EAMS: Early Memories

VISITORS TO BELFIELD. (3)

2006-01-19T17:03:00.000Z

The first of my school friends who came to stay was Gloria J-----. Gloria was a little older than me, but we had been best friends at school for some time and shortly before Christmas, when we were aged about eight or nine, I went to her birthday party. It was at this birthday party that my mother suggested to Gloria's parents that it would be nice for me if she would like to come and spend Christmas with us at Belfield. Of course Gloria and I were delighted with the idea, and greatly excited.

To start with, the visit went well. Gloria enjoyed playing on the swing under the yew tree, and even decorated it by buying several packs of different coloured raffia from Herrings (the art shop in High West Street, Dorchester) which she then used by tying one end of each strand of raffia to the ropes, from top to bottom, so that when we used the swing, all the raffia strands made a rather nice wooshing sound as they swept to and fro. But after the excitement of this had worn off, Gloria no longer wanted to play in the garden, but retreated indoors to the drawing-room fire where she sat, shawl around her shoulders, doing her needlework.

This was not what I had in mind. What I wanted to do most during the holidays was to play outdoors, whatever the weather and however cold it was - and that included climbing trees, for which Gloria had no aptitude.

Up until then, I had no experience as a hostess over such a long period, and was used to having things pretty well my way. In a fit of devilment - but never really expecting poor Gloria to react in the way that she did - I grabbed the William IV naval sword which was kept in the hall umbrella-stand, drew it from its scabbard, and chraged whooping into the drawing-room in my best pirate fashion. I was rather keen on pirate stories at that time, and acting them out in the garden.

The unfortunate Gloria screamed with horror, jumped to her feet, and dashed from the room with me in hot pursuit, out into the garden with Gloria still screaming loudly as she ran. I could hardly believe how successfully my ploy was turning out; at last, I thought, we are going to have some fun.

But not so. Mr W----- heard Gloria's desperate screaming and fetched my mother, who ran to see what was happening. On seeing her would-be rescuers, Gloria fell weeping into my mother's arms and was led back indoors to be comforted. I was in deep disgrace.

The next day I refused to play with her at all, and after breakfast managed to disappear into the one part of the house I had not shown to her: the attic where I kept my museum. Some time later, I heard the bell ringing and came downstairs to the kitchen where Gloria was waiting with my mother. I took one look, turned round, and ran back to the attic.

Not surprisingly our relationship never recovered, and once back at school I do not think we ever spoke to one another again.

Far more successful were several visits, during the summer holidays, of my next best school-friend, Diane H-C---. Diane lived with her widowed mother in Dukes Avenue, Muswell Hill. Her late father had been a bank manager in Ludlow, where they had lived before he died.

Years later, I admired some small landscape oil paintings hanging on the wall by my mother-in-law's bed in Doncaster. She told me they had been painted by a great friend of theirs when they had been living in Ludlow before the War. He was a bank manager there, with the name H-C---.

Diane had inherited her father's artistic talent, but he probably would not have been happy with the turn her stage career took after she left school, about which her mother was strangely naïve. She told us that Diane had got a marvellous well-paid job as a hostess at Murry's Night Club in Soho.

"The men are all so kind to Diane", she told us. "They give her such expensive presents, and take her out to dinner." She could not imagine why.

Another former school friend called Josephine S-------, whose birthday parties I used to attend, became a topless dancer at the famous Windmill Theatre at about the same time. Perhaps my father got me away from Arts Educational just in time.

Diane was no more an outdoor tomboy than Gloria had been, but I had learned my lesson and never tried to get her to climb trees. Instead we would put on little theatrical performances staged under the yew tree, to which our mothers, my father and Mr and Mrs P----- would be invited.

Her mother and mine became good friends too, and we all enjoyed their visits, which continued even after I had gone to Queens Gate and was more into horse riding than theatricals. My stepmother Evelyn was not really interested in continuing the friendship with Mrs H-C-, and the last I heard of Diane from her mother was a few years later when she told me that she had got married in rather a hurry to a young man of whom even her kind-hearted mother did not approve. They had a baby, but Mrs H-C- did not see them very often.

<< Previous post · First post

VISITORS TO BELFIELD. (2)

2006-01-12T17:03:00.000Z

As well as the Portland expedition, we went on others to both Cerne Abbas and Abbotsbury. I remember our picnic on Giant Hill when we went to Cerne, and trying a sip or two of cider which I did not like very much, but pretended I did in order to appear "grown-up".

We went to Abbotsbury by train from Weymouth via Upway Junction: one of the small stations between Weymouth and Dorchester which no longer exist. The first station was Radipole Halt, followed by Upway Junction, Upway Wishing Well Halt... and I think the last one was called Winterborne Came Halt. The branch line from Upway Junction also stopped at Portesham, but it terminated at Abbotsbury. It had never continued on to Bridport which, together with West Bay, was served by another branch line from Maiden Newton.

I expect we visted the Swannery, but the part of the day clearest in my memory was our walk up to St Catherine's Chapel; the first part being along a very muddy and deeply rutted lane, before the long and steep climb to the Chapel at the top of the hill. Once there, the view down to the Fleet, and along the Chesil Beach stretching to Portland in the distance, has always remained most memorable and is just as impressive as it was that first sighting.

We would have returned home to Belfield at the end of a long day, perhaps enjoying a cream tea on the way, and as we all sat around the dining room table for dinner, Elizabeth B--- was once heard to murmur: "Ah, gracious living!"

Belfield had remained a place of pilgrimage for various members of the Buxton family who, from time to time, used to call at the house and introduce themselves to us. They were always made to feel welcome, and we enjoyed learning more about the family and their historical connections with Belfield.

In August 1946, a Captain R.H.V. Buxton and his wife made such a call on us whilst they were in Weymouth for the day. We happened to be out, but Mr W----- the gardener was there and had taken them on a tour of the house and garden. After returning to his home in Romsey, Captain Buxton, who had last visited the house twenty years earlier, wrote a letter of appreciation to my father, commenting on how pleased he was to see everything in such good order despite the Army's wartime occupation. His great-great-grandfather had been Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton Bt. (the grandson of Isaac Buxton, the builder of Belfield). Sir Thomas, with William Wilberforce, had been a prominent campaigner for the abolition of the Slave Trade.

Another quite frequent Buxton visitor was Miss Howell. She was rather elegant in an almost 18th century manner, with her white hair swiped up into a loose bun on the top of her head. To me she looked very like the portraits of Queen Charlotte. The last time I saw her was when she came to see us, only a few days before we left Belfield in July 1957. She was almost as devastated as I was over our impending departure.

Not long after the end of the War, my Whittaker grandparents and Auntie May left Grange-over-Sands and moved to Bournemouth. They bought a house in Winton at 51 Norton Road called "Monksrest", a name which gave my parents cause for great mirth. However they were not so amused when the Whittakers all came to stay with us at Belfield for a few days. On being asked which train they intended returning home on, they said, with some indignation, that their tickets were valid for a month, so why the hurry to get rid of them?

Indeed, Grandpa meant to make himself useful around the house, and had brought his screwdriver with him. He used this to dismantle most of the door handles, which he decided needed repairing, but managed to leave them in an even worse state than before.

If there was any friction amongst the adult - and there always was between my mother and her family - I was blissfully unbothered by it. Whenever we went to stay at "Monksrest", Grandpa would always give me a stick of Bournemouth Rock when seeing me off at the station. I accumulated quite a lot of sticky half-eaten sticks of rock in my bedroom back in London.

<< Previous post · First post · Next post >>

VISITORS TO BELFIELD. (1)

2005-12-23T13:40:00.000Z

The visit during one summer holiday of friends of my parents from Oxford days, John and Mary B---, together with their daughters Elizabeth and Catherine, led to my first visit to Portland, and was by train.

John B--- had been an Oxford Don who married Mary P------, a great friend of my mother. They had both been undergraduates at Lady Margaret Hall at the same time. Elizabeth and Catherine were both older than me. Elizabeth was about to go up to Oxford herself, where she had obtained a place at St Annes, and Katherine was still at school.

This visit must have taken place in the 1950's, as I was about to start learning Latin the next term at Queen's Gate. My father thought it would be fun to teach me a Latin sentence which I could recite to John B--- on his arrival, using beginners' vocabulary from the first Latin Primer. The English translation was: "The sailor is kissing the pretty girl under the table", the Latin of which I have long since forgotten - but at the time it brought the desired response of great amusement, and set the tone for a relaxed and enjoyable visit.

Further amusements in the shape of excursions were laid on for the B--- family too, and these excursions were both exciting and memorable events in the days before we owned a car. Meticulous planning must have taken place beforehand for our visits to different parts of Dorset by publio transport, and although I have forgotten the order of these visits, one of them was our outing to Portland on the train.

We probably went into Weymouth on the bus, in order to catch the train; or maybe we started from Radipole Station. I do not remember, but I do remember well the scenic route.

After passing Sandsfoot Castle, the railway crossed the Fleet at Ferry Bridge and continued along the harbour, parallel with the road and Chesil Beach, until it reached Chiswell, the first station on Portland. After this the line turned east, again hugging the harbour shore, before dramatically starting its climb up the side of East Weare Cliff, past the station for what had been the Convict Prison, but was by then a Borstal Institution, and finally ending at Euston Station.

Even on a warm summer's day, Portland is a bleak, rocky and wind-swept place. Since the 17th century its main industry has been the quarrying of its famous stone, and later the building of the breakwater in the 19th century created one of the largest and safest naval harbours in the world until its recent closure.

Convict labour was largely used in the building of the breakwater, and this brought about the building of the Verne Prison. Few prisoners ever made successful escapes from Portland as the only way off the island by land was across Ferry Bridge, where immediate road blocks were set up the moment a prisoner went missing.

The island used to be famous for its own breed of hardy sheep, and in recent years sheep farming with this breed been re-established in a small way.

From Easton Station we would have walked the short distance to Wakenham, past some of the few remaining traditional local stone cottages with their stone-slated roofs and porches with the entrances set at right angles to the inner door so as to give protection from the cold Portalnd winds. One of these cottages, called Avice Cottage, was and still is a museum of local history which I am sure we must have visited before taking the path next to it down to Church Ope Cove, passing the ancient Rufus Castle on our way.

