The edited transcript of a tape-recorded interview Danny Howell made with John Francis, at his home, at Boreham Field, Warminster, Wiltshire, on the morning of Wednesday 22nd April 1998. This transcript was first published in Danny Howell’s book Wylye Valley Folk Volume One (Bedeguar Books, July 1999):
“My dad came from a big family. There were seven or eight of them. Dad’s father died rather young, so I never knew him but I knew dad’s mother, my granny, for a little while. My dad’s name was Charles Francis. His home was at Bruton and he talked with a bit of a Somerset accent. You know, the old country talk. He’d say things like ‘carnflakes’ instead of cornflakes. All his family came from Bruton. They were mostly railway workers. They were guards and signalmen. Nearly all of them worked on the railway but dad, for some reason, was a farm labourer. He worked on a farm at Bruton.”
“My mother’s name before she married my dad was Taylor. Her name was Elizabeth Minnie Taylor. The family always called her Minnie or Min. She didn’t like the name Elizabeth. Mother was Welsh. She was born at Abergavenny. She was very sociable, like most Welsh women. Their community is one where people live close together. They are chapel people and mother’s family were chapel goers. Mother came from a big family. There were about ten of them. Her father was a miner in the pits.”
“Mum’s family moved from Wales to Bruton in Somerset but I’ve no real idea why. Work I suppose. Her father might have come out of the pits in Wales and changed jobs. I know he finished up, spending the latter years of his life, as a farm cowman. I can only presume he moved to Somerset to work on a farm and his family obviously moved with him. He must have moved to Bruton to work on a farm there but I don’t know for sure.”
“The family lived at the High Street in Bruton. That’s where my mum met my dad. Mum told me dad was always standing on the corner of the street, with a group of lads, like they used to do years ago. One Sunday morning she was on her way to chapel or church and she saw him stood on the corner. She said to him ‘Come on, come along with me.’ That’s how they met up.”
“My mother and father got married at Coombe Hay, near Bath, in 1913. I’ve still got mum’s Bible, the one they gave her when she got married, and her wedding date is written in it. Dad must have left Bruton and got a job on a farm at Coombe Hay. That’s where they got married and that’s where they were living when they first got married. I was born there on 12th September 1914, and I was also christened there.”
“When I was a month old they moved to Bishopstrow. My dad came to Bishopstrow to work at Eastleigh Farm. That’s where he was working when I was a baby. Dad used to look after the cattle on the farm. He used to walk them to and from market. I don’t remember him doing that because I was only young then.”
“Dad was away all through the First World War. He went off to France to fight for King and Country. He couldn’t have been in Bishopstrow long before he went off in the army abroad, leaving mother to look after me. Life went on regardless for the ones left back home. Mother coped with father being away. She never complained. Everybody was in the same boat.”
“Dad came home on leave from France and that’s how my brother Leonard came to be born. He came home on leave again when Leonard was about to make his appearance into the world. Len was born on 22nd March 1916. Dad came back to Bishopstrow and walked in home, saying he had come home on leave. He then had to walk out to Sutton Veny to get the nurse or the doctor because mum was about to give birth to Leonard.”
“Dad was patriotic, oh yes. I can’t remember what regiment he served with but I expect it was the Somerset Light Infantry. Years later dad used to speak to me about his time in the War, how the chaps were in the trenches with the guns firing over them. They used to get shelled by the British guns at times because the big British guns were back behind them. Then the Germans would retaliate and dad and the other chaps would be in the middle of both the German and the British guns. It was a terrible war. Thousands of blokes were killed and maimed. Thousands were shell-shocked and they didn’t have the treatment like they’ve got today. Dad came through it all without a scrape, thank God. He was lucky.”
“After the War my dad used to go out to Sutton Veny, with some of the other chaps, to help pull the wooden huts at the army camps down. He found himself a bit of work doing that. He used to take me out there. The camps stretched from Southleigh Woods, across Sutton Veny Common, to Codford, Corton, Boyton and Sherrington. There was another camp at Longbridge Deverill. A railway line connected Heytesbury Station with the camps at Deverill Road, Sutton Veny. The railway line crossed over the road at Norton Bavant and also over the road on Sutton Veny Common.”
“Thousands of troops had been stationed at Sutton Veny during the First World War. There were lots of Australians and New Zealanders. An epidemic of flu swept over the camp. Quite a few died of the flu and they are buried in the churchyard at Sutton Veny. So many soldiers died of flu and war wounds that the villagers got fed up with hearing The Death March being played so often by one of the military bands. There were that many funerals and people complained. An Anzac Service is still held each year at Sutton Veny, in memory of those Australians and New Zealanders who died so far away from home.”
“I can just remember my mother taking me and my brother in the pram to the railway station in Warminster, to see the activity that was going on there. People used to go there to see the wounded soldiers being unloaded from the trains. They were taken to a big hospital camp at Sutton Veny. The street through Bishopstrow was very busy during those days. With all the troops at Sutton Veny, there were a lot of horses and carts coming and going. The street was filthy and constantly in mud during the wet weather. When I was a kiddy I used to see the soldiers marching through Bishopstrow. They used to go on route marches. Some of those soldiers were injured or shell-shocked and were shouting out but we kids never used to take any notice of the way they were.”
“My dad wasn’t a farm labourer all his life. He worked at Bishopstrow Mill for a while and later on he worked in Squire Temple’s garden. By the time I was old enough to know what was happening dad had left farm work and gone to work, as I say, at Bishopstrow Mill. That was owned by Squire Temple but the mill was let to Mr. Pearce from Upton Scudamore. My dad worked for Mr. Pearce. My uncle Charlie Taylor worked at the mill as well and he lived in the cottage down there, opposite the mill. He was my uncle on mother’s side of the family. He was in charge of grinding corn at Bishopstrow Mill. He was the miller. Uncle Charlie was thinnish and of medium height. He used to wear a trilby hat. He had a wife and a daughter. That was my aunty Rose and my cousin Joan.”
“Bishopstrow Mill was a very busy place. A big water wheel drove all the machinery and it was always very interesting to watch it when it was all in motion. Bishopstrow Mill was used for grinding corn into poultry and cattle feed. It was in competition with Neville Marriage at Boreham Mill and other mills around. The horse and carts, when they left Bishopstrow Mill, had to make their way up the hill (Mill Lane) to the main road. They had to put drags behind the wheels to stop the carts running back down the hill. I spent many happy hours playing about at Bishopstrow Mill, messing about on the ladders and watching the carts being loaded. I can remember as a boy going with my father and my uncle on a cart to Upton Scudamore one Saturday morning. I was allowed to go with them for the ride. I had to get under the tarpaulin because it was raining pouring.”
“There was a nice little farm next to Bishopstrow Mill. It was called Mill Farm and was farmed by the Dawkins family. They kept some dairy cows and did a milk round, delivering milk, with a pony and trap, in the village and into Warminster. Farmer Dawkins had four children and I sometimes used to play with them in the barns and sheds. I still see a couple of them in Warminster, sometimes, and we often stop and have a chat about the old days. Bert lives at Sambourne Road now and Douglas lives at Downside House, on the corner of Copheap Lane and Portway. Doug comes out to Bishopstrow Church sometimes. When we were kiddies going to St. John’s School Doug was always last coming into school. He caught his leg in a cart on his way to school once. He got it twisted in the spokes of a wheel. That was a cart belonging to Marriage’s Mill at Boreham.”
“Eventually my uncle left Bishopstrow Mill and went to work at Downton Mill. He was the miller there for a while and my cousin worked in the tannery there. Mr. Symes took over as the miller at Bishopstrow Mill when my uncle Charlie left. Bishopstrow Mill is a private house now. People live there but the water still runs underneath. There’s a grating in the floor and you can look through it and see the water. As I said just now, the mill belonged to Squire Temple. The water was his and he had an eel trap by the mill, just under it. When you got a lot of rain you got a lot of eels. Chinn’s, the butchers and fishmongers, who had a shop in the Market Place, Warminster, used to buy the eels. They had a contract with Temple. The gardener used to get the eels out of the trap for Temple, so that he could sell them to Chinn’s. I used to watch him doing that.”
“A footpath runs from the mill to the back of the churchyard. There’s a lovely little iron bridge along there. A little further down from that iron bridge are some hatches. We called that Bull’s Hatches when we were boys. That’s how they controlled the water for the mill. That was the reserve water. It’s a man-made river really and when I was a boy the water was virtually stagnant there. It was only used to regulate the mill. Rats used to make holes in the banks along there and then the water used to leak out. That was a problem. I can remember seeing my uncle on the bridge, with a gun, shooting the rats. That was part of his job.”
“After working at Bishopstrow Mill my dad found work gardening for the Tanner family at Barrow House but when they left the village dad went on as one of the gardeners for Squire Temple at Bishopstrow House. That’s where my dad worked until he retired. He was only an under-gardener. The head gardener was called Tucker and he lived in one of the cottages, on the main road, on the Warminster side of what is now the drive to Bishopstrow House Hotel. I’m talking about the row of cottages opposite the Weirs. Mr. Tucker lived in one of them. Wilf White lived in the other one. Wilf worked for the wheelwright Mr. Down at Boreham, where the Marsh & Chalfont garage is now. Mr. Down used to make and repair wagons and carts there.”
“Temple had four or five gardeners. They had a large area to toil. All the digging, sowing and hoeing was done by hand. Most of the produce, the flowers and the vegetables, was taken into Warminster, having been sold to the shops. The large grassed area around Bishopstrow House was cut by a mowing machine pulled by a pony which wore special leather boots strapped on. On some occasions the gardens were open to the public. The gardens were always nice and tidy.”
“Today, anyone can walk along that path, by the Weirs, between Boreham Road and Bishopstrow Church. It’s a well-used path now. When I was a youngster the Weirs was more or less Squire Temple’s private domain. If he saw someone along there he would choke them off. He’d tell them that was his private walk. He had a gate from there into the gardens and the path went through a tunnel, under the main road, near Temple Corner, and into the grounds of Bishopstrow House. The tunnel is still there. You can walk along it without having to stoop.”
“When we were children we used to go down to the Weirs to play. We used to climb the trees and make little houses and dens in the box bushes. Temple’s gardeners used to keep it all tidy along the Weirs. Squire Temple was a stickler for everything being perfect but he wasn’t perfect. Oh no. On one occasion, Bill Sloper, the taxi man, gave him a lift from Warminster Railway Station to Bishopstrow House. When Bill dropped him off outside his door, Temple said ‘How much is that?’ Bill said ‘Two shillings and sixpence, sir.’ Temple said ‘That’s sixpence too much,’ and he gave him two bob. They had a row. Bill said ‘I’ll stay here until you give me the sixpence,’ and he did. Temple went in doors and Bill stayed there, in his taxi, parked outside the house. He wouldn’t move. After a while Temple came out and threw the sixpence at him!”
“I can remember when the choir from Bishopstrow went carol singing one Christmas Eve. We called at several houses and everyone was good, giving us something for our trouble. After doing the village street we went up to Bishopstrow House to sing some carols there. We decided that we must go there, if nowhere else. It was a raining pouring night but we thought we must go up to the Squire’s. We didn’t want to miss him out in case he felt offended. We went up and sang a carol or two. We sang lovely and thought that he would be delighted but no such luck. We rang the bell. No one came to the door, not a soul. Temple was in the house and he heard us singing but he wouldn’t answer the door. Typical! That’s how he was. We had to make our way home feeling dejected and very wet.”
“Squire Temple had quite a reputation because he always had an eye for the ladies. He had woods up the back of the house, well, there’s one called Temple’s Plantation after the family and a path through it called Peter’s Walk, named after Peter Temple. If a lady went up Grange Lane way or near those woods Squire Temple would be up there after her. I don’t know what went on but they said you had to watch your step. I suppose they got goosed. He used to go up those woods picking primroses and bluebells. In fact, Temple’s Wood is sometimes known as Primrose Wood but there’s no primroses in there now. Temple always had a bee in his bonnet about those woods being kept prim and proper.”
“We didn’t see much of the Temple family. They kept themselves to themselves. We only saw him occasionally and I very rarely saw him with his wife. The only time I ever saw them together was when they were sat in church together and that wasn’t very often. He usually wore a smart, dark suit, and a bowler hat. He’d walk to church on Sundays by coming along the Weirs. Squire Temple was always the last one to go into church. He owned the village, he was in charge, and he liked to show his authority. He’d wait outside the church until everyone else was inside. He’d look up at the clock and he’d make sure it was the right time. He’d take his pocket watch out of his waistcoat and look at it. Sometimes he would go up the tower and wind the church clock, depending on how he felt. They would stop the ringing for the service while he wound the church clock up. He would do anything like that on the spur of the moment. The service would be about to start when he would swagger in. He’d make his way to the front pew where his wife would be sat waiting. He would swagger by the rest of us, the villagers, making his grand entrance. He always smelled of camphor and mothballs as he went by. People would whiff it.”
“Temple would even sit in the front pew when we were having choir practice. He would make sure everything was perfect. I remember when Bill Clifford, who was a tenor in the choir, had a niggling cough. Temple went on at him about it. Bill didn’t come to church after that. Bill, poor chap, worked in the flour mill at Boreham for Neville Marriage, which was very dusty, and he was bound to get a cough. Temple told him off and that put paid to Bill singing in the choir.”
“I seldom saw Mrs. Temple. She didn’t always go to church. More often than not it was him on his own. I hardly ever saw them together. She was a tall woman and she had two black Scotch Terrier dogs. I think Mrs. Temple suffered from dementia in later years. Squire and his wife had two sons and a daughter called Vera. I don’t know what happened to Vera but I can recall when she ran a scout troop in Bishopstrow. I can remember once hearing a band coming into the village. They were playing a tune. It was a bugle and drum band. That was the Scouts going to church for a service. They were playing ‘Here comes the great boy scouts, they’re all dirty louts, they have their mother’s broomsticks, . . . . . ‘ They used to play that. I can only remember seeing them once, so I hope I’ve got my facts right.”
“My dad worked as a gardener for Squire Temple but he wasn’t allowed to sing in the garden or go in the house with the servants. Likewise, the servants were not allowed to sing while they were working and they were not allowed to have a wireless. The gardeners and the servants were not allowed to smoke. Temple hated anyone who smoked. He was very anti-smoking. The staff were never very happy. Temple was always very strict and fussy. No-one really liked him. The only perk the servants ever got was at Christmas when Temple gave them a present each of some clothes or some soap. And when the men cleaned out the cesspit he would give them some beer.”
“Sometimes my mother would go up to Bishopstrow House to help with the cleaning. When it came to cleaning the windows Mrs. Temple would hold on to mum’s legs while mum leaned out to do the outside of the glass. Mum would come home and tell us all about it. She used to get so embarrassed. That house took some cleaning. It was big and there were cold flagstone floors on the ground floor. We were living in a little rented cottage and Temple had that great big house and owned just about everything else around. We were not envious though. People didn’t think like that in those days. We were happy the way we were.”
“There’s a tomb to the Temple family at the bottom end of the churchyard in Bishopstrow, and memorials to them inside St. Aldhelm’s Church. They were the lords of the manor before my time. It was one of the Temple family who gave the land and some cash about 150 years ago for St. John’s Church to built at Boreham Road.”
“Dad was a hard worker but he was a jovial chap. He liked a laugh and a joke. He used to get in arguments about politics. He was a Labour man and if someone started running Labour down he’d say his piece. He used to get in a lot of arguments with Mr. Roberts, the next door neighbour, over politics. Mr. Roberts was a Conservative because he had worked in service for a long time. He was a butler at Barrow House for a while. He used to come in home a lot for a cup of tea with my dad and they’d get chatting. The two of them would get in an argument and my mother would have to tell Mr. Roberts to get off home. Dad wasn’t bothered about flying his colours. Some people had to be careful, especially if they worked for an employer, like Squire Temple, who was, of course, a staunch Conservative. That’s why a lot of people went to church years ago, to satisfy the Squire. Dad wasn’t frightened to shout the odds about anything. He spoke his mind. Of course, a person who does that are not always liked, but my dad wasn’t bothered with what people thought about him.”
“Dad would swear now and again. He was only a country yokel but if something got him going, if something entered into his mind, he’d say about it. Obviously, having been in the army he’d picked up on bad language and everyone swore in those days. He was no exception. Dad wasn’t a big drinker but he liked a pint of bitter if he was out somewhere. He wasn’t a boozer though, thank God. He also smoked a pipe. He wasn’t a heavy smoker though. Mother didn’t mind him smoking. It was quite common for men to smoke in those days. He used to smoke shag tobacco. I think it was called Black Bell. He’d buy his tobacco from Stevens’ shop and off-licence in Bishopstrow. The shop was opposite our cottage.”
“Quite a lot of people patronised Stevens’ shop because they sold everything there. It was a successful shop because the villagers relied on them. People bought paraffin and candles from there, for lighting. If you wanted some cotton you could get it there. You’d see different vans pulling up outside the shop, delivering. Ushers brought the beer. They rolled the barrels through the archway, at the side, to the rear of the shop. If a villager wanted some beer, he or she could take a jug into the shop and get it filled up. They didn’t have to walk round to Boreham to the Yew Tree, because they could get their drink from that little shop. Stevens did a good trade there. It was a very handy place. They sold sweets and, of course, groceries and cheese and all that sort of thing. Sainsburys had a lorry that brought the groceries. I think the paraffin was supplied to the shop by Stiles Bros., from Warminster.”
“Mrs. Stevens was very good. She was a bit tubby and shortish. She was very kind. She was alright. She had a way, quite natural, with the customers. Her husband used to help her with the shop but he used to go gardening, as well, up at Barrow House. He did part-time up there. Mr. and Mrs. Stevens had one room just inside the front door of their home for the shop. They had their own private room on the right and a kitchen at the back. Mrs. Stevens used to open the shop on Sundays, about 12 o’clock. You’d think they wouldn’t have bothered after being open all through the week but they did. They kept it going. Mrs. Rosella Hallett had it later on. She ran it just the same and she also used to open on Sundays too. She wasn’t supposed to but she did. She was offering the villagers a service. I can remember coming out of church and going in the shop. I wish that shop was open now. People have to go to the shop at Boreham or into town now. There’s no shop in Bishopstrow today.”
“Dad always wore his suit on Sundays. When the men, years ago, wore their best suits they usually wore a bowler, a trilby hat or a cap. They would often wear a flower in the buttonhole of their jackets and a walking stick was usually a must. Men’s working clothes, particularly for those on the farms, would be an odd jacket, a waistcoat and a pair of patched-up trousers. Although they wore braces to keep their trousers up, most men would wear a belt too. Some wore yorks, which were tie-offs or leather straps just below the knees of their trouser legs. Some wore leggings. Many men wore collarless shirts, some wore corduroy trousers and almost all wore a cap. Clothing was always rather thick, the coats being long and heavy. In rainy weather an old overcoat would suffice. The boots would be of the heavy hob-nailed type. Leather boots were always polished.”
“I wouldn’t say dad was particularly religious. He went to church on special days like harvest festivals and Easter but he wasn’t a church man. Working on the farm he didn’t get much time for going to church. Not only that he also had his garden to see to, and his allotment. The allotments were on the left as you start to go out of Bishopstrow towards Sutton Veny. You know where Harold Parham keeps his car now? That’s where the allotments were. Everyone in the village had a bit of ground there. They grew spuds and greens. In those days you didn’t have the supermarkets like there are now, so you had to grow enough food to last you all through the winter. You had to grow enough potatoes to get you through. And vegetable seeds were always saved for sowing the next year.”
