An interview of Joyce & John Spear January 2026 by Anne Stone
Joyce - I was born down by Bristol Suspension Bridge, mum had one of the big Victorian houses on the Portway and John came from Chew Magna, so we moved to Clutton when we got married.
John - It was 1964 when I took Joyce back to her home one night, then returned to my house in Chew Magna. I sat down on the settee and picked up the newspaper and there was an advert for a plot of land for £2,500 (£44836 equivalent in 2025) in Venus Lane, Clutton. That was an appalling amount of money then, but the next morning I rang Joyce up, picked her up in Bristol and came out here to see this bit of land. Nothing was built, but Moorsfield Road and the houses were already there. We had a look at it and thought it looked very good, so I went into Chew Magna to the bank, drew thirty quid out, which flattened my account, then went over to Keynsham to the estate agents and put a deposit on it before they laid any bricks at all. I was going to technical college at the time, and one of my colleagues, he was getting married and he told me that he'd got a mortgage from Bristol County Council. So I thought, if you can do that with Bristol Council, I can do that with Clutton, I'm sure I can. The same day or the day after we went to the council offices. They were on the main road then (now Cholwell House nursing home). I said that I'd like to live in Clutton and was looking for a mortgage on the property; we went through all the nonsense there and signed the documents and before I knew where I were to, we had a house. I’ve got a photograph of myself, stood here when it was just levelled with concrete. When we had our mortgage, you had to pay back in a month what you earned in a week and they didn't take the lady into consideration. So John earned sixteen pounds a week; we paid sixteen pounds a month.
Joyce - I started off with an old cooker, an old washing machine with an agitator, mum's old three piece suite. I was just glad to get a house. John's dad used to come up on a Saturday and he helped with the garden. He knew more people around here than I did. This is the only bungalow here that’s never been sold or changed ownership. Mum moved into the bungalow next door for 15 years until she was 87 and when she died we kept it and that was two into one. We brought up the children here. They all went to Clutton school, Mr Bick was the Head, wouldn’t stand any nonsense.They were a very good school. He was there for a long time. Then Norton Hill, they got there by coach and they all did well.
Honestly, there was half as much here in Clutton as there is now. Rogers Close was there already when we moved here. What wasn't here were other roads - King's Oak Meadow, Greenridge, all those new ones where Bromilows was, on Station Road. Churchlands farm opposite us in Venus Lane - that was a working farm with Jeff Wilcox. Carlton Close wasn’t there then and he had raspberries and strawberries and fruit growing down there. In what is now the barn conversion, he had turkeys for Christmas and my girls used to go over there and help pluck them. You'd see cows walking around and chickens. He also owned a lot of land and Southways, which was an old cottage on Clutton Hill. That's where his cattle used to graze.
Transport - There was a little bus that came down through the village and went to Bath twice a week, but I think it came back quite early. I didn't have a car, we didn't have a phone. I just had to wait for John to get time off to take me anywhere, or Mum and Dad to come out from Bristol. But there were local shops, you could buy a pound of flour or a piece of butter or cheese or a bottle of lemonade. There was quite a lot here. It was all within walking distance.
I used to walk, push the twins, and Simon would be walking, he'd get tired and sit on the front bit and I'd end up pushing three of them. I used to push them from Clutton, through Pensford and up Hursley Hill to meet John at Whitchurch where he was working and he'd take us home in the car. And John's mum gave us a bit of tea when we walked to Chew Magna to visit, so it was all right.
The railway station was still going then, because Simon, our son, used to stand in the front room looking out the window watching the trains go by - steam trains going over the bridge because there was a bridge down there. The railway line - even in those days there were probably up to four, maybe five trains a day going through, although only two or three passenger trains.. I didn't go to work on it, I went on the bus because it was easier. And John was a SWEB engineer for 40 years.
Years ago there were a lot of local pubs. The Cross Keys, which was run by Mrs.Mapstone - but that wouldn't be a pub like a modern pub, it was a drinking pub. Spit and sawdust. And the Hunters was there, it was old bus seats round the walls and a flag stone floor. The Warwick was another one, and originally there was a pub at Chelwood. There was a pub at Zion hill as well.
Shops - A number of people ran the post office over the years: Mike French, an older lady and her husband, the Keens owned it. You could walk into the old post office and smell candles and other lovely smells. Then there was the Countryman and another little shop opposite the Railway Inn where they sold little sweets and newspapers and drinks, owned by a couple.The butchers took over from the Countryman. Harris's had groceries, everything. It was quite big, because he had the place up on the top, by the Main Road, opposite the Warwick - the Top Shop. Ron Harris also had the shop in Venus Lane built, and his mother lived in a flat above. Basil and Peggy had the bungalow next to it built. He was a plasterer for Evans, which is now Biggs, that built these bungalows.
Also, right next to the old railway station, there's a hall. The Scouts were based there and I’ve got a feeling they had socials and all sorts of dances. We were in the Carnival Club, they had a plot of land near that building where the floats were built. John did the electrical work and there were heaps of other things going on. We would go and pull it out and away we would go to wherever the carnival was.
Churches - so there was the C of E church, John used to play the church organ there every week for years. He played piano as well and gave lots of lessons to children in the village. There were other churches around - the Methodist Church was still on the main road and there was also a little one; it's turned to a house now, at the bottom of Broomhill Lane.
When the children were little, we’d have more to do with the Flower Show because they'd enter stuff. We'd go over and have a look around. John’s dad used to grow chrysanthemums to enter.There were tents and everyone else in the villages was there. They had it going for maybe a week or fortnight, not just put up and taken down. It would be there for a sort of funfair with swings and roundabouts and all sorts of stuff like that. I can remember the boys going over there watching them put it up. There were a lot more clubs, I think. It was a much smaller community and we were more together.
Employment - A lot of men worked for the builders Biggs, then there was the place at Radstock, the mill. There were a few plasterers and miners. I think there were more local trades available in the area, in the village area than there is today - the people that were useful to actually be able to do something if you needed it, because you didn't want to have to go out to Bristol and Bath or anywhere else.John’s grandfather, I think, was a postman - he picked up the post at Clutton railway station.Then he walked all the way to Hinton Blewett. And his uncle used to keep the post office in Temple Cloud. So it was two brothers, one was the postman, one kept the post office.
John’s employment - I started off as an apprentice. It was a funny sort of arrangement. Dad and Mum lived in the house in the high street in Chew Magna, a little cottage. And there was a front door out on the pavement and a garden at the back. Dad had a slot meter for his electricity supply. And he had a dispute with SWEB, which was in Whitchurch. As you go over the bridge, you could go into Whitchurch. There was the SWEB shop on the right-hand side. And there was a substation there as well. Anyway, the manager from there came out of his office and spoke to Dad, and I was in the same room as him. And he said, Hello, how are you? What's your name? And Dad won his case, and went home happy. Anyway. about six months after that, there was a knock on the door again, and that was that manager. He said, Oh, he said, Mr. Spear, I'm looking for an apprentice. Would your son be interested in coming? I said, Yes, I would. What's it doing? I didn't know what I wanted anyway. I went in for an interview, actually in the shop there, and within about three days we had a letter to come back and say yes, I could be signed up as an apprentice. I was just 15 years old. And from there on I worked there as an electrician and a linesman and all sorts, we brought the electricity into these little villages. You were known as Mr Electric, you know. Clutton had electricity, I'm talking about the Chew Valley. I put loads of electric on.The area that we covered from Whitchurch was all over the valley, they didn't have electricity. Then I was promoted to installation inspector because I was a technical engineer. I moved then into Bath and took over the Bath area, which was around here then for inspections and eventually I made foreman there.