Near the top of the path we would have seen a large house called Pennsylvania Castle, surrounded by some of the only trees on Portland, with its spectacular view down to the Cove past the ruins of St Andrew's Church.

The house is not really a castle, but was built around 1797 by John Penn: the son of William Penn, founder of the state of Pennsylvania USA. William's wife was one of Queen Charlotte's ladies in waiting, and John was frequently in the Royal party on its visits to Weymouth.

It was during an excursion to Portland with the King that John first saw the site which he purchased from the Crown, employed James Wyatt as his architect and proceeded to build the house. It took three years to build, and was finally opened by one of George III's daughters in 1800. Three years later, John Penn founded the Portland Royal Legion to defend the island against a possible invasion by Napoleon in 1804.

Not long after our visit the house came up for sale and my parents were interested in possibly buying it, but after going round it one afternoon they quickly realised that it would be totally impracticable. It needed a lot of money spending on it, and shortly afterwards it was sold for ₤10,000 - half of what it had cost to build in 1800 - and was turned into an hotel.

On this, our first visit, we continued our exploration of the island with the B--- family. I expect we brought a picnic lunch with us, which probably included a bottle of ginger beer or fizzy lemonade for me, and a flagon of cider for everyone else. I do remember us all sitting on the grass verge outside a pub in Wakenham Street, while John B--- went into the pub, perhaps for a beer and to check the latest cricket score.

I do not think we went to Portland Bill on that occasion as it would have been a bit too far to walk - although we might have taken a bus - but I do remember that we went to see the 18th century St George's Church at Reforne before we left.

St George's was in a poor state of repair, having been disused since 1917. Inside was all dust, cobwebs and flaking plaster. Half way down the aisle were two pulpits, and there was an organ loft at the west end into which we climbed.

Elizabeth B---, who was inclined to be what my mother called "highly strung", was quite overwhelmed by the melancholic atmosphere, while her more prosaic sister attempted to play the organ. Elizabeth imagined herself to be intensely "in love" with the long dead notables. Around that time it was with the 18th century artist Richard Wilson; after him came John Stanley, the 18th century blind organist at the Temple Church.

A few years later, she became engaged to be married to another blind organist, a Frenchman, but his parents objected so strongly to the match that the engagement was broken off.

<< Previous post · First post · Next post >>

BELFIELD 1945-56. (6)

2005-12-14T15:56:00.000Z

Weymouth was always overcrowded with holiday-makers during the summer holidays, many of them coming by train from the North of England and the Midlands. So rather than use the beach there, we would go down to the nearest beach to Belfield at the bottom of Rylands Lane, not far from Sandsfoot Castle; about a twenty minute walk.

Rylands Lane was also unadopted, and only a few houses had so far been built there, about halfway down on the left. This area is now totally built up.

The part of the shore which we used to go to was the west of Sandsfoot Castle; a much better and sandier beach lies to the east and was used by Castle Cove Sailing Club, but that would have been further to walk. Being within Portland Harbour, the sea was always calm, but the end we used was largely rocky and covered with lots of seaweed; tiny crabs could be found in the rock pools.

Before Buxton Road was made, the old road from Weymouth to Smallmouth (the ferry link across to Portland) continued from what is now Rodwell Road and Old Castle Road and passed along this stretch of the coast. Until the line finally closed in 1965, the Weymouth to Portland branch line ran along here too.

The summer holidays were idyllic - but as in London, without central heating Belfield in the winter was exceedingly cold and we had to rely on open fires for warmth. These were usually a mixture of coal and wood, with an electric fire for background heat.

A fire would normally be lit in the Drawing Room, but if it was very cold there might be one in the smaller Octagon Room instead. When a fire was lit in the Dining Room grate, the firelight beautifully illuminated the shell surround.

An electric fire would be turned on in my bedroom at bedtime, but it was agony to leave the warmth of the fire downstairs, go into the icy Hall and up to bed. We had hot water bottles, not always reliable. There was a pre-war stone one, whose rubber washer round the stopper had perished and so was liable to leak - and the post-war rubber ones were made of inferior quality rubber, and did not last long.

My mother was fanatical about damp beds, which she would strip and air thoroughly with the aid of an electric fire when we arrived at the house on Friday nights. My clothes would get so damp overnight that steam would rise from them when aired before the fire next morning. I would even resort to getting dressed under my bedclothes rather than shiver in my icy bedroom.

There was a small triangular piece of our garden bordered on one side by Belfield Park Avenue, and on the other, behind a tall cypressus hedge, by the garden of a house called "Maymolly". In 1945, a surveyor in Weymouth, acting on behalf of the owner of "Maymolly", had written to my father asking if he would be willing to sell this piece of land to hin, in order to "square up" his own land. My father had refused to sell, and as far as I know that was the end of the matter.

Some years later when I was playing on the lawn one day, I noticed a small boy, aged about five, watching me rather wistfully across the railing from the garden of "Maymolly". After a while I went across to talk to him. He told me his name was Robin, and I invited him to climb over the low railing to come and play with me.

I showed him all round the garden and into the wood on the other side of the house where I had built myself a shelter of sticks, very much like Eeyore's House at Pooh Corner.

Robin was most impressed, and begged me to help him build one like it in his garden, insisting his parents would not mind. So we collected together the longest sticks we could find (probably some of Mr W-----'s pea-sticks), and we started to build another stick house in the corner of Robin's garden, just over the railing from ours. It was well hidden, just where the cypressus hedge met the easily climbed over iron railing.

We had almost finished when the bell rang for me to return home for my lunch, so we agreed to meet there again after lunch.

We had not been back there for long before an extremely angry woman, who announced herself as being Robin's mother, came storming into view.

"I don't know who you are or where you've come from", she told me, "but how dare you come into my garden and create this hideous mess. I cannot think what the people next door must think."

I did not let on that "the people next door" were my parents who, I was sure, couldn't care less! I tried to explain that Robin had asked me to build him a house and this was it, whereupon she flared back at me saying that Robin was only a baby and too young to understand such matters so couldn't be blamed. She gave me five minutes to clear everything away, to clear out and never dare come back - then marched back to her house with Robin, who had not said a word, in tow.

Feeling like some desperate criminal, I quickly dismantled the stick house, flung everything back over the railing to my side, and did a quick disappearing act, hiding in bushes some distance away, from where I could watch the return inspection in safety.

I never told my parents what had happened and I did not want her to discover who I was, so unless Robin told her - and she might not have believed him - it must have remained a mystery as to where this awful urchin had vanished with all the rubbish I had brought with me.

I never saw Robin or his mother again.

Belfield House and garden, 1945-56.
Click the diagram to enlarge it to full size.
On the other side of the kitchen garden from "Maymolly" was an old "Tom Putt" apple tree. It produced a crop of small apples, but most of them were infected with a type of worm which burrowed in under the skin. So much of the apple had to be cut out before eating that they were hardly worth the bother.

However, about half of its branches overhung the road, and the sight of apples was irresistible to the gang of small boys who would come along and throw stones, trying to get them down. My father used to get very annoyed about this because a) the boys were stealing, even if the apples were practically inedible, and b) because there were cold frames near the tree in which Mr W----- grew cucumbers, squash and melons, and he feared the glass would get broken.

One day he managed to catch a handful of these boys in the act, and marched them up to the house where he lined them up in front of his desk and gave them a severe ticking off. They came from a nearby Approved School (a type of reformatory school).

<< Previous post · First post · Next post >>

BELFIELD 1945-56. (5)

2005-12-12T15:40:00.000Z

We would return to London on Sunday evenings - a taxi would come to drive us to Weymouth station. As well as our luggage there would be many bunches of flowers, cut from the garden by my mother after lunch and given a good drink in buckets of water before being tied into bunches for the journey. Once on the train, she would suspend them from the luggage rack in our compartment, where they hung throughout the journey, swaying with the motion of the train. She also had a long wicker basket with a lid, and that would be filled too.

This all helped to deter other passengers from entering our compartment, which my parents hoped to keep to themselves for as long as possible. As a further deterrent, I was ordered to hang out of the window when the train was standing in the station; the sight of a potentially disruptive child and bunches of dangling flowers was enough to put off all but the most determined.

Before the start of a train journey, my father would go to the bookstall to buy what he called a "female magazine" for my mother, often Woman or Woman's Own, and perhaps Picture Post or Illustrated for me. Comics were frowned upon, but occasionally bought when we went to the grocer's shop on Buxton Road during the holidays.

Belfield House, Weymouth, c.1952.
The grocer's shop was near the end of Buxton Road, just before the railway bridge over the old Weymouth to Portland Line and opposite a church which had, I think, been bombed and rebuilt out of corrugated iron: my father called it the "Tin Tabernacle".

Next to the grocer, on the corner of Clearmont Road, was a bakery run by a couple of Greek sisters. The baking must have been done on the premises, as you could smell it cooking and the bread was often still warm from the oven. It smelt so delicious that I once nibbled off the corners of a loaf whilst carrying it home. They also made very good cream buns.

I used to walk to the shops with my father, taking with us a large wicker basket on wheels, pushed along by a long handle, rather like a walking stick. When not used for shopping, my mother used it in the garden when weeding.

For the most part my school holidays fitted in quite well with my father's legal vacations, though he had longer than I did at Whitsun, which was usually Half Term, but we only had a long weekend for it. We had to return to London early too for the start of my Autumn Term in September: Michaelmas Term did not begin until early October.

But these were the times when we could all enjoy Belfield to the full. It was wonderful to leave hot and dusty London and head for the Weymouth train from Waterloo - and even more so to climb out of the taxi at the end of the journey to head for my favourite parts of the garden, revelling in the thought of the long holiday ahead, whilst also hoping to avoid too much enforced piano practice or spelling exercises set by my mother, anxious for me to catch up on at least some of my educational deficiencies.

Until Diane and Lesley Y---- came to live at the bottom of Belfield Park Avenue in 1954, I had only one friend of about my own age living nearby: this was Catherine P--, a year or so older than me, who lived with her parents in the topmost left-hand corner of the avenue. Her other friend was Jennifer P----, the vicar's daughter, who was nearer her age. However for the most part I was perfectly happy to be on my own, playing in the garden or reading story books which fueled my imagination for the make-believe world in which I played.

