Recalling a child's life in the late 1920s to the early 1930s (part 2 of 4)

Our house was provided with light from a lovely, ticking gas-making machine. Petrol was poured into it and a weight that pushed the gas through copper pipes into the house was powered by winding a lump of concrete to the top of a tree (trees were obviously useful). To ignite the gas, a mantle had to be fitted to wall-hung sconces. These mantles were of soft material, like a small bag, attached to a ceramic ring. Fitted to the gas supply and before turning on the gas, the mantle had to be lit. After its flame had subsided the gas could then be turned on and the now very delicate mantle, lit. The light given off was soft and very pleasant. 

There was never any shortage of water as my father was an expert water diviner. He had selected two sites for wells from which the water was pumped up to a tank in our roof by a Swift car engine that had been bolted into a slab of concrete. But as the engine often failed to work, we all took turns to pump the water up by a hand pump in the kitchen.

The cooking, hot water and irons were catered for by a night-and-day, coal-fired, black-leaded kitchen range, on which was often a pressure cooker filled with water and cabbage.  The resultant liquor was thought to be health-giving by my father. The smell was unpleasant.

The kitchen was a focal point for us children, especially in winter. Connie, our maid (charming, but smelling of carbolic soap) made wonderful cakes there and allowed us to lick out the mixing bowls. The range also provided us with barely-enough hot water for our baths and hot water bottles that we took to our freezing bedrooms by candle light to warm our beds. There was no central heating in those days.

Connie, who lived in a room near the back door, had a boyfriend who was the local steam roller driver. He would leave his bicycle in bushes and climb into her bedroom through a very small window - when just around the corner of the house was a much larger window, which would have been far easier.

I once visited Connie's parents house in Tadley (where the gypsies came from) and when the door was opened, there in front of me, was a vast black pig hanging from a hook on the wall. I suppose that it was about to be cut up. I was impressed.

A man whose job it was to be in charge of a section of road, was called a length man. He mended pot-holes, trimmed hedged and cleared drainage ditches. I'm sure he also needed the services of Connie's steam roller boyfriend. Anyhow, our local length man was a friend of mine and I would sit on the verge of his road, sometimes to share his cold tea, bread, cheese and raw onion - I imagine much to my parents' displeasure.

To get into and out of our village, it was usual to cross over streams by a ford. Whether length men were in charge of keeping these in order I do not know.

Beside an adequate supply of eggs and chickens from the farm, we were almost self-supporting in fruit and vegetables. My father was an agriculturalist and very proud of his kitchen garden, from which we had many vegetables and much fruit - a lot of it being preserved as jam or in glass jars for the winter. At one time, when he was very pleased with a fine crop of giant gooseberries, we woke one morning to find that the whole lot had vanished. The gypsies had penetrated the hedge that separated us from the road and stolen the lot - every one, and at night. I'm sure we called the local policeman, whose name to us was "not good enough".

I was not meant to play with the village boys, and at one time when I went with them to catch newts, and thus gone missing, "not good enough" was called to find me.

When I went to the local pub to collect beer in a jug for Mr. Beer, I would pass by where the newts lived and left them and the village boys well alone.

Going to church on Sundays was a must. We walked there along a Roman track, crossing a pre-Roman fosse, and where a toad lived in his hole. Near to it was where long-tailed tits tended to build their lovely nests of moss and lichen. Then we passed through where there had been an entrance to Calleva Atrebatum, the Roman town. In our designated pew in church we had to listen to long boring sermons and in an atmosphere that smelled strongly of death-watch beetle spray. It was a great relief to retreat afterwards to enjoy Sunday lunch, cooked by Connie as we were supposed to have communed with God. 

Recalling a child's life in the late 1920s to the early 1930s (part 1 of 4)

 This piece is really a glimpse into my early life, a child's life in the English countryside during the late 1920s to the early 1930s.

It all started as Margreet and I were enjoying a glass in our garden "shed" when she asked me more about when I was recovered crawling toward a neighbour's house in my nappies to see the local parson's daughter, a friend. "You must write about it", she suggested. But how could I write a whole piece on such a small incident? So I might as well include it with other small recollections of that time. That is what I have done. I apologise for any repetition as I have written in the past on many of the episodes that I will mention.

I was born in our house at Silchester in 1925. At that time the village could not be reached unless a stream had been forded. My father (badly wounded by the Turks during the '1914 - 1918' war in Mesopotamia) had started a chicken farm in a large field next to our house.

