Kristen Riisnaes b 11 Jul 1895 d 2 Oct 1981 m 31 May 1926 Ethel Agnes Weeks b 20 Oct 1899 Eric John b 27 Jul 1927 Raymond Peter b 4 Aug 1928 Harold James b 7 Dec 1929 Edwin Kristen b 20 Jul 1933 KRISTEN RIISNAES was born at 7, Domkirkegaten, Bergen, Norway. He was christened on 15 September at the Cathedral. When he was 7 years old he went to Heiberg School in Vestre Torbgate, a boys private school run by Miss Heiberg, which his elder brothers also attended. When he was 10 or 11 he spent a long summer holiday at Fedje with a fisherman named Kahrs and his family, distant relations on his mothers side. In 1906 he moved to Bergen Latin School, a grammar school reputed to be the best in Bergen. Unfortunately his father was by then in financial difficulties and could not afford to keep him there beyond the first year. Kristen spent the summer holiday of 1907 with his uncle Harald, a solicitor at Vik on Sognefjord. In September 1907 Kristen went with his mother, younger brothers and sister to join his father at Aggersborgade 7 in Copenhagen. There he attended Oster Farimagsgade School, which cost the family only one shilling per term for each of the first two children, the rest attending free. Kristen found himself, to his surprise, top of the class in German after the first month, but this was because his school in Bergen had reached a higher standard, and he did not maintain this position very long. He saw and tasted tomatoes and bananas for the first time in Copenhagen. In 1909 Kristen's father died and the family moved back to Bergen. Next year he was confirmed at the Cathedral. When he was 14 he started work at Zuckermans, a mens outfitting shop in Bergen, and stayed there for 10 years. For the first few months he worked part-time as an errand boy, earning 2/6d per week. Then he worked full-time in the shop, initially at 10/- per week. He attended evening classes in office work. By 1912 he had become a close friend of Harald Bervin and Sigurd Skaar, both of whom also worked at Zuckermans. They used to go bathing in the fjord at Hordvik on Sunday mornings. On one occasion when two other friends were also present, Sigurd, who was not a strong swimmer, got into difficulties. His friends swam towards him but before they arrived he sank to the bottom. Kristen dived down and managed to lift him off the seabed, tow him to shore and resuscitate him. Three girls were walking by at the time and saw it all. They were the Holsen sisters, Laura, Anna and Gerda, and Kristen remained firm friends with them for the rest of his life. The eldest, Laura, who was two years older than Kristen and a schoolteacher, gave him lessons in German and English. That year Sigurd persuaded Kristen to join the Blue Cross movement, a Christian temperance organisation, and Kristen started to help run a Sunday School. He also joined the Youmg Mens Christian Association with his friends. One day he was asked to lead in prayer, which he did, but it disturbed him as he was not as yet a convinced Christian. Nevertheless the experience helped him and he became a wholehearted member of the Lutheran church, and joined in communion at New Church and Cross Church with his mother. In 1916 Kristen and Sigurd were called up into the Army. From March he spent three months in training at Ulver outside Bergen. He was already concerned whether as a Christian he should become involved in war. One day 150 recruits were out on a training run carrying their rifles. The terrain was icy and rough and many men stumbled and fell. However it turned out that only Kristen and one other, a member of the Salvation Army, had broken the shafts of their guns as they fell. The two Christians felt this was a sign that they should not fight. Nevertheless Kristen did not try to leave the Army. Having completed his training he returned to civil life, but was called for two further terms of duty each of about a month. During the first, in 1917, he guarded a radio station, and he spent the second, in early 1919, on an island near Bergen called Little Bergen. He appears to have remained liable for military service until about 1924. During these years Kristen became friendly with Gjerdis Skaar, daughter of the churchwarden for Bergen and sister of his friend Sigurd. He proposed marriage to her while on holiday at Tellevik, and they became engaged in early 1919. At about the same time, Kristen together with his friends Harald Bervin and Bernhard Steen, all then working at Zuckermans, joined the Norwegian Mission to Seamen, with the intention of being sent abroad on missionary work as soon as their military service was completed. And so in April 1919 the Secretary sent Harald to New York, Bernhard to North Shields and Kristen to London (instead of North Shields as he had thought likely at first). He landed at Newcastle on 11 May and took the train to London. He was attached to the Norwegian Lutheran Church at Rotherhithe and lodged at 21, Culling Rd, Rotherhithe. His duties were to help with the church services, look after the recreation room, and visit Norwegian seamen on ships in the docks. On two occasions he preached in church in the absence of the regular pastor. He started a diary from the day of his arrival and it shows that, while carrying out his work conscienciously, he was moving towards more "fundamentalist" beliefs akin to those of the Plymouth Brethren. Among other things, he realised that baptism by sprinkling at birth was not in complete accord with Biblical teaching. On Thursday 4 March 1920 he was baptised by total immersion at a Pentecostal Church at Ladbrook Grove in North London, having been introduced there through a Pentecostal Norwegian lady. As his views on baptism were now different from Lutheran teaching he wrote to the Secretary in Bergen offering his resignation but was asked to stay on. A few months later (7 August 1920) during one of his regular visits to Norwegian ships in Surrey Docks, he met and started talking to two other men who were also visiting seamen in order to spread the Gospel. Their names were Mr Lutz and Mr Shriever. The three men discussed their activities and beliefs. Kristen learned that his new acquaintances were from an assembly of believers at Forest Gate in East London whose interpretation of the Bible agreed with most of the views of the Brethren. There was however a divergence over the Second Coming of Christ. Kristen started to argue in favour of the Brethren's view that Christ could return without warning, but was impressed by the view of his acquaintances that the Bible predicted a warning period. On 18 September he visited 61, Upton Lane, Forest Gate for the first time and met the leader, Mr Heward, and other Christians there. He steadily developed his contacts with them. On one occasion Mr Heward came to visit him at Culling Rd. By the end of 1920 he found that his interpretation of the Bible had moved so far from that of the Lutheran Church that he left the Mission to Seamen, moved to Forest Gate and lodged at 95 Upton Lane together with Albert Shriever and other unmarried men associated with the meeting at 61 Upton Lane. He continued with evangelical work in the docks and elsewhere, attended the meetings and started to learn Greek as well as improve his English. Mr Heward's father, who lived at 61 Upton Lane, had become blind, and Kristen used to take him out for walks during which they discussed religious matters, which Kristen said he found very beneficial. In the summer of 1921, and again in 1922, he returned to Norway for a month or so to see his family and fiancee. It was clear that his changing beliefs were not favourably received by the Skaar family, who were strict Lutherans. When Kristian eventually said, by letter in 1923, that he no longer wished to be married in church, Gjerdis broke off the engagement. In the autumn of 1921 Kristen started to work part-time for James Weeks, repairing and decorating houses at New Cross (Knoyle St) and East Ham (Claude Rd). This went on intermittently until 1923, when he attended Cusack Business College at Finsbury Square full-time for three months, learning German, English, shorthand and typing. He then worked for Pfeiffers at the Borough, South London, a Norwegian firm who imported bottle glass, for six months until April 1924. On 14 July he obtained a post at a bank, Kleinwort, Sons and Co, (now Kleinwort Benson) in Fenchurch St, and stayed there till the depression in 1932. In early 1924 the "mens hostel" at 95 Upton Lane closed down. Kristen went to live with Mr and Mrs Hobbs at 22 Harefield Rd, Brockley, South London. However he continued to attend the meetings at 61 Upton Lane quite regularly, often walking all the way from Brockley and back on the Sunday with Mr Hobbs and his two sons, a distance of about 8 miles each way. It was at the meeting at 61 that he met Ethel Weeks. ETHEL AGNES WEEKS was born at 44 Richmond Park Rd, Kingston-on-Thames, Surrey. When she was two years old the family moved to 49 Birkenhead Ave, Kingston (now demolished). She felt she did not get as much affection from her mother as her sisters did, and believed later that this was because she was impetuous and thoughtless. She used to wet the bed on occasions. Once she did it when the family were on holiday. She had just told her mother when the landlady came in and noticed it too. Her mother was so embarrassed that she told the landlady she knew nothing about it. Ethel was very upset at the thought