The only time we were away from both homes was for the occasional few days' stay in towns which had a Public Record Office, where my father could spend happy hours carrying out further research into whatever piece of genealogical work he was involved with at the time. I can remember several visits to Taunton and staying at the Castle Hotel, where I enjoyed playing in the garden which incorporated the ruins of the medieval castle which had once stood there.

We also went to Wells, Salisbury, Exeter, Chester and Bath, and frequently to Oxford - usually in the autumn - staying at the Randolph Hotel. I would be taken round the Colleges, and particularly liked New College garden because there were several chestnut trees where I could search for conkers.

Watercolour painting of Belfield House by Sarah Godman, 1907.
A brass bell was kept by the back door which my parents rang to call me back to the house when meals were ready. One day I thought I would ignore it, just to see what happened. So when it rang that lunch time I stayed where I was, sitting under a bush on the grass bank beside the road.

After a few minutes the bell rang again, with greater urgency; then a long silence while my poor parents must have been searching the garden for me.

After a while my father came past where I was sitting, wheeling his bicycle and about to carry out a further search along the road before going to the police station to report his missing child.

On seeing me calmly sitting there, his reaction was a mixture of surprise, relief and anger. Where had I been all this time? Why had I not come back to the house when I heard the bell? He and my mother had been worried sick and lunch was spoiled.

By now I was feeling not only very remorseful but also extremely foolish, and tried to look both innocent and surprised, saying I must have fallen asleep and not heard the bell. A silly excuse and not believed for a moment!
<< Previous post · First post · Next post >>

BELFIELD 1945-56. (4)

2005-12-08T23:46:00.000Z

Back in Belfield, I would spend much of my time playing in the garden, whatever the weather was like. My favourite spot was probably the magnificent yew tree which I loved to climb. With so much undergrowth and shrubberies there was plenty of scope for hidy-holes and dens.

There were two banks of rhododendrons; inside one of them was an open space large enough to stand up in. It was here that my mother and I made a little "Chapel". We made an altar from three pieces of rough wood nailed together, and above it hung a small cross which we made out of a gilded picture frame.

Many years later, in 1983, I re-visited Belfield with my father, my stepmother Evelyn and my son Michael. The then owners took us all on a tour of the house and garden. When we reached the rhododendron bush where our Chapel had been, they took us inside - where, to my astonishment, they had made a Chapel too. They had found the cross, still where we had tied it over thirty years before, and this had been their inspiration.

Starting with a wig-wam but soon progressing to a proper Swallows and Amazons type ridge-pole tent, I loved camping-out in the garden. I usually set up my camp on the land across the road from the house, which Mr W----- used to call "Down-Over". Here I would pitch my tent and the wig-wam, which I used for stores. Between the two, I cut out a square of turf for my camp-fire, over which I could hang my cooking pot and kettle, and roast marshmallows on the end of a stick. In the embers I would cook roast potatoes.

I furnished the tent with a groundsheet, rug, lilo and sleeping bag, and when I was a bit older would stay out there all night. I once tried to sleep outside without my tent, but once the dew started to form, it became so cold and damp that I soon gave up and went back to my cosy bedroom. In one of the garages, I found an old paraffin hurricane-lamp which I cleaned up and restored to working order to light me round the garden at night.

Mr W----- would come to the kitchen around midday with a basket of vegetables from the kitchen-garden and get hot water for his lunch-time mug of cocoa, before retiring to the secluded brick-built garden shed up the path from the back door. This was his refuge from bad weather and where he would sit to eat his sandwich lunch, enjoy his cocoa, and read the Daily Mirror.

When he had finished with the paper he would give it to my mother, as she and I enjoyed following the exploits of "Jane" - the saucy strip cartoon. Jane was always getting into situations which resulted in her losing most of her clothes, down to her frilly French Knickers, but her virtue always managed to stay intact. In addition there was an entire page of strip-cartoons in the Mirror which I looked forward to day by day; particularly "Garth" and "The Flutters".

When we were at Belfield for only a weekend, and the greater part of the Saturday was spent in Dorchester and the Sunday morning in Church, there cannot have been much time left for my mother's gardening - although I do remember her doing it during the summer as I watched from my bedroom window after I had gone to bed. For a few years after the War we had "double summer time" which gave us an extra hour of daylight in the evening.

On Sunday morning we would walk to All Saints, Wyke Regis to attend Holy Eucharist at 11am. Although this was our Parish Church, my father did not really approve of the Services there, which were of the Anglo Catholic tradition. He would have preferred a vicar who wore a modest surplice, scarf and academic hood - preferably that of an Oxford M.A., conducting a Service of Matins - to Mr Pratt grandly processing up the aisle in his cope and biretta. On reaching the altar he would ceremoniously doff the biretta and bow deeply, at which point my father was inclined to mutter under his breath: "Good morning God". However I was fascinated and rather impressed by all the ritual.

After doffing his biretta, Mr Pratt would soon be relieved of his cope too, revealing a chasuble beneath, and that too would eventually be removed before the sermon, leaving just his alb and stole. He was attended by an altar-boy in lace-edged cotton who seemed to spend all his time, when not meekly kneeling on the altar step, helping with the disrobing, moving Mr Pratt's Service Book from one side of the altar to the other, ringing the Sanctus Bell and generally, it seems to me, acting dogsbody to someone so grand and holy that he was incapable of conducting such menial tasks himself. Indeed I thought Mr Pratt second only to God, if not God himself.

We never stayed for the Communion part of the Service, but would discreetly leave during the last verse of the Offertory Hymn.

<< Previous post · First post · Next post >>

BELFIELD 1945-56. (3)

2005-12-05T23:27:00.000Z

We went to Dorchester every Saturday when we were at Belfield. This meant catching a bus at the bottom of Belfield Park Avenue into Weymouth to the bus station, and from there another bus to Dorchester where we would get out at South Street. It was a double-decker and, as in London, we would try to get the front seat upstairs where there was a good view - especially when coming down the Ridgeway on the return journey.

My father had been appointed a J.P. in 1943, Deputy Chairman of the Court of Quarter Sessions in 1950 and Chairman from 1953-1971, so if the Court was sitting, that would take up most of his day. At other times he would spend many hours in the Muniment Room at the Dorset County Museum, cataloguing the Museum's collection of archives.

Sometimes he would work in the Turret Room which overlooked St. Peter's Church next door and Cornhill. The turret itself was a snug place in which to sit watching the street below, and I would sometimes join him there, when he would give me a rubber stamp and ink-pad and the job of stamping documents when he checked them.

On the ground floor, before the Museum's re-development, there used to be a door to the left of the main staircase which led to a narrow passage, along one side of which ran a long wooden table. Here packages and parcels could be left and we would leave our shopping, to be picked up at the end of the afternoon before catching the bus back to Weymouth.

We used the Museum Library as a meeting place in which to rest weary legs and read the magazines arranged on a round table near the window. During the winter there would be a fire in the grate, tended by Mr Hammet the Attendant, whose main job was to collect the entrance charge from visitors to the Museum. His method of keeping the fire going was to chuck a scuttle of slaggy coal on it from time to time, which successfully doused any flame which might have struggled through.

Mr Hammet was a great friend of mine. When I told him I was making my own museum in one of the attic rooms at Belfield, he secretly supplied me with some "exhibits" from a store of artifacts which had presumably been given to the Museum from time to time; because they had no connection with the County, they were never put on display but had been stored away in a cupboard and "forgotten". My father wondered if Mr Hammet had any right to give me these things, but thought it wisest "not to know". They were only small items, nothing of any great value.

Another member of the D.N.H.A.S. (Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society) who also liked to frquent the library was Miss O'Rourke, who had once been Thomas Hardy's secretary. She was impressively ugly, very garrulous, and talked so fast she used to spit. Mr Hammet nick-named her "the Blowfly", because she "settled" on people and there was no escaping her incessant chatter. He would warn us, before we entered the Library, if she was there.

Frank Hammet was the Museum's faithful attendant for over thirty years, not retiring until he was 75. When he died, five years later in 1968, my father wrote his obituary for the Proceedings of the D.N.H.A.S.

Lunch, and tea before catching the bus back to Weymouth, was always at "J.J's". Most of the waitresses stayed there for many years. The nice waitress at our table called Dorothy was there for about twenty years. There was one called Mrs Squibb, and another who was small and thin, who looked as if she was in a permanent bad mood. An efficient one in the back room used to wear celluloid cuffs on her uniform, and always polished the table with great vigour between customers. From our table in the front window we looked across the street to the wartime British Restaurant which was still running for a few years after the War.

My favourite shop in Dorchester was Longmans, the bookshop at the Cornhill end of South Street. It ws here that I used to spend my pocket money on adventure books, particularly those by Arthur Ransome. The children's department was upstairs, and like the waitresses at J.J.'s, the same assistant stayed for many years. She was friendly, had grey hair, and soon got to know me and the sort of books I liked.

Longmans was next door to Parsons, the grocers shop which my father used to call the "Fortnums and Masons of Dorchester". They had a machine in the window for roasting coffee; it had a revolving drum to turn the coffee beans over and over as they were being roasted, and there was always a delicious smell of roasted coffee as one passed the shop. Further along, on the same side of the street, was Shepherd and Hedger: a furnishing shop still run by Mr Hedger, a tall man and always most courteous.

At the bottom of High East Street, opposite Mr Legg's antique shop, was a fishmonger/game merchant. Here, as well as fish, my mother would buy rabbit and chicken. On one occasion we were fascinated to watch the fishmonger give a demonstration on how to hypnotise a hen. He tucked its head under its wing and stroked it gently for a few minutes until it appeared to be fast asleep.

I once begged him to give me a rabbit's tail which I proudly took home and put into my doll's wardrobe to keep safe. Some days later, when I opened the door, I was shocked and startled to find a large bluebottle sitting on it.

E.A.M.S, Belfield, c.1948. Click to enlarge.<< Previous post · First post · Next post >>

BELFIELD 1945-56. (2)

2005-11-30T14:53:00.000Z

In October 1946 my father spent £5.0.11 on large trumpet daffodils, tulips and winter aconites for the garden. My mother, a keen and knowledgeable gardener, took great delight in restoring the neglected garden. She grew many plants from seed in the Conservatory, where the wooden shelving running along the length of its wooded side, made for her seedling trays, was still there when the house was for sale in 2002. My father used to tackle the heavy work - clearing brambles, pruning etc.

