Mrs Crocombe: My Great Great Aunt

by Bob Stride

To think I was going to throw this book in the bin. The original handwritten receipt book had first come to my attention in 1981, but the story really started with Avis Crocombe in the late 19th century.

Avis was cook to Lord and Lady Braybrooke at Audley End in the 1880s. She kept a notebook of recipes, which she had probably brought with her from her previous position of cook–housekeeper in Norfolk. In 1884 Avis married Benjamin Stride, a butler, whom she must have met in London when she was with the Braybrookes at their town house on Hanover Square. On her marriage she left service to become a lodging-house keeper in Marylebone in north London, taking her receipt book with her. Benjamin died in 1893 and Avis in 1927.