Memories Of An Early Childhood In Clutton (1931–1942)
by Lena Church (2009)
I have lived in this house all my life. The family moved here from a very poor cottage 75 yards along the road to this house – a slightly better cottage. It had bigger windows, higher ceilings and a bigger garden, and being the end house, had a wash house on the side. It was August 1931 and I was four months old, my sister Sylvia five and a half.
I don't know how they moved the furniture but I am told the piano was pushed along the pavement. Can't have done the piano much good, it’s reckoned the worst thing you can do to a piano is move it. I remember that instrument, it had big brass candle holders on the front, and fretwork with satin material behind.
The house was still a house without sanitation or running water, but the wash house must have been a boon. The boiler was in the corner, a long wooden bench against the wall, where there was a small window. Beyond that a big mangle, and underneath the window that faced onto the road was an old table.
This big window was where all the village notices were displayed. People just came to the house with their posters, always to the back door, and asked for them to be put up. It was probably a tradition that went with the house. They were pinned onto an old lace curtain and mum had to clamber up onto the table to reach the window.
The wash house was a very good place to play too, especially on wet days and that would be when we discovered how many friends we had until it all got so noisy or the quarrelling started, then my mother would come storming out and make everybody go.
It was in the wash house that Bernard Selawy and I played with his big brother’s magic lantern. Where all the other kids were on that day I don’t know, but Bernard sneaked the magic lantern from his house and one of us stole the matches. Then between us, as we tried filling the can in the lantern we managed to set fire to the wicker laundry basket. I expect fingers got burnt and the match dropped, for we went out through the wash house door screaming in panic and it was mother to the rescue with a bucket of water when she saw what we had done. She continued to use that wicker basket for years, with the charred end by the handle.
The cottage had an earth closet in the garden and a stand pipe inside the gate by the road. Right of way to the house next door went straight past our back door and as this was quite often the case with country cottages, no one thought anything of it. Our neighbours were Mr and Mrs Jesse Light and their two boys Ken and George. The standpipe served both houses and our drinking water was kept in a bucket in the stars cupboard. There was an enamel scoop for dipping.
In the kitchen there was a black sand grate with the tiniest of ovens. Mother cooked meat in it but nothing ambitious in the baking line. What she could make with success, was a big jam tart on a plate. Saucepans for boiling were balanced over the fire. This grate is still in situ today, albeit blocked up behind plaster.
On the odd occasions when the water supply was cut off, we would be sent with buckets to the water spout at Cholwell. Here, just below the Lodge was a spout of spring water gushing out of a pipe. It had railings around two sides and steps down into a grated area at the bottom. Even that would become a game if someone started messing about splashing water. We would fill our buckets and struggle home with them uphill all the way and plenty of spillage. The old railings are still here at Cholwell, but no running water.
I don’t remember anything about the very early days, until I started school at four years old. I needn’t have gone until I was five, but insisted that I was going to school after Easter, and then I cried all the time. I must have been a right pain in the backside for my sister Sylv, as she had to be brought into the infants class to sit with me day after day just to lie down after lunch. About a half hour nap on a thin canvas mat on the hard floor. I cried about that as well.
My very best friend was Esme Tucker (née Brimble). She was a year ahead of me and we were inseparable right up until the time Esme moved onto secondary school. After that the friendship sort of fell away. I don’t ever remember falling out with Esme, but I do remember being very put out on one occasion when I wasn’t very well, I was housebound and Esme came to borrow my old saucepans to play at cooking. Afterwards she insisted that my mother had said she could keep them and wouldn’t let me have them back. Her dad must have died when she was young, as I never knew Mr Brimble.
Through those years before the outbreak of the war, escapades that happened – mostly involving Esme – are like cameos in my memory.
One of the earliest that I remember, concerned the fair which came every year for Clutton Flower Show. This was held in Stowey Road in the field alongside the cricket pitch. The fair arrived on Friday, set up all the stalls and rides, opened Friday night then again on Saturday afternoon and evening. We kids would make our way to the field to watch all the effort of assembling of bolts and bars and timber and awnings. Health and safety wasn’t an expression that was bandied about.
Everybody, but everybody went to the Flower Show. In that respect nothing has changed, all of Clutton still turns out on Flower Show Day. People who have moved away come back for that afternoon. Still these days there is a fair with its dodgems, roundabouts and swinging boats.