Near the conservatory was a stoned paved path and some shallow steps leading into a thicket of overgrown bushes and dense undergrowth. Upon clearing a way through, my parents were excited to discover a paved area within - the remains of an arbour which they reinstated.

Mr & Mrs W-----
To cope with grass cutting and the vegetable garden they employed a gardener, a retired quarryman from Portland called Mr W-----, who lived with his wife in the main street in Fortuneswell. Mrs W-----, who was extremely deaf, was a big strong woman, twice the size of her husband. She was employed to clean Belfield, but only came when we were back in London, and we would return to find everything spotlessly clean and shining.

Unfortunately she did not know her own strength, and occasionally things got damaged or broken. Dusters would be reduced to cobweb-like thinness after only a few washes, and rugs were liable to skid on her highly polished floors the moment one stepped on them. When we were there for the long summer holiday, she and Mr W----- would be invited to tea one afternoon and she would gloomily look around and remark on how dirty the house was!

Lionel W-----
The W-----s had a son called Lionel who was in the Fleet Air Arm and was the apple of his mother's eye. She presented us with a framed photograph of him in his uniform, which we would have to remember to put out in a prominent place when we knew she was coming or on our return to London.

Mrs W----- was an ardent royalist, until the day when the newly crowned Queen was driven past our house on a visit to Portland. Mrs W----- was there with her Union Flag, hanging out of her window and waving enthusiastically as the motorcade drove past. But, alas, the Queen failed to return Mrs W-----'s wave. At the critical moment, she was busy waving to the other side of the street. Mrs W----- took it as a personal insult and never forgave her.

With Mrs W----- at Belfield
Before the discovery of Mrs W-----, for a very short time, my mother had tried employing a cleaner who had recently been a patient at Herrison, then a psychiatric hospital near Dorchester. I do not remember her name, only that she seemed to be rather distrait and vague. After she left, I was told that she had "been let out of Herrison" but had to return there for further treatment. It sounded ominous and a bit sinister, and for a long time I thought that "Herrison" was some sort of limbo place, akin to Purgatory.

Odd too was a plumber who came to the house to do some work, went home at the end of the day promising to return the following morning to complete the job, but never came back. Several years later he suddenly re-appeared one day to finish the work he had long abandoned, and was surprised and taken aback to be told that in the meantime another plumber had been employed to finish it. His excuse was that when he woke up the next day, he had felt unable to get out of bed to go to work, so his wife had encouraged him to stay where he was until he felt better and he had done just that.

Work on the external renovation of the house began in September 1946 when my parents received a quote from Rendell and Son of Weymouth. For repairs and outside painting of wood and iron work to the house, conservatory and verandah, the price quoted was £135.12s and for the re-painting of stone and stucco work: £117.2s plus a further £10 for sundry repairs. Three years later, the exterior had to painted again; perhaps the quality of post-war paint was not very good. This time the contractor was F. Selby and Sons, whose quote was only £67.17.6.

Mr W-----, my mother, father and me.
After Grandpa Squibb died on June 10th 1946, a lot of his furniture and possessions came to Belfield. My parents had already started buying furniture for the house, mainly from two Dorchester antique dealers. Some from Mr Pitman, but mostly from Mr Legg who owned a shop at the bottom of High Street East which is still there, run now by his son Michael.

This was a good time to be buying antiques, as post-war prices were rock bottom, and my mother was particularly interested in Regency furniture which was not yet fashionable, so there were some good bargains to be had. She learnt a lot from Mr Legg, and I too was taught by him how to detect genuine old from reproduction furniture by running my fingers along the edges underneath tables and chairs. If they felt sharp, it was likely to be new.

To reveal the true colours of a dirty oil painting, he would lick his finger and rub it over the surface, but this landed me in trouble one day when I tried it out in an art gallery I was visiting with my parents.

I had gone on ahead a little way, and was looking at a large and very dark landscape which featured some cows by a river. Being curious to see how it might look if cleaned, I went up to it and did just what I thought Mr Legg would have done.

There was a squawk of outrage from a nearby attendant, who rushed over and frantically and indignantly wiped the place I had violated with his handkerchief. My parents, although secretly amused by the incident, were full of apologies, and after insisting that I meant no harm, we hurriedly left the gallery in deep disgrace!

<< Previous post · First post · Next post >>

BELFIELD 1945-56. (1)

2005-11-26T14:40:00.000Z

I cannot remember much about my first summer at Belfield in any detail other than exploring the house and garden, happy in my own world of make-believe. My companion was still, for a while, Molly: my imaginary "friend", who had come with me from Cerne. I found her a home under a beech tree, and soon after celebrated her "wedding" with lots of rose-petals from the climbing rose on the verandah, which I used for confetti. She then left my life.

My bedroom was the first room on the right at the top of the elegant curving staircase. My parents had the first on the left, but my room was the sunnier with one window facing east, to the front of the house, and the other south with a view of Portland harbour. It felt safe and cosy to lie in bed on wild stormy nights, listening to the wind and rain pounding against the windows and more wind whistling in the chimney.

One winter, when I had been kept in bed with a bad cold, a fire was lit in my fireplace which was protected by my old nursery fire-guard with its polished brass rim. I remember feeling very secure as I watched the glowing embers as I drifted off to sleep. On foggy nights, I could hear the mournful sound of the foghorn on the Shambles lightship out at sea, and on clear nights I could see the flash of its beacon light.

After five years of occupation by the Army, both the house and garden were looking the worse for wear. The tapestry panels in the dining-room were in excellent condition, having been well protected by horsehair pads attached to battens - but elsewhere all the decorations were in a poor state, with chipped paintwork on doors and skirting boards.

The War Department was obliged to pay out compensation, but it was not until October 1946 that, following a thorough survey, a Schedule of Dilapidations was agreed upon of £902.8.8 plus £50.17.0 for a rehabilitation allowance, plus interest. This included a revised claim for electrical work of £102.19.9.

One cold dark winter's evening I had lost my temper over something forgotten when, in my anger, I gave the drawing-room skirting board a hefty kick, whereupon there was a blue flash as all the lights in the house went out and apart from the firelight, we were left in darkness. Thus complete re-wiring had to be added to the bill.

Outside in the neglected garden where statues had been used for target practice, the Army had left behind two Nissen huts which my father, fearing squatters, insisted on being dismantled as soon as possible. I was rather sorry as I enjoyed playing in them, unlike the remains of an air-raid shelter in another part of the garden which I found a bit scary. The Nissen hut bases stayed though, one of them forming the base of an Italian garden which my parents designed, and the other used for a dumping place for grass-cuttings.

Nearby stood an ancient yew tree, the largest I have ever seen, in which I spent many happy hours climbing. A swing was fixed for me from one of its branches, using the For Sale board for the seat.

Today the garden consists of just over an acre, but when we lived there, there was, in addition, about another acre of woodland to the north of the house, up the hill and bordered by Belfield Park Avenue. To the east, opposite the house and across the road, was another acre. This was all that remained of the Park which had once surrounded the house and had stretched from Wyke Road, where the main entrance and lodge had been, to Buxton Road and the Stables to the south, and as far east as Cross Lane.

Before the War, Belfield had been owned by a Mrs Patterson who, although she claimed to have spent a lot of money restoring the house, had unfortunately sold most of the Park for building land. The old Drive down to the house from Wyke Road had been abandoned and an entirely new road, named Belfield Park Avenue, had been made and lots of small houses built along it. Until the 1960's this remained an "unadopted" road, very rough and stoney, especially where it wound up the hill to join Wyke Road. During heavy rain it would become a river, dislodging yet more of its surface into deep ruts.

The War had interrupted the building process and an acre of land across the road from the front of the house was still undeveloped. This my father was quick to buy back. The part nearest the road was already well wooded with young elm trees which even then were prone to Dutch Elm Disease, but this was kept under control by pruning out diseased branches which also helped to keep up stocks of firewood for the house. My father extended this plantation in 1947 by planting a further ten trees, including Spanish poplar, maple, lime and pine as far as the southern boundary, along which was planted a screen of thirty-six macrocarpa to make a quick growing screen to hide the rather utilitarian house called "Trees" which was being built in a corner of land he had not been in time to re-purchase.

The remaining land, left to rough grass, was kept under control with a fearsome looking mechanical "Allen Scythe". There was also a mature walnut tree, and my father went on to plant a hazel "nuttery" and further mixed woodland trees along the eastern boundary to a neighbouring farmer's field.

A low stone wall was built in front of the house between the house and the road, with a Cupressus Fletcheri planted at either end, and a line of further trees continuing each side as far as the drive gates, of cherries, crab apples, almonds, thorn and prunus as well as poplar and maple.

Together with more tree planting added to the north of the house, Belfield became well screened from encroaching suburbia and one could almost imagine it still being part of a park - if rather more wooded than the original shown in early 19th century engravings when the house stood in its then idyllic setting on an "acclivity" and commanding "a fine prospect".

<< Previous post · First post · Next post >>

CERNE ABBAS 1940-1945. (11)

2005-11-21T17:34:00.000Z

All I can remember of V.E. Day in Cerne is of the bunting hung along the houses in Abbey Street, but I do remember arriving at Belfiled for the first time. We came by car - perhaps it was a taxi - and were driven down Radipole Park Drive alongside Radipole Lake. On reaching the house, we were greeted in the hall by Mrs Pearse, who offered to get me a glass of milk.

Mr & Mrs Pearse had lived in the basement flat at Belfield before the War, and had written to my father that July to ask if they could become tenants again. This suited my parents very well, as they could act as caretakers when we were in London. The letter is dated 20th July 1945 and they were anxious to move in as soon as possible - so they could not have been there long before we too arrived, which was probably around the end of the month at the start of the Long Vacation.

Mr Pearse was a retired school teacher and cabinet maker, and both he and his wife had been professional photographers at some time. They had two grown-up daughters, Lois and Margaret.

Margaret had been a landgirl and had been engaged to be married - but her fiancé, whose parents lived further up Belfield Park Avenue, had been killed in action. She continued to visit frequently and would spend time in a small room in the flat with her gramophone, playing the records they had listened to together. As far as I know, she never married - but her sister Lois was married not long after we went to Belfield, probably at Whitsun the following year. Some white camelias from a bush the size of a small tree, in the garden, were used to make her wedding bouquet.