that her deed had caused her mother to tell a lie. From the age of 4 she attended a private school run by Miss Grove (who later became Mrs Betts), first in East Rd, then Kings Rd, and finally at 100 Richmond Rd. When she was 11 years old the school was sold to Miss Grantham. Most of the children were younger and Ethel found herself in a small class with her elder sister Nell and one other child, learning very little. Her father accordingly took her away and she, along with some of her brothers and sisters, were taught by her parents at home. They concentrated on shorthand and typing, poetry (learning, for example, much of Macaulay's "Horatius"), and Bible study. Ethel passed the Elementary Stage of the Society of Arts Examination in Shorthand and Typing at the early age of 11. Ethel enjoyed outdoor activities in Richmond Park. She said many years later that if she wanted to be good she went out with her eldest sister Flo; if bad, with Nell; and if she wanted to take the lead she went with Peg. She also enjoyed the family holidays on the south coast, usually at Worthing. At one time, however, she had a weak back and had to spend hours lying prone on the floor to help strengthen it. On another occasion, when she had been ill for some time and the doctor said she should stay in bed, her father took her on holiday to Worthing in the hope that the change would cause her to rally and recover, and the risk came off. When her father started to own houses in East Ham, Ethel would occasionally accompany her elder sister Florence all the way across London to collect rents and take them back. At about the same time the family became acquainted with Mr Heward and the assembly of believers at 61 Upton Lane, and would travel across London to the meetings. For some months in 1912 Ethel made the journey every Thursday afternoon with her father, sister Nell and brother Leslie. They would cycle to Mr Richmond's house, 43A The Broadway, Walham Green, leave their bicycles there, then go by underground to Mile End and by tram to Forest Gate. They would study Greek or Hebrew during the afternoon, attend the Bible School for children from 5.45 to 7.30pm, then the adults meeting from 8 to 9.30pm. By the time they had picked up their bikes and cycled home to Kingston it would be past midnight. This travelling stopped when the whole family moved to 103 York Rd (now Derby Rd) East Ham in the autumn of 1912. Ethel now attended a lot of meetings at 61 Upton Lane, usually three (morning, afternoon and evening) on Sundays, several on weekday evenings (there were meetings on Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays - each a Bible School followed by an adults meeting), and on Bank Holiday afternoons and evenings. At the Bible School, run by Mr Heward, she was usually top of the class. (On one occasion she was placed second to her brother Leslie. She was so surprised that she checked the marks and found that Mr Heward had added them up wrongly. She took them back to him and politely asked him to recheck them. He was very apologetic for his mistake.) The family also continued to attend meetings at Walham Green about once a month. When she was 13 she went on a train by herself for the first time to stay with a pen-friend at Jarrow. Her train broke down at York and she eventually got the last train that night from Newcastle to Jarrow. The family were waiting for her at the station, very worried. Although Ethel was a regular and indeed willing attender at meetings she had not yet received the "assurance of salvation", and this did not come until 1916, through correspondence with a Miss Best and discussion with Miss Elsey her (then) Bible School teacher. Ethel was baptised in April 1917 in a tank in the floor of the meeting room at Walham Green. By this time she was working full-time in London. She had first tried to get a job in 1914, but it was difficult because of the war so she stayed at home and helped her mother. At Easter 1915 she started her first full-time job at Liptons Head Office in City Rd for 8/- per week. She found she had to spend all her time adding up columns of figures, which she hated, instead of shorthand and typing, which she wished to do, so after only two weeks she left and, being able to claim that she was now experienced, landed a job in the office of Everclean Collars in Ilford at 15/- per week. After three months there she moved to Van Oppen and Co, Shipping Agents, in Bartholemew Close, EC1, getting a further rise to 17/6 per week. By this stage London was undergoing air raids, so far only at night, and one day Ethel arrived at work to find that the office had been bombed. The staff had to move into temporary accommodation and with winter coming on