By Sunday morning it was all dismantled and the fair moved on, southwards through Temple Cloud.
On this occasion however, one of the steam traction engines that was towing trailers of fairground equipment tipped over into the ditch at Rectory Corner.
As the news spread, all the village people came to see what was happening. This was an event. Now Rectory Corner wasn’t as big as it is today. Around the Rectory was a high wall always in need of repair, for it bulged outwards over the pavement and the road was overhung with big beech trees.
This incident was really exciting, with everyone jostling to see what was going on and a policeman keeping the crowd back. We were too little and couldn’t get anywhere near, so Esme had the right idea of climbing up onto the high retaining wall of the Old School. Esme couldn’t manage it, but as an agile little six-year-old I could. However, having got up there, I was stuck! Looking back down onto the pavement was like peering down a precipice. I was petrified, and started crying – what else? Esme kept telling me to go down into the stone stairwell and open the door, but I did not know how to open the door, it was a Yale lock and I had never seen a Yale in my life. When you’ve lived in an old cottage there aren’t any locks like that, our back door key was six inches long! So there I am, six years old, and stuck on top of a seven-foot-high wall, bawling – and oh, the humiliation – the policeman had to climb up and get me. He just took me by the hand, led me down into the stairwell, reached up, turned the knob on the catch and let us both out. I don’t remember what happened next, I expect I ran home, but there was worse to come. The old woman who lived along the road told my mother. She was appalled that I had done this with all the village looking on.
Things weren’t any better at school either. I was in trouble with my knitting and Miss Evans lost patience. Another pupil kept bullying me to knit with my eyes shut, and as I wasn’t even very good with them open it was disaster.
There never seemed to be a shortage of children to play with. If they didn’t call for you, you called for them. Across in The Mead there were lots of children although Esme and I were about the youngest.
Esme had two big brothers and a sister Glenys. Glenys played with us sometimes but she had to wear a boot with a built-up sole and couldn’t race about in quite the same way as us. She always seemed to be playing with her dolls and dolls pram. Esme’s eldest brother was called Ron, and I remember how he made us laugh on one occasion as he shadow boxed around the living room accompanied by a Freddie Mills fight commentary on the wireless.
Johnny Chappell was the youngest of quite a big family. He was a joke, doing silly walks and saying naughty rhymes like “Roll up, roll up, see the big fat lady. Every time she coughs she pees a drop.” And then we would all fall about laughing.
Marian Bailey lived in the second house and had a big dog called Gyp. Gyp was an Airedale who would chase after nothing if you pointed and shouted “cats.”
It was Marian’s father who wrote a letter to the local paper about the new secondary school that was built at Timsbury and he called it a white elephant – a name that stuck for a long time. The children were bussed there from the surrounding villages.
Clutton caught the coach right outside our house, at the top of the hill. Those eleven to fourteen year olds must have been a noisy jostling crowd as they got off the coach, and we must have heard someone say they were like a lot of hooligans, for on some afternoons Esme and I would stand on the high part of our garden wall and shout “Timsbury Hooligans” at the tops of our lungs as the coach went by. They probably never heard us, but we thought it was a very daring thing to do.
Charmaine and Stella Bailey lived in number one The Mead. Margaret Winn lived further along as did the Clare family and Maurice Carter. His father was a local Councillor and a staunch Methodist.
The Mead was a driveway not much more than the width of a vehicle. The houses all had fences, shrubs and hedges. Along the back of numbers one to six ran a lane, and this was used as a shortcut to come up to the shop. The strands of wire making the fence had long since disappeared. The lane was known as The Top. Along “the top” was good for dens in the elder bushes, and here we would set up a “kitchen” and do pretend cooking with shredded leaves in the previously mentioned saucepan, stirring it all with a bit of stick.
There were long summer evenings when we played hide and seek until it was dark, then they would all melt away into their houses and I was left to run home up the hill with the very devil on my heels. The big bank and the horse chestnut tree by the blacksmith shop was the darkest place in Clutton, and the petrol pump standing on the forecourt of Jimmy Riggs’s garage was a bogey man.