“On a bank holiday you’d see everyone working on the allotments. I used to have and go help father on his allotment, against my liking. On one occasion I had to pick up some potatoes. My pal Fred Hiscock was there with me and we were larking about a bit. All of a sudden I felt something hit me. That was my dad. He had thrown some dirt at me. That was sticky old clay up there. Dad said ‘Come on, stop messing about.’ That’s how dad was. We had to work. The potatoes were carted home and stored for the winter. Even the small ones were not wasted. They were boiled and mashed up to make chicken food.”
“We used to keep poultry at home in the back garden. We had laying hens for eggs. Any eggs surplus to our requirements were sold to the neighbours. We also reared poultry for the table. We didn’t keep a pig. There were only about two people in the village who kept pigs. You know where the archway is between the cottages on the east side of Bishopstrow street? Maidments used to keep some pigs out the back of there. George ‘Piggy’ Payne used to come out from Warminster and slaughter the pigs for them. Piggy Payne lived at Chapel Street, down at Warminster Common, and he used to go all round the district slaughtering pigs and castrating piglets. He also doctored dogs and cats for people. He used to play in the Warminster Town Band and was a well-known bloke.”
“My dad didn’t belong to any clubs and he wasn’t interested in playing sport but he liked to watch it. He wasn’t mechanically minded. He loved gardening. He spent his spare time gardening. He knew about farming and gardening and that was about all. He knew how to do his job. That’s all the chaps knew then. That was their life, how it was all around them. Dad wasn’t particularly worldly wise. They say I take after my dad. I do my garden, yes, but I don’t think I learnt a lot from my dad. He let me do my own thing and I learnt by my own experience.”
“My dad was about my size but a bit on the stout side. He had a little moustache. Moustaches were fashionable then and the older chaps usually had a beard. Dad’s moustache was a nice one. He used to spend hours trimming that after he’d had a shave. Dad, like most men at that time, used an open (cutthroat) razor. Goodness me, I didn’t dare breathe when I saw dad shaving. He had to be so careful. He used his belt as a strop to sharpen his razor. I used one for a while and I thought I was so clever but I was glad when I was able to purchase a bladed-razor from Woolworths for three shillings and sixpence.”
“Dad had good health all the way through. He only had one bout of influenza, as far as I know, during all the time I knew him. He lived until he was 85. He worked until the day he was taken ill. He was gardening then for Dr. Garratt, at The Cottage, in Bishopstrow, where Tony Emmerson lives now. Dr. Garratt asked dad to do the garden for him. Dad was happy to do that. It kept him occupied. He came home from Dr. Garratt’s one day and had to go out into the garden to get some clothes off the line. He was living on his own then. He got the clothes off the line and had a stroke. He died on 23rd February 1975.”
“My mum died before my dad. She died on 4th April 1963. She was 74. They’re both buried at Bishopstrow. Their grave is near the wall of the church. Mother was a regular worshipper at Bishopstrow Church. She always went to church. She was the church cleaner for 40 years. Mum put her mind to cleaning that church and that was her life. Many hours were spent sweeping and dusting. She took a great pride in it and spent a lot of time doing it. Remember we had oil lamps in those days and I suppose there were 30 of them in the church. Mum had special scissors for trimming the wicks. She used to have to fill the lamps with paraffin and every so often the burners had to be boiled up to clean them. She used to do all that. When electric was put into the church her task was made a lot easier. She didn’t get paid much, only a very small fee. She was relied on for 40 years. She would even go down and do it when the weather was below freezing. The church would be freezing cold in the winter and the lane would be frosty or covered in snow but that didn’t stop her. And she also saw to the surplices. She would wash all the surplices when they needed washing. She made sure they were always nice and white and not creased up. That was another job that was made a lot easier when the choir started to dwindle. I am proud to say my mum did these duties for four decades until illness prevented her from continuing with it any more. That’s what you call devotion to duty.”
“St. Aldhelm’s at Bishopstrow is a nice church. It’s beautiful in there. I’m glad when people like yourself say they like it. I wonder how many people stop to take notice of the lovely hinges on the church door. They were beautifully handmade by a local blacksmith. The late Hedley Curtis, the Warminster undertaker, would always remark about those hinges. He said they were the best he had ever seen. A long time ago I was told that St. Aldhelm’s Church once had a ceiling but during some restoration work the workers discovered the lovely roof timbers, so the authorities decided to do away with the old ceiling. I’ve often wondered whether that story is true or not.”
“A lot of village churches have closed for worship and are now used for other purposes, like at Crockerton. That’s a pity. And a lot of churchyards have been left to go wild and unkempt. Thank God that Bishopstrow still has its church, thanks to the help of a grand lot of friends and helpers. It has been restored and is lovingly looked after. The church has had, and still gets, many visitors from all over the world and they all say what a lovely building it is. We are very lucky. I can’t speak too highly of the well-kept churchyard. It’s a treat to walk around it. It is truly like a garden and the lawns are kept neat and tidy. I’ve got to give credit to the caretaker for all his hard work.”
“I started going to church when I was three years old. We used to walk down there for Sunday school. That’s how the church became part of my life. Through the Sunday School I joined the choir. I was a sidesman at St. Aldhelm’s Church, Bishopstrow, from 1961 onwards. I took over from Bert Parham. I also served on the P.C.C. My mother was on it. She said ‘We want some young blood on it.’ She told me I should get on it. They held their meetings in the old schoolroom. I’ve been on the P.C.C. twice. I was on the St. John’s P.C.C. at one time. It was all to do with the running of the church and the churchyard.”
“Years ago a gang of five or six men from the village, using reap hooks and scythes, cut the grass in the churchyard. That was Walt Moore, the sexton, Tim Scane and five or six blokes from the village. They’d do that twice a year. It used to grow about two foot high. They’d cut it and make it look nice. In the spring the churchyard was covered in snowdrops. It was white with them because the ground was always moist from the meadow water. There used to be four old elm tree trunks in the churchyard. Some jackdaws nested in them each year, making a lot of noise with their clackering and cawing.”
“I hope that Bishopstrow can keep its church going for many years to come. It is a lovely church. I don’t like St. John’s at Boreham so much. Bishopstrow Church has lovely acoustics. They’re going to put an arch with a lamp, like it used to be, over the churchyard gate for the Millennium. That will be nice. The screen in the church was a gift from the Southey family, who lived at Eastleigh Court. They used to have fetes at Eastleigh Court. I didn’t see a lot of the Southey family. Miss Southey would come down to a social or whist drive at the village hall and give out the prizes. She was like the village celebrity. It was always a joke with the boys about who was going to see her home.”
“The Southey family were regular churchgoers and their servants always came to Sunday morning matins. They had three or four servants in the house. There was a path which ran down from Eastleigh Court to a little door, in the corner of the garden wall, near the end of the village street. The path and the door are still there. The Southeys and their servants used to come to church that way, through that door. The Southeys helped the church a lot. They arranged for the nice wooden screen to be put into St. Aldhelm’s Church. There are memorials to the Southey family inside the church and a granite gravestone in the churchyard.”
“The Southeys were involved in farming. They were highly respected in the village. Me, the housekeeper from Bishopstrow Rectory and her sister, went carol singing at Eastleigh Court once. We only did it for a laugh. We sang a carol and knocked the door. They said ‘We’ve just had our evening meal or we would have asked you in to join us.’ That’s what they were like. They gave us half-a-crown for our trouble and that was a lot of money in those days. That was a very different story to the reception we got at Squire Temple’s.”
“St. Aldhelm’s Church has quite a history. Several vicars have come and gone over the years. The first recorded rector was Gilbert de Mureslic in 1300. That was a bit before my time! I can remember quite a few vicars though who served there during my lifetime. There was the Reverend Atwood in the 1920s and he was followed by the Reverend Wansey. During the 1950s there was the Reverend Tamblin and he used to drive about in a vintage Rolls Royce car. The Reverend Allan Elkins left at the end of 1991 and the latest incumbent, the Reverend Denis Brett, came in 1992. We were lucky during the gap to have a retired priest, the Reverend Oldham, and his wife Mrs. Susan Oldham, take care of the church and the village.”
“Alas, Bishopstrow Church has no choir today. That’s a pity but times have changed. It’s noticeable, over the years, how most people only go to church for christenings, weddings or funerals, or on festive occasions such as Easter, Harvest Festival or Christmas. For most of those people it will be in the knowledge that they will hear the well-known hymns, the ones they can sing. Now, cornets and other musical instruments are being introduced in churches to brighten up and modernise the services and to encourage the younger folk to join in. These days, I am always hearing church people and the listening public complaining about the modern choirs breaking into the highbrow descant singing. I always thought the choir was there to lead the congregation, not to leave it to struggle on their own. It’s no wonder some people give up church and prefer to stay away. I reckon it’s nothing but a hideous noise now. It’s not like singing used to be. It’s rather hit and miss now with some of the hymn tunes and they are not enjoyed.”
“I reckon that places like Bishopstrow, if they had a good choir, like the old days, with a return to the well-known hymns that have stood the test of time and are known to everyone, plus louder organ music, would find the regular churchgoers coming back. Several people in Bishopstrow have said to me they would like a morning matins service, say, once each month, and if the well known original chants were used, well, it would go down very nicely. It was enjoyed by all in the past. I’m sure that a matins service would enlarge the congregation and would be worth a try, and, who knows, after some advertising, communion could be included during matins.”
“Bishopstrow used to have a wonderful choir. It was very good. I can remember most of the people who were in it. About ten of the village boys, including me, were in it and five men who were good at tenor and bass singing. The men included Bill Clifford, Jack Payne and a chap named Garrett. Bill Clifford worked at Marriage’s Mill and lived in one of the cottages [No.7 Boreham] at Bishopstrow Road. He sung tenor. He was the one that was told not to cough so much by Squire Temple. So Bill left the choir. We used to practice after the morning service had finished, about 12 o’clock. We used to practice for half an hour or so after the congregation had left. As I said before, Squire Temple would sit in the front pew and listen. He would point out any mistakes. He was fussy.”
“The choir boys were paid three shillings and sixpence a month. Sometimes, when a choir boy’s voice broke he would be encouraged to take on a man’s voice for singing which would be more suitable for him. Sometimes he would decide he’d had enough and would give up the choir to join the congregation. I remember the time when my singing became terrible instead of the angelic treble it should have been. I thought ‘Ah, a good excuse for me to leave the choir and have my Sundays free to do as I wish.’ No such luck! Someone was wanted to pump the organ and my mother made sure I was the person to do it.”
“Mr. Jim Rutty was the organist. He lived at Christ Church Terrace in Warminster. He was the organist at Bishopstrow for years and years. There was like a little cupboard in the vestry, where the two wooden pedals were. I had to pedal to pump the wind. I had to stand on the pedals, making the legs go up and down, first one and then the other. I also had to watch the air gauge which went up as the bellows filled. Out in the vestry, where I was, I would get rather bored. The sermon used to get monotonous and drag on a bit. I couldn’t hear very well what the vicar was saying anyway. I used to have a pencil and some paper so that I could do some drawing during the sermon. I had to remain alert though so as to know when it ended. I usually knew when the sermon had finished because Mr. Rutty would tap on the wall. There was a little sliding door, a window, from the vestry into the church, through which Mr. Rutty and I could see and speak to each other. During the sermon I used to see Mr. Rutty dozing off. I used to see his head dropping. He had a habit of doing that. When it was time for me to start pedalling again he’d tap on the wall. I did the organ blowing on Sundays until the outbreak of the Second World War. Today, the organ is controlled by electricity. How times have changed?”
“Miss Hadow used to sing in the choir. She used to rock backwards and forwards while she was singing. She lived on her own at The Cottage, where Tony Emmerson lives now. She had a little dog called Sammy. It was a brown terrier. She had a gardener and an orchard opposite, on the other side of the road, where she kept chickens. The orchard is still there. The gardener was Clary White. He was from Longbridge Deverill. He wore glasses and a trilby hat. I remember seeing him working there. Miss Hadow had a housemaid as well. Her name was Ruth and she married Cecil Puckett. Ruth only died a couple of years ago. I used to see her in town and we used to stop and have a chat.”
“There were two Pucketts called Cecil and Gerald. They lived at Yew Tree Cottages, next to Mr. Kaye, on the Salisbury Road. Cecil and Gerald were brothers and they lived with their mother, Mrs. Puckett. I didn’t know Mr. Puckett. He must have been killed in the First World War. A chap named Moody used to lodge with them. The Pucketts worked for Farmer Gauntlett. They milked the cows for him at Bishopstrow Farm. The milking was done in some thatched sheds but they’re gone now. They were destroyed when there was that big fire at Bishopstrow Farm about 20 odd years ago [21st August 1976].”
“The Puckett brothers had a motorbike each. Cecil had a fast one and Gerald had a slower one. They used to make their own fun. They were nice chaps but Cecil had bad luck. At one time he worked for Mr. Waddington, the auctioneer, in Warminster. He was going to sit down and someone, one of the clerks for Waddington, took the chair away, just for a joke. Of course, Cecil went down on the floor and damaged his back. He was in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. That was in his later years, after he got married.”
“I can relate to you what Sundays used to be like at Bishopstrow when I was a boy about 14 years old (1928). Going to church was an important occasion in those days. Just imagine it’s a nice summer’s morning and the eight o’clock communion has taken place with lots of us in the congregation. My dad would collect the vegetables from his garden for our dinner and my mum would be busy making a tart and a cake (to last all the week) and preparing the dinner. Being a member of the choir I proceed down the lane towards the church at 10.30 a.m. Walt Moore, the sexton, starts to ring the big bell. Dong, dong, dong. This goes on for ten minutes and after a while starts again. I meet the other members of the choir sitting on the wall outside the churchyard gate. It’s too early for us to go in the vestry and put our shirts on, so we sit there on the wall or stand around, watching the people going into church. They include the Sunday School children, about 25 to 30 of them, young and old, in a tidy group led by Miss Heath the teacher. They go to their special pews inside. Next comes the Squire (sometimes with his wife), walking along the Weirs to the church. As I told you before, he checks with his pocket watch that the church clock is correct, before being the last one to go into the church. He takes his place in the pew at the very front. The bell which has been ringing for a while, now rings the five minute call, and us lads go into the vestry. We meet the Vicar and the five men of the choir putting their robes on. At the last minute the Legg boys from Home Farm arrive (they’ve had lots of jobs to do on the farm before coming to church). The organist Mr. Rutty is in his position, playing some nice music. The five minute bell stops and the church clock strikes eleven. The choir makes its way to their pews, ready to lead the singing. When this, the matins service finishes at 12 noon, the choir returns to the choir stalls for practice. At six o’clock I return to the church for the evensong service. Sometimes I have to light 24 candles before the service begins. After evensong some of us boys might take the bus into Warminster and walk back. And so it was every Sunday, as it probably was in every village, large and small.”
“Once a month, in Bishopstrow, there was a children’s service at three o’clock on a Sunday afternoon. Some of us in the choir would have to lead the singing for that. In 1927 each member of the choir were given a prayer/hymn book by the Reverend Johnson’s wife. I still have mine.”
“Just now I mentioned Walt Moore, the sexton. He rang the bell and he used to dig the graves. He also used to light the fires at the church for the Sunday morning service. The fires were lit on Friday evenings. There was an anthracite fire set down about seven feet under the floor near the church entrance. The chimney was near the centre of the nave and came out via the vestry. The heat would rise up through iron gratings. It was always nice and warm. There was another stove in the vestry. All the coal and ashes had to be carried up and down in buckets. Old Walt Moore did his job well and never failed but the old stoves wore out and couldn’t be repaired. The authorities then bought half a dozen stoves which burnt cheap paraffin. Someone had to light them early on Sundays. Those stoves were smelly and smoky, some of the parts burnt out and repairs were soon needed. Eventually electric strip heaters were fixed under the pews and fan heaters were introduced. The congregation knocked their feet against the heaters when they knelt down and the noise of the fans meant the vicar couldn’t be heard. To overcome the problem time-set electric heating was installed. The electric heating is fairly good but we would be a lot warmer in church if the heaters on the walls were lowered a couple of feet. Perhaps someone will see to that one day.”
“Walt Moore was the sexton at Bishopstrow for years and years. He must have been the sexton for over 30 years. Every Friday evening, when the weather was cold, we saw Walt come out of his home, No.42 Bishopstrow, and make his way down to the church to light the fires with anthracite. He wore breeches and polished leggings, carried a lantern, and pushed a wheelbarrow filled up with wood. We kiddies never used to like him because he used to grumble a lot. He lived next door to my brother Leonard, in the first house in the next rank of houses. Walt Moore worked on the farm for Mr. Gauntlett but he was always allowed time off work to do his church duties.”
“I wound the clock at Bishopstrow Church for many years. I forget exactly how many. I was interested in it and I took over the winding from Bert Parham. The clock had been in his care for several years. Clocks were his hobby and he had clocks throughout his home, all ticking away. He lived opposite us in the village and he worked as a ganger on the railway. He had to walk miles on the railway. We saw him coming and going quite a lot. He carried his grub in a straw bag on his back and when it was raining he had an umbrella. I hardly ever saw him wearing an overcoat or a mac. Instead he had a big wide umbrella. He was a sidesman at St. Aldhelm’s and a doorman at the village hall. When he began to suffer ill health he passed the clock winding duty at St. Aldhelm’s on to me. We went down to the church at about ten past twelve one day and he took me up into the belfry and showed me what to do. He taught me the do’s and don’ts. The first time he did it he said ‘It’ll strike in a moment.’ I rushed off down the ladder. He said ‘Where are you going?’ I said ‘It’s going to go bong.’ He laughed. He said ‘You’ll be alright.’ Then it struck one o’clock. Bong! It was okay but, of course, being a youngster, I was a bit frightened when I first saw that bell.”
“It is interesting to note that the clock was put in the church on the instructions of Viscount Folkestone who lived at Bishopstrow House. He had the clock put in, I’m told, as thanks for the safe return of his son from the Boer War. That would be about 1902. I put a printed newspaper cutting all about it on the frame of the clock.”
“It was hard work winding the clock because there were two weights to wind up. One for the working and one for the time. The one for the time is the heaviest. It’s all solid iron. A weight comes down. When the weight hits the ground the clock stops. It’s the weight that keeps the clock going. The chain coming down the weight casing in the porch is to stop the clock striking the hour during the service or during any maintenance.”
“I never got any trouble with the clock, providing I kept to the regular days for winding. I used to wind it on a Saturday. It only went for seven days, which meant it needed winding again on the following Saturday. If you were going away on a Saturday, you had to do it the day before, the Friday, and then your whole week was put out. You’d have to do it the following Friday.”
“I wound the clock every Saturday for years and years. Alex Barber, who lived near the corner of Church Lane, by the letter box, used to run me down. He kept saying things. He used to say the clock was two minutes out. He kept niggling. In the end I said ‘Well, you get and do it then.’ So he took over winding the clock after me but only temporary. He did it for a little while until he became ill and then I went back up into the winding loft to do it again. Alex is dead now. He died in 1974 and he’s buried at Bishopstrow Churchyard. I continued to wind the clock until May 1981 when it had to be stopped. The church had been damaged by lightning again. The glass door on the large wooden clock cover had been shattered and the cover broken. Some wiring in the tower had melted and a lot of cleaning had to be done. Thousands of pounds were spent on repairs. It was quite a big job. Chris Ede winds the clock now.”
“I believe that the church was struck by lightning just over a hundred years ago. It was certainly struck by lightning in 1930. On that occasion the clock kept going. It didn’t effect the clock but the church was so shook up they had to stop the clock. A third of the spire, at the top, had to be replaced and a hole was blown out into the porch. My mother picked up a floor tile from the porch by the pulpit when she was cleaning up. The complete weather vane was not replaced at the time. One part, which had been put in storage for safe keeping, became lost and was never found. A few people, over the years, had taken pot shots with guns, at that old weathervane. Butcher’s, the Warminster builders, bravely did all the repairs to the church spire after the lightning of 1930. That was a risky task.”