I think it unlikely we went north, either to Grange or Chester, that summer, as my parents must have been busy settling in at Belfield. A letter from my mother, written while we were still at the Pitchmarket, states with much gless that her sister May was:

"...obviously looking forward to my next effort at taking the entire house on my hands again this summer. I relish the idea of telling her later that she is in for a much shorter "complete rest" this year! How her (?) mouth must be watering already when she thinks of weeks and weeks of never touching the washing-up, dusting, sweeping, gardening, baking, even cooking. What fun to put sand in it therefore (I mean the mouth). I'm not really in a vicious mood!"

There was little love lost between the two sisters, and much resentment. May was six years older than my mother, and was deeply jealous that her younger sibling had not only been up at Oxford and got a Degree, but also a husband and child. It was said that she threw a fit on the bathroom floor when she heard the news of my birth. She was forty by then, trapped into the position of housekeeper to her parents for the rest of their lives.

They had once refused to give their permission for her to marry a man much older than herself who lived in New Zealand. They did not approve of her moving to the other side of the world: "Who will look after us in our old age?" they demanded. So their dutiful daughter stayed at home doing just that until after my grandfather died in 1959, aged ninety.

May married six years later when she was sixty-seven, to John Gee whom she met whilst out exercising her dogs.

The Pitchmarket, Cerne Abbas
<< Previous post · First post · Next post >>

CERNE ABBAS 1940-1945. (10)

2005-11-17T00:21:00.000Z

Although it was to be another six months until V.E. Day, my father was already making plans for our future after the War was finally over, including arrangements for me to start at the City Of London School For Girls the following September, then in Carmelite Street just outside the Temple and very convenient; so plans for us to move into 5 Paper Buildings must have been under way by then too. He and my mother had also begun looking for our future weekend/holiday home in the Dorchester area, as by now my mother was anxious to move from Cerne as soon as possible.

By March 1945, the search had been narrowed down to four possibilities: The Pitchmarket, Belfield House, Radipole Manor, and Wollaston House. My mother wrote to my father:

"If possible I don't want to spend holidays in Cerne after the War. I should always be making excuses about not coming! I would dread the end of term and having to go back to all that 'to all that'. Especially in the Long Vacation. You would be away so much then."

Wollaston House, built in 1786, stands in the centre of Dorchester at the junctions of Church Street, Durngate Street and Acland Road. Whatever garden it once had has now long gone, and it is surrounded by busy roads and car parks, including the Waitrose one. My mother continued:

"Wollaston was a better thing in the War times than in peace. Time saved on your journey, easier food. But it is much less easy to run without servants than Belfield. And in peace, it would be difficult to get up much holiday spirit about coming to such a queer locality! I cannot feel it's the right place really."

As for Radipole Manor, built in the 16th century and standing only a few feet away from the church and graveyard, my father once told me that my mother refused to live there because of the close proximity of all the gravestones, although he could not see why that should have been a problem!

In the same letter she went on:

"We must have, I'm now sure, something small enough to run without servants. But the average 4 or 5 bedroom house is so undignified. Radipole was a fluke and so was Belfield, only still more (I think Radipole would have been as hard to run as Pitchmarket: think of those polished floors and all the leaded lights)."

They even discussed the possibility of a flat, but there were none on the market and anyway they wanted a garden. Belfield seems to have been my mother's number one choice from the start: "I wouldn't have missed seeing Belfield for anything", she wrote wistfully after their first visit, and continued:

"I liked everything I saw at Belfield but it would break my heart to think of an excessive unreasonable £75 a year going down the drains on Schedule A and rates. They are about double what they should be ar'n't they?"

Belfield had been requisitioned by the Army during the War, and was still in occupation when my parents were shown round the property on their first visit. Whether their guide was an officer or the estate agent I am not sure, but when he opened the upstairs bathroom door they found a soldier in there having a bath.

They seem to have made their final decision before March 20th, as my father referred in one of his letters to the research he had already begun into the history of the house. This was to culminate in his writing a booklet called Belfield and the Buxtons, which he had printed privately in 1954.

The Contract Agreement is dated 4th April 1945 and the Completion Date was on 16th May, only eight days after V.E. Day. The house had been valued at £3750, but it was finally bought for £3000; the same price that Abbey Cottage had fetched the previous year. But this price must have taken into account the tremendous amount of renovation needing to be done after five years of Army occupation.

<< Previous post · First post · Next post >>

CERNE ABBAS 1940-1945. (9)

2005-11-14T18:17:00.000Z

Although the first rockets fell on London on September 8th 1944, there is no mention of them in my father's letters until 14th November when he wrote:

"The papers seem to be making a great deal of fuss about these rockets, but they do not appear to be anything like such a nuisance as the flying bombs were during the summer. I think that most of them must fall a good way from London and it is said that a lot of them explode in the air. Life must be pretty miserable in some of the German towns these days."

Perhaps he would have had a different opinion had a rocket landed on the Temple, or maybe he was just trying to reassure his father that life in London was not as dangerous as he feared; but London only survived what could have been the most dangerous of weapons because they were expensive to produce and there were too few, too late. The allied armies over-ran most of the launching sites soon after attacks began.

Toys must have been difficult to get during the War years. My Chad Valley teddy-bear had been bought early in the War, and I had a few dolls and toy animals, all much loved. When we went to stay with my Whittaker grandparents, I was allowed to play with another beautiful Victorian doll called Rosie. She was smaller than the one given to me by grandpa Squibb, but she too had an extensive wardrobe of clothes and was probably far too valuable for a young child to be playing with. However I always looked forward to being reunited with her on my visits, and took great care of her.

One of my favourite dolls was Edith. My mother made her out of some of her old lisle stockings stuffed with kapok, she was taller than me and no beauty. My mother made the head first and thought the face - with its red felt lips, eyes with half black "popper" fastenings for the pupils and black woolly hair tied in pigtails - was so ugly that I might be frightened by it. So she showed me the head first, to see my reaction, but when I just laughed at it she went ahead and made the rest. Edith wore my old dresses and had lovely floppy arms and legs.

A toy inherited from my mother was a black cat, about a foot long, called N****r. Her mother had tried to dissuade her from buying him, as she thought there were other toys in the shop which were a lot more attractive, but my mother had been determined and had insisted that N****r was the only one she wanted. He had been much loved by her, and his fur was very worn out by the time he was passed on to me, so she made him a coat out of some scraps of red leather, added some "medals" made from Christmas cracker charms, and he became a Chelsea pensioner.

So in November 1944 it must have seemed a real "find" when, with great delight, my mother found a doll's house for me. My father wrote:

"Bessie came across a great rarity in the shape of a doll's house the other day. It is so big that we have not been able to hide it until Christmas, so Elizabeth is having great fun - and I think that Bessie is enjoying herself almost as much as Elizabeth! She got the doll's house from the grocer's assistant. It seems to be of some age and has been very well kept. It will be many a long day before such a thing can be bought in a shop again, for it could not be made within the maximum price now allowed for toys."

My mother had kept all her own doll's house furniture which was an added bonus, and after the War, she had fun in Hamleys finding more. I remember the day it was given to me, and can picture it placed in the room next to the kitchen, by the right of the door leading into the hall.

My grandfather Squibb was asked if he would try to get me Alice Through The Looking Glass for Christmas, as Alice In Wonderland had been such a great success.

The last letter in the 1944 series deals with my father's birthday on December 1st, and encloses a drawing done by me of what I call "a sideways man", said to be dancing. I had been taken to lunch at Judge Jeffrey's Restaurant in Dorchester for the first time, and the waitress had given me a lump of sugar as a reward for good behaviour.

"J.J's" was to be our regular lunch time venue when in Dorchester for many years to come. We always sat at the same table, in the front window which overlooked High West Street and the Museum opposite. At that time, all the round oak tables and Windsor chairs were genuine antiques, as were the pictures on the walls: mostly coloured engravings of hunting and coaching scenes. Pieces of armour and swords hung on the walls in the back room, where there would be a blazing log fire in the huge fireplace on cold winter days. On a wall near the window hung an Act of Parliament Clock. All of these pieces were later sold and replaced with reproduction furniture when, under new management, their value as antiques came to be realised.

There was another room at the back, called the New Room. This had been built just before the War and lacked the character of the older part of the building, so we only used it if the restaurant was full. I remember the three course set lunch cost 2s 6d for quite a long time, increasing to 5s in the 1950's. The delicious bread rolls at lunch time were baked on the premises, as were the cakes at tea-time. Flapjacks were my father's favourites - he called them "cold porridge".

<< Previous post · First post · Next post >>

CERNE ABBAS 1940-1945. (8)

2005-11-09T19:01:00.000Z

On 4th September 1944, we moved on to Chester to stay at the Blossoms Hotel for the weekend, from where we went to see my grandfather Squibb. He lived at Kent House, 147 Boughton. I can remember him fairly well, but as he died in 1946, I did not have time to get to know him really well. We visited Chester again after the War, but I cannot remember him coming to visit us in Cerne, London or at Belfield.

Reginald Augustus Hodder Squibb: 1872-1946
He was not in the best of health during the War years, and my father's letters to him throughout 1944 are always full of concern to do with the treatment of his eczema. My grandmother Squibb had died in 1930, and a housekeeper called Ella Fairfax-Jones looked after Grandpa.

During one of our visits to Chester, he gave me a lovely Victorian doll with a china face and blue glass eyes which opened and shut. She had real blond curly hair, and wore a white lawn and lace dress - a sort of Christening robe - a petticoat and a blue cloak and bonnet, trimmed with swansdown. He also introduced me to ginger-beer and fizzy lemonade.

Writing to thank him after this, our 1944 visit, my parents were concerned that we had consumed the whole of his meat ration at Sunday's lunch, and must have made inroads into his other rations too.

Mary Elizabeth Squibb: 1869-1930
From Chester we returned to Grange for the rest of the holiday, about a week, whereupon we all caught colds - we seemed to get a lot of colds - and eventually embarked on the long and tedious return train journey back to Dorset. This involved changes at Preston, Crewe and Bristol. All the trains were very full, we had to travel in the corridor between Crewe and Shrewsbury, and nearly lost some of our luggage at Crewe when the porter disappeared into the crowd. We eventually arrived at Dorchester fourteen hours later, tired and weary - but only fifty minutes late.

