Recorded in 1981. First published by St. Edmund’s Art Centre, Salisbury, 1981:
There were three in the family. I was the eldest, born in 1900. Then there was my sister, Irene, and my younger brother, Tom. We were brought up in Wylye. It was a very happy home, but centred around the village school. At Christmas we used to have a Christmas play organized by the Rector’s daughter, Miss Edith Haddow. She used to get up drama events and Christmas plays particularly.
To school I wore just a little dress and a pinnafore. No uniform was required in those days – you just wore what you had, this was it! There were three teachers. A headmaster, and his wife, who was the assistant teacher, and the daughter, Constance, who was the infants’ teacher. The whole family was comprised of teachers at the village school.
The May-Day, that was wonderful! Absolutely! It meant that all the people came from all the little villages to see this. This is it! There was always Maypole dancing at the annual fete. I was the Queen because I was too small to do much else. I had to go in the middle and be danced around. I loved it. I wore a white dress, with a blue waist band. Your parents saw that you were well turned out, for any event that came along.
I started work when I was fourteen. I went to the Rectory at fourteen years of age, as a maid. I wore black and white – a black dress, white apron and a white cap. You had to get up at six. Of course, the World War was on then, so the old Rectory was full of visitors. People paying, and people who weren’t paying – well, they had to go somewhere! It was very difficult to get accommodation for anybody, so the house was an open house for anyone who was homeless. You got up and you did the grates in the various rooms, because in those days you had fires in all the rooms. So I had to get up and get the rooms organized, the grates done, and the bath-water taken upstairs. And at that time, at the early part of 1914 – 18, there were about seven different rooms to be seen to, and the people all had baths in their bedrooms. The water had to be taken up, stood in the bath till they were ready to get out of bed and bath. Then they would come down to breakfast and you as a maid would go up and empty the bath by the time they had their breakfast, so they could go in the room and do letter-writing or anything else they wanted, and the rest of the day was their own. So you didn’t have any spare time to yourself. You fitted your own breakfast in between eight and nine if possible. Whilst the family were having their breakfast, my work consisted of turning out bedrooms and housework upstairs. The downstairs would be done by one maid.
When I left there were two maids, a cook, and a housemaid. Then at that time they had a nursery-governess for their family. There were three children in the family. At one time there would be four maids but, of course, the wages were very cheap. I had £8 a year when I first went out to work. I thought I was being well paid then, before fourteen years of age.
In those days we had the Bread Charity, which was very acceptable because times were hard. Therefore, the bread was looked forward to as something different. There was one small loaf for each member of the family. The bread was made from the flour from corn on the various farms around the village. It was thrashed out at the mill and then given to the local shops for distribution for the Charity Bread. We declared that the Charity Bread was better than the bread you had all the year round, because it was genuinely grown in the locality and you knew what you were having. It was run from the Church.
I met my husband as a child, of course. Naturally. We had the first Mothers’ Union meeting – it was held opposite the Church. I was brought there by my mother – there were five members then. We used to sit on the floor, my husband and I, in front of the fire, and play with the bricks; and I little thought then that we would grow up together and attend the same school and share everything that was going on in the school. I never realised that we would come together quite like we did. We were always very fond of each other and, therefore, in the end we were engaged at eighteen, married at twenty-three, and it was a wonderful wedding. Everybody came and the Rectory people attended. One very funny event during the wedding service: my father got a bit impatient because he had been briefed about what had to be done by the parson, you see. The family were all choristers and they had to be briefed as well. We had to start from the west door. My father and I, with the bridesmaids following. Well, my father got impatient. He said, “Well, I think we are going to walk on up slow,” and I said, “No, you mustn’t.” We weren’t supposed to do that, we were supposed to be given the cue from the chancel. Well, the music had not started or anything like this, and my father started to move with me; and one man, who was the miller, said, “Go thee back, Tom, it’s too soon,” so we had to go backwards. I wore a white silk dress, full bodice, long skirt – not a train – with beads all round the collar, turned-back collar with beads all the way around the top. It looked lovely, it really did. But the bridesmaids quarrelled a lot. I wanted them both to wear hats, and they had to be alike. But they couldn’t come to a decision as to what sort of hats they wanted to wear. Yes, they came to grief over the hats. In the end they didn’t wear the hats at all!
Going back to my days at the old Rectory – one day we had been spring cleaning, and I thought, “I must change the water,” so I went and changed the water, and looking up from the ground, off my knees, I saw the fire start in that barn. So I rushed through to the front of the house and I said to the Rector, “Call the fire brigade.” He said, “Are you mad?” I said, “No, I’m not, there’s a fire in the barn, opposite the kitchen window.” The fire brigade was very quickly on the scene. Quicker than quicker! But there was such a wind on that day, they went up just like that – eight cottages! According to the Steeple Langford people, the burning thatch from those cottages was stamped out by them, right across the valley, in the village of Steeple Langford.
Another portrait of Lily Vallis.