“So, you see, Bishopstrow Church has been struck by lightning at least three times. The spire is stuck up on its own, with no high trees or tall buildings around it. That’s why it’s been struck so many times. A giant conductor has been fitted to the spire now. Let’s hope we don’t get any more trouble.”
“We don’t seem to get the thunder and lightning storms now that we used to years ago. We used to get terrific thunderstorms, especially during May, but not now. About every three days in May there would be a thunderstorm with lovely hot weather in between. The weather was different then. Winter was winter and summer was summer. In winter it was very cold and frosty and it would snow. I’ve known the Heytesbury road blocked with snow. The days in summer were hot and dry. The ground used to crack open. We kids used to play with dust. We’d get a tin with holes in, fill it with dust, and run around sprinkling it. There was plenty of dust in the streets. That shows how dry it was.”
“Man has tampered with the climate. I think all these chemicals they use now are a lot to do with the damage to the ozone layer. There’s all these gases in the aerosol tins and all the fumes from car exhausts. There’s a blanket effect. Look at all the blackspot you get on the roses now. You never had that years ago. That’s today with the weather. The air was different years ago. And look at all these aeroplanes flying through the air now. You saw nothing like that years ago. You don’t think about them because you don’t see them but there’s hundreds of planes going over. You can see the vapour trails all across the sky over Warminster. There are planes flying all over the world. They’re stirring up the atmosphere.”
“Many years ago we had a swarm of bees in Bishopstrow Church tower. They were there two or three years. You could see them, from the road, flying around and they used to go in and out through a hole in the wall just below the clock face. They didn’t interfere with no-one and there wasn’t any complaints but we had to get rid of them. The bees were removed when a paint expert came to gild the clock numerals. He lowered his equipment in a basket from the battlements on the tower. The numerals want gilding again now. On the clock face, in Latin, there are some interesting words concerning time [Scis Horas Nescis Horam – meaning ‘Thou knowest the hours. Thou knowest not the hour’].”
“Years ago when there was no television or wireless people relied on church clocks to know what time it was for going to work and things. In Bishopstrow you could tell the time by the clock at St. Aldhelm’s or the regular sound of the steam hooter at Mark Hill’s Timber Company at Imber Road in Warminster. People used to put their clocks right by that hooter. At one time it was used as the fire hooter as well. The hooter went at eight o’clock in the morning, one o’clock at dinner, and five o’clock in the afternoon. You could hear it quite plain. You could hear that hooter even though it was about a mile away.”
“My mother very often used to ask me to go up the garden to see what time it was with Bishopstrow Church clock. From the top of our garden you could see over the roofs of the houses on the opposite side of the street. I’d go up the garden, have a look and then I’d run back down and tell her. Later on mum and dad had a wireless. It was an accumulator one and they used to get the batteries charged at Monk’s. They had a television in the latter part of their lives. They never had a car but mother had a bicycle. It was a Swift and she thought the world of it. She kept it upstairs. There wasn’t nowhere else to keep it. In those days cycle lamps were usually lit by paraffin but sometimes people used carbide gas.”
“My mother used to lay people out. People would call on her any time, day or night, to do it. She would do it because she had been looking after them while they were ill. She would clean them and put them tidy, ready for the undertaker. Mum was more or less a nurse. People relied on home medicines. Blackcurrant drinks and hot cider with ginger in were taken for colds. Things like that because you had to pay for medicine and it wasn’t cheap. There was no National Health Service in those days. Mother had to pay for the doctor if he came out. She didn’t get the doctor out if she could help it. You couldn’t afford seven and six. That was a lot of money. You had to make the best of things. There were lots of illnesses about like pneumonia, double pneumonia and lumbago. People got by with home remedies. People were hardier then. I never knew my dad ill except for once when he had the flu. Dr. Hodges, from Ulster Lodge, at East Street, came out to him then. People go to the doctor now when they’ve just got a headache or a cold.”
“There was a dentist called Prescott at the Chantry on Town Hall Hill in Warminster. And there was Mr. Bowie. He had his place over the top of Main’s shop in the Market Place. I had a terrible toothache one weekend. I went to see Mr. Prescott. He said ‘I can’t see you until Monday. You’ll have to come back then.’ So I went to Mr. Bowie. He had the reputation for being a butcher. I didn’t care where I went as long as I had that tooth pulled out. I went in and saw the receptionist. I went upstairs. It was a big, hollow room. I told Mr. Bowie all about my teeth. He got the aching tooth loose but he couldn’t get it out. I thought if he starts prising on that it will snap. That’s exactly what happened. He snapped it off. He said ‘If you get any more trouble come and see me again.’
“Mother was the living soul of Bishopstrow really. My mother always seem to have a poster up in the window, advertising dances or something that was going on somewhere in and around Warminster. Mum was jolly and very sociable. She wanted to be involved in anything that was going on. The old school was always full up for whist drives which would go on until 9.45 p.m. After the whist drive there would be an interval for prize-giving and refreshments. That was followed by a social evening or a dance. The dancing would go on until midnight. Several of the villagers would organise the social evenings and they were always well patronised. There would be a variety of different items. Perhaps someone would sing a song or someone would play the accordion. Maybe someone would recite a monologue.”
“They used to put on variety shows in Bishopstrow. Very often a group of ladies and one or two men would get together in the village, in someone’s home, and rehearse a play. They were so good they would be asked to perform again in one or two of the surrounding villages. Sometimes the children would put on a play of their own and that was well-liked too. Yes, there was plenty of entertainment for us. Village folk were only too glad to help in any way they could.”
“If there were any plays being presented mum would want to take part, learning theatre work and lines. Mum was always learning lines for plays. She always wanted the comic part. That’s true. She was always the one to cause the laughter. She could be so serious and keep a straight face while she came out with the comic lines and she enjoyed every minute of it. In one play she was dressed as a kitchen maid with her hat all askew and smuts of soot on her face. I can remember her doing that. She once dressed up as Old Mother Riley for a carnival float. Mum liked to be the leading light. Same as any clubs, she wanted to be the leader. She was one of the organisers of the women’s club and if there was a coach trip to be planned it was always ‘Mrs. Francis will see to that.’ She liked doing that.”
“My mum and dad lived at No.26 Bishopstrow. That’s where I was brought up. The cottage we lived in was rented. It was owned by Neville Marriage, the miller at Boreham Mill. Mr. Marriage lived at Heronslade. His chauffeur, Mr. Macey, who lived on Boreham Hill, used to collect the rent. He was also the odd-jobman and did a bit of carpentry. Marriage wouldn’t have hardly any repairs done to the cottage. Macey would come down doing a bit of carpentry, patching things up, when repairs were needed. At one time we had a wooden board wall put in because the brick wall was falling down. White’s, along the road, did that. Mrs. Snelgrove, who lived a bit further up from us, used to do the washing for the Marriages. Mr. Macey used to come with the car every so often, with a big wicker basket and collect the washing from her. He’d take the washing from Snelgrove’s and collect the rent from my parents at the same time. The greater part of my father’s wages went on the rent.”
“Boreham Mill was a steam flour mill. There was a boiler house with two big steam boilers out the back. Coal was delivered in and burnt to heat the boilers. There was a big chimney with black smoke coming out. There were two or three stokers there. Albert Scane was one of the firemen, one of the stokers. There was a pipe coming down to release the steam. Albert touched the handle once to let the steam off and I nearly jumped out of my skin. Albert Scane lived in the rank of houses on the left after you go over the bridge towards Bishopstrow. He lived in the end house, where Valerie Mitchell (formerly Mrs. Beckman) now lives. There was quite a family of Scanes who lived there and that was only one room down and two bedrooms up. I don’t know how they managed.”
“Mr. Marriage was a big, stoutish chap, with a big round face. He had quite a few people working for him. A chap named Jim Gard was the manager. He lived in the house next to the mill. I can remember seeing him shoot a dog. He had a terrier dog and there must have been something wrong with it. I was walking along the footpath by the bridge and I looked across and saw him shoot this dog with a gun. People did things like that years ago. They didn’t bother with vets. Same as if people wanted to get rid of cats they’d put them in a sack and chuck the sack in the river Wylye. Many a cat has been thrown in the river down by the Weirs.”
“There was a blacksmith chap called Tom Ball who worked at Boreham Mill. He lived in a cottage at the bottom of Grange Lane, on the corner with Boreham Road. This chap Ball used to do a bit of engineering work. If any of the pipes needed repairing he had to do it. I can ‘see’ him now. I can also remember seeing the blokes wheeling the ashes from underneath the boilers, across the road, to where Beeline have got their bus depot now. That was a heap of ashes in there. There were huts along there where they used to keep and mend the corn sacks for the mill. Philip Howell’s father used to do that. George Howell only had one leg and he’d sit there in a shed all day long mending sacks.”
“Boreham Mill was a very busy place. There was a lot of coming and going there. Mr. Marriage had two Foden steam lorries and lots of horses and carts. They were proper wagons, not carts, and each wagon was pulled by two horses. There was stabling next to the mill but I think there was a fire and the stables got burnt down. The mill is made into offices now. Neville Marriage is buried at Bishopstrow Churchyard. As I was saying, he owned my parents’ cottage.”
“The cottage was homely. It wasn’t that big. If you went into the front door you stepped straight into the living room. We did everything in there, like sitting by the fire and having our meals. The cooking was done on the open fire. There was like a rack over the top of the open fire and you put the saucepan on there. Mother cooked some lovely meals like that. We had mostly stews and a fry-up now and again.”
“Looking back, I reckon that the old folk lived fairly well. In some cases the rich people supplied soup or tea to the not so well-off, giving them the energy they needed to work hard for many hours each day. In many homes a joint of meat lasted from Sunday to Wednesday. It had to. You could buy a decent joint of meat for about three shillings and sixpence. There were always plenty of rabbits about for roasting or stewing. You could catch one out in the fields or you could buy one for about nine pence. Rabbits were always very nice to eat. It was good grub. People could buy nice chunks of cheese and real nice butter. If I wanted some toast I would hold the bread on a wire fork in front of the fire. I had the habit of putting buttered bread on the fork and I would hold it in front of the fire until the butter bubbled. I would sprinkle some sugar on it and eat it like that. Bread and lard or bread and beef dripping were also very tasty. Mum would bake a cake, a pie or a little tart in the little oven next to the living room fire. Most villagers would boil their Christmas puddings in the wash boiler, two at a time.”
“Christmas was well-looked forward to. We didn’t have a Christmas tree during the early years. We used to hang a piece of yew branch from the ceiling. We would tie a few sugar sweets, if we had any, to it. We made some paper chains at school and we took them home and hung those up. Before going to bed on Christmas Eve we’d hang our stockings up and in the morning we’d eagerly look into the stockings and find an orange and some nuts. We had a chicken for Christmas dinner, one that had been raised in the pen in the back garden. The family spent Christmas on its own. When the wife and I got married we lived at 8 Bishopstrow Road. Then we would go to my parents on Christmas Day and they’d come to us on Boxing Day.”
“My mum shared a wash house with the four neighbouring families. Every Monday she would light up a coal fire underneath the boiler and fill it up with water to boil. The houses had thatched roofs, so on rainy days mum would have to walk to and fro’ under the dripping eaves. She dried the clothes in front of the living room fire or on a line hung across the room. If the weather was fine she would take the washing out into the garden, to hang it on the line out there. There were ten steps up to the garden. You can imagine what hard work it was for her to carry wet washing up those steps. The ironing was done later on the living room table. As well as the family’s washing mum also had the choir’s surplices to wash and iron as well. She put a board on the table when she wanted to iron the surplices.”
“There was the back door and a door into the larder and coalhouse. Downstairs was the living room. First of all we had mats on the brick floor. Later on we got some lino. We had a chest of drawers, a sideboard and a couch. There were a few shelves to keep the cutlery on and that was about it. The fireplace had a grate and mum used to heat the irons on there for ironing. That was the only heat we had. Everyone heated their homes with a coal fire. The ashes would be disposed of by putting them on the garden or making a path up. The ashes were sieved first, the cinders being mixed in with the coal again. My dad kept poultry, so he sieved the ashes in the poultry pen. During the autumn the surface of the pen was dug up and wheeled on to the garden. This ensured that the vegetables grew well, resulting in good crops for the family’s dinner table.”
“During the winter evenings I had to help dad cut timber with a crosscut saw. I didn’t mind. We did that up the top of the garden next to the toilet. Dad kept the saw in the toilet. He’d have a lot of wood stacked up underneath the apple tree waiting to be sawn up into logs. We’d get sawing for an hour or so. It was surprising how much you could cut in that time. Then we’d carry all the logs down to home. We would burn them as fast as we could saw them. Most of the villagers went out gathering wood from wherever they could. They would pick up fallen branches and other wood. They’d haul it home on trolleys and things.”
“Our home was lit by a paraffin lamp and we went to bed by candlelight. The bedroom was heated with a Valor oil stove. Mum and dad stayed up for a little while after my brother and I were packed off to bed. They always had something to do each evening, mending our boots and doing things like that.”
“Just now I mentioned that the toilet was up the top of the garden. Bishopstrow didn’t have a modern sewage system. The big houses had cesspits which were cleaned out annually. The cottages had bucket toilets. People had to dig deep trenches in the garden and the contents of the bucket toilets were emptied into the trenches, usually after dark. Again, this ensured good crops of vegetables.”
“Warminster’s sewage works were down Smallbrook Lane. They had a big pump house there but it was demolished years ago. I can remember when Sutton Veny had a pump on the Common for water. Mr. Scane was in charge of that. As you go across the Common, you looked to your left, before you got to Sutton Veny, and that’s where the pump was. Across in the field was a hut. I went in there once and had a drink of water.”
“There were two bungalows on the corner of the Sutton Veny road and Eastleigh Lane. Harold Millard lived in one of them. There was a well in the copse opposite there. There was also a house on the right at the top of the hill as you dropped down Eastleigh Lane into the hollow. Some people called Stanley lived there. I don’t know if it was one house or two. We always called him Bluebeard. That was his nickname.”
“Those bungalows have gone now. They fell unto rack and ruin and were eventually demolished. Part of the little copse is still there but the Warminster Bypass cuts through it now. The traffic rushes along the Bypass. It’s a far cry from the traffic we used to see passing along the street through Bishopstrow. Bill Curtis was the local roadman. He must have lived at Sutton Veny or out that way somewhere. He was in charge of the roads around Bishopstrow. That was his job and he just got on with it. He saw to the dust and the weeds. He had a barrow, a brush and a shovel. The banks were cut with a reap hook. He kept them lovely. He used to talk to us. He was well-liked in the village.”
“Sometimes when the roads were really dusty they were sprayed with disinfectant and water from a horsedrawn tank. There may have been more dust about years ago, from the engines and the carts passing through, but the village women would brush the pavements outside the front of their homes and polish the windows most days. Some of the houses had little flower borders in front of them, with red brick surrounds. I believe that the nails can still be seen in the walls of the cottages where flowers were trained up.”
“Great changes have been made in the village since my childhood. There have been improvements while some things have gone to ruin but it’s still nice to walk around the parish and see some of the old things which are still there, even if they are now neglected and run- down. Years ago the houses were let for rent, everything was fairly quiet and serene, and there was the happy sound of children. The cottage roofs on one side of the village street were thatched and each house, as I said, had a front flower border and the pathways were cobbled. Times have changed, the cottages have been sold and are now in private hands, the thatched roofs are now tiled, and the flower borders have gone. Thank goodness for the lovely flower baskets hanging through the village street today.”
“There was always something to amuse us children. Even watching the roads being repaired or surfaced was a simple pleasure for us. They laid tarmac on the roads using a horse and cart with a tar boiler. It had a fire underneath. It consisted of a large wooden barrel hoisted over a large boiler. The tar would run into it and when heated by the coal fire it was manually pumped to spray it over the road surface. One bloke would be on a pump and another would have a pipe to do the spraying. Men would then cover the wet tar with gravel and the horse would pull the contraption further along the road. Barrel loads of gravel were thrown over the tar. Us children would spend time just watching the tar being sprayed on the roads. Another interesting thing for us would be to see a steamroller repairing a strip of the road. We were fascinated by that.”
“Chivers’ timber wagons from Devizes used to come through Bishopstrow. They used to do a lot of work in Southleigh Woods. They’d come through the village at about four o’clock in the morning, towing a couple of timber wagons on the back. They’d be on their way back to Devizes. You could hear them coming. I’d jump out of bed to look out of the window. The wagons had gas lamps. There would be a man on the back with a rope to the cab, to ring a bell. If anything came up behind he’d pull the rope to ring the bell to let the steersman, the driver, know he had to pull over. The man on the back also operated the brakes.”
“There were lots of steam engines and lorries around in my younger days. Some of the lorries had solid tyres. Half a gallon of petrol would get a lorry a mile and a half. The speed limit was 20 to 30 miles per hour. Button’s, the shipping and haulage agents at East Street, Warminster, had two Sentinel steam lorries. There was a blacksmith’s forge just inside the entrance to Button’s Yard. That was Fitz’s. Button’s depot has got a block of flats built on it now. Marriage’s Mill at Boreham had two Foden steam lorries, as well as horses and wagons. There were lots of horses and wagons about.”
“I can remember Mark Hill’s horses hauling timber carriages up Boreham Hill. They’d have six horses pulling a carriage loaded up with great big tree trunks. That used to be a sight. Mark Hill had his sawmills in Warminster, on the corner of Imber Road, where Hudson and Martin have got their builders’ materials yard now. There was a charcoal factory next to Mark Hill’s. There was a chair factory on the land behind the railway station, offering employment for ex-servicemen. There were only two or three other places in Warminster providing factory work for people. That was Jefferies Gloves at Fairfield Road, the silk factory at Pound Street, and Hall’s paintworks at Weymouth Street.”
“If we were playing about in the street at Bishopstrow, or kicking a football about in one of the fields, we would hear the fair engines coming round Temple Corner. We’d hear them rattling along. We’d run to the crossroads at Boreham to watch them go by. The traction engines used to stop at the little stream, beside the road, between the crossroads and Park Cottages. There was like a little pull-in there. It’s still there but there’s a little concrete bridge over the stream now [at the entrance to Spurt Mead]. That’s where the traction engines would fill up with water. The drivers knew where these places where. They had regular stopping places when they were travelling. The water wasn’t very deep at Boreham. It was only like a brook. They had a strainer over the end of the pipe so that they wouldn’t suck up a lot of dirt out of the bed of the stream. While they were stopped there, the drivers would also attend to the fires in the boilers. We kids would gather around to watch what they were doing. We thought anything like that was good to watch. There was always plenty like that to see. That was interesting to us. The drivers were alright. They were very friendly towards us. They did what they had to do and went on their way again.”
“We used to go to the fair in Warminster. That was held all the way through the town centre, straddling from the Post Office to the Athenaeum. That was something to see all those steam engines in the Market Place. It was real lively. There was lots of steam and lots of noise. The main street was packed. There wasn’t much traffic to come through, not at night. The fair was held twice a year, in April and October. It was known as Warminster April Fair or Warminster October Fair. The October one was better because it was darker and there was more of the fair lit up with paraffin flares. It was quite attractive. People would come to the fair from miles around, from all the villages. Well, it was something special, wasn’t it? People would come in from Imber to go to the fair. A pony and trap, belonging to some people called Pool, I think, used to bring people in from there and take them back. Imber was rather an isolated place. Before the War it was a pretty country village with its own pub. It was a farming community. Ploughing matches used to be held there. People used to walk from Imber to Warminster (about five miles), to shop and then they’d walk back home.”