Cricket matches were organised in Gastons. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I knew the proper spelling of that field. The cry would be “Let’s go down gassons.” Sometimes it would be “tip and run,” and other times rounders. I wasn’t very good at either. All was fine until Mr White appeared in the farm gateway at the bottom of the field. He terrified all of us. He always stood with arms akimbo, his fists holding his jacket back. If he started to walk up the field with his menacing stride, we ran like the devil.
If there just happened to be no one to play with, then there was always Mr Tiley. He was the blacksmith, and must have had the patience of Job. As well as watching him shape things from hot metal on the anvil or shoe a horse, he would let you pump the bellows. It was very easy to get dirty in the blacksmith shop.
Not many years ago someone told me that if I went to the Bath and West Show, I could actually watch a horse being shod. Ha! I had that T-shirt a long time ago and well remember that burnt eggshell smell as the hot shoe touched the horse’s hoof.
Mr Tiley had a wonderful bass singing voice. He and his wife, both great Methodists, would sing duets at chapel concerts.
I was in the primary section of Sunday School twice in my very early years when all the Sunday School children took part in “Operettas.” All the small fry – I was a glow worm once and a fly on another occasion. A platform would be erected at the end of the schoolroom; this was constructed from trestle tabletops placed together. The rest of the setup was done in the chapel; mostly crepe paper.
I know our positions on the stage. Oh, showbiz!
School Anniversaries were always a date in the calendar for the primary children, and one of the hymns was “Abide With Me.” I can still call to mind as well, the recitation, the title of which eludes me, but it certainly was long:
“Some said the country lane was dull,
Not from end to end nor meet what’s called throng.
A hedge each side gave shade to it, those hedges twain were tall,
And under them grew many flowers, amongst which some were small.”
Now you can’t get much calmer than that! It went on for many more verses, much in the same vein as Tennyson’s “The Brook.”
It was a very special Sunday, with performances morning, afternoon and evening, and again on the Monday evening when Sunday School prizes were presented.
You likes, request a bible. Otherwise your book would be a surprise title chosen by your Sunday Schoolteacher.
In Coronation year 1937, all the children of the village were given their souvenir mugs. I expect we had a bun fight, but don’t remember it. However, I do remember being taken into Bristol to see the street decorations. Mr Arthur Maggs, a local man had a fleet of lorries with the livery colour of brick orange. There was a big assembly outside the school and everyone piled into the backs of these vehicles, with one or two adults to supervise on each lorry and off to Bristol we went. Lloyd Francis, who was a boy in my class at school, sat in the cab on his father’s lap as he drove the lorry. What a bit of “one-up-man-ship” that was. I had no idea where we were driven, but many years later it was déjà vu as I was taken to Queen’s Road and the Victoria Rooms.
Eighteen months or so before this, there had been all the scandal of abdication. I was five years old, and must have had little pitchers, because I innocently asked “Who is Mrs Simpson?” and my Dad shouted, “Don’t mention that woman’s name in this house.” as I said I was five.
Mondays was Club Day. On the way back to school after dinner, we took the club money to the vestry door at the church to pay into the fund. This was organised by Mrs Mansfield, the Rector’s wife who would open up the door from the inside after we had been waiting what seemed like hours, This waiting time had mostly been spent pushing, and shoving each other on and off the vestry steps. The money saved went towards bedding and household fabrics and was paid out once a year. Lots of people took advantage of the scheme.
I know that purchasing of goods from this savings club meant a special trip to Bristol, either to Jones's or Baker Baker's. So if my mother was away from home for some time, then I was given a packed lunch to take to school. Oh the importance of walking to school carrying my little attaché case, containing boiled egg sandwiches!
There were some children from the out skirts of the village who brought a packed lunch everyday. They came from the top of Clutton Hill, Grey Field and Breach.
At school we had medical examinations. The “head” nurse would come, and with white cotton gloves on her hands and a look of distaste on her face, she would go through our hair looking for nits. I don't think she ever found any.
The doctor came too and my mother could be there for that examination. As I undressed, she made me undo all the rubber buttons on my Liberty bodice instead of dragging it over my head. I remember she eventually stitched it up - old habits die hard. The doctor would listen to your chest, while you stood there before him in your knickers, then he would inspect your limbs for rickets and peer into every orifice! Well, not quite.
And then there was the dentist. Oh dear the dentist. Within my first year at school there was to be a visit from the dentist and I WAS GOING! It cost sixpence to attend and if there was any treatment then the sixpence paid for it. If you had a clean bill of health then you had the sixpence back. Whether it was the thought of showing off with the money - I don't know, but I WAS GOING!