found it very cold. In early 1916 Ethel changed jobs again, moving to Cole, James, Bond and Co, Chartered Accountants, in Gresham St, for 25/- per week. She stayed there a few months, doing shorthand and typing, and looking after the library of the Chartered Accountants Students Society. She then joined the staff of the Post and Telegraph Clerks Association in Paternoster Row for 30/6 per week, but it was a Trade Union Headquarters and Ethel did not like the work on religious and other grounds. So after a short while she moved again - for the last time as it turned out - to Cox's Bank at 16 Charing Cross (now Whitehall) at 30/- per week. She stayed there from early 1917 until she married in 1926. She enjoyed the work and made a lifelong friend in Mary MacNaughten, later Mrs Austin, who was also a Christian. When Kristen started courting Ethel she was not at all keen on him at first. Once when she visited her friends in Jarrow Kristen wrote to her, concerned that she might drop him in favour of the son of the house there! (In fact she was not at all attracted to this assumed rival). More than once she turned down his proposal of marriage and they stopped seeing each other for a time. On one occasion she told him that she disliked his way of arranging everything they did together without consulting her, and that she had a mind of her own. But in time the problems got smoothed out and they were married in the Registry Office in West Ham Lane, followed by a meeting in 77 Claremont Rd. They then set off for a two week honeymoon in Norway, where Ethel met many of her new in-laws for the first time. On arriving back they moved directly into 23 Chobham Rd, Stratford, a house somewhat larger than the rest in the road and with a walled garden, which Ethel's father had bought in their name on the grounds that he could use the covered "yard" on one side for his Builder and Decorator's business. Since the house was too large for the two of them at first, Arthur (Ethel's eldest brother) and Hilda came to live for a while in the upstairs flat, and Arthur used one of the front downstairs rooms as an office for his Accountancy business. During the first half of 1928 they moved out, and Florence (Ethel's eldest sister) and Albert Shriever moved in with their baby Arthur, their second child Daisy being born there. They in turn moved out in the autumn of 1929. For the next ten years or so, two or three of the upstairs rooms were let out intermittently to a succession of Christian individuals or families, including Mr and Mrs Thomas and their daughter Gwen, Mrs Thirlby (who inherited a lot of money from her father but gave it all to Mr Heward), and Mr and Mrs Hills. After the Hills moved out the bedroom was found to contain bed bugs from an old secondhand chair they had bought, and Kristen and Ethel had a hard job catching them. The last "lodger" was Mr Gerrard, who was hard of hearing, ate marmalade with bacon and lots of salt with everything, and was always writing long letters for jobs he did not get. Kristen and Ethel continued to attend and support the meeting at 61 Upton Lane for the next 25 years or so. Each Sunday they walked to and from the meetings with their children, usually twice and sometimes three times, a distance of nearly two miles each way. Kristen continued to visit the docks from time to time on Christian work. During his vacations from the bank he occasionally travelled on the continent with Mr Heward or Mr Lutz, spreading the Gospel. On one occasion with Mr Heward in Luxembourg the two of them were arrested for their preaching and spent the night in prison. The next day the police escorted them to the German border before releasing them. In May 1929 Kristen was told by his employers to be vaccinated. He wrote back saying that as a Christian he felt he could not agree to it. Apparently the firm accepted his stand. In the early 1930's the depression forced Kleinwort's Bank to start laying off staff on a strict "last in first out" routine. Kristen was about the 80th on the list but his turn came inexorably on 30 January 1932. He tried for other jobs without success, and after a couple of months started working for his father-in-law's firm Weeks and Sons, repairing and decorating houses. Although expecting it to be temporary he continued with Weeks and Sons for the rest of his working life. Soon after he joined his brother-in-law Cecil left to start up on his own. In 1935 Albert Shriever also left to join another Builder and Decorators business, so from that time on Kristen was in charge of Weeks and Sons. He collected rents from, and did repairs to, about 30 houses scattered mostly around West Ham and East Ham, nearly all belonging to James Weeks or members