“Warminster Fair was quite an event in the local calendar. We enjoyed ourselves. You could get a bag of chips at the fair for tuppence and we’d buy some to eat on the way home. That was a treat. Mother usually gave me some sweets once a week when she came back from shopping. My parents didn’t have much money so I didn’t get much pocket money. They would give me some when they had some to spare but usually I would get a few coppers by doing errands for people. If I ran an errand for someone they would give me tuppence or some sweets or a piece of cake. I would run an errand for anybody just to get a bit of cake.”
“I ran errands for Mrs. Barber who lived across the road from us. Mrs. Barber used to do our patching. Mother wasn’t no good at patching our clothes. She was more for cleaning. Mrs. Barber would see to our trousers and things. Mum bought our clothes in town but we didn’t have new very often. I had a lot of my brother’s hand-me-downs. I was older than him but he was bigger than me. It was hard times. I would go into Warminster, to the Co-op, to order Mrs. Barber’s groceries. I would take her book in. She would give me a piece of cake for doing that. That was a treat because we didn’t get much cake in those days.”
“Mrs. Barber shopped at the Co-op to get the divvy. Mother did the same. The Co-op was quite a big shop. It was a nice shop. Everything was weighed out on the scales. There were quite a few people working in there. The staff wore white aprons. You’d order what you wanted and they would deliver. The Co-op used to deliver bread and groceries with a horse and cart.”
“E.J. Butcher, the baker, at Silver Street used to deliver bread and cakes by horse and cart as well. Fred Sharp was the driver for Butcher’s. Bread was delivered every weekday. It was fresh bread. Mother used to be very particular. She’d look at the bread in the baskets and choose what she wanted. If it was too black she’d say ‘I don’t want that.’
“There were five bakeries in Warminster and the bakers delivered fresh, warm bread and cakes, with a horse and cart right to your front door in all weathers. Pity the roundsman on a rainy day. With more than one baker delivering there was a choice. Same as with the milk and groceries. Everett’s, the grocers in Warminster, used to come out to Bishopstrow and take people’s orders. They had a motorbike and sidecar at one time. They’d come out, take the order, and then deliver. Mostly on a Friday they’d deliver. Later on they had a van.”
“Warminster had a good variety of little shops. Nearly every shop had errand boys who delivered with handcarts or bicycles. After a while deliveries were made with a motor van, the shopkeeper having first been visited to place the order for what was needed. Nearly all the Warminster shopkeepers used to come out to Bishopstrow delivering. The shops delivered further afield than Bishopstrow as well, to Sutton Veny and the villages beyond.”
“Mother went into Warminster on a Saturday morning to do her shopping. I can remember going with her. She would walk into Warminster, like most people did in those days. Her first stop would be Porky Lewis’s shop in East Street. It was opposite the Mason’s Arms. It’s not there now. It’s recently been used for the sale of fabrics and was called Private Interiors but even that’s gone now. Porky’s old shop is empty again. It was a very good pork butcher’s shop. All around, on shelves and hooks, were hams and joints of bacon. Mother would choose what she wanted and I was allowed to turn the handle of the bacon slicer. My mum always paid for things as she bought them. The women carried a shopping basket. There were no supermarket trolleys (there were no supermarkets!) and there was no car to get the shopping home in.”
“Next to the Masons Arms was Tom Bellew’s place. He was a gents hairdresser and he also mended bikes. His shop was split between the two trades. If you went in there for a haircut and someone came in for a packet of fags or some hair oil he’d down tools and get the stuff out of the cupboard. You could be sat there for hours while he fussed about with customers and bicycles. I used to get my hair cut by Tom Bellew for two-pence. My mum would say ‘Go in there on the way home from school and get your hair cut.’ Tom would cut your hair and cover your head with oil. People used to joke that it was just as likely to be bicycle oil as hair oil. I always reckoned he put all that oil on your head to make your hair grow so that you would be back again. I reckoned it was good for trade. Tom Bellew’s shop passed to old Mrs. Batchelor but she’s dead and gone now. The shop is gone as well. It was demolished to widen the entrance into the Masons Arms car park.”
“Occasionally, mum and I went in Hicks’ shop at Boreham on the way home. We’d go in there to buy some stale sweets. Mr. Hicks ran a taxi. They were nice people. They made that shop what is it. Up until recently it was Hibbs’ antiques shop. Now it’s a shop selling returned catalogue goods. Where Boreham Post Office is now, was another shop. The Fitz family ran that. They sold tea and groceries and things like that.”
“Boreham Post Office used to be at the wheelwright’s yard, where the Marsh & Chalfont garage is now. The wheelwright was Mr. Down and he made and repaired carts and wagons. His wife, Mrs. Down, ran the post office, from a cottage there. You went down a passageway at the side, to a door. You went into what was just an ordinary room with a little table. We used to get our stamps there. Mrs. Down had a club foot.”
“If we wanted to post a letter we used the letter box in the village, the same one that is still there now. It’s the original Victorian letter box. Someone wanted to get rid of it, not so long ago, but the village wouldn’t let it happen. The letter box is situated in the wall of the cottage on the corner of Church Lane. Mr. Foyle was the village postman. He was very conscientious. In those days the postman used to knock your door to make sure you got a letter. It’s just the opposite today.”
“Where the seat is in the village now, at the junction of the main street with Church Lane and Dairy Lane, opposite the village hall, was the pound. Stray animals used to be penned there but that’s before my time. When I was a boy people used to hold public meetings there. When the local elections were on the candidates used to get there telling the villagers what they would do if they were elected. There used to be some proper carrying-ons and shouting. You can imagine the village yokels taking the candidates to task. There were big arguments.”
“In my childhood days Bishopstrow was a very lively place. Imagine how we felt when, in about 1926, Mr. Garrett from Brook Street, down at Warminster Common, came out to Bishopstrow selling ice creams. He had started doing a delivery round to the villages in the district. He wore a white coat and his float was pulled by a piebald pony. He had a nice shiny milk churn with the ice cream in. A cornet was tuppence. What a treat that was for us youngsters. Visits by Mr. Garrett were well-looked forward to. Later on, about 1930, boxed tricycles came on the scene, selling Lyons ice cream.”
“Scissor-grinders used to call at the houses. Rag-and-bone men used to come round. There was always someone travelling around collecting rags, woollies and rabbit skins. They’d have a horse and cart. They’d shout ‘Any old rags, any old rags?’ It was surprising how they made a living but they did. We often saw the Gipsies. They travelled about with their horses and caravans, selling homemade clothes pegs, bunches of heather and flowers. We often saw a tramp making his way through Bishopstrow. He would tap on someone’s door to get a crust of bread and his billycan filled with tea. One of the cottagers would gladly do this and the tramp would continue on his way. I remember one old tramp, an ex-miner from Wales, who always called on the rector each year. The rector would ask him to do some gardening jobs or other chores. In return the rector would pay him and give him a really nice dinner. The tramp would thank the rector and go on his travels again, quite happy.”
“There were no street lights in Bishopstrow but even in the dark evenings there were no muggings. Burglaries were rare. There were no hippies about, unlike today, and young and old were safe to walk the streets. All you hear about today are muggers and child molesters.”
“I started school in 1917 when I was three years old. I went to the little school in the village to begin with. Miss Heath, the teacher, used to pick me up on her way to school. She’d call at our house and say ‘Come on John, time for school.’ She lived in the cottage at the northern end of the rank. I think, at some time, Eastleigh Court bought those two end houses for staff. If someone came to work at Eastleigh Court they had to have somewhere to live. Those houses were reserved for that. Miss Heath lived on her own. She was in charge of the choir and she got involved in different activities in the village. She was shortish and plumpish. She wore glasses and she was very nice. I wasn’t frightened of her. She never punished any of us children. I never saw her tick anyone off.”
“Mrs. Pike, the head teacher, she was more strict. She lived next door to the school, on the Warminster side, where Mrs. Bigwood lives now. That was the school house. I don’t know what Mrs. Pike’s husband did for a living. I don’t remember much about him. The school room was divided into two. There was a screen across. The screen was a folding one and could be pulled back for dances and things like that when the whole room was required. There were two fire grates, one each side of the room. They were coal fires which were lit to warm the room on cold days. The toilets at the school were the bucket type, same as most people had outside their houses in the village. The toilets didn’t bother us. We didn’t know any different, so we had nothing to complain about.”
“Miss Heath looked after the younger children and Mrs. Pike looked after the older ones. There were a fair few going to the school. I think there were about 24 pupils there. It was a bit cramped. The other children at Bishopstrow School included the Cliffords, the Scanes and the Scotts. We were all very happy there, especially at Christmas time when we always had a nice party. The rest of our school life was very ordinary. There was a routine. We didn’t have an assembly. The teacher just started class. There were a few books but we didn’t have much. There was a little playground out the back. It used to get rather crowded because all the children, both the big ‘uns and the small ‘uns, would play together in rather a mix-up. The playground had a dirt surface with bits of grass coming up through. We played Ring-A-Ring O’ Roses and things like that. There were no accidents, that I can remember, despite the stone steps and the spiked railings.”
“It wasn’t too bad at Bishopstrow School. It was a bit boring but I was happy there. I don’t suppose my mother had much choice about sending me to the village school but she was keen that I should have a good start at learning, so to speak, and she knew I was in good hands. I was only at Bishopstrow School for about three years because the school closed in 1921. The outside of the building has hardly changed at all. The inside has a bit. It’s now the village hall but you can still see the old playground round the back. I was in Miss Heath’s class when the school closed down. I hadn’t moved up to Mrs. Pike’s class. Miss Heath went to teach at Longbridge Deverill after Bishopstrow School closed. She used to cycle backwards and forwards. One day she was hit by a car. It was a very nasty accident. It knocked her about a bit but she recovered except she lost her sense of smell. She carried on teaching at Longbridge Deverill until she finally retired. Miss Heath and her parents are buried together in the family grave in Bishopstrow Churchyard. It’s under the second yew tree. Miss Heath and her parents were very big church folk.”
“After Bishopstrow School closed it was empty for a while. Squire Temple handed it over to the village. The parish took it over for meetings and the Womens Institute used to meet there. Miss Hadow ran the W.I. She lived in The Cottage, where Tony Emmerson lives now. Miss Hadow was one of the leading lights of the village. The Women’s Institute used to organise outings and trips, which gave the ladies of the village the opportunity to experience something outside of their daily routine.”
“The old school was also used for the Sunday School and that was well patronised. Miss Heath was the Sunday School teacher. She was an expert on hymns, ancient and modern. If you mentioned a hymn number to her she could tell you which hymn it was and she could always recite some of the verses. They used to have Sunday school outings to Bratton and Edington. That was by horse and cart in those days. They borrowed the horse and cart off Bert Legg’s father at Home Farm or George Gauntlett at Middleton Farm. It was a bit of fun going in the horse and cart. It was something different for us. We went to the pleasure garden at Edington. There was an orchard there, with apple trees. We played games and had some tea.”
“Later on we went by charabanc to the seaside. That was better. Cruse’s or Cornelius, from Warminster, would provide the charabanc. That was lovely fun. We would congregate by the wall at the top of Church Lane, by the letter box, to wait for the charabanc to turn up. We’d be waiting there at about eight o’clock in the morning. A big cheer would go up when the charabanc came into view. People would shout hooray and we kids would wave our flags.”
“The charabanc didn’t go very fast. Going up the steep hills, like Lord’s Hill, there’d be the grinding of the gears. There was a row of doors, about five in a row, down each side of the charabanc. If it rained they’d pull the canvas hood up over. Once on the way to Weymouth it broke down at Maiden Bradley. The big end went. They sent out an old football lorry instead. It had seats both side. They took us on to Weymouth in that. It was all open. It was great fun. I remember sitting on somebody’s lap.”
“When we got to Weymouth we had donkey rides, we played about on the sands, and we had an ice cream each. And we’d have a tea at the Dorothy Cafe. That was on the sea front. The Dorothy Cafe was still there not long ago. We’d set off back for home about five o’clock. On the way home we’d be singing all the old songs like Bye Bye Blackbird. We were a happy-go-lucky bunch. We used to spend weeks looking forward to that outing.”
“We used to have two outings a year, one to the seaside and one elsewhere. That was our special occasions, the highlights of our year. We sometimes went to the Tidworth Military Tattoo. It started late at night. It was always a sight coming home to look back and see the line of lights from all the vehicles wending their way home. That was miles and miles of lights from cars and buses. It was a quite a thrill for us kiddies to see the tattoo. It broke the monotony of the year because there wasn’t much else going on.”
“There was a cinema in Warminster. It was called the Palace and it was in the Athenaeum building at the High Street. A man called Charles Rowe was in charge of the Palace Cinema. It was silent films. Someone did the piano accompaniment. If the film broke down, which happened often, the kids would start shouting. The Palace Cinema was alright provided you made sure where you sat. There were a couple of pillars and it was no good if you got stuck behind one of them. I remember once when my mates and I walked to the Palace Cinema, to see a film called The Ghost Train. I liked trains and I really wanted to see that film. We walked all the way from Bishopstrow into Warminster. I thought I had sixpence but when I got there I only had a threepenny bit. The cashier wouldn’t let me in. I didn’t have enough money, so I didn’t ever get to see the film. It was heartbreaking. The others had enough money and went in. I was left outside on my own. When I think about it I’ve been a bit of a loner all my life.”
“Sometimes Warminster Town Band would come out to Bishopstrow to play, in the street, or, more often than not, the village would be visited by the Salvation Army Band. The Sally Army were based at Warminster Common. The villagers used to enjoy hearing the bands when they came out to Bishopstrow.”
“Everyone seemed to help each other. Most people were working class and in the same situation. The people who lived in Bishopstrow were mostly farmworkers. They would go off to work on the land, carrying a straw bag on their back, in which was their grub for the day, usually some bread and cheese, an onion, and a bottle of cold tea. In Bishopstrow there was also a railway ganger, a cabinet maker and carpenter, a blacksmith, two thatchers, two shepherds, the traction engine drivers, and the people who worked at Boreham Flour Mill. There were also the domestic staff for the big houses, a butler, and, of course, gardeners. There were also two schoolteachers. People received a wage according to the work they did. They didn’t earn much and a rise in wages was a rare occurrence.”
“Folk didn’t bother much about going away for holidays. Only rich people could do that. Most workers only got two days off work each year. People worked long hours and thought nothing of it. People in those days had to be fit and strong to survive, and believe me, they were. They had to do almost everything by hand and they did a lot of walking. That’s how it was. Outside of work people spent their time attending to home, garden and allotment. There were no thoughts about holidays or booking trips away. That was unheard of.”
“Village folk made their own fun. There was no television like today but people found something to do one way or another. For a long time there was no wireless to listen to in the evenings. There were a few crystal sets about but only one or two in Bishopstrow. People didn’t stay up late in any case. The saying was ‘Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.’ That applied to adults as well as children. We children had to be in bed by six or seven in the evening so that we could be up early each morning to walk to school.”
“When I had to leave Bishopstrow School I went on to St. John’s School, at Boreham Road. Miss Lander was the head teacher there and she was strict. She was a terror and I had some run-ins with her. The other teachers were Miss Lyons and Miss Fitz. Miss Lyons lived at Holly Lodge, the old turnpike house on Boreham Road, the one with the clock above the door. Miss Fitz lived where Boreham Post Office is now. Her family ran the shop there and she assisted at the school.”
“I didn’t like going to St. John’s. That’s the honest truth. I didn’t want to study. I didn’t like the atmosphere there and I didn’t want to learn. My mother used to chase me to school because I wouldn’t go. Mother used to follow me with a stick. I would go a few steps and turn around to see if she was coming after me. There she’d be with that stick. I’d go on a bit further and turn round again. That’s how she got me to go to school.”
“Sometimes it would pour down with rain when we were on our way to school. We would get wet through. I’ve known the time when it poured so much that hardly any children turned up for school, and they sent us back home. They said ‘There’s no school today, you can go home.’ I used to think hooray when they said there was no school. Sometimes when we got home mother wouldn’t be there because she had gone out to work.”
“There were no school dinners. We took our sandwiches to St. John’s. There were two iron seats along the Boreham Road. The seats were on the top of Boreham Hill, on the north side of the road, about opposite where the National Trust have got the field now. We used to sit on them and have our sandwiches. We’d also have a drop of lemonade in a bottle.”
“We did reading, writing, and arithmetic at St. Johns. We never did exams. We had inkwells and pens to write with. There was a blackboard in the classroom and a tortoise stove. The best ones at reading could sit nearest the stove to keep warm. If you wasn’t so good you were back in the cold.”
“The Reverend Dixon used to come to the school on Good Friday to give a service. He lived at Prestbury House, at Boreham Road. I used to be a gardener at his place for a little while after I left school. Reverend Dixon was a big tall chap but he stuttered. Can you imagine a vicar that stuttered? They didn’t try to cure people with stutters in those days. The service was only a short one. He’d talk about the reason for Good Friday and Easter. We took in what was said. We respected vicars and those sort of people and we used to kowtow to them. We were scared stiff of them really. We were below them. We kids were given a hot cross bun each as we left school after the service. That was a treat.”
“Some kiddies were worse off than others. You could tell the poor ones by the state of the clothes they wore. Mine weren’t too good but they were better than others. Our clothes used to soon wear out because we were wearing the same ones all the time. We didn’t have many. It was a matter of having to make do and mend.”
“I went to St. John’s until I was about 11 and then I left and went to the Close School. That was different. We didn’t do P.E. There were no exercises at all. It was all reading and writing and arithmetic. We did sums and we did music but not singing, only learning about music. Everybody had to knuckle down and pay attention. You had to sit up and take notice. I hated school but I had to put up with it. I had to take it all in my stride. Schooling is soft now.”
“Harold Dewey was the headmaster. There were four or five other teachers. Gussie Greenland was my teacher to begin with and then Tommy Silcox took over. We had different teachers. Sometimes you went from one classroom to another. Miss Blackall and Miss Hayward were in charge of the girls. Harold Dewey took charge of both boys and girls. He had his favourites. He’d have all the nice girls sitting in the front. Of course, underneath the desks was all open. All teachers had their favourites.”
“Looking back I think our schooldays were rough and hard times but I enjoyed them even though I received the cane for minor things like talking in class. Us boys were at the back and Dewey always had his eye on us. If we misbehaved we got the cane straight away. Ernest Tanswell was in the same class as me. Scrubber Tanswell we called him. His parents had a clothes shop at the top of Town Hall Hill. Scrubber was a nice chap. He was big and tall and he stuttered a bit. Unfortunately for him he was always getting the cane. Another of my pals at the Close School was John House. He’s still a friend of mine. A lot of people know him these days, through his work as a dentist or his time as a local councillor.”
“All the teachers were keen with the cane and the ruler. The boys got the cane and the girls got the ruler. There was no nonsense with Harold Dewey. He had a cane that did bend a bit. If you didn’t hold your hand out straight he’d come up from beneath with it. You’d get the cane and walk back to your seat holding your hand under your other arm, tucked in.”
“I got the cane more than once. Sometimes I’d get the cane for nothing at all. There was a photographer called Joyce at the High Street. He had two sons at the school. One day, one of the Joyce boys was talking to me. I just happened to turn my head to hear what he was saying and Mr. Dewey said ‘Come out Francis.’ I had the cane but I wasn’t the one who was talking. It hurt.”
“Mr. Dewey was a disciplinarian but he thought he was doing the right thing. Many years after I left school I met him at a fete at the Avenue School. I said to my missus ‘This is the schoolteacher that used to give me the cane.’ He said ‘Yes, it just shows how bad you were. You deserved it.’ It just shows he had no regrets. That’s the way it was.”
