| Notes |
- Belper Today
Betty is sweet 103
22 February 2005
The last of the George Bassett liquorice clan has reached the ripe old age of 103 at Osmaston Grange residential home in Belper.
Elisabeth Bassett, granddaughter of confectioner George Bassett, was born on February 17, 1902 and has seen many changes in her lifetime, from the invention of the telephone to air travel and the television. Elisabeth was born in Sheffield but spent 93 years of her life in her family home at Ashover. She attended a private boarding school near Bournemouth where she stayed until the age of 17.
When her youngest brother was killed in a motorbike accident Elisabeth returned home to care for her mother. During the second World War, Elisabeth became a land girl, tending her father's farm. She said: "I have seen many changes including the arrival of the telephone. I do not think there is a secret to getting to my age though. I have led a quiet life on the whole. I have never travelled on an airplane or been through the channel tunnel. I am positively the last of the original George Bassett clan. Our house always used to be full of liqorice and that was the present we gave to people too."
Derbyshire Times
27 October 2005
Community remembers confectionery dynasty's last direct descendant
Long-time residents in the village of Ashover believe Elizabeth Bassett - of Bassetts' confectionery firm fame - was a local legend, and they've been turning back pages of her life to keep her memory alive.
If you turn on TV's Heartbeat, or pick up books like the James Herriott series, you could be forgiven for thinking that the hills and dales of north Yorkshire are THE places that cultivate fascinating characters.
One of north Derbyshire's most picturesque rural villages, however, has just said a fond farewell to a woman whose 103-years' lifetime was so colourful she could have stepped straight out of a storybook.
Lesley Fields reports.
Something sweet was cooked up years ago in a cottage in Rattle - a countryside village near Ashover.
For Liquorice Allsorts pioneer, George Bassett, made his home in the hamlet and went on to found the confectionery firm that became synonymous with the sweets - Bassetts.
Years later still, the liquorice was playing a part in the national success of one of his granddaughter's prize-winning cows.
Elizabeth Bassett's cattle won championships at Royal Shows at Stoneleigh, Warwickshire, and one of the ways she earned success was by feeding them on waste sweet products such as liquorice.
When Elizabeth died a few weeks ago, she was the last remaining direct descendant of the Bassetts family.
But while ever there are locals who can recall the majesty of her Blue Albion cows, and what might have even been her secret ingredient of feeding them at the time, Elizabeth's part in agricultural folklore will remain legendary.
Cllr Eddie Willmot, tenant farmer of Hill Top Farm, Ashover, on land Elizabeth used to own, said: "She told me that because her family were involved in making Liquorice Allsorts, she had the sweepings up - any waste liquorice that was unfit for putting into sweets - which she fed her cattle."
He believed the sweepings were from Bassetts' Sheffield factory and says nowadays it is possible to buy animal feed mixture with added waste sweet products.
But Elizabeth, he added: "was way before time" in realising the quality of energy that cattle could get from sugar.
Her family's connection with the Bassett confectionery firm is understood to have ended by her father's death many years ago, though their name has remained a part of the business title.
Factory closure
She was not affected directly at all by the closure earlier this year of the Chesterfield Trebor Bassett factory - which had stemmed from the sweet empire her family started.
Eddie added: "She was a very high profile lady in the farming world, which is where her interests lay."
Her appreciation of her family's line in business didn't change, though.
Janet Taylor, who was Elizabeth's housekeeper, and later her carer at Ashover, bought stocks of Liquorice Allsorts for Elizabeth when visiting her during the last few years of her life in residential homes near Matlock, and later, near Belper.
Janet said: "I'm sure she had boxes of them in her wardrobe at the homes, and she used to eat some, and also gave them as gifts."
Elizabeth Bassett lived most of her life in Ashover and has ploughed indelible troughs there as a wily top farmer - and a lady.
Eddie Willmot, vice-president of Ashover Parish Council, of which Elizabeth used to be a member, said: "She was a lady. She always had an air of a bit of breeding."
"We always knew her as Miss Betty, and her younger sister, who died about ten years ago, as Miss Kitty."
The reason was that anyone going to the Bassetts' home at Hill Cottage asking for Miss Bassett, would be asked 'which one?', he added.
Elizabeth went on to become the oldest life member of the Royal Agricultural Society, became president of Ashover Show and received national acclaim in the Farmer and Stockbreeder, a national agricultural journal.
Heart and soul
"I think her heart and soul were in farming. That's what she wanted to do," Eddie said.
Her well-to-do beginnings in a family that helped the locals seemed to reinforce Elizabeth's own astuteness, like recycling waste sweets as animal feed.
Eddie said: "The interesting thing was that her father must have been a similar type of character, because when the Depression was on he employed local men to do various jobs for him that were probably not necessary. They dug a tennis court in Ashover. He was trying to provide local work to try and help them out through a difficult time."
The Bassetts were like gentry, said Janet Taylor. "They would be one of the first in the village to have a car. They had a chauffeur, they had nannies and a cook. A lot of the village people worked about the farm, and the ladies either as maids, or in the kitchen."
Elizabeth went to boarding school, but she was one of the villagers, added Janet.
And the lady the villagers called Miss Betty was also an extremely astute farmer.
Eddie said: "She was farming in the Second World War. She was conscious of straightening bent nails - nothing was thrown away."
Though Elizabeth's death means the end of the Bassett direct family line, their name will live on in north Derbyshire.
There are Bassett Rooms in Ashover church hall, named after Elizabeth.
Eddie Willmot said: "The modesty of the lady was that she said to me, 'Really, they shouldn't be named after me because they weren't built by my family'."
The Bassetts also built a Wesleyan Chapel, now demolished, in the area. Elizabeth's mother was a founder of the original Ashover WI and Elizabeth also gave as a gift the old Upper Town School, which is now run as a thriving social centre for the area by a working group.
Eddie said: "It's the end of an era. It was a very high profile family."
He added that Elizabeth's death was a sad loss but that Miss Bassett would always say, "This happens, this is life. You don't live in the past, you move on."
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Bassett Family Association Database
1902 - 2005 (102 years)