of his family. In his repairing and decorating work he usually had one or two men to help him. He used to earn about 1/6 per hour at first, a considerable drop from his pay at the bank (£5 to £6 per week). When she started a family, Ethel had full-time domestic help. One girl lived in for a period. Her third son Harold was sickly when young and she had to take him to Highgate in North London for special treatment. When the children grew older, Ethel preferred to teach them at home as she was concerned both about the coarseness of the children and the standard of teaching at the local schools. She had then to convince the local authorities that her children were learning at least as much as those at school. When, in a reading test, her eldest son Eric showed a standard well above average, the examiner was so impressed he let him keep the book! Nevertheless in March 1935 she was finally persuaded to send the two elder boys to school. She chose to send them not to one of the nearest schools, but to Water Lane Boys School, which she felt had a slightly better class of children. Kristen was very fond of music. He bought a gramophone (fibre needles and a heavy arm feeding a horn) and built up a small collection of 78rpm records. He also bought a piano - an expensive luxury. In 1937 a family of four brothers and sisters in their late teens arrived to stay for about a year. They were from New Zealand; the parents (Christians) wanted their children to visit England and had made contact through Mr Heward. The two eldest (Ian and Joy McKean) were both very keen on music. Kristen went to a performance of Mendelssohn's "Elijah" with them - the first time he had been to an "entertainment" since joining the meeting at 61 Upton Lane, and an event which Ethel viewed with disapproval and concern. The McKeans returned to New Zealand in a year or so, except for Joy who stayed on in England to train as a nurse. 50 years later, having not seen him since, Ian McKean remembered Kristen as "a perfect gentleman, absolutely straightforward, kind and considerate". The family managed to get away for a summer holiday of one or two weeks several times in the 1930's. In 1932 Ethel and the children went to St Leonards, Sussex, with Kristen joining them for part of the time. They stayed on Canvey Island more than once, usually at the bungalow of a Christian friend. In late August 1939 they all went to stay with a Christian lady called Miss Chattin at Benhall near Saxmundham in Suffolk. They were still there when war broke out, so while Kristen went home (after two weeks) Ethel and the children stayed on for another four weeks. When it was clear that London was not going to be razed to the ground by German bombing during the first few weeks of the war the family returned home - and indeed apart from holidays stayed in London throughout the remainder of the war. Early on in the war Kristen and Ethel obtained a wireless "to keep in touch with the news" and the family started listening to some carefully selected programmes. When the air raids started in 1940 the family slept on the ground floor behind windows with shutters; later they slept in the cellar. Bombs nearby caused a few broken windows and once an incendiary bomb landed on the roof but Kristen managed to shovel it over the side to the road below. Kristen spent much of his working time patching up the roofs and windows of houses damaged in air raids. In the summer of 1941 the Shrievers moved to Rushall, Norfolk, a few miles from Dickleburgh where Mr and Mrs Ling lived. As Mrs Ling had become a close friend of Ethel there was a double incentive for the family to spend holidays in the area. Ethel arranged to "rent" a wooden "chalet" on the Ling's small farm, and the family went there each year for a holiday during the remainder of the war. In late 1942 Kristen and Ethel decided to move to Forest Gate to be nearer to Ethel's parents who were now getting very old. They made an offer for 125 Chestnut Avenue, but the transaction fell through, and on 19 December the family moved to 54 Claremont Rd, only about 12 doors from the Weeks' house on the other side of the road. 23 Chobham Rd was sold to the road haulage business next door and they knocked down the adjacent garden wall and started to concrete over the garden before the family left. Kristen and Ethel lived at 54 Claremont Rd till all the family had grown up and moved away, and Ethel's parents were no longer living down the road (her father died and her mother went to live with her sister Nell). Then 22 years later to the very day they moved to 178 Tolmers Rd, a bungalow backing on to woods at the end of a long pleasant road at Cuffley near Potters Bar in Hertfordshire. Throughout his