“Once I had the cane five times during one playtime. That was five strokes from Gussie Greenland. I had to learn a verse of poetry. Five lines it was. He said ‘In a minute I’m going to call you out to say the poetry. Every time you stop you will get the cane.’ That’s how they used to get you to learn. This was during the playtime. The other children were out playing. Of course I stopped and it was bang. He did it five times. I didn’t cry. I was hard. I had to be. If a teacher did that today they’d be up for assault.”
“I suppose the teachers, years ago, were doing their job. Caning was their way of getting us to learn what was right and wrong and we knew no different. School was depressing and the discipline made you downhearted. I looked forward to the day I could leave school and get away from it. You had to watch your step not only when you were at school but also during out-of-school hours.”
“If you misbehaved outside school, if you upset anybody, they’d be liable to give you a clout. You’d get a clout from a stranger for upsetting them. We were afraid of getting into mischief. If you went home and told your parents what someone had done you’d get another clout from them. You never went and told your mother or father that someone had bashed you, otherwise you’d get in trouble again.”
“If we were playing football in a field and we got ordered out we just went into another field elsewhere. We used to go scrumping apples. There was an orchard by Bishopstrow Mill and we often went in there pinching apples. We also used to pinch gooseberries or rhubarb out of people’s gardens.”
“There was a policeman living at Sutton Veny. His name was Gough. Every so often he’d come through Bishopstrow on his bike and he’d keep his eye on things. He’d come through after six o’clock in the evenings during the summer. Us boys would be playing games. We used to play hey-jig-a-jig. One boy would bend down against a wall and another one would have to jump on his back and stay there. Then someone would have to try to jump on his back and so on. The policeman would see us doing this. He’d get off his bike and say ‘You boys! What are you boys doing?’ We’d say ‘We’re playing hey-jig-a-jig.’ He’d say ‘I’ll give you hey-jig-a-jig. You go home and get ready for bed.’ So, we’d have to go home. We couldn’t go fast enough to get out of Police Constable Gough’s way. There was another policeman at Heytesbury and he was P.C. Sims. In those days a policeman was a figure of authority and you respected him, unlike today when people have no respect for the police and refer to them as cops or pigs.”
“We had different times of year for doing different pursuits and games. When the weather in the winter was cold and frosty we used to run about outside with what we called a winter-warmer. That was an old cocoa tin with some holes made in each end. The lid was taken off and the tin was stuffed with some bits of old rag. The rag was lit and the lid was put back on. The rag would smoulder away and smoke would come out through the holes. We ran about with the tin in our hands. It kept our hands warm and was a fun game for us.”
“Lucas and Foot’s, in the Market Place in Warminster, sold toys. We played in the village street. We didn’t have to worry about traffic. The street was empty. In the evenings, work had finished, and there were no carts going through. We played hopscotch, marbles, and games with cigarette cards. We’d stand throwing the cards against a wall, seeing who could throw them the furthest. That’s the sort of things we used to do. One of the games was called Kings And Smugglers.”
“We had whips and tops too. We used to call them window smashers because sometimes they would fly off and smash someone’s window. If that happened you’d run off quick. On one occasion the neighbour Walt Moore come out. He was going to give us the stick. His wife called him back and told him not to be so silly.”
“The girls had skipping ropes and wooden hoops. We boys had tops and iron hoops. Playing with a hoop made us run. That was our exercise. I’ve ran from Bishopstrow to Heytesbury and back with a hoop and thought nothing of it. If you couldn’t find a hoop you ran along with a bicycle wheel. Mr. Fitz, at the forge along Boreham Road, nearly opposite Boreham Manor, would mend our hoops when we broke them. He’d charge sixpence for doing that. The join was welded together and it would come apart sometimes. Mr. Fitz didn’t mind seeing to it. He’d mend it there and then for you.”
“When I wrote down some of my memories in November 1990 I commented how pleased I was that the gateway and the original blacksmith’s buildings at Boreham Forge were still there and not converted into houses. Unfortunately I spoke too soon. The old gateway has gone now and the buildings have been converted into houses. The gateway has been bricked up and a new one made further along. That pretty little place where Mr. Fitz lived is now a big house with a huge roof. It’s out of all proportion to what it was. I’m surprised the planners let it happen. It’s done for money, that’s all people care about today. I think the old forge has been spoilt. Whenever I passed Mr. Fitz’s old forge I was reminded of my boyhood days but not now.”
“There were about six boys and six girls who had to walk from Bishopstrow to the Close School or Sambourne School in Warminster. Sometimes we would get soaking wet but we had to put up with it. We had no wellies or good raincoats. We took our sandwiches to school with us and a penny to buy a mug of cocoa. I walked from Bishopstrow to the Close School along Boreham Road. There wasn’t too much traffic going along there in those days, only the occasional cart. We would try, if we could, to get a lift behind a cart from Marriage’s Mill at Boreham. We’d try and hang on the back and get a lift that way. We’d hang on to try and save walking. On one occasion the carter came back to us with a hay prong in his hand. He soon made us get away.”
“Squire Temple, from Bishopstrow House, used to get about on a sit-up-and-beg bicycle. We used to see him cycling along Boreham Road. People used to take their hats and caps off to him. He was a magistrate and he loved to lord it over others. He hated people who smoked and he hated motorists. He used to openly call them road hogs. If anybody went up before him on a motoring offence he’d dish out the most expensive punishment he could. He was well- known for that.”
“On the way to school we would go into Mr. and Mrs. White’s shop, at the top of East Street, next to the Rose & Crown, where Bishopstrow Antiques are now. We’d go in there for sweets. Mr. and Mrs. White were old people. Jimmy White was a little bald-headed chap. Mrs. White would serve us. Years ago some of the shopkeepers would diddle you if they could but whether Mrs. White used to weigh out a few sweets short or not I don’t know. We were glad to eat whatever she put in the bag for us. Every time I go past that shop now it brings back memories of going in there when I was a child to get my sweets.”
“When we got to the bottom of East Street we were ready for a drink of water and we’d get one from the Morgan Fountain in the middle of the road outside the Post Office. That old fountain is in the Park today but it doesn’t work now. It used to be nice to see the fountain where it was in the Market Place. It was a regular stopping place for us on the way to and from school.”
“Marshman’s had a shop in the Market Place, where Thresher’s, the off licence, is now. Marshman’s were corn merchants and they sold animal feed and pet food. There were bags of dog biscuits and things like that on show outside the front of the shop. They had barrels and buckets of things on the pavement. They used to sell monkey nuts and sometimes we used to help ourselves as we walked past. Well, it was a great temptation. We used to pinch on the sly. We were quick and the shopkeeper didn’t see us.”
“Sometimes we’d go in the Co-op, on the corner of Market Place and North Row, and get two penn’orth of broken biscuits. They sold broken biscuits in those days. They used to kill pigs at the back of the Co-op in Warminster. I used to go up North Row and look through the gateway to see what they were doing. You could watch them poleaxing the pigs. That was a bit of excitement to watch them doing that.”
“We’d also go into the garden at the back of Charlie Corden’s shop. We went in that garden to see a monkey in a tall cage there. It belonged to Charlie. You could go in there whenever you liked. Nobody ever said anything to us. Charlie didn’t mind. He never grumbled. The cage went along and then up, with a pole inside for the monkey to go up and down. Us kids would stand there watching the monkey and we’d talk to it. We’d push our pencils through the wire and the monkey would take them. We used to tease that blighter. Charlie Corden also had a magpie in another little cage on the wall. The big wooden doorway into the garden is still there now, as it was. It’s at the back of what they now call the Long Room. I often look at that when I go down North Row now and it brings back so many memories. I’ve told Mr. Norris, who’s got Corden’s shop now, all about the monkey and the magpie.”
“Daymond’s had a cake shop in the High Street, not far from the Athenaeum. Daymond’s old place is now an insurance agent’s place [Clive Lewis]. We’d go in Daymond’s and buy some stale buns. Those buns were stale but they tasted jolly good to us. We loved ’em. We’d eat ’em quick and then we’d go round the corner into the Close and go into school.”
“We used to go out of the Close School during our dinner break to go to the Railway Station to see the steam locomotives. Two or three of us boys would go. We would stand on the fence outside the Station and watch. We knew there was a 1.20 p.m. passenger train. It was quite a sight to see a steam train coming into the Station. We used to watch the drivers. Every so often they’d get the hosepipe and splash us with water for a bit of fun. The engine drivers were like that. They were good fun. They would always wave at us kiddies. All the named rail engines came through Warminster, bar the King class, pulling passenger trains.”
“The railway was very busy with lots of lorries coming and going from the station. Coal came in from Radstock and Derbyshire. Livestock came in by rail as well. Warminster Cattle Market was next to the Station, where the Lidl supermarket car park is now. The market was another place of interest for us when we were schoolboys. It was held on Mondays, so every Monday we would go in the market during the school dinnertime. Sometimes there would be some new farm machinery from John Wallis Titt’s on show. Things like that ensured our school days passed quickly by. They were happy days. The teachers didn’t mind us coming out of school during the dinner break. They didn’t mind where we went as long as we were back on time.”
“Coming home from school in the afternoon we would very often see one of the Foden steam engines, belonging to Neville Marriage, making its way to Boreham Mill. Marriage had two of those engines. They’d trundle along with the smoke billowing out of the funnel. You couldn’t normally get a lift on them because they were going too fast but going down Boreham Hill they’d slow up a bit. They would put the brakes on going down the hill. Then we could hang on the back. All of a sudden the steersman would realise what we were doing and it would be bang, bang, bang. He would hit us with his cap to make us get off.”
“Another vehicle we always used to look for was the Sainsbury’s grocery van. We could get a lift home in that. The driver would let us. He used to stop at Bishopstrow, to deliver to the shop there. On one or two occasions we boys opened up the cigarette packets in the van and helped ourselves to a fag each. I was about 13. We never got found out or choked off. We’d go down the lane to the Reading Room, in Bishopstrow, and hang about there, smoking.”
“Both my dad and my granddad smoked. My granddad loved to smoke a pipe. He was always smoking. I remember he was at our house in Bishopstrow one day and mother said ‘Come on dad, your dinner is ready.’ He said ‘Ah, I’d sooner be having this,’ as he puffed away on his pipe. Mother smoked woodbines. She’d have a couple of puffs and then pinch it out and put it on the mantelpiece. Later on she’d light up again and have another puff or two.”
“I started smoking when I was 13. I smoked a pipe. We’d get bubble pipes from out of the sherbet or cereal packets. Breakfast cereal was about three halfpence a packet. Those pipes were made of clay. I used to pinch a bit of my dad’s tobacco when he wasn’t looking. About three or four of us boys from the village would get together, somewhere quiet, and we’d pass the pipe to each other and have a puff. We’d also pick up cigarette ends that had been thrown down. We’d crush them up and smoke the tobacco from them. In those days Woodbines were two-pence for a packet of five. As I grew older I got my own pipe. I always bought a good one, a Dunn’s or one like that. There were quite a few tobacconists about. I used to buy my pipes from Mr. Sheppard in East Street. He had a little shop, selling tobacco and smoking requisites, and he also repaired umbrellas. He was a crippled chap and he was usually sat in a chair. If he had to get about he’d shuffle along on his hands and knees. At Christmas time he’d give you a cigar if you went in his shop. He was very good.”
“I didn’t smoke a lot. Only an ounce or two a week. Tobacco was eight pence an ounce. I never smoked before 11 o’clock in the morning. The best smoke was always after an evening meal. Smoking is frowned upon today. You don’t see so many people smoking a pipe now. I think smoking is definitely bad for you. It doesn’t do you any good. It’s the nicotine. I stopped smoking years and years ago. I’m glad I gave it up.”
“I was 13 or 14 when I left the Close School. A few kiddies went on to high school but most of us went out to work. We didn’t have to take an exam when we left. We just came to the end of the term and left. We had reached the highest class and that was the end of that. Harold Dewey, the headmaster, never said anything to us when we left. Not to my knowledge he didn’t.”
“I don’t think my education was sufficient. There weren’t many brainy children in my day. I learned more after I left school and I am still learning now. When we were kids we weren’t wrapped up to learn. We were there because we had to and that was it. Today children have got everything in the way of opportunity. They’ve got computers and everything today but, with or without computers, there are lots of brainy children today. They know far more than what we did at their age. The only difference in schools now is the discipline. It’s slack now. If infants at school want to go to sleep today they let them go to sleep. It was different in my day. Harold Dewey never let us get away with anything. He was a stickler like that. He was an expert with the cane.”
“Now and again, when I was going to the Close School, I had a part time job, helping out Mrs. Paddock at Knapp Farm, on Temple Corner. Mrs. Paddock was very nice but it was a worry for her trying to make the farm pay. She was a widow and her husband died fairly young. He must have been in his sixties when he died. They had a son, Jimmy Paddock, but he didn’t get on very well with his parents. He was a bit bossy. He was a bit of a la-de-da. I don’t know where he lived but he had a clothes shop in Warminster, next to the Town Hall.”
“Mrs. Paddock was very old-fashioned. She always wore a gown and bonnet. I got on alright with her. She had a man called Jim Forsyth to help on the farm. He was really her head man. The farm wasn’t much. They had six or seven cows. They were Friesians but most farmers in those days had Shorthorns. Mrs. Paddock’s cattle were kept in the fields around Bishopstrow. She had a field by the allotments and other fields further over. I had to go down the fields, especially when Mr. Forsyth was busy haymaking, to get the cattle in for milking. They were driven up Watery Lane and along the main road to the farm for milking. They knew where they were going. It wasn’t much bother. I used to have to do that once a day and I enjoyed doing it. It got me sixpence for pocket money. Mother used to send me up to Knapp Farm on Sundays in the summer, to get some cream to go with our strawberries for tea. Mrs. Paddock would let us have some cream in a jam jar.”
“Paddocks did a little milk round. Mum got her milk from Paddock’s. She favoured Mrs. Paddock. The milk was dipped out of a churn on the back of a horsedrawn cart into a jug. They had half pint and pint measures. The Dawkins family, at Mill Farm, did a milk round as well. They used to deliver in Bishopstrow and up Boreham Road into town. Same as the Legg family at Home Farm. They kept a dairy and did a milk round too. They were all in competition with one another.”
“I used to go up Home Farm quite a bit. My dad used to go up there helping with haymaking part-time. Mr. Legg used to come down to our cottage. He’d say ‘We want to pick up some hay this evening, Charlie, can you come and give us a hand?’ Dad would say ‘Yes, I’ll come up.’ Dad would cycle up to the farm on mother’s bike. He would join in with the other chaps and get the haymaking done. Mr. Legg used to bring a jar of cider and some cheese out for the chaps when they finished. I’ve known dad come home the worse for drink where he had drank some cider. You try and imagine him riding home on his bike like that.”
“These days we don’t hear much about haymaking or harvest time because the farmers now get on with it, quietly and easily, with machinery. When I was a boy it was always an interesting time. Horses pulled the mowers and the hay-rakes. The mower would go round and round the field and when it got near the centre the rabbits would come dashing out. We’d often see the farmhands trying to catch the rabbits. The hay would be turned and dried and the smell was lovely and sweet. When the hay was ready it was pushed into an elevator which carried it up to the men on top of the ricks. We children enjoyed watching anything like that.”
“At corn harvest all the sheaves were stacked in groups in the fields to dry and then they were loaded by hand on to carts and hauled in to the rickmakers. The farmers were glad of some help and the phrase ‘Many hands make light work’ comes quickly to mind. Those were nice times and the summer seemed to go on and on forever.”
“The Legg family were lovely people. They were very hard-working. I knew all the Legg boys – Wilf, Garf, Les, and Bert, and their sister Rhoda. I knew them all fairly well. They were all nice people. They’ve had their share of tragedies but they keep going. I didn’t know much about Mrs. Legg but I went up there once to sweep the chimney for her. Mrs. Legg wanted that done and my mother said to her ‘My son will do that for you.’ My mother told me to go up there. Mrs. Legg was alright.”
“The Bazley family had Boreham Farm, where the playing fields are now, next to Boreham Crossroads. In my early days there was only a footpath, beyond what is now the crossroads, from Boreham to Woodcock. Woodcock Road wasn’t built until the Second World War years. The road only connected town with John Wallis Titt’s, a firm which dealt in making farm machinery, digging wells and pumping water by windmills. Boreham Farm has gone now. It was all demolished about 30 years ago, when they built St. George’s School. The only part of the farm which survives are the two thatched cottages just up from the crossroads. There used to be a five bar gate near those cottages and the fields around there were used for growing corn, mangolds, turnips and sugar beet. Young lads would go into those fields, when no one was looking, and pinch a few turnips for their mums’ cooking pots.”
“Boreham Farm had a big house. It wasn’t particularly grand, only like a farmhouse but it was lovely. There was a proper driveway up to the house with flower borders each side. There were lots of barns and outbuildings. The barn owls used to nest there. It was nothing to see several barn owls in the evenings flying around Boreham. There was a big wall all around the farm but there’s only part of the wall left now. It runs alongside Boreham Road, from opposite Park Cottages to opposite the Post Office. There used to be a doorway in the wall. Where the wall starts, opposite Park Cottages, if you look down you’ll see the bricks beneath your feet where the doorstep used to be.”
“Bazley had a big farm. The land went all up over Battlesbury and beyond. They grew corn and had two big steam engines for ploughing and cultivating. They reared cattle and they kept pigs as well. They used to keep a lot of poultry. I worked for Bazley for a little while. I helped with the poultry. I was still at school. I used to go up there part-time. A fellow named Jones who lived in one of the houses by Boreham Crossroads [48 Boreham, now 159 Boreham Road] was in charge of the poultry. They had hundreds and hundreds of chickens living free-range. The chickens were fed on maize and corn. Mr. Jones saw to all that. The chickens were fattened up and sent off. Some were sent away, alive in baskets. I can remember putting them in wicker baskets, ready for despatch. Some were killed and plucked. There was a big greenhouse at the farm. We used to burn all the feathers in the greenhouse fire. I must have put thousands of feathers in that fire. I also had to do odd jobs in the house, like cleaning knives, for Mrs. Bazley.”
“They said the old man, Arthur Bazley, went bankrupt or nearly bankrupt because he used to go off to the horse races. Arthur was crazy for going horseracing. He’d go to Salisbury and Newbury, anywhere and everywhere he could. He had a car and off he would go. They reckoned he lost money all the time. He’s buried at Bishopstrow Churchyard. Arthur’s son, Tom, didn’t show much interest in the farm. Tom was more interested in driving lorries and buses for a living. He used to go off doing that and the farm went down hill. He let the fields go to pot. It all went to rack and ruin. It was a shame really.”
“There were quite a few farmhands working for Arthur Bazley. They lived in the two thatched cottages and the houses on the Salisbury side of Boreham Crossroads. In the evenings we used to see the barn owls flying around the meadows at Boreham. There were also owls in the wood on Battlesbury and in front of Barrow House before the trees there were thinned out. Half the trees have been cut down and the drive to the house has been improved. Years ago we used to hear lots of owls at night but not now.”
“One of my pals was Fred Hiscock. He lived with his parents in one of the cottages down by Bishopstrow Church. There were two semi-detached cottages there. Hiscock lived at the far end (village side) and Curtis lived this end (church side). Those two cottages are made into one now. It’s called Glebe Cottage now.”
