Albert’s Granddaughter has provided the following recollections about him:
My grandfather was born in 1909 at Headington, Oxford, to Alfred Benjamin and Mary Elizabeth Dandridge. Sadly, Mary passed away early and his father remarried: a woman Albert came to know as Aunt Lizzy. Lizzy, it seems, was a strict individual who encouraged early independence in the children and a reliance on their own resources.
As a child, growing up at a time when money was scare, Albert taught himself to make small rudimentary toys from odds and ends found around the family home: dolls, pull along trains and animals to amuse his siblings and to satisfy his creative curiosity. And he could always be found drawing on any surface that came to hand, often with charcoal from the fire.
The highlight of his year was the family’s visit to the St Giles’ Fair in Oxford. He would later describe this experience to me as “a fairytale you could never imagine”. Big and bombastic, the smells, the jostling crowds, the colours and the music, intoxicating and compelling you to return: which he did, year after year until the end of his life.
At this time, the fair looked a little more like an agricultural market, so the main attractions for this practical and creative young boy were two of the rides: the Scenic Railway, which grandad referred to as a “Switchback” and the set of Galloping Horses, both of which would show a few weeks later at the fairs in Thame High Street. His large collection of original photographs and photographic plates from this period and earlier may be viewed at The Oxford History Centre in Cowley.
On reaching adulthood, to begin with Albert worked as a gardener, eventually managing to “put by enough money” to fund classes at Oxford School of Art. However, I suspect he may have been awarded some form of bursary, given his financial circumstances. Here, he showed tremendous potential and talent, studying technical and creative drawing and painting. On leaving the college he attended interviews at Pinewood Studios, with the intention of training as a set designer.
His reasons for refusing this life changing post remain a mystery, although shortly afterwards, in1932, he married Edith Ind from Headington Quarry, who was partially sighted and therefore reluctant to leave the area she knew.
Albert and Edith had three daughters, Anne, Gillian and Marion. He would later create three working fairground models, dedicated to each daughter. For Anne, a scale-built Traction Engine, fully operational (now untraceable), for Gillian a Scenic Railway and for Marion a personalised set of Gallopers, their bridles decorated with the names of friends and loved ones and the roundel proclaiming the name: “A.E. Dandridge Galloping Horses”! The last two models were gifted to Thame Museum by their owners in perpetuity.
During the Second World War, Hitler selected Oxford to be his future capital city and as a result it was therefore spared much of the bombing. Nonetheless, Albert, now 30 years of age, played his part throughout: in the closing years being stationed locally, working to defuse stray unexploded bombs and decommissioning crashed aircraft sites. Always on the lookout for useful offcuts to re-use for his personal projects, Albert would return to these sites once safe to salvage as much wood as he possibly could and this material formed the basis of the models you can see in the
museum today. I remember being asked if I knew what a Spitfire was. When I told him, he answered me by gesturing to his models and saying “this is what one looks like now”!
For the VE Day celebrations in Headington, my grandfather designed and built a PA system for the street in which the family lived and my grandmother Edith was asked to sing, as she sounded like Vera Lynn!
At the end of the War, Albert took a job at Morris Motors, Cowley, progressing to the Photographic Department, which was based in Oxford City. Here he worked as a Technical Colourist, which means he was responsible for hand colouring large black and white photographs of the latest car models off the production line. These images were billboard size, and completed to the standard of a professional oil painting. They were then shipped around the world for advertising purposes.
The posters featured elegantly dressed young women, who would pose demurely next to or in the driving seat of a shiny new car. When Gill and Marion saw their father’s work, they pleaded with him to ask his boss whether they might be allowed to become models. It is testimony to Albert’s powers of persuasion that before long they were being employed regularly by Morris Motors at weekends, and my grandfather was taking the photographs! I hold a number of these images in my collection, some featuring Brill windmill. By the 1950s he was heading up his own department and training apprentices.
When away from work my grandfather was, of course, in his shed, creating his marvellous models. My mother, Gill, was especially close to him and would sit for hours watching him at work experiencing both the highs and the lows. He did not possess many sophisticated tools, his favourite being a simple penknife, which he would sharpen until the blade snapped, then it would be replaced, I remember his desperation to own a bandsaw, but when he finally got one, both models were long since completed.
To create his final pieces, he would first make prototypes of the horses, carriages etc, and these would be taken from drawings he had made in situ. On his regular visits to St Giles’ Fair, he managed to gain the trust of the showmen who owned and ran his favourite rides. Thankfully they were happy to share their technical knowledge with him as it was not simply the visual element he wished to capture but all of the mechanical details as well. He also wanted both models to dismantle exactly like the real thing.
In payment for their generosity, grandad was more than willing to make any repairs necessary to broken or scuffed carvings on the organs and he would also recreate new barrel organ music by referring to an old template, drawing up and using a scalpel to cut out a series of little holes into folded concertina card, which looked a bit like braille in reverse. It was not unusual for him to return home with a small gift from one of the rides, a carving or figure that was no longer needed, such was his persuasive charm.
Albert was famously dissatisfied with his Scenic Railway, despite it being awarded a commendation at The World’s Fair Exhibition at Olympia, prompting articles to be written by a number of publications. Although a visual delight, it tended to stutter a little bit along its tracks and in frustration he would coax it along with his finger.
However, things were about to change. Whilst Anne had settled with her family in Headington, both Marion and then Gill moved with their husbands to Thame. From my grandad’s perspective this was excellent news, as it meant that not only did he have the opportunity to study his beloved rides in Oxford, but also for all day, each day in another location with free board and lodging too!
Albert applied all he was now to learn from the sketchbook drawings and notes completed on site in Oxford and Thame to create his set of Gallopers and I believe this process was much more straightforward for him. My mother was honoured to be asked to sew the canopy which once completed was seamed to perfection. It was widely exhibited over the years and in addition to a number of articles written and awards, he was interviewed on BBC Radio Oxford.
My beloved grandparents were now living on the London Road in Headington, the models given a dedicated space in his studio at the top of the house. I loved it when my parents were going out at weekends as this meant I could stay with them, go with my grandmother to collect fish and chips from town, then see the models all lit up in a darkened room, rotating to the sound of barrel organ music played from grandad’s reel to reel tape recorder. Even as a young child I knew how very special my grandfather was. Although a self-effacing individual, I was just a little in awe of him and could not really perceive how a person could just “make” these wonderful things.
I studied for my O and A levels (which included Art) at Lord Williams’s School and remember telling my Art teacher, Mrs Kiggell all about the models. To my surprise she was very eager to see them at first hand, and by the end of the next week had visited my grandparents, spent the evening with Albert and managed to persuade him to allow the school to display both of them in the window near the school entrance, to coincide with Thame Fair. For the first time in my life, I was popular!
On one of the last occasions, when I slept over at my grandparents’ house, I remember sitting at the table with a sketchbook doing my Art homework. Grandad looked over my shoulder and asked me what my future plans were. When I told him they were to become a ballet dancer he became quite agitated and told me I should really go to Art School. I cannot begin to quantify the effect he has had on my career and I am so glad that before he died, he knew I was studying Visual Arts at Oxford Brookes University (formerly his Oxford School of Art) and on my way to Brighton to complete a Masters in Illustration.
I now believe his models must be infused with magic. They contain hope, self-belief, hard work and resilience. And to those who look hard enough, they can inspire infinite possibilities.