One of the big children from the top class would be monitor with a list of names. That person would go round the classes and call the next one to be seen. Lena Price was called and off l went. The “surgery” was in the little room off the middle entrance, at that time it was the staff room. I sat in the big dentist's chair, opened my mouth and he started counting What he was counting I will never know. It may have been the number of teeth in my head, the number to he filled or horror of horrors, the number to be extracted. Whatever it was, he never had the chance. I was out of the chair, through the door, across the play ground and running didn't stop until I reached home. Bawling. I wasn't allowed to forget it. Lenny Minal one of the big boys would taunt me whenever he saw me," Nah, Nah, n' Nah, Nah. Ran away from the dentist". I believe we eventually had a refund of the sixpence.
It was in the staffroom that we queued for our diphtheria inoculations. I suppose we were nine or ten. It was done 'army' style and everybody was gawping around the person in front to watch. This was the first jab that any of us had ever had. We were all entitled to milk at school. The bottles held a third of a pint and had wide necks with cardboard lids. There was a perforated ring in the centre of the lid that needed to be depressed to insert the straw.. A bit too much pressure and the whole thing plunged into the milk and squirted up into your eye. Much to the hilarity of all your friends.
Milk in schools was one of the first successful campaigns the National Federation of Women's Institutes fought. I am not sure at which point it became free, but the sum of tuppence ha'penny comes to mind. It was paid on Monday mornings, and carried to school clutched in a hot little hand. If you happened to be sick and unable to attend school, then your bottle of milk was brought home to you by a friend. Esme had brought milk home for her sister Glenys on one occasion and taking the empty back to school, she dropped it in the road and low and behold it bounced. What a trick! Mrs Brimble was with us, walking down to Mrs Pritchard's where she did a little job, and showing off, Esme did it again, only to see the bottle smash to smithereens. Her mother was very cross.
Invalid food, when you were really poorly was bread and milk with sugar on. If you had a bad cough, then there was raspberry vinegar which mother had made and if you hadn't "been" then there was a dose of syrup of figs. A daily winter supplement for me was a teaspoonful of "Virol". I loved it! My sister loathed it.
If you needed to go to the surgery then it was to Dr Vaughan at the bottom of Temple Cloud. He had contracted trench feet in the first world war and never "came up" to see his patients until midday. I say "came up", because all those waiting to see him were in the waiting room which was accessed via the stone steps at the side of what is now Cameley Surgery. Dr Vaughan arrived at the same level via an indoor staircase directly from his house.
The waiting room was without a door and had benches on three sides. Light came from a skylight The walls were covered in writing and initials gauged into the plaster. An indication of how long the waiting was some days. Those who were unable to find a seat, stood in the passage, and when the doctor arrived, he would sit on a high stool in the next cubby hole along this passageway This was also the dispensary. Here, within earshot of all those who were waiting, you stood in the doorway and explained your symptoms and were duly liquid medicine which Dr Vaughan mixed himself.
If you didn't have a cough when you arrived, you could certainly have one by the time you left. Sometimes you had to cut your way through the cigarette smoke to for a seat.
The queuing system was marvellous. You knew who was in front of you and who was after you and it worked. It just meant a long. long wait. In those pre NHS days,
Dr Vaughan never seemed to send out bills.
We weren't poor, but there just wasn't money to throw around. My mother did dressmaking and suspect, looking back, she never charged enough. People would bring her an adults coat and ask her to cut it down and make one for “our Johnny”. My sister tells me that on one occasion the garment was dirty, mother had to wash it before she could even start.
Some women would come with a length of material and ask to have a dress made. No pattern was provided, and I realise now just what a clever woman my mother was. I think she had a variety of home made pattens cut from newspaper, and I don't remember there ever being any' complaints.
Delivery of the finished articles was done by me and I would get a tip of maybe a ha'penny. Best of all I liked to delivery to Mrs Arthur Maggs because she would give me thru'pence, and it was only just across the road. Then I was rich - wow - three pence and remember for just a ha'penny it was possible to buy a small bag of sweets at Mabe's shop.