The holiday seemed to have done my mother a lot of good and, apart from getting a cold, her general health had much improved.

It was while we had been away that Abbey Cottage had been sold, for a reputed £3000 - which my father found stupendous and difficult to believe, as only two years previously it had been sold for £2000. The purchaser this time was the retired tea-planter from Assam with his younger wife and two year old son, with whom it was thought I might want to play, "unless she feels too old for a playmate so young!"

October arrived, and with it my forthcoming fourth birthday. My father wrote:

"She says she wants a gun for her birthday, so we had to go round the shops on Saturday to find one. It seems strange taste for a little girl, but she is quite definite about it!"

I do not remember the gun, but I do remember the toy farm-yard which they also got for that birthday. It was thought that it would please me as I was:

"...very fond of a little girl dressed as a landgirl and some animals which the landgirl has to look after."

I was getting a cake with pink icing and four candles on it too, and on the day another little girl, probably Penelope Fry, came to tea. My grandfather Squibb sent me a copy of Alice In Wonderland with which I was very pleased, and soon started to recite: "You are old Father Wiliam".

By now the autumnal gales were blowing, and it was time to pick the apple crop - which was not a very good one. Most of the apples were very small and many had various kinds of blemishes, so would not have been good keepers. I told my father all about how I had been up Giant Hill to see the hounds and saw a lot of foxes too, which he found hard to believe! Snugly dressed in my green mackintosh and sou'wester, I was the only one enjoying the persistently wet weather, and had made friends with the newly arrived little boy at Abbey Cottage too. He called be "Mummy" - which at two, was about the only word he knew. I thought it a great joke! A week or two later I was invited to his birthday tea.

<< Previous post · First post · Next post >>

CERNE ABBAS 1940-1945. (7)

2005-11-06T14:04:00.000Z

With the general feeling that the end of the War was now in sight, it was suggested that we would go to Chester early in August, to see my Grandfather Squibb. There was worry about the extra burden our staying in the house would put upon Ella, his housekeeper, so my parents decided to stay in an hotel and bring me along to the house after breakfst, where we would stay until bedtime. My grandfather was going to book the rooms when the exact date was known, and it was stressed that they must have two rooms, with connecting doors.

July 4th 1944, and my mother still not well. Back in London during the week, life at the Oxford and Cambridge Club sounds uncomfortable. My father writes:

"There is plenty of room downstairs for those who sleep here. I had two armchairs on Monday and Tuesday nights, but on Wednesday there were beds for the eight of the most senior members, and I was one of the eight! I wonder whether I shall come in the first eight tonight. However I slept quite well in the chairs with a pillow and an eiderdown.

My impression of these flying bomb raids are much less serious than ordinary bomb-raids. All the power of these things seems to be in the blast, and they hardly penetrate at all. It would be interesting to know what proportion are being brought down. I imagine that it must be high, for while the "alerts" last a long time, one does not hear many bombs."

Indeed, these flying bombs only went at the speed of an ordinary aircraft, so were relatively easy to shoot down. The anti-aircraft guns were moved to the coast, the fighters operated inland, and by August 80% of those coming over were being destroyed. However, they still had to experience the rockets, or V2's, which were more frightening and potentially more dangerous.

Our visit to Chester had been proposed for 2nd August, after which we were going on to Grange-over-Sands to see my Whittaker grandparents; but there had been complications over our hotel rooms in Chester. Also, the Whittakers had been warned that they might have evacuees from the South billeted on them. It was thought that if the house was full of family, this might stop them getting the evacuees - so it was decided we would go to Grange first, and then on to Chester on September 4th instead.

Apparently I was very excited at the thought of going to see my Grandfather Squibb. My father wrote:

"When she is going anywhere fresh we always tell her about it, so that she can get used to the idea. I hope she will behave nicely. She is usually fairly good and behaves well when she goes out.

We took her to Weymouth on Saturday and she was very good indeed. She was disappointed at not being able to play on the sands, but she took it quite calmly and looked at the shops instead. She started playing with bricks which form a picture when put together, so when Bessie gave her a simple jig-saw she soon got the hang of it."

I remember the bricks, and still had some of them many years later.

It was hoped that the holiday in Grange and Chester would help my mother recuperate too, for she was still far from well. The use of penicillen was still in its infancy; although in use during the War, it does not appear to have been readily available, as her doctor was making some tests to see whether he could find an antidote to the poison still in her bloodstream from the septic gums. He said that a change and a rest were all that would do her any good.

We eventually made the train journey to Grange on 24th July, so as to avoid the posibility of having evacuees billeted on us in Cerne. Some evacuees had already been sent to Cerne the previous week.

We left home at 8.30 am, arriving in Grange at 9.45 pm. The next day my father wrote:

"In order to avoid taking Elizabeth through London, we came by way of Bristol. At Bristol we caught a through train to Crewe. It was most uncomfortably crowded, but we were lucky enough to get seats at Hereford. Elizabeth behaved beautifully, and did not seem nearly so tired at the end of day as Bessie and I were. She took a great interest in everything and only slept for a couple of hours in the afternoon.

Elizabeth has quickly made herself at home here. Her grandparents and aunt [my mother's sister May] are delighted with her. There is a nice garden for her to play in and she started to explore it as soon as she had had her breakfast, so I think she is going to be very happy."

Adelaide, May & George Whittaker c.1944
at Fairbourne, Charney Rd, Grange-over-Sands
I remember the garden at "Fairbourne", Charney Road, Grange-over-Sands very clearly. The house was built on the side of a hill, and it was a very steep walk up the hill from the town. The garden was terraced, the middle terrace being a lawn on which my grandfather Whittaker played bowls. Below that was an orchard. At the top of the garden, near to the back door, was a rockery and the garden shed.

The house faced south, and there was a nice view over the sea. My father said the roads were quite as steep as those in Matlock, and the first thing he had to do on our arrival was to walk down the hill into the town to collect our emergency ration cards. I was soon taken into the town too, and went paddling in the sea. Unlike Weymouth, the beach was not sandy - despite the name - but rather rocky and muddy, so we soon nicknamed it Grange-over-Mud.

Because we had arrived earlier than originally intended, my father had to return to London during the first couple of weeks as it was still Term time. A flying bomb falling on a building on the Embankment had blown out four of the windows in Chambers, now in 3 Paper Buildings.

Back in Grange for the first Sunday in July, he was with us when I was taken to Church for the first time. I joined in "The Lord's Prayer", but they brought me out before the Sermon. Later on we went over to Cartmel Priory for a visit, and I was said to have been impressed by the Church, the largest I had ever seen. My parents were looking forward to showing me Chester Cathedral later in the holiday.

Before we left Grange and moved on to Chester, there was a visit from my mother's cousin Fred Byrne, his wife Martha, and their son Paul, who was six years my senior. Fred was my grandmother Whittaker's nephew; he had fought in the trenches during the First World War and had been badly wounded in his leg. The wound had never healed properly, and he had been left with an open ulcer, for which he had to have treatment for the rest of his long life. He did not die until 1998, shortly after his 100th birthday.

Martha was ten years younger, and died three years before Fred. Until he and Martha had to move into a residential home near their flat in Lytham, they were cared for by Paul who became a schoolmaster, but like Auntie May, never married. It might have been during that visit, or perhaps a later one, that I remember trying to persuade Paul to climb an apple tree with me (as perhaps three and three quarters was a bit young, even for me, to have been climbing trees).

Fred and Martha were very fond of my mother, but after she died they lost touch with us. It was not until after May died in 1976 that I rediscovered their address, and was able to re-establish contact with them all again.

<< Previous post · First post · Next post >>

CERNE ABBAS 1940-1945. (6)

2005-10-31T15:57:00.000Z

Meanwhile, the invasion of France continued: my mother could hear the bombardment as far away as Cerne. In his letter of June 18th 1944, my father wrote:

"These new pilotless planes gave me a sleepless night on Thursday, which was my night on duty. The "alert" went at 11.30 and we did not get the "all clear" until 9.30 the next morning - the longest raid since the winter of 1940-41. Nothing seemed to be happening in the middle of London, and we only heard the gun-fire at long intervals, but still being on duty I had to be awake all the time. I think they are going to be more of a nuisance than anything else. Indeed, it does not seem that they can be an effective weapon of war."

In Cerne the previous Friday night:

"We heard a great crash just before we went to bed and found that an American lorry had backed into the windows of the paper shop" [now the Post Office]. "It not only broke the glass but the wood-work as well. The sound of the glass being swept up reminded me of the morning after an air-raid."

Until recently the replacement window still had different sized panes of glass and glazing bars from those on the right hand side of the door: the window was not fully restored until after it had again been smashed, this time during a night-time raid when the Post Office safe was thrown through it. This happened just as Cerne was about to celebrate the 50th anniversary of V.E. Day.

By August, 80% of the flying bombs which came over were being destroyed, but on September 8th the first rockets reached London. My father never talked to me about his part in the War and life in London at that time. When I was little he used to entertain me by imitating the sound of a doodlebug, but that was all.

Transport at that time cannot have been easy, but my father continued travelling all over the country by train in order to appear in court in such towns as Nottingham, Sheffield, Cambridge and Watford. And of course there was the weekly commute between London and Cerne. He described his journeys from Cerne to catch the train back to London from Dorchester in a letter to his father in November 1944:

"I have no difficulty about getting a car in Cerne and I always have one if it is wet, cold or dark. When I do ride [his bicycle] I always have a waterproof cape, leggings and sou'wester in the bag at the back in case it comes to rain on the way. When the weather is decent I enjoy the ride but do not set out if it is not fine. During the school term there is a bus which leaves Cerne at 8.30 and I travel on that very often and have a car to meet me on Friday."

Because of his poor eyesight he never learnt to drive a car, and neither did my mother.

My personal memories of that time are mostly trouble-free. I remember falling into the stream which runs down Abbey Street from the duck pond, and meeting Minkey Patterson, who lived opposite, as I climbed out. She told me that my mother was looking for me along the mill-stream path, so I must have escaped from her watchful eye and run on ahead, while she feared that an accident had befallen me. I remember too, being pushed along by the mill-stream in my push chair one afternoon and seeing a horse and rider on the opposite bank.