“Fred’s father, Topper Hiscock, worked for Mr. Gauntlett at Middleton Farm. Topper was a smallish chap and he was quiet. He was alright. His wife wore the trousers. She was the boss. Topper used to drive a steam engine. Gauntlett had two steam engines for tilling the fields. Fred and me would go up Middleton to watch these engines at work. They would have an engine on each side of a field, which dragged the plough or a cultivator across the field. Then they would move the engines up the field a little way and drag the plough back across. And so on. They would gradually work their way up the field. There wasn’t much noise. They blew their hooters every so often, to indicate stopping and when to wind the cable. Edgar Scane would be sat on the cultivator, steering it. That was a dangerous job. If the cable broke and spun round it could kill you. The engines were filled with coal. They’d have a water cart for the engines and one of the Bourroughs brothers would be on that. If you want to see anything like that today you have to go to one of these steam engine rallies.”
“Of course, if there was anything happening which was of interest, us children were sure to be there to see it. We loved going up to Bishopstrow Farm to see Gauntlett’s sheep being dipped or sheared. Same as we enjoyed watching the corn ricks being threshed by the steam engine. The sheaves in the ricks were home to rats and mice. Before threshing started a fence of wire netting was put all around the rick. When nearly all the sheaves had gone and the rick was low the dogs were put in to catch the rats. The men would tie string around the bottoms of their trousers and they would use sticks to hit the rats. It was quite a sight to see that happening. That’s how the farmers dealt with vermin in those days. There wasn’t so much in the way of powders and poisons.”
“Someone else who worked for Gauntlett’s was Tim Scane. He was a farm labourer. He was a nice chap. He never married and he lived with his widowed sister Mrs. Doughty. At one time her father and mother also lived there but they died. Tim used to sit on the doorstep, singing and playing the accordion. He used to do a song called Buttercup Joe. At one time Tim played at a party at the school. There wasn’t much to do in those days. You had to make your own entertainment.”
“Tim Scane used to like a drink. He’d have a bottle under his coat. He’d go in the off-licence in Bishopstrow in the evening and get the bottle filled up. He’d come out and drink that. Then he’d go in and get another one and drink that. He’d come across the road. There was a wall by our cottage. He’d put the bottle over the back of the wall and go home. After a while he’d come back, get the bottle, go in the off-licence again and get it filled up again. He did that most evenings. He was never drunk though.”
“There were a couple of thatchers living in Bishopstrow. They were the Everleys, father and son. They worked for Gauntlett’s, thatching the ricks and cutting the hedges on the farm. The father, Jacob Everley, used to make the spars and trim the straw. I didn’t see a lot of him. The outside of the Everley’s cottage, at Dairy Lane, was always covered in straw because Jacob used to work outside of there. His son, George Everley, used to go up the farm and thatch the ricks. He used to walk to work. Everybody did in those days. Jacob and George are buried at Bishopstrow Churchyard.”
“Mrs. Everley used to do the teas for the Saturday cricketers. I can remember seeing her taking them a big, mouth-watering, chocolate cake on a tray. We boys could only dream about having a piece of that. It was a lovely chocolate cake with lots of chocolate on the top. You can imagine how us kiddies used to look at that. We never got any. Mother used to make a currant cake and we’d be allowed one slice of that a day if we were lucky. I used to love cake. If I saw a playmate at school eating some cake I’d say ‘Leave the crust for me,’ so I could have a taste. Cake was a luxury for us hard-up children.”
“Bishopstrow used to have a good cricket team, especially when the Reverend Wansey was at St. Aldhelm’s. He was a big chap and he was in the team. Another player was Mr. Gerald Kaye. Those two together could beat the Warminster team on their own. The Reverend Wansey and Mr. Kaye were the Bishopstrow stalwarts. Stan Cowdry, the postman, was also in the team. He used to live in the village but he later lived at Ferris Mead in Warminster. And of course, the Everleys also played cricket for Bishopstrow.”
“Mr. and Mrs. George Gauntlett were nice people. They were involved with raising money for the church and things. They used to hold fetes at Bishopstrow Farm. They used to fix up an alpine railway, with a wire running from a tree to a rick. And they used to let people use the barn at Middleton Farm for dances. The barn was swept out and the young people used to walk from Bishopstrow over there for dancing. We looked forward to it. That was life for us.”
“Every year I used to have a fortnight’s holiday at Farmer Cook’s farm, at Bemerton, near Salisbury. It was called Bemerton Farm. My granddad, that’s Granddad Taylor, was Mr. Cook’s cowman. He was in charge of the cattle. I used to spend a fortnight with him every year. He had a beard and he wore a trilby hat. Granddad lived in a nice house at the farm. It’s still there. It’s the farm with the dovecote in the yard. You can see it, across the field, when you travel into Salisbury on the A36. There was a proper stone road from the Salisbury road to the farm but I think it’s gone now. I think it’s overgrown now.”
“Beyond the farm were the meadows. That was all Cook’s fields and that’s where they kept the milking cows. I used to help my granddad get the cows in. There were grass snakes in the meadows. I don’t like snakes and I don’t like spiders. We spent the entire fortnight on the farm. We didn’t go into Salisbury or anything like that. I went to and from the farm by bus. There was a Wylye Valley bus in those days. I used to enjoy going to Bemerton for a holiday. When I got home my brother Len used to go to the farm for the following fortnight. He used to cry. He didn’t want to go. He didn’t want to leave his mother but he had to go.”
“My brother and I loved each other but we could never agree with one another. He was more of a la-de-da sort of a chap. He couldn’t do any hard work. Len wouldn’t even mend a puncture on his bike. I had to do all that for him. He was more for indoors. He wouldn’t play with the other boys outside. He was a bit spoilt by my parents. He was the baby and he was their pet. I had to take the rough and he had it easy. I accepted it.”
“When Len left school he started work as an errand boy at Everett’s, the grocers, in Warminster. He did try gardening but his feet used to get sore and they’d blister and break open. At one time he worked as a bird-scarer for Wheeler’s. That suited him down to the ground. It was summertime and he could strip off and soon get brown. He was on the dark-skinned side. He got that from mother’s side of the family. Wheeler’s had a shop at East Street and nurseries where Plants Green is now. They grew Wheeler’s Imperial cabbages. They were grown, from where Plants Green is now, down over to the Marsh. Wheeler’s had lovely crops of greens there but they’d be plagued with pigeons. They tried scarecrows but the birds soon got used to those. So they tied strings across the fields, with empty tins attached to the string every so often. Leonard had to pull the string and make the tins rattle. That’s all he had to do through the summer during the lovely hot weather. That suited him. He enjoyed doing that. This is after he left school.”
“Len spent the rest of his working life in service. He went on as butler and footman. He started off first as a footman with Sir Francis and Lady Lacey at Sutton Veny House. He didn’t stay there long because the butler was one of those who used to touch up young boys. That sort of thing used to go on. Leonard didn’t like that so he moved on to Dauntsey’s School at Lavington and then to a place near Chard in Somerset. He was there a long time. They thought the world of him. Eventually he worked at Hythe Mess at the School of Infantry.”
“Growing up, Len and I preferred different things. I used to go out with the lads and do what they were doing. Len wouldn’t. The Maslen family lived across the road from us. Mrs. Maslen had to struggle. She brought her children up, more or less on her own, because I think her husband died young. She had several children. There was Frank, Bill, George, and a couple of girls including Dorothy. I used to play with them. Bill Maslen is still alive. He lives in one of the flats [Kyngeston Court] at the Close in Warminster. He’s a bit older than me, a couple of years I expect.”
“The Maslen boys had a trolley with big iron wheels. We used to get some lard to grease the axles. It was a four wheel trolley and you could sit on it and steer it with a rope. We had lots of fun with it. We’d pull it to the highest part of the street, just past the old school building, and then, with one of us on board to steer, we’d push it, gathering speed as we went before all of us could jump on for a ride. We’d whizz around the corner and end up halfway down Church Lane. After a thrilling ride like that we’d pull the trolley back to where we had started from and have another go with someone else steering. Of course there wasn’t much traffic coming through Bishopstrow in those early days, thank goodness, and we could play in the street, in much the same way as children could in most villages.”
“Something in the summer that brought us lots of happiness was when we boys and girls went paddling or learning to swim in the river just beyond Bishopstrow Mill, where the trout farm is today. When we were older we boys used to go down to Mount Mill swimming. The mill was long gone but the brickwork was still there. It was just off the Norton Bavant road. There was a big pool and a large waterfall there. We used to spend most of the summer holidays down there. Even if it was pouring with rain we still went down there most days. We used to go off to Mount Mill on our bikes. Our parents didn’t seem to worry about where we were. We had fun. I didn’t get in the water until I saw the big boys had got out and were dressing. I was a bit wary of them. I was younger. When they saw me getting in they’d get undressed again and come in again. They would try to duck you. That was their fun. I learnt to swim there. There was no trouble. No one ever came along and told us off. Sometimes there’d be as many as 15 of us children there. If we got thirsty and wanted a drink there was always plenty of water in the surrounding meadows, and I never heard of anyone contracting any illnesses from swimming in the river. Children from miles around used to go to Mount Mill to swim in the summer.”
“We used to go up Battlesbury Hill to play. We virtually lived up there when we were boys. It took us less than quarter of an hour to get up there. There were hundreds of sheep on the downs. It was an ideal place for them. There were no bushes growing up the slopes of the hill like now because of the sheep. There were no ugly shrubs or hawthorns. The sheep kept them down. It was all grass. Same as along the golf links at Westbury Road. There are shrubs and trees there now but not when I was a boy.”
“I can remember seeing the old shepherds with thick corn sacks draped over their shoulders or round their waists. It meant nothing to us to see a flock of sheep or cattle being driven through Bishopstrow. That was a regular sight, particularly in the evening. They would either be coming from or going to the market or the railway station in Warminster. There were farms all around the district and Warminster was, as it had been for many years, a market town providing good business for the farmers and dealers.”
“During the spring the meadows around Bishopstrow would be flooded with water, to encourage the grass to grow. That was important for the cattle. The farmers always relied on good crops of early grass. The ditches used to be dug out during the winter, ready for the spring. The water used to come from the Wylye. Alongside the Weirs were hatches. You can still see where the old hatches were. A channel, alongside the path, used to fill with water and those hatches were used to regulate the flooding of the meadows. We could go out into the meadows catching minnows. There were plenty. You’d see a dozen of us kiddies out in the meadows playing around. No one told us to get out. We took jam jars and brought the minnows home. Mother didn’t like it when we did that.”
“All the village boys used to go bird-nesting for eggs. We always looked for birds’ eggs. When we went bird-nesting we always left at least one egg in the nest for the hen bird. We used to blow them out. I had a collection of about a dozen. I used to keep them in the toilet at the top of the garden, out of mother’s way. We used to get up to all sorts. Sometimes we used to go down by the Reading Room and light a fire and cook some of the eggs. Today it’s illegal to collect birds’ eggs but it was a normal thing for boys to do years ago. We thought nothing of it then.”
“There was a sand pit up Grange Lane. They must have dug sand out of there for building but they had stopped using it before I was a kiddy. The sand martens nested in holes there. You could see them going in and out. The old sand pit has been covered in now. There was another quarry, a chalk one, where St. George’s Close is now.”
“The men from the village used to meet at the Reading Room. It was looked after and painted on a regular basis. It was a very thriving place. The Reading Room was always well patronised. The chaps used to play cards in there, and darts, and they used to play billiards. Mr. Gerald Kaye, who lived at Yew Tree Cottages and did the account books for Mr. Gauntlett’s farms, gave a billiard table to the Reading Room. Mr. Kaye was a very good chap. I didn’t know much about him, except he also used to help out with the Women’s Institute.”
“The men could also play quoits in the evenings, outside the Reading Room. They had great big iron hoops and a proper bed there. They’d take aim and the one who threw his hoops nearest the feather was the winner. They had a feather for a peg. The quoits were played every Sunday evening by the Moores and the Everleys. George Everley used to be in charge, more or less, of the Reading Room. He lived near it. Bert Cole used to be another one of the leading lights there.”
“I didn’t go in the Reading Room very often. On the opposite side of Dairy Lane were the allotments, which were on higher ground. We kids used to get in the allotments during the dark evenings and throw stones over the lane, on to the galvanised roof of the Reading Room. We used to do that for devilment. The stones would rattle and bang on the roof, upsetting anyone who was inside. The men would come out with their billiard cues and chase us off. That happened more than once.”
“The village rubbish dump was at the Island, behind the churchyard, across the meadow. There was a bit of a bridge there across the little river. In that coppice, next to Watery Lane, was the Island. That’s where the villagers dumped their rubbish. We kids used to go over there to see what had been scattered around. We used to go there smashing bottles and lighting fires. No-one ever told us off. We could play there all day without ever getting hooked out. There must be hundreds of old bottles and valuable things buried there.”
“There must have been a lot of orchards in Bishopstrow over a hundred years ago. There were only about two left when I was a boy. We used to go scrumping in them. We threw sticks up to knock the apples down. We’d get pocketfuls of apples and we’d go off somewhere to light a fire and cook them. That was something to do. There was an orchard belonging to the Gauntlett family, by Bishopstrow Mill. We got chased out of there once or twice but they never caught us. The other orchard was opposite Miss Hadow’s place, the Cottage, on the Boreham side of the village. We didn’t go in that one much. It still exists. You can still see it today.”
“A missionary used to come out to Bishopstrow every so often and put up his tent by the oak tree near the corner of the cricket field. Quite a crowd used to gather. An organ provided some music and people sang hymns. We boys used to go down there and watch what was happening. One or two of us would play the fool and get told off.”
“I joined the Scouts at Woodcock. Opposite Holly Lodge, on Boreham Road, a path went off, diagonally, across the fields to Woodcock. That’s the way we used to go to Scouts. We used to come back that way to. The Scout Hut was where Chancery Lane is now. It was a wooden hut and it wasn’t very big. Lady Scobell owned the land there. She lived at Belmont, on the Boreham Road. We used to put on shows in St. John’s Hall. A lot of people used to come to watch because there wasn’t much else on. I didn’t go to the Scouts at Woodcock for long.”
“When they started the St. John’s Troop I joined that but I didn’t stay there long either. Only long enough to get a cap and a pole. They used to meet at St. John’s Parish Hall. The Teichman Hall was built later. That’s where they met later on. Another time I joined Mr. Greenland’s scout troop. We went on a camp to Shearwater. I was in a tent with some other boys talking about Gussie Greenland. We were saying ‘Gussie Greenland this’ and ‘Gussie Greenland that.’ Unbeknown to us he was outside the tent listening to us. All of a sudden he said ‘Who’s talking about Gussie Greenland?’ They said ‘John Francis.’ He said ‘Well, tell him to shut up and behave himself.’ Me again, I was always getting into trouble.”
“When I left the Close School I went to work as an errand boy. Most shops had errand boys who delivered with bicycles. I went to work at International Stores in the Market Place. It’s no longer there now. It was where Payne’s the newsagents are now. International had their own errand boy’s bicycle. I had to go to Corsley and the other villages. I had never been that way before. We had to find our way around in all weathers. We took the orders and away we went. I started at eight in the morning and worked until five. That was five days a week, Monday to Friday. I got eight shillings a week. I gave it to mother and she gave me two shillings a week back. I bought a bike out of that. I got it from a shop and it cost a pound. I had to pay 5 shillings and ten pence a month for it.”
“I didn’t stay at International Stores very long. I went on to work as an errand boy for Turner And Willoughby. They were next to the Town Hall. They had a china shop and they also sold prams, furniture, and furniture polish. The shop had huge glass windows. There was a showroom on the first floor and that’s where the prams and things were.”
“I had to push a handcart with furniture on. I had to go as far as Corsley and Heytesbury. I had to go up to North Farm behind Scratchbury Hill once. Can you imagine pushing a cart to there? I was the only errand boy at Turner And Willoughby’s. I got eight shillings a week. They had a man in the shop. His name was Dewey. He used to go laying lino if anyone bought it from the shop.”
“Every day we had to put all the crockery on tables and shelves outside the front of the shop and take it back in at closing time. There was a step outside the shop door. It dropped down. One day, when we were taking the crockery out, I didn’t see the step. I missed it and I went flying. The crockery went everywhere and broke in pieces. The owner of the shop went wild. I had to pay for the crockery I had broken, so much a week, until the debt was cleared.”
“I was at Turner And Willoughby’s for quite a while. A married couple took it over for a £1,000. That was a lot of money. They tried to get it to pay but they didn’t have much of a trade. Many was the time we would be sat waiting for customers. This couple went bankrupt and I had to leave. Kendrick & Co. took it over eventually and Jimmy Paddock had a drapery shop next door.”
“I was unemployed for a long time. This was the 1930s and it was a terrible period. I had to sign on. The employment office was in the Market Place, opposite Weymouth Street, where Taylor & Sons, the estate agents, are now [Taylors closed December 1998]. Mr. Pullin was in charge of the Labour Exchange and he was a strict bloke. There used to be a big queue of blokes at the Labour Exchange. People who were on the dole were looked down on like tramps. We were like the scum of the earth. The dole wasn’t a lot. It was means tested too. If you had been on the dole a while and wasn’t getting any work they’d make you get rid of any valuables you had, like a piano. They would take it away. I didn’t have to suffer that but lots of married men did. My mother and father didn’t moan at me about it. We just hoped for the best. You felt there was no future. You had no idea how long it was going to last. You envied anyone who had a permanent job, like on the railway. I was getting desperate. I’d do any little job from weeding to window cleaning.”
“You had to take whatever jobs came up. If you didn’t do it you didn’t get any dole. Farmers used to want help, temporarily, hoeing turnips and swedes. We were given a green card and sent out to the farmers. One place I went to was Mr. Jones’, at Manor Farm, Corsley. We also went out to the farms threshing. I was going out to Corsley one time and I met some blokes coming back. They said ‘Are you going out to Farmer Jones?’ I said ‘Yes.’ They said ‘Don’t go out there. He’s a slave driver. We’re on our way back.’ They’d had enough. I had to go and work there for a couple of days or I wouldn’t have got any dole money. The farmer would complain if you didn’t turn up. You were glad to do any work to get some money. It was hard times.”
“Eventually I got a job in the garden at Bishopstrow Rectory. A new Rector came and he went into Mrs. Stevens’ shop at Bishopstrow and said he wanted help in his garden. Because my family lived opposite the shop, Mrs. Stevens thought of me. She said to me ‘You go down there and don’t let us down. You’ll do alright there.’ It was a big garden and there had previously been two gardeners looking after it. The new Rector was the Reverend [Jasper Selwyn] Bazeley, [M.A]. He was a very nice chap.”
“Mrs. Bazeley told me what I had to do in the garden. She was very strict. There was a big lawn at the back. I wasn’t allowed to mow it until she said I could. The grass would grow up and then I would have to use a push-mower. She’d say ‘I want you to spend no more than two hours on that lawn.’ She’d get up in the bedroom window watching me. Of course she’d let the grass grow too long for mowing. She wouldn’t buy no new gardening tools and it was hard work.”
“Mrs. Bazeley was very much the boss. I was at her beck and call at all times. She played the organ in Bishopstrow Church. I had to pump it for her. I got lumbered. She wanted me to sing while she played to make sure she was playing in tune but I couldn’t sing so it never got to that.”
“Mrs. Bazeley was an ex-nurse and she had got quite high up in nursing. If I had a cold she insisted I go in the kitchen and have a spoonful of cod-liver oil. She was very strict like that. On another occasion I was sawing wood, I looked up to see who was going by, and the saw jumped out and cut my thumb. I dared not go and tell her. She would have sent me to hospital. I was very wary of her. Rather than see her I went all round the garden in pain.”
