Arnold Ashley Miles, 20 March 1904 - 11 February 1988

Arnold Ashley Miles was born in York on the 20 March 1904. He was the second child and only son of Harry and Kate Miles. Both his father and mother were the youngest of large families, but there is little known about their backgrounds. His father’s family came from Dorset, where they were farmers in the last century. Ashley’s father was the son of a shoemaker resident in Shaftesbury, Jeremiah Miles, and was put early to an apprenticeship with drapers in London. He moved to Sheffield where he met Ashley’s mother, Kate Elizabeth Hindley, at the Wesleyan Sunday School, and saved up enough money to start up a draper’s shop in York, which he ran until he retired. The most notable of Ashley’s relatives was his father’s brother, George, who went as a missionary to China, lived through the Boxer Rebellion, and translated Wesley’s sermons into Chinese. Ashley had little knowledge of his mother’s family with the exception of an older brother, William Hindley, who went to Australia as a Methodist preacher, transferred to the Church of England and eventually became Archdeacon of Melbourne. This uncle spent many leaves with Ashley’s parents, smuggling comics for the children into the house in his coat-tails. He was adored by the Miles children and Ashley kept in contact with him throughout his life.