 George and Jean’s daughters Victoria and Anthea published Civilians at War.