Around our pear-shaped back drive were two ex-army sheds, joined together to form a banana shape. In one end the food for the chickens was kept (mostly dried sweetcorn and ground-up oyster shell) and in the other, the Baverstocks who worked on the farm and did odd jobs. Their daughter remembers me going to see them to ask for "half a naaner" (banana).

One of our jobs was to scrape eggs. Being free range (as all chickens were then) sometimes droppings would adhere to some. These had to be scraped off before the eggs could be loaded on or trailer to be driven to Woking market. One of those scraping knives is still in use in our garden shed. It must be around 100 years old. When there was an order for a chicken from the farm, our spaniel Ben, would under my father's direction, hold down the bird with his paw until my father could pick it up.

We were "gentry" but poor. This came to light I remember when the local brass band came to our drive to play carols at Christmas and we had no money at all to give them. Perhaps we offered eggs or chickens. But I recall that it reduced my mother (a Londoner brought up in court circles) to tears. I don't think she was ever very happy as a farmer's wife. Yet being gentry our financial circumstances were understood. And I am sure that friends and relations helped out with school fees and other expenses. 

This lack of money and the generous attitude to our small income with my father's war disability pension, manifested itself when my parents played bridge with friends. Always someone at the table would cover their losses. It was not a disgrace to be poor.

The Firths lived across a field from us. It was one of the venues for playing bridge. I was often taken along, and boring it was for a small boy. To keep me happy I was given marons glacées to eat, but I would have much preferred a "pennerth" (pennyworth of chocolate drops, a bag of lemonade crystals or a sherbet fountain. 

When the Firths wanted two chickens from our farm for a dinner party, my sister June delivered them - to the front door. Sherrard, the butler, opened the door and asked her, very politely, to deliver them to the servants' entrance at the back of the house. My sister never forgot her embarrassment, especially as no one locked their houses and we were used to simply walk in to see whoever we wanted. 

A social faux-pas that I remember my mother telling we about was when the Duchess of Wellington came to call. When she arrived, my mother was eating bread and dripping. And dripping was one of the  perquisites of the staff.

Harry Firth seldom entered his well-stocked cellar. One day he decided to look at it and found the butler, Sherrard, drinking his favourite port out of a teacup. Sherrard was sacked on the spot, not for drinking the port but for drinking it out of a teacup.

We had other connections with the Firths. Our wireless (a PYE) needed power from a large dry battery and a wet, car battery. As there was no electricity in the village it was my job to take our wet battery across the field to have it charged at the Firth's electricity-generated plant. This extension to the back of their house contained a large flywheel as part of its power generator. On the floor were masses of car batteries linked up to supply the house with light. Our battery was added to the others. My father, being a cricketer (he played for Berkshire) among other sporting skills, wanted to hear the Test Match score from Australia. This needed an aerial strung from the wireless set to the top of a tree. 

The Firths must have moved, I think to Calcott. We stayed there and I recall their men's lavatory being just like stalls in a public lavatory. And after our stay I tipped the butler six pence.

Mary Firth's sister, Hetty Heber Percy, who came to stay at the Firths, became a great friend of my mother's. She lived in London near to the Albert Hall. Much later, when her chauffeur had gone to war, she let us use his flat in the basement, which became a fairly safe refuge for friends and family on leave or needing rest and recuperation. A bomb actually fell nearby and blew off the right breast of one of the sculptures connected to the Albert Memorial. (It was cleverly repaired after the war, but was not quite the same as the original.)

Other rich friends lived at The Vyne, a Tudor house owned by Charlie Chute (he was probably a sir or a lord). There was a chapel in the house, and a resident priest who gave me fishing hooks when I went fishing in their lake. Outside the front door were (and probably still are) two large stone eagles on plinths. They were covered in lichen. I called them "the mossy eagles", and that was then their name.

My grandmother, a formidable lady with a title and rather unknown origins, would come to stay with us. We obviously had to be nice to her as she probably contributed to our finances. She was grand enough that when walking in London's Soho district with my mother, they were confronted by some louts blocking the pavement. She pushed through them, saying "aside, scrum". And they obediently did stand aside.

One day at Silchester, when I had shot or snared a rabbit and not yet dealt with it, she rolled up her old-fashioned sleeves, paunched, skinned and cut it up for the pot. We were astounded. It might have confirmed that she had been an Irish farmer's daughter before she met my later to be knighted grandfather.