Celandines used to grow in profusion on the bank just inside the gate to the burial ground when the path up to Belvoir was line with yew trees (felled in the 1960's when they became diseased). I have lots of early memories of flowers: primroses in the hedgerows, as there still are, and nasturtiums and "Chinese Lanterns" in the Pitchmarket garden.

One event which is not mentioned in any of the letters to my grandfather is the "privy" I made out of a hat box in my bedroom, and used! I was fascinated by the outside privy at Kay and Nurses' cottage and wanted one of my own!

<< Previous post · First post · Next post >>

CERNE ABBAS 1940-1945. (5)

2005-10-28T14:31:00.000+01:00

By now, there was a "coastal ban" in force. It stretched for more than ten miles inland, and included the whole of the Rural District of Dorchester, in which Cerne was. Once you were lawfully within the area you could move about freely - so from Cerne you could go to Dorchester or Weymouth, but could not if you wanted to have any visitors from outside the area. You could not go to Bournemouth for instance, because it was in another area.

It was now the end of March 1944, the weather was warmer, and we had lunch in the garden one weekend and tea under the Giant.

Despite her dislike of the wartime years in Cerne, there must surely have been times when my mother appreciated the advantages of life in the country at that time. Coal was scarce, and one had to have a licence to obtain it - but wood seems to have been readily available. Full cream milk too, from Lord Digby's herd of cows, was delivered to the village by Lord and Lady Digby themselves. I remember watching Miss Kendall (Kay) skimming the cream off milk which had been left to settle in a wide shallow dish, in the traditional manner.

Unlike most of my later London school friends, I was no stranger to rich cream - but they used to turn up their noses at the small amount of thin stuff which passed as cream, which topped the tiny bottles of school milk that we were supposed to drink during our mid-morning break.

My parents grew their own vegetables, as everyone was supposed to do - not potatoes, as they did not have enough room, but most other things including fruit.

Surprisingly, scabies was reported to have broken out in some parts of Dorset in 1944.

On to April and Easter. My father reported that we had

"...started the day without an egg in the house, and by bed-time we had been given no fewer than seventeen by three different people. As you can imagine, we celebrated Easter with boiled eggs for breakfast!"

He had also noticed a great improvement in the quality of bread during the last few days, and there were quite a lot of oranges about.

My grandfather Squibb sent me some chocolate and a book for Easter with which I was very pleased, and thought Easter was almost as nice as Christmas. My father told him that I was well and very happy, and he was glad that I was spending my first few years in such healthy surroundings. He could not believe that I would like it when I had to spend part of my time in London.

It was now five years since my parents had decided to take the Pitchmarket. They had spent that Easter in an hotel in Wyke Regis, which had later been requisitioned at the outbreak of war. He remembered that the weather that weekend in 1939 had been beautiful the whole time.

Early May, and the apple trees were in bloom in the garden. They still had a few of the previous year's crop left, but the next weekend's heavy frost and a hailstorm knocked off a lot of the blossom, and there were fears for the strawberry crop too, which was in full flower. There were the first of the home-grown radishes for tea, and I watched the aircraft flying over the house.

My father was always afraid that I might inherit his poor eyesight, so he was delighted that I could see the tow-ropes on the gliders (which I called "ciders") and could also read the letters on low-flying aeroplanes. The year before I had been calling planes "cuckoos" and had seemed a bit scared of them, running indoors when I saw one - but now I was taking a great interest in them and included airmen, along with soldiers and sailors, in my bed-time prayers. It must have been about this time that I remember being greatly taken by the photograph of a pilot in a magazine, which I used to gaze at with great devotion!

Weymouth and Portland were among the major loading ports for the invasion of Normandy, and from 6th June 1944 to 7th May 1945, over 500,000 troops and over 144,000 vehicles embarked across the Channel from these harbours. For weeks before sailing, the troops were encamped in the Dorset countryside, waiting to be shipped across to France. According to my father, one of the chief objects of the coastal ban was to prevent women following the troops!

Certainly the ban seems to have made travelling by train between Waterloo and Weymouth much easier, for my father had no difficulty in finding a seat. This was in sharp contrast to a journey he had made between Cambridge and Liverpool Street that June, which he described as being one of the most uncomfortable he had ever had. He had been lucky even to get onto the train, as a good many people had been left behind, but he just managed to squeeze into the corridor. The journey to Cambridge had been rather a waste of time anyway: his case had been due to come before the magistrates that day, a Saturday too, but the defendant had paid up that morning.

Meanwhile my poor mother was going through the ordeal of gradually having all her teeth extracted. Her troubles had started in the January with the abcess, and her gums had now become very septic. By 1st June all her bottom teeth had been removed and a denture fitted.

My father had a mid-week appeal at Salisbury Quarter Sessions, and as she had never been to Salisbury, he took her with him, hoping a little change beforehand would help her with the ordeal of having the remaining teeth out on her return. They stayed at the White Hart Hotel, which was noisy with all the U.S. Army traffic passing by, but my mother seems to have enjoyed her visit, despite the early heraldic glass in the Cathedral having been moved to safety and some of the early tombs also being covered over. They went there and back by the Wilts and Dorset bus, and I was left in the care of Kay.

More teeth were extracted on their return, and the last not until June 18th. The last extraction had caused the poison from her septic gums to spread, and the entire trauma left her feeling very ill. The dentist told her she should feel a lot better after three months!

<< Previous post · First post · Next post >>

CERNE ABBAS 1940-1945. (4)

2005-10-26T18:15:00.000+01:00

It is useful to be able to jog my memory by reading the weekly letters which my father wrote to his father in Chester during 1944. In his letter of January 10th, he described a visit we made to Weymouth for me to play on the beach. There were invasion exercises going on, and he and my mother watched some amphibious tanks sailing between the beach and a large barge which stood a little way out to sea. However I was much more interested in building sandcastles.

Later in the month, arrangements were being made for me to have my photograph taken at Cummings Studio in St Thomas Street, Weymouth. My mother was making me a dress to wear for the photograph, which I remember well: it was rust red Viyella with a lace collar.

January was also the start of her teeth problems, which were to continue for many months. She had painful abcesses, and two of her bottom teeth were taken out. To add to all their difficulties and disruptions there was a power cut one weekend, and they had to cook breakfast on the sitting-room fire.

February brought gales, the planting of shallots in the garden, and my parents' eighth wedding anniversary. Cerne had a delivery of oranges, to my great delight.

Back in London, my father was having a noisy time fire watching. All of the windows at the Oxford and Cambridge Club, where he was now living, were blown out in a raid one night. Nobody was hurt by flying glass, he had not yet gone to bed, and ended up sleeping at the United University Club. The London Library was damaged the same night. He spent the next week at the Norfolk Court Hotel in Hampstead, which he found very cold, and they were getting short of fuel for the fires in Chambers too. The following week he moved to the Hampstead Towers Hotel, which he said was an improvement.

At home in Cerne, my mother and I had bad colds in spite of anti-flu/cold injections, and the telephones had been cut off, though not the village call box. My mother had another seven teeth out and was feeling shattered, so it could not have improved matters when I found a cake she had baked and proceeded to "ice" it with salt and pepper. When rebuked, I offered to make amends by singing a song!

Fuel problems continued in Chambers, where after a day without any fires they managed to get a very small delivery. In Cerne, there had been a delivery of wood from a man in Sydling St. Nicholas, just before they ran out. It was very cold and had tried to snow.

Next week's news was more cheerful. It was by now the second week in March, and the photo session in Weymouth had taken place. There was such a shortage of photographic material that they could only use one plate, so there would only be three prints: one for us, and one each for the two lots of grandparents.

Our one was always on my father's desk for the rest of his life. It shows me sitting at a table wearing the dress my mother had made for me, and holding my little wicker basket full of shells which I had collected from the beach that day. The sandy part of the beach was closed, so we had to make do with the pebbly end.

EAMS: 3 years 5 months old. Click to enlarge.
Meanwhile my father had been to see his Cousin Flo, who lived in Radipole, to talk to her about her Will. She gave him a small dog-whip made from a deer's leg to give to me. I treasured both the whip and my little basket for many years, but the whip disappeared when we moved back to Cerne from Belfield in 1955, only reappearing in 1990 in the woodshed when my second husband Joe and I were turning it out. By then damp had just about destroyed it, and I regretfully had to throw it away. But I do still have a green Mad Hatter mug with a lithophane of a girl feeding her two kittens in the base, which Grandpa Squibb had given me, mentioned in the same letter of 13th March.

My mother made a small drawing of me, amongst several of hers which still exist, and which I remember her doing. To keep me still, I sat on my father's lap by the big fireplace in the sitting room while he read me a story, probably a Winnie The Pooh one. He enjoyed reading Pooh stories, and A.A. Milne poems from When We Were Very Young and Now We Are Six. Amongst his favourites were The Knight Whose Armour Didn't Squeak and The King's Breakfast. I was growing fast too, my father said, and now took size 10 shoes, which he thought was very large for my age.

There were more fuel shortages, and it was now necessary to obtain a permit for further supplies. Mr Pickett, the head clerk, had got a permit to buy a ton of coal for Chambers - but now that he had the permit, he was unable to get the coal. To his great relief, my father was now back at the Oxford and Cambridge Club.

I was aware there was a war on, but took it all for granted as I had never known life to be any different. On fine sunny afternoons, I used to see the planes flying overhead on their way to France while I played in the Pitchmarket garden.

A German plane came down over Sydling and Mr England, the village baker, went to arrest the airmen. One of them was said to have come quietly - but the other, whose parachute had been caught in a tree, put up some resistance. My mother told me that they had both been marched through Cerne Abbas and were booed at by the crowd of villagers who had come to watch. My mother felt ashamed by such behaviour.

<< Previous post · First post · Next post >>

CERNE ABBAS 1940-1945. (3)

2005-10-25T16:25:00.000+01:00

Landing, The Pitchmarket, 1940's.
Tom, our big black tabby cat, had been adopted by my mother when she was living in Betty Surtees House in Newcastle, and working as a librarian at Durham University before she was married. Tom had come from the Newcastle docks, and remained semi-wild and fiercely independent.