Miss Attwood's little shop was opposite the Railway Inn. She was universally known as 'Mabe' and Nellie Owen worked in the shop with her. You stood on tip toe to put your money on the glass tray between the rows of sweet jars which lined the top of the high counter. Mabe also made ice cream in the summer time. It was hand turned in the ice cream maker and sometimes it just would not freeze. I have been told that when this happened Mabel was known to swear profusely.
On some Sunday mornings in the summer, Ken Light would ride his bike to the shop to buy wafers and pedal home like fury before the ice cream could melt. It would already be beginning to drip through the paper bag.
There was another little sweet shop, a lock-up, owned by Miss Clarice Church. She lived with her sister Miss Elsie, in Angle House opposite the school. The shop, a little wooden building, stood in the corner of her garden where Church Lane and Station Road meet. It had the same set up as Mabe's with the jars of sweets displayed along the top of the high counter, but the opening hours here were less frequent than Mabes. I still have the set of brass weights that went with the scales, from Miss Church's shop.
The fish and chip shop, which I don't remember us using very often, was further down Station Road in the end cottage next to Magnolia House. I can't even recall how often they opened. I do remember that for a very small amount of money you could have a little bag of scrunchy scraps of chips. The bits that went through the basket.
A few cottages up the road from the chip shop lived Mr Enoch Cook, the cobbler. Collecting the shoe repairs from him was another errand. He was a tall cadaver of a man, who seemed to me to be very old. He peered over the top of his wire framed spectacles from gentle sleepy eyes, a little smile playing around his mouth. He would reach behind the door for the shoes, and then slide the payment into his pocket, beneath his leather apron.
Miss Atwood had a brother Dick who lived in one of the group of cottages halfway along Northend. He worked as a postman but was also the village bike repairer. He spoke in very broad Somerset and if you weren't local you wouldn't have understood a word he said.
My father was a worker too. When I was very small, as well as working at Pensford Colliery where he was always on afternoon shifts, he would do a bit of thatching and hedging in season, before he went off to pit. Then with the coming of the war he did auxiliary post work. When I was big enough, he took me with him on Christmas mornings and guess who got the Christmas boxes? Once I went with him around Greyfield and another year it was to Bishop Sutton.
As we were growing up. both Sylv and I had piano lessons with Miss Amy Tiley. We each had 5 years tuition and at some point those five years must have overlapped. The cost was 12/6d quarter which at almost a shilling a week, must have been quite difficult to find, I wonder what sacrifices our parents made to keep that up. I am so grateful now, that I can play the piano, albeit badly.
When she was eleven, Sylv passed the scholarship, later called the I I-plus. It meant she had a place at Midsomer Norton County Secondary School, now Norton Hill Comprehensive. Would they be able to afford it was the first question? Granny Bush was still alive then and she urged mum and dad not to let Sylv miss out on this chance. So to the County Secondary School she went. Jim Brain [42 Maynard Terrace] lived next door to my Gran [41 Maynard Terrace] in Maynard Terrace and he told Sylv that if she passed her scholarship he would give her half-a-crown. In 1937 half-a-crown to an eleven year old was fortune and as soon as the results were known my sister went knocking on Jim Brain's door to collect. Gob smacked I believe. is the expression we would use today. What could he do but pay up?
I can just remember Granny Bush, She lived in Maynard Terrace, and every Thursday mother meet us outside school and would walk to Maynard to have tea with Granny, I always had to stop under station bridge to sing out a “coo-ee” just to hear the echo.
In granny's biscuit tin there were shortcake biscuits. We only had Marie's at our house. Sometimes on these afternoons at Maynard, I would play with Chris Withey. She had a grand selection of pots and pans and we would play pretend cooking on the bank at the top of their garden. The bank was the embankment of the old railway siding which led from Clutton Station up to Greyfield pit Long since disused even then. It was planted with larch trees and a wonderful place to play.
At Maynard too, there was '"Charlottes", Mrs Charlotte Bailey kept a selection of sweets which we would go and buy She lived in the rank of houses that looked back towards the village [6 Maynard Terrace]. I remember pink sugar mice with string tails and wafer cornets that tasted like cardboard and had a revolting marsh mallow type of filling. Sometimes you could be lucky and find a toy ring inside, or a charm. We might, of course, have choked to death, but what a find!
Memories Of An Early Childhood In Clutton (1931–1942). (Part 2) Click here