Linking the generations: 'Alan's great-grandmother'

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I couldn't resist investigating this lady from the e-bay store of 'crouching gerbil' ...

Mrs F H Durant. 'Alan's great-grandmother'.

Alan who? Well, let's try.

I don't think Mrs Durant was a milliner. What IS she wearing on her head? A gerbil? 

So, what and who was she?

Answer. 

She was born as Isabel Maria Robinson, in 1860, in Shoreditch, a later daughter of John Robinson, cabinet maker, and Rebecca Maria née Wallbank, and soon left fatherless. Mother (with half a dozen children in tow) remarried another cabinet-maker, William Henry Bransgrove, but died herself in 1866, at which Mr Bransgrove married ...  her daughter, Kate. Isabel was brought up with her stepfather-brother-in-law, siblings, and the new Bransgrove children who soon came forth, until she married (25 December 1879) a Bethnal Green butcher, Frederick Henry Durant (d Walton-on-the-Naze 27 October 1924). She had her first child in 1880, her second on 15 October 1882 ...

And look! The next day Mr Gerbil proferred a second photo. 'Alan's grandfather'. P W Durant. OK, that's the second son: Percy William (d Frinton on Sea 27 November 1947)...

An hereditary butcher. Meat runs in the blood, it seems, as well as vice versa. 

Well, Percy married Rose Maria Tricker, and I see them in 1911 living in Leyton, with a four-year old daughter, Doris Louie (b 10 November 1906, d 2000) ... only one child? Well that makes things easy!

Here's the mysterious Alan!  Alan Roger Devereux (b Tendring 18 April 1933; d Strathblane 1 February 2019).

Doris married Donald Charles Devereux (1898-1989), a builder, and brought forth Alan and Janet Rose (Mrs Radcliffe-Smith, 1938-2005) ...

I guess the photo was inscribed by Alan's wife, Gloria Alma née Hair (b Brentford 28 January 1933; d Newton Mearns 1985) ...

Alan himself became DNB material as an Industrialist and a CMG in Scotland .. but that's all on google ... I'm just happy to have linked him to his ancestors, and identified the mysterious 'Alan'  ...