After I was born and we had come to live at the Pitchmarket, he took umbrage and decided to move next door to The Old House, where there were other cats for company. There he stayed for some time, passing through our garden in a disdainful manner, refusing to have anything to do with any of us. Then one day he decided to return, as suddenly as he had left.

But he and I did not get on together. He would scratch me - and I, so I was told, used to hit him on the head with the coal shovel. On one occasion when Kay (who helped my mother after Pam had left to get married) was skinning a rabbit, I came in carrying the unfortunate cat: "Peel Tom", I said.

It might have been round about the same time that I remarked, while watching Nurse (the District Nurse who shared a cottage with Kay) who was also skinning a rabbit: "His running days are over, I think." (October 1944)

Unfortunately my relationship with poor Tom became so bad that my mother told my father that either I or the cat had to go. Rather reluctantly, my father decided it would have to be the cat. I can see him now, leaving the house in the morning on his way to the vet in Dorchester with Tom in his cat basket for the last time. I used to use the basket after that for my doll's clothes.

<< Previous post · First post · Next post >>

CERNE ABBAS 1940-1945. (2)

2005-10-21T17:50:00.000+01:00

My early memories have stayed clear in my mind, and remain like vivid snapshots.

The earliest of these is of one sunny summer afternoon, sitting in my high-chair by the french window in the room next to the kitchen at the Pitchmarket. My high-chair, which was made of a light coloured wood, had legs which hinged half way down so that they could be folded in half - so making the seat at floor level, with the panel at the base of the chair upturned to form a large tray in front of me, with two rows of coloured wooden beads down each side, and plenty of room for my toys.

As I sat there, diagonally facing and to the right of the window, with the afternoon sunshine pouring through, I can very clearly remember thinking that this was much better than the chair's usual upright position, wondering why it had not been thought of before, and hoping it would happen again!

I can just about remember sitting up in my pram - a lovely shiny black affair - and can certainly remember seeing it stored away in what was then a lumber room over the passageway between the Pitchmarket and Abbey Cottage. I wanted to climb back into it, but it was too high to do so.

The passageway was a shared access between the two houses to their gardens at the rear. Abbey Cottage was owned by a Mr Beresford, who was my parents' landlord. The relationship seems to have been an acrimonious one, starting with some sort of dispute to do with drains in October 1939, continuing in February 1940 with an argument over the key of the passageway, with further threatening correspondence in February 1942. It must have been a relief to all concerned when in October 1944 Abbey Cottage was sold privately to a retired tea-planter from Assam with a young wife and son, aged two, with whom I used to play. I can just remember him - I think he had red hair.

My best friend at the time was Penelope Fry. She and her mother lived at 6 Abbey Street. I'm not sure if her mother was a widow, or if her husband was away in the Services, but later I was told that she had a reputation for consorting with the American soldiers. I wrote a little story for Penelope on her fourth birthday about a farmer and his ducklings, which I also illustrated.

Many years later, when she was a student nurse at the Westminster hospital, she became a lodger of an old school friend of mine, Rachel MacOwen, through whom she returned the little book to me - but we never met again after I left Cerne in 1945.

My bedroom at the Pitchmarket was at the back of the house overlooking the garden, and my parents had the one in the front. On one occasion, a foot of their four-poster bed came through the ceiling of the floor below. There was a gate at the top of the stairs to prevent me falling down them when I was learning to walk. I can just remember being in my drop-sided cot in a small narrow room next to my parents' bedroom. I was moved to a proper bed in the bedroom in July 1944.

Whenever I was a bit poorly, or generally just out of sorts, my mother would resort to dosing me with a horrible-tasting cure-all in which she showed great faith: Steadman's Powders. Each dose, which came in its own individually folded piece of white paper, would be mixed with water and given to me to drink.

There was a small red booklet containing advice on the treatment of all possible ailments from Croup to Whooping-Cough, most of which, it stated, could be successfully treated by a timely dose of Steadman's Powders - although for the more serious illnesses, such as Diphtheria, it was recommended that one should "call a doctor immediately", in heavy type. The booklet also contained photographs of healthy happy children, with letters from their equally happy looking mothers who were so pleased with the miraculous results of using these foul-tasting powders.

I hated and dreaded having to take them.

On one occasion, I was sitting up in bed when a glass containing that night's dose was handed to me. As soon as my mother had left the room I spat it out, all over the wall. There was no way of disguising what I had done. Another dose was prepared, and my mother stood over me while I swallowed it.

I have much fonder memories of the garden where I used to play. My parents grew vegetables throughout the War, strawberries and raspberries too, and there were several apple trees; but my mother, always a keen gardener, grew lots of flowers as well. I had my own small wheelbarrow, which got lost in the move to Belfield later on.

I can remember sitting on my mother's knee while she taught me to read, and how excited I felt when one day I suddenly discovered I could read on my own.

<< Previous post · First post · Next post >>

CERNE ABBAS 1940-1945. (1)

2005-10-19T18:03:00.000+01:00

A newspaper cutting, probably from The Times, slipped inside the pages of my "Baby Book", records that:

"On 17th October 1940, at the Imperial Nursing Home, Harrogate, to Bessie and George Drewry Squibb of Cerne Abbas, Dorset and 8 East Heath Road, Hampstead NW3, a daughter."

The book records that I was born at midnight and the doctors in attendance were "Currie and Warham" and the nurse "A.G.U. Crosthwaith". It had been a long and difficult birth - labour had lasted sixty hours. This was against all expectations, but my mother was thirty four, and the stress of wartime life may have been a contributing factor. I was a big baby too, weighing 8lbs at birth, having "rosy cheeks, thick brown hair and very dark blue eyes and quite a temper".

I was born in Harrogate because my mother's parents were living there at the time and the Blitz was causing havoc in London. My father's Chambers were at 5 Crown Office Row, which had probably been damaged when a bomb had fallen on Crown Office Row on 25th September 1940. Another bomb fell on the day of my birth, putting Chambers out of action completely, and his barrister's wig, still in its metal box but squashed flat, was rescued from the ruins: when the box was prised open, the wig sprang back into its original shape. A press photograph, taken before and after the box's opening, survives. Crown Office Row was entirely demolished and rebuilt in the 1950's.

However I was not to remain in Harrogate for long. On December 7th 1940, I travelled with my parents, by taxi, from there to the Pitchmarket Cerne Abbas, a journey of three hundred miles. They were to be ready to depart by 6 o'clock on the Saturday morning as there was to be no overnight stop. They took a cooked chicken with them and arranged for vegetables to be delivered on their arrival. They stopped for lunch at the Randolph Hotel in Oxford, where my parents took it in turns to go in for lunch, the other remaining with me in the taxi.

My mother had found living with her parents and her sister very trying. She wrote to my father:

"Quite definitely another week is not to be considered chez mon pere. I feel no less ill and have collywobbles."

I did not sleep much between 2 and 4am, which she thought might be "sympathetic nerves". She goes on to write:

"Dr C's (Currie's) letter is reassuring. I'm treated now as a neurotic, and one not responsible for herself!"

Before the War, my parents rented the Pitchmarket as a weekend/holiday home, but shortly after the outbreak of hostilities in 1939, at my father's insistence and my mother's fury, they vacated their flat in Hampstead and moved to Cerne. My father moved into digs at 4 Rosslyn Hill, at the lower end of Hampstead High Street during the week, coming down to the Pitchmarket for weekends and the legal vacations.

Left on her own, unused to life in a small village, with only Tom, her cat, for company when she longed to be back in London with my father doing her "bit" towards the War effort, my mother felt miserable and abandoned. Her first week there in 1939, she wrote to her friend Vi Actland:

"Do write and tell me all the happenings. When I think of the little uniform, tin hat, and all the FUN, I feel utterly frustrated. You are having a full and glorious new life. I am in a little backwater, tied up by a rope like a boat, by a careful and terribly clever husband. God bless him anyway in London, and God keep him and you and all I love."

Her letters to my father, written then and through 1940, however, are always loving and resolutely cheerful. She describes Tom's devotion to her, her new maid, the fourteen year old Pam, and someone called "Mickey", who seems to have helped her keep house for some time. In one letter, not long after leaving East Heath Road, Hampstead, she is concerned that my father, still living in the empty flat, might be sleeping in a damp bed.

My father had applied for membership of the Army Officers' Emergency Reserve in April 1938 and had been accepted in September of that year. However a medical examination in January 1940 had resulted in him being passed only Grade 111 due to his defective eyesight, and this precluded him from membership of the A.O.E.R. Worse was to follow. A further medical examination took place in August that year when he was again passed as Grade 111 and declared unfit to become an officer. It was proposed that he should become a Private in the Pay Corps, with no prospect of promotion.

Apart from anything else, this would have been a financial disaster. As a highly successful barrister in a specialist practice, his income was around £1,500 a year, and a Private's pay would have been a pittance in comparison, not sufficient to pay his commitment of £6.10.0. in rent alone on the Hampstead flat, the lease of which he was unable to get rid of until February 1942. Then there was the Pitchmarket rent, a wife, and soon to be child, to support.

But more worryingly, not only for him but also for the other members of his Chambers, also serving in the Armed Forces, there was the future of the Practice at stake. He was by then the only one left to carry on, apart from the Head of Chambers, Mr Montgomery, who was past the call-up age. Had he gone, Chambers would have had to close, their goodwill, which had taken years to build up, would have vanished and they would have had to start again with nothing at the end of the War.

After much correspondence, his appeal against call-up seems to have been successful, and in October 1941 he enrolled in the Civil Defence for "prevention of fire" duties, which he continued to carry out throughout the Blitz.

We had arrived in Cerne after the long taxi ride from Harrogate on December 7th 1940. On December 19th I was baptised at St Mary's Church by the vicar, John Ray. My godmothers were Elizabeth Lillian Bower and my aunt, Florence May Whittaker. My godfather, Brian Hamilton Bird, was a close friend of my parents from the Oxford days whom we always called "Birdie". After the ceremony, a party was held across the road at The Old House, which at that time was a guest house.

<< Previous post · Next post >>

Preface.

2005-10-19T17:50:00.000+01:00

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.

T.S. Eliot, "Burnt Norton".

Next post >>