“I also had to look after the central heating and get the car going. Reverend Bazeley used to go to St. Monica’s, at Vicarage Street in Warminster, and take a service there on some mornings. I would start work at about seven o’clock in the morning. My first job, on the days when the rector had to go to St. Monica’s, was to wind the Austin Seven up. Sometimes it wouldn’t start and the housemaid and me would have to push the car up Church Lane and back to try and get it going. The housemaid was called Alice Cowley. She lived in but her home was at Monkton Deverill.”
“One year Mr. and Mrs. Bazeley went on a tour to Wales in the Austin Seven. They left me in charge of the garden. Before they went she said ‘For every dandelion I find in the garden when I get back you will have your pay docked.’ I used to curse her under my breath but it was a job and I had to do it. A lot of people were out of work.”
“Mrs. Bazeley had a relation in Wales who was a market gardener. He sent her some trees and she gave me instructions how to plant them. I had to dig a trench and put turf in the bottom and lime it. As well as planting hedges I had to grow beans and things. I learnt gardening the hard way at Bishopstrow Rectory. I didn’t even know how to put beans in when I went there. I used to say to dad ‘Ere, I’ve got to put some beans in, how do I do that?’ He’d tell me. I had to do all the hoeing and mowing.”
“The Bazeleys had a mowing machine that had to be pulled and pushed. My granddad used to walk from Longbridge Deverill to Bishopstrow every Thursday just to help me with the mower in the garden at the Rectory. It was hard work pulling the mower. Half the time I thought he can’t be pushing. Granddad would spend the day helping me and then walk back to Deverill again. Mother used to say to him ‘Stay and have a cup of tea,’ but he wouldn’t. He’d prefer to get on back home. He was only a little chap. He had a beard and he was a farmworker.”
“I worked at the Rectory until Bazeley left. He had a bad heart. I think he died of heart trouble. Mrs. Bazeley went to a nunnery down at Bournemouth. She was the head one there and she sacked half of the staff. The Reverend Earl became the new rector at Bishopstrow.”
“I did a short time at Sutton Veny House for Mr. Weeks. He was the head gardener there. I could do the menial things like hoeing and mowing but being a boy I didn’t have no knowledge of plants. He wanted someone with that sort of experience, so I didn’t last long there. He was growing vegetables and flowers for the house. He had posh flowers in the greenhouse which required watering in a particular way. In the springtime there was a lot of pricking-out to be done. He gave me the job of doing that. He showed me how to do it and went off. He came back about half an hour later. I had done three boxes but I had done them wrong. He starting shouting ‘This is not a bit of good,’ and he was snatching the plants out. That was the end of my employment there.”
“Sutton Veny House used to be called Greenhill House. During the First World War it was used by Australian and New Zealand soldiers. There were also big camps all around the village. We used to go out to Sutton Veny when we were kiddies, getting sweet chestnuts. We’d get in under the trees alongside Sutton Veny Common. The gardener would see us and start shouting at us. He’d run us off. We’d scarper and we’d go back there when we thought he was gone.”
“I went to work as a garden lad, at Barrow House, in Bishopstrow, for the Tanner family. They were nice people, especially Mrs. Tanner. Mr. Humphrey Russell Tanner was a business man. I didn’t see much of him. He was the Tanner part of Butler And Tanner, the book printers at Frome. Mr. and Mrs. Tanner had a car each. Mr. Tanner’s was a sports one. The Tanners had a chauffeur called Mr. Harris who lived in the cottage at the back of Barrow House. He had come out of the Navy and taken on the post as chauffeur. The first job he had was to take Mrs. Tanner and the children to Brighton. The Tanners had two or three children but I didn’t see much of them.”
“Mrs. Harris worked in the house, and so did her daughter. Two or three other girls worked in the house as well. My mother also used to work there sometimes. I can’t remember the chef’s name but he had a false leg and, like Mr. Harris, he had also been in the Navy. He was very jolly. Mr. Stevens, from the off-licence in Bishopstrow, used to work at Barrow House as well. Oh yes, the Tanners had a big staff.”
“Every New Year’s Eve the Tanners would arrange a nice dinner, a party, for their staff, in the large dining room at Barrow House. The staff were allowed to invite a few of their friends. Everything was provided including cigarettes and cigars. The Tanner family would come in during the evening and ask if we were all enjoying ourselves. They would wish us all the best for the New Year before they retired for the night. As Bishopstrow Church clock was striking midnight we would go outside, regardless of the weather, to dance and sing, to welcome in the New Year. We used to sing Auld Lang Syne before making our way home. I can still remember how much we enjoyed ourselves.”
“I worked for the Tanners for quite a while. I had to call Mrs. Tanner ‘Ma’am.’ She used to call me ‘Francis.’ I had to wear a waistcoat and a shirt with a collar and tie at all times. The Tanners were alright to work for but they were very strict. If I had a cold I didn’t have to cough, even out in the garden. It was like that.”
“Mr. and Mrs. Tanner had a horse each and the children had two Exmoor ponies. There were some stables up the back of the house, by the house where the chauffeur Mr. Harris lived. When the Tanners wanted someone to look after the horses because they were busy I volunteered. Mr. Tanner used to go out hunting on Saturdays. He went to the local meets. There was nobody to look after his horses so he asked me to do it. He showed me what to do. Arrangements were made for me to go out to the Wylye Valley Hunt’s stables at Tytherington. Mr. Tanner said to me ‘Work there each day and help the groom.’ It was a big concern and there were about 20 horses there. The head groom was called Bill and there was a chap called Farmer who looked after the dogs.”
“Mr. Tanner said ‘You will soon learn to be a groom at Tytherington, you’ll learn much more than I can teach you.’ By Jove, how true his words were too. On most days we had to take the horses out for exercise, whatever the weather, on the downs. We had three horses each to look after. You would ride the middle one and lead the other two. Bill, the head groom, would say ‘You’ve got nothing to worry about if you fall because you’ve got something soft to fall on, on either side.’ It was hard work because the horses would get very dirty, especially after running for a day with the hounds. We had to clean the mud off and groom them, as well as seeing to their grub and bedding. We had to give them pills when necessary and see to all that sort of thing. It was hard graft but I enjoyed it.”
“Mr. Tanner never had much luck with horses. I can remember when he went to a meet at Bratton one Saturday. It was very muddy and Mr. Tanner came a cropper over a first jump. He went a flyer. The horse injured its left heel and went lame. Mr. Tanner couldn’t ride the horse, so the chauffeur had to bring Mr. Tanner home and I had to go and get the horse. It had been raining pouring and everything was soaking wet. There was a strong wind too. I had to walk the horse back over the downs from Bratton to Tytherington. I couldn’t ride it because it had an injured fetlock. I met a shepherd on the downs. He said ‘Where have you got to go?’ I said ‘Tytherington.’ He said ‘You’ll have a wet shirt before you get there.’ I was already wet through. It was pouring with rain and the wind was blowing. The horse kept stopping because of the weather. It was a job to get it going again but eventually we got to Tytherington.”
“The Tanners, sadly, left Bishopstrow and moved nearer to Frome. That upset everything then. My dad was working for them then, before he went to work for the Temple family. Some people called Cliff came to Barrow House. They were another nice family. Eventually they moved and Barrow House became a private school called Draytons. It’s now used as offices by Lyons Seafoods, who have a factory at Fairfield Road in Warminster. The old stables and garages are now private houses. I suppose it’s part of what is known as progress.”
“After the Tanners left Bishopstrow I got a job with a brigadier at Heytesbury. He lived in the Estate House there and I had to look after his garden, his car and his horses. That was a full time job. This brigadier was an alcoholic. He had been a huntsman. That was his interest but he couldn’t ride his horses because of his drink problem. One horse was blind in one eye and it was dangerous to ride. He didn’t mind traffic but if he heard a rustle in the hedge he’d shy. You could get caught unawares. I had to take the other horse out every day for an hour and a half. I didn’t know where to take it half the time. Sometimes I’d ride out Chitterne way. Sometimes I rode it out to my grandparents’ home at Longbridge Deverill. I’d tap on the door and shout ‘Hello Gran.’ She’d look up at me on that blummin’ big horse. It was a chestnut. I was adventurous. I got choked off once for riding in a field. I took the horse up the road that goes to Imber past East Hill Farm. I took the horse off the road and went for a gallop round a lovely field. The farmer must have saw me. He come out and choked me off. That was a bloody field of clover. It all looked the same to me. He said ‘Whose nag is that?’ He gave me a damn good choking off. I didn’t go up there again.”
“Years ago there were a lot of cantankerous cusses about. They were it and we were the downtrodden. On a Bank Holiday Monday, Easter Monday, I still had to go over to the Brigadier’s just to give the horse some hay. I had to cycle out to Heytesbury from Bishopstrow and I had to cycle back. The Brigadier wouldn’t give me any time off. He was a miserable blighter. You had to do it otherwise you’d lose your job. I got 30 bob a week. You were glad to have a job in the 1930s. If you didn’t do it then someone else soon took your place. You had to do whatever was expected of you. One day he asked to get rid of some kittens. He told me to drown them. I tapped them on the head first, so they wouldn’t know nothing. It was my job. I couldn’t not do it. To disobey him would have got me the sack.”
“Times had been hard during the 1920s. There had been the General Strike in 1926. The most noticeable thing in Warminster had been the rail strike. There was a lot of unemployment in the 1920s and it took a long time for things to get better. Jobs were still scarce in the 1930s and we noticed great changes in our surroundings. The old familiar things slipped away. The military were coming, some of the farms disappeared, and the market declined. A new cinema, the Regal, was built at Weymouth Street [in 1935], when it was announced that troops would be coming to Warminster. Plans were being made for the building of the Tank Barracks at Oxendean. It was real luxury in the Regal Cinema and bands sometimes played there on Sunday evenings.”
“There used to be dances at the Town Hall in Warminster and I can remember us boys and girls going to a dance in the barn at Middleton Farm. As I grew older and started to shave I went to the dances at the Raymond Hall in Heytesbury. They were very good. The band came out from Wilton. They were called the Wiltonians and consisted mainly of banjoes. You imagine eight or nine people playing banjoes. It was lovely music but I couldn’t dance. I went with the other lads I knew for company. Some could pick up dancing with no trouble at all but I couldn’t. I used to go across the room and ask a girl for a dance but they would always make an excuse. They’d say ‘We’ll sit this one out.’ My problem was I was always a bit shy. I had no go in me to do anything. Harry Millard, one of my pals who came to the dances, could do anything. He lived at Bishopstrow in one of Southey’s houses.”
“Those occasions meant getting all togged up while my parents were thinking of going to bed. We boys and girls either lit our lamps and cycled to Heytesbury and back afterwards or we shared a taxi. The dance was supposed to finish at midnight. A cap would be passed around for a collection and the band would then play on until two o’clock in the morning. We all behaved ourselves. There was no hanky-panky with the girls. We were brought up that way by our parents because they were strict.”
“Bill Sloper was the taxi man. I shut my thumb in the door of his car once. We’d come back in the taxi with the girls sat on our laps. When I got home I would fold my suit and my clothes up tidily before blowing out the candle and jumping into bed. I had to get up for work in the morning but it never bothered me. I wasn’t late for work the next day.”
“I only had the one suit and I needed it for church on Sundays. I was very particular with my clothes. I still am. I paid for that suit myself, bit by bit. I had to pay so much a week. A chap used to have a clothes shop in Heytesbury and he used to come round with a car selling clothes. He was a nice chap. He had a habit of always rolling pound notes up into a ball. He said ‘You won’t get them lost or stolen that way.’ Sometimes I went to Lucas and Foot’s in Warminster for clothes but usually I got them from Hibberd’s.”
“I used to go out to Norton Bavant some Sunday mornings to see my pal Bill Williams. Some people called Whitbread lived in the Manor House at Norton Bavant. They kept a lot of greyhounds. Bill used to take the dogs out for Mr. Whitbread. He used to exercise them. Bill was a bit younger than me. He was living with his aunt. His parents went to Australia and left him behind. His aunt brought him up. I used to go to see Bill to keep him company. He lived near the school room.”
“Bill had a lot of boxing equipment and we used to box together. I took on Jim Strickland once. He used to be a plumber in Stiles’. I was talked into boxing him in the street. We got our boxing gloves on and Jim was laughing at me because I was left-handed. He was bigger than me but I didn’t give him a chance. I gave him left, right, left and right, and he retreated all down the street. I won. Jim was married to one of the Barters. His wife came along and said to me ‘I hear you’ve been hitting my old man about?’ I said ‘Yes.’ She said ‘Good for you.’ She was glad because she didn’t like him very much.”
“A favourite pastime before the Second World War was rowing on the lake in Warminster Park. Bill Williams and me, and Bill Hannam, another friend of mine, used to hire a boat each and we’d go up and down the lake. We did that so often we reckoned we paid for those boats. It was a bit of fun. We really enjoyed ourselves. Bill Williams eventually went to Australia, to join his parents I suppose. I never saw or heard of him again. I don’t know if he got through the War or not. Bill Hannam lived at Oxford Terrace, off East Street. His mother was Welsh. She was a nice lady. Bill got called up with 21 Group and within about a month he was killed. He didn’t have a chance.”
“I had joined the Territorials on 9th October 1933. Like lads do, Harry Millard and I were cycling around in the evening, killing time, because we didn’t know what to do. Harry said ‘Let’s join the Territorials.’ I said ‘Yes, that’s a good idea.’ I don’t know whether I told my parents first or not, but we went off to see Paddy Miles at the Drill Hall, at Imber Road, in Warminster. He gave us a form and told us to go and see Dr. Hodges for a medical. He said ‘When you’ve done that, come back and see me.’ Harry and I went up to Ulster Lodge, at East Street, opposite the junction with Imber Road, to see Dr. Hodges. He was out on a call. We had to wait for him to come back. He gave us a medical. He signed us A1. We went back to Paddy Miles and handed the form in.”
“We were soon notified. We joined B Company, 4th Wilts Territorials. We were given a uniform and we had to go to the Drill Hall twice a week, on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, for drill. Paddy Miles and other sergeants took us for drill. The officers included Major Pearce from Mere and Major Jeans from out Salisbury way. There were about forty of us lads. Several blokes used to cycle in from Heytesbury. We had one bloke who would walk all the way from Tytherington to the Drill Hall. That was Archie Gibson. He was a roadsweeper out there. He was only a little chap and he was very well known. Whenever we went on a route march the first thing he would say was ‘Can I fall out, sir?’ He would make out he wanted to go to the toilet. They’d say ‘Yes, you can fall out,’ and we wouldn’t see him any more.”
“We used to go to a field at Woodcock, where the caravan site is now, and we used to do our marching in there. That was one of Silcox’s fields. We used to go shooting on the range at Oxendean on Sunday mornings. We learned to take our rifles apart and put them back together again. Paddy Miles used to shout our orders at us. The other sergeants used to show their authority too. I took it all in my stride. I got on alright. It was something out of the ordinary for us boys to do and we were all pals together.”
“We drilled so much we used to swing our arms even when we were off duty. It was a habit we got into. We had swagger canes. When you walked you carried your swagger cane. That was to keep our hands out of our pockets. Wherever I went my cane went. It was a good old pal of mine. I’ve still got it. I’ve looked after it. It’s got a shiny top on it with the Wilts badge. There aren’t many who can still say they’ve got their Army cane.”
“We went on fortnightly summer camps to different places and I used to look forward to that. We did battle manoeuvres and it wasn’t just the Wiltshires, it was the Somersets and Dorsets as well. There was a big comradeship of young men. It was a healthy life. There were bugle and drum bands and we had to do cooking outdoors. Exmouth was one camp we went to. We camped in fields. We didn’t go far from camp. We never really went into the towns drinking or looking for girls. We never bothered with girls. That didn’t matter to me.”
“I enjoyed being in the Territorials. It was a lovely time. I go once a year to the Old Comrades Dinner at the Drill Hall. We have a meeting four times a year. Unfortunately there are only about eight or nine of us left now. We talk about our soldiering days and have a laugh. The memories come flooding back. Our regimental march is called The Farmer’s Boy.”
“My employers, the Tanner family at Barrow House, didn’t mind me going off to camp with the Territorials. Neither did the Brigadier at Heytesbury, when I worked for him. I did six years with the Territorials.”
“I started a new job on the railway in 1936. I had been on the dole for a while. I got a green card to report to Mr. Durbin, the Stationmaster at Warminster Railway Station. They wanted a van guard there. I thought I would be travelling on the train, in a guard’s van at the back. I was jumping with joy. I thought I was going to a guard on the railway. I went and saw Mr. Durbin. It turned out the job was for a driver’s mate on one of the lorries. They had queer names for things. A lorry driver wasn’t called a driver; he was called a steersman. A van guard was the name for a lorry driver’s mate. A van guard had to help the driver load and unload the lorry.”
“There were three lorry drivers at Warminster Railway Station. They were Jack Dunn, Albert Clifford and Jack Cox. Jack Dunn was Phyl Butler’s father. He was a well-known driver in Warminster and I got on alright with him. He was a nice chap. He lived at West Parade. He was thinnish and he drove a lorry for the station for donkey’s years. Albert Clifford was a well-known Warminster lad. His family lived at Bread Street. Albert was a nice lad but he used to speak his mind and a lot of people didn’t like that. The other driver, Jack Cox, lived up Pound Street.”
“There was competition between the drivers. They tried to beat one another. They’d see who could go the fastest and who could deliver the most loads. Albert was steady going. When I was loading up the lorry he would say ‘Don’t go so fast.’ He was just the opposite to Jack Dunn, who would say ‘Be as quick as you can.’ Jack Dunn wanted to make a name for himself.”
“Wednesday afternoons was cleaning time for the lorries at the Station. The water had to be drained out of the lorries at night in the winter or they would freeze up. In the morning we had to fill them up with water again. Sometimes it was a job to get them started. Jack Cox’s lorry was an AEC. You had to swing it a couple of times to get it to start but once started it was never no trouble summer or winter. The other lorries were always a job to start. Jack Dunn’s lorry, an old Thornycroft, was always a problem. It had a big flywheel, about two feet across, and you had a job to get it going. Jack used to have to take the plugs out, warm them up over the fire and put them back in, to get the lorry to start. Sometimes Jack’s lorry had to be towed all round the town by Albert Clifford’s lorry to get it started. They did that once but Jack’s lorry still wouldn’t start. They towed it back to the Station, where they discovered what the problem was. Jack hadn’t turned the petrol on. That’s why it wouldn’t start. That’s the sort of things that used to go on. Jack’s lorry used to use a lot of petrol. So did Albert’s Clifford’s lorry. Albert drove an old AEC lorry with a wooden seat. It was very old-fashioned. It had a drop windscreen and oil lamps. On a draughty night I’ve had to stand on the footplate and see if the lamps were still burning.”
“Everyone relied on the railway in those days. The shops and businesses in town, the factories, the farms and the mills, all had goods going in and out by rail. There was a goods shed at the Station. There was a chap in charge of the goods department, a checker, two clerks, a yard foreman, and a shunter. On the platform were porters and clerks. The goods clerks booked out the tickets. Bert Sharp was one of them. Mr Burgess was the head clerk in the goods shed. He lived at Portway and I got on alright with him. The foreman in charge of the yard, in the latter years, was Horace King. He was a nice chap. Before him was a chap named Smart. The shunter lived at Sutton Veny. I forget his name. The engine would come from Westbury at about three o’clock in the afternoon to do the shunting. That wasn’t permanent in Warminster. It came over every day. It was a small engine.”