time at Claremont Rd Kristen continued to run Weeks and Sons, largely as a one- or at most two-man business. Kristen and Ethel bought some further houses which, being occupied, could be obtained at quite a moderate price. When in due course a house became vacant because the tenant had moved away or died, they could sell it "with vacant possession" for perhaps 5 times as much as they paid for it. When they moved to Cuffley Kristen retired completely from the day-to-day work of the business but used to visit the Forest Gate area once a fortnight to collect rents. One of the factors influencing their decision to move away from Forest Gate was that, since Mr Heward's death in 1948, the meeting at 61 Upton Lane had steadily shrunk until there was only a handful of members, and without the binding influence of Mr Heward even the few left did not see eye to eye on all matters. At Cuffley Kristen and Ethel made contact with an Evangelical Church in Hatfield and soon started to play an active part in their affairs. After the honeymoon in 1926 Kristen was unable to visit Norway again until after the war. In 1948 he went there for a holiday with Eric and Edwin. They landed at Stavanger and made their way overland (by car, bus and boat) to Bergen. The highlight of their visit was to be at Froyset in Masfjord coincidentally with the wedding of a distant relative at Risnes, and to be invited to the wedding festivities which lasted two whole days. After that trip to Norway there was another long gap but from the 1960's Kristen and Ethel managed to visit Norway at roughly 5-year intervals. Each son and family in turn joined them once. Both Kristen and Ethel enjoyed good health though Kristen developed a disease in one hip bone which slowly made one leg several inches shorter than the other and made walking difficult and painful even with sticks. On his visit to Norway in July 1981 he had to be helped through the airport in a wheelchair much to his embarrassment and irritation. He said that this would be his last visit to Norway, and although he had made similar remarks on previous occasions this time it was to be true. In September Kristen and Ethel took their friends Mr and Mrs Lawson to Eastbourne for a week's stay at a Christian guest house - as they had done several times in previous years. On the way back on the Saturday, with Kristen driving, they stopped by the road for a short rest. Kristen went into the woods to relieve himself but when he returned seemed bewildered and lost for words. They got him into the car and rather than drive on home Ethel drove to her sister Peg's house in Bromley. As they were helping Kristen indoors he collapsed completely. He was taken to hospital where they said he had had a stroke. He rallied slightly on the Sunday and Monday but did not say much. During the rest of the week he slowly relapsed and on Friday 2 October at about 9.30pm he died. His body was taken back to Hatfield and a week later after a funeral service led by Gordon Hawkins, a minister who had lodged at 54 Claremont Rd for a time, he was buried in Hatfield Cemetery. Ethel continued to live in Cuffley on her own for some years. She was helped by the fact that her niece Joyce (daughter of her brother Leslie who had emigrated to South Africa) had, quite coincidentally, come with her husband and family to live nearby in Cuffley. Joyce was a great help to Ethel, going to the shops for her and taking her out. Eventually Ethel decided she could no longer live completely on her own and decided to move to Bedford to live near her son Ray. By a remarkable coincidence the bungalow (64 Leasway) next door to Ray's house came on the market and Ethel bought it and moved in on 10 May 1986. Her sons and their families had started a tradition of a Family Reunion once per year, initial-ly at Cuffley, and this carried on at Bedford. Ethel found a number of afternoon women's meetings to attend, as well as going with Ray and Joyce to their local Baptist church on Sundays. She enjoyed playing Scrabble on her own or with friends, but did not read much. She was 93 before she had to give up driving a car; her eye-sight was still excellent but her reactions were slowing. She was becoming more feeble and losing her memory, particularly of current events. Gradually she spent more and more time with Ray and Joyce next door, having meals with them as she became unable to get adequate meals for herself. Then Ray had to arrange for helpers to come in to put her to bed and to get her up in the morning. In due course the burden on Ray and Joyce became too much, and on ..th March 1996 she went into an Old People's Home next to the hospital in Bedford. It was a well-run place and she seemed content there.