“People used to move by railway. Things went by containers. Previous to lorry driving, Albert Clifford had drove a horse and cart for the railway station. Wally Doel took over the horse and cart when Albert Clifford went on the lorry. Wally took on the horse and cart for a while until they got rid of it and then he had another lorry. Wally was an expert at tying on the containers. Being an ex-farmer he was an expert at tying knots and things. Some were roped on and some were chained. The containers were taken off the train and put on the lorries. They were lifted on and off by the yard crane. Eddie Creed was the yard man in those days and he worked the big crane which was on the town side of the station. Eddie was well-known. I don’t know where he lived but he was alright. He always wore a cap slouched on the side of his head and he liked a drop of beer.”
“The goods staff always had a drink on Christmas Eve at the Station. We worked until three o’clock and then we would go in the goods shed and have a drink. The staff had been collecting money for a booze-up. We would wish each other happy Christmas and go home. That was nice. The trains ran until about midnight on Christmas Eve but that didn’t effect us in the goods shed. The trains ran on Christmas Day. It was busy because there were always passengers who wanted to travel on Christmas Day.”
“The railway station was a very busy place throughout the year. The cattle market was next to the Station and cattle used to come in by train. The market was held on Mondays. There used to be a lot of Irish cattle come in. The cattle were loaded off and on the trains.”
“Before the War all the farmers around Warminster brought their milk to the station and it went out by train. There was a milk platform where the churns would be loaded from. The farmers brought their milk in with horses and carts. It went on the ten to five train in the afternoon.”
“When I was a boy I used to see Frank Maslen in the afternoon coming through Bishopstrow with churns up on the back of a horsedrawn cart. Talk about Ben Hur, well, the horse would be galloping and Frank would be stood up on the cart. Frank used to take the milk from Bishopstrow Dairy to Warminster Station. At one time a man called George Crocker was the dairyman at Bishopstrow Dairy. It was on the corner of Watery Lane and Dairy Lane. That’s before I was working at the Station. The Dairy was part of Bishopstrow Farm. Carts were always rumbling up and down Watery Lane bringing cattle food, hay and straw from Bishopstrow Farm to the Dairy. There were lots of cows in the fields there.”
“There was a John Wallis Titt windmill east of Warminster Station. The windmill pumped water up into a tank there, for the railway engines. Horace King had to look after that. The old corn stores, between the market and the railway station, were used by Bibby’s for storing cattle feed. They kept corn and maize and cattle cake in there. The cake came in by rail from the mills at Avonmouth Docks. There was a siding off the main line at Warminster, which served the old corn stores.”
“We had to keep the farmers going with cattle cake, meal and corn. I had to work with Jack Dunn. We used Jack Dunn’s lorry, the Thornycroft, to deliver the stuff to the farmers. The furthest I went on the lorry was to the farms out Kingston Deverill way. We also went to Heytesbury. If the lorry broke down anywhere on the road Jack wasn’t allowed to try and repair the lorry to get it going. He had to send to a mechanic in Frome to come out and repair it.”
“I always remember there was a farmer called John Dearden out at Haycombe, Sutton Veny. We had to move some furniture for him once. I used to take some bread and cheese and onion for my lunch. I used to eat the onion like an apple. Jack Dunn used to say ‘How you can eat that onion like that I don’t know?’ That used to amuse him. On another occasion we had to move the shunter’s furniture from Warminster to Salisbury, when he got a job there. The engine of Jack Dunn’s lorry was in the middle of the cab. Jack was in the driver’s seat, the shunter sat on the passenger seat, and I had to sit in the middle on the engine.”
“We didn’t just handle cattle feed and furniture. There were all sorts of things for the lorries to take to and from the Station. We handled all the parcels for Wheeler’s Nurseries, and bacon for Frank Moody’s factory down the Common. We also delivered barley to the Pound Street Malthouse. All the malt went back out on the railway. We would go and collect it. It was loaded in goods vans and sent by rail up to a brewery in London. All the anthracite that was burnt for making malt also came in by rail. The British Legion had a chair factory on the north side of the railway. They had timber coming in and chair parts going out by rail. We also handled timber for the Timber Company at Imber Road. Sam Smart, who had a junk yard next to the Station, where Homeminster House, the block of flats, is now, would send out scrap iron from his place. He sent a lot out. We’d be all day loading up trucks for him.”
“Jefferies’ Glove Factory (later Dents’), at Fairfield Road, used to send no end of gloves out by train. We had a lorry load of gloves turn up every morning through the week. They were all in heavy parcels and they were worth thousands of pounds. Those parcels had to go all over the country. They were unloaded into the parcel office and we had to check and label them. We had to put them in bags and seal them so they wouldn’t get pinched. That was a big job every morning and we didn’t have much time to hang around because we had plenty of other things to see to as well.”
“We handled all the parcels for the R.A.F. depot at Crabtree on the Longleat Estate. The depot there supplied aerodromes in other parts of the country. R.A.F. Crabtree would crate up stuff and send it to the Station for us to load on to the trains. I suppose it was parts and things for aeroplanes. They had some refugees, some Polish people, living and working at Crabtree, and the food for them used to come in by train. They used to eat a lot of fish. Barrels and barrels of sardines used to come in by rail for them.”
“Sam Bishop, who had the fish shop down at the bottom of the High Street, and John Vallis, the other fishmonger at George Street, used to have their fish delivered to Warminster by train. It was packed in ice and all in heavy boxes, weighing over a hundredweight each. Meat for the butchers’ shops came in too, and so did groceries and hardware. We handled loads of things at the Station. It was a very busy place.”
“In the late 1930s they started building the Tank Barracks at Oxendean, north of the town, heralding a big change for Warminster. At the time there was no real excitement about the army camp being built. It was just another lot of buildings going up. When they started building the barracks (what was later to be the School of Infantry) the work on the railway improved. As well as Warminster Station’s own lorries there were also lorries from Frome, Salisbury and Trowbridge at the Station eventually, delivering to the barracks. Everything used to build the barracks came in by rail and was then ferried by these lorries up Imber Road to the building sites. Imber Road became very busy with traffic.”
“All the girders and ironwork for the frames of the buildings was unloaded by crane off the trucks at the Station and towed up Imber Road on a timber cart behind a railway lorry. Bricks came to Warminster by the train load. Most came from the London Brick Company. Some came from North Wales. That was special bricks for the Officers’ Mess. We usually did two loads of bricks in the morning and one in the afternoon.”
“It was hard work handling those bricks off the railway trucks on to the lorries. We had to unload all those bricks on to the lorries by hand. They were all stacked, 4,000 odd, on the lorry. The driver would get on the bed of his lorry. I would be in the railway truck unloading. I would throw the bricks to the driver five at a time and he’d catch them. We had special pads made out of deerskin for our hands. We didn’t hurt our hands very much. If there was a broken brick I would shout ‘Broken brick’ and the driver would shout ‘Right oh.’ We had a system. We’d stack two rows on the lorry, that was 2,000 each side. We’d go up the camp and unload them, again by hand, and stack them there. That was part of the railway’s contract.”
“Sometimes things would get slack. If there wasn’t any bricks coming in, there wasn’t any work for us and we’d be sent home. We were supernumerary. The railway would break your contract once a year. In other words we were cheap labour and we didn’t get a uniform. It was hard work but I enjoyed it. The pay was always poor on the railway but we took it all in our stride. It was a job and if we didn’t do it someone else would soon jump in your place. You couldn’t afford to be out of a job. You relied on what little money you could get.”
“Hoare Belisha came to open the Tank Barracks but I didn’t go to the opening. Lots of Warminster people went to watch but I had to work. I was at Warminster Station when Churchill came to Warminster to visit the camp though. It was all low-key. It wasn’t announced. and we had to stay quiet. That was a big day for the Stationmaster. He was given a big cigar. Much later on I saw the Duke of Edinburgh when he came to Warminster.”
“We had more work at the Station when officers started coming to Warminster to do courses at the School of Infantry. Their belongings came in big, six feet long, tin trunks. That was their clothes and stuff. Those trunks had to be lifted out of the railway trucks and put on to trolleys. And of course, when the officers finished their courses it all had to go out again. The courses lasted about a month. We never ever got any tips from those officers for humping those trunks about.”
“There were train loads of soldiers coming to Warminster. One train, known as the Troop Special, arrived at 11.25 on a Saturday night. It came from Bristol and Bath to Warminster. It was a big engine, Hall or Castle class, and it had to be uncoupled because it had to go back to Bath. They couldn’t turn engines round at Warminster, because there was no turntable, so they just put the engine on the back of the train. While they did that the guard took the lamp off the train and took it to the other end. He had to walk to the other end. While he did that I had to go through the carriages and make sure things were okay. I had to get any drunks off. There were always a few. I got them out alright. I didn’t mind doing it. We never had no trouble with the troops.”
“I worked on the railway at Warminster until the outbreak of the Second World War. People had been talking for some while. They used to ask ‘Do you think we’re going to have a war?’ I could see it coming.”
“I was still in the Territorials. We went to a big house at East Knoyle. It was situated on the left. We slept on the floor there. It was makeshift accommodation. They also put up tents around the house for the men. When the chaps got evacuated from France they came back there and we had to move out. We then went to Imber. We had to march through Warminster and out on to the downs. We learned to dig trenches before coming back into Warminster. We were put in houses and places at East Street. I was billeted in Button’s Yard. Other men were at the Masons Arms, out the back in the stables there. We were only in Warminster for about a fortnight.”
“We went on to Tidworth after that. There was going to be trouble, they thought, on Salisbury Plain. They reckoned the Irish were going to sabotage the electric light stations up there and poison the water. That was our first job to go out there and guard the electric light stations and the reservoirs.”
“Also, while I was in the Territorials we had to look after the railway bridge at Box, near Bath. We had to guard it from being blown up. We used to get coal from one of the engines. As the train went by the driver would have some coal on a shovel and he’d tip it up. That’s how we kept our fire going. From there I went to Amesbury with the Territorials. I had to do night duty. I wasn’t scared about anything I had to do. None of the chaps worried or cared about things. We just did what we had to.”
“War was announced on 3rd September 1939. We carried on with our duties. My first Christmas was at Netheravon Aerodrome. That was an R.A.F. base. The R.A.F. wanted to have Christmas off. They wanted to go home, so we had to stop there and guard the aerodrome. It wasn’t too bad. It was noisy though because some of the staff were still there learning to fly and they were doing night flying. They were flying great big Avro planes with noisy exhausts. They used to take off, fly around, land and take off again. They’d do that all night long. About once a fortnight one would crash. Sometimes pilots got killed.”
“We were billeted in huts at Netheravon. Eddie Twitcham was one of the chaps with me. The Twitchams lived at Boreham Crossroads. There was quite a family of them. Eddie was a bit of a lad. It was very cold at Netheravon. It was icy and freezing and there wasn’t much to burn for heating. Eddie solved the problem. He burnt the blackout stuff. He burnt it because we had nothing else to burn. There was trouble over it and the unit had to pay for the damage.”
“We were given Boxing Day off. We were allowed 24 hours leave. Eddie and me decided to go home. We set off at nine o’clock. We walked towards Amesbury and got lifts wherever we could, sometimes by horse and cart. George West, from Warminster, was also with us. He was another pal up at Netheravon with me. George had a nail in his boot that Boxing Day. He was hobbling along. He said ‘Do you think I should do something about this boot? It’s hurting my foot.’ I said ‘If you stop to take that off, something might come along and we shall miss a lift.’ So he kept his boot on. He hobbled along and put up with it. We got as far as Codford before we could catch a bus, a Wilts and Dorset bus. We got home at four o’clock in the afternoon. Most of Boxing Day had gone. There was only the evening left. It was hardly worth going home for but I was glad to get home and see my mum and dad.”
“We went back to Netheravon Camp the next day. Les Knight, who lives just a couple of doors away from me now, was another chap at Netheravon with me. From there I went to one camp after another. We were mostly on guard duty. At one time we were at Savernake Forest. They had ammunition dumps all through there. We had to guard that lot. We had to guard them the best we could at night. I had to ride a bicycle round the ammunition dumps, checking everything was okay. We lived in railway carriages with no heat and we were there quite a while.”
“Then they started forming the military police, the blue caps, and they wanted volunteers for that. I volunteered. You had to put your name down or go and see them. I became a military policeman but it was guard duties again. I went all over the place including Devon and the Isle Of Wight. I also went to Weymouth, where they had barbed wire everywhere. I had to guard against the public getting at things, never mind the enemy!”
“We had to do a crash course to prepare for D.Day. We took over a hospital by Westminster Bridge in London. That’s where we did our course. Sergeant Marlowe from the Grenadier Guards drilled us. The Metropolitan Police taught us unarmed combat and self defence. We did that in Hyde Park and some of the other parks in London. I was left-handed and I had to learn to fight and do things right-handed. We had to do exams. It was from morning until night. It was like being at school again. There was to be no copying. A bloke walked up and down to make sure there was no cheating. If during the course you couldn’t stick it you had to say and they sent you back to your unit. I stuck it. It’s surprising what you can learn.”
“I got to know the ins and outs of London. I’d walk around when I was off duty. If we went out in the evening we had to be back in by midnight or you’d find yourself on a charge. I can remember running over Westminster Bridge when Big Ben was striking midnight. I’d get in just in time. At night you could lay in bed and hear the underground trains running somewhere below you.”
“We then went to Woking for brigade training but I had to leave the regiment because of my eyesight. I was transferred to the R.A.M.C., not to join them, but to look after a padre. He was unarmed so he needed an infantryman with a rifle to look after him. I became a batman for him. This was at Truro. I had to escort this padre from Cornwall to Oxford. We got to Oxford. I was supposed to stay the night and go back the next morning. I said to the padre ‘Do you think I could go home now instead of staying here?’ He said ‘If you think you can get home, then you can go.’
“Off I went. Of course the trains weren’t running very well and I had to take pot luck. I got to Frome eventually. From Frome I got to Westbury. By that time it was gone 12 o’clock at night and there wasn’t a train from Westbury to Warminster, so I had to walk. I wasn’t the only one walking. There were some other chaps trying to get to Knook Camp. I got home about two o’clock in the morning.”
“My folks had gone to bed. I knocked the door. The upstairs window opened. Unbeknown to me my dad had been fire-watching earlier that evening with Tom Hiscock. Dad opened the window. He thought it was Tom. Dad said ‘What’s up? There’s nothing about is there?’ I said ‘Yeah.’ He said ‘Where?’ I said ‘Over there.’ He looked down at me. He couldn’t see who it was for a minute and then he said ‘Is that thee, John?’ I said ‘Yes, come on down and let me in.’ He said ‘Well, I’ll be buggered.’ He turned to our mother and said ‘It’s our John.’ He came down and let me in.”
“The next day I had to catch the one o’clock train from Warminster Station to get back to the Isle Of Wight. I had to report to a hospital, where some officers had to be looked after and waited on. They used to like their drinks in the evenings. It was a cushy job. It was about three months at a time before I could get back to Bishopstrow on leave to see my mum and dad but that didn’t bother me. I lived day to day.
“I had to go next to Goodwood House. That had been commandeered by the R.A.M.C. as a hospital. When I got there the R.A.M.C. weren’t there. They had moved to Germany. I had missed them, so I had to go all over the blummin’ place in England on guard duties. Eventually I was sent to Southampton.
“I was at Southampton during the last time it was bombed but there was no damage where I was. We were stationed on the Common under canvas. Our beds were on duckboards because there was water underneath us. We had to rough it a bit. We were there when the buzz bombs [V-1’s] were coming over. They used to shut off when they were coming down. I was on the telephone once and I heard one shut off. I dived under the table but thank God it didn’t fall near me.
“I was in Southampton on D.Day (Tuesday 6th June 1944) or thereabouts. We had to parade along the docks because Winston Churchill was going to come along and have a word with us. He was inspecting the army and the navy all the way along the south coast. We waited three hours in our best uniforms, all formed up ready. Eventually he turned up in a car. He never stopped. He just drove straight past. He put his fingers up and that’s all we saw of him after all that waiting. We thought it was an absolute disgrace. The chaps weren’t half grumbling.
“I got into trouble while I was in the Military Police at Southampton and I got put in the glasshouse. The whole unit was involved. There was a big camp for German prisoners of war. German prisoners were being brought back from the front line. They had blankets round their shoulders to keep them warm. They had to dump the blankets in heaps. We had to search the prisoners and interrogate them. They were put in cages and we had to feed and water them. We had to give them tea and biscuits and look after them. We had to guard them until they were put on trains and sent elsewhere to other camps inland. Then another batch would come in and we would do the same again.
“These German prisoners had watches and trinkets and they wanted cigarettes. So we swapped them cigarettes for their watches, trinkets and money. Their money was no good to them. Us guards used to take the German money into Southampton and change it at Cook’s, the travel agents, for English money. There were no questions asked. The Yanks were at Southampton and they had plenty of cigarettes and stuff. We used the money we had changed for the German currency to buy cases of cigarettes from the Yanks. We were doing alright. Everyone was doing it. We had our ammunition pouches filled up with cigarettes. We’d say to the German prisoners ‘Cigarette?’ They’d say ‘Ya.’ We’d make a bargain. The prisoners were alright. Most were German but there were a few Spanish ones too. We never had any problems with them. They were quite friendly.
“We were going into Southampton and buying brown paper to send parcels of blankets and watches home to our families. We were all doing it. People started asking questions. I was picked out. Me again! I was told to go to the office to see the C.O. He said ‘There’s some gentlemen here who want to have a word with you.’ I was escorted into a room and there on the table was a parcel I had sent home to my parents at Bishopstrow. They said ‘What can you tell us about this?’ They had followed that parcel to Bishopstrow and unbeknown to me had spoken to my parents and retrieved it. They knew all about it. I knew the game was up and I had to tell them what I had been doing. They said ‘Don’t mention your parents. You’re not to involve them. Just tell the truth about what you know.’ I told them I had sent the parcel and I told them how I got the contents. I had to go before a court martial. I got 56 days in jankers. That was two months because they didn’t count weekends. I was in jankers in Southampton. Eventually the matter passed but I was sent to Colchester. They wanted me in the cookhouse there. I had to keep the fires burning and look after the coke. My unit was still in Southampton, guarding the Germans. I had a fortnight of jankers to do but a brigadier must have asked my C.O. why I hadn’t returned to my unit. Unfortunately, if you’re in the Military Police and you get in trouble you don’t go back to it, you finish. That was the end of me with the Military Police. It had been a nice job and I had enjoyed it.
“I became Y-listed and I was then sent off to a camp where all the odds and sods went. I was tested on different things to see what knowledge I had. You could then be sent off to any unit. I was sent to the Pioneers at Portsmouth, making prisoner of war camps and doing things like that. That’s where I was during the latter part of 1944.
“I then got posted up north. I was stationed near Sedgefield. We got sent to Ferryhill. We got snowed up and we had to stay there clearing the snow off the main London railway line. I was stationed outside a place called Hanley. Me and my mates went to the W.R.V.S. canteen and had some refreshments. Afterwards we went on to a dance hall at Sedgefield. I couldn’t dance but I went. That’s where and how I met my wife-to-be. I saw her with some other girls and I asked her for a dance. It was love at first sight for me.
“Her name was Mary Alice Barber but she was known as Molly by everyone who knew her. She was born at Langley Park in County Durham. Molly was a nurse at Winterton Mental Hospital at Sedgefield and she was one of ten children – six daughters and four sons. Her sisters and one of her brothers were nurses. The other brothers worked in the colliery at Blackhall. That’s closed now. It went for a mile and a half under the North Sea. It was hard work but it was work. They used to go by train backwards and forwards to and from their home and the colliery. One of Molly’s brothers, Wallace, still lives at Sedgefield. Molly’s father was an insurance agent. His name was Norman Barber and he worked for the Pearl agency.
“I was 27 but Molly kept me waiting. She wasn’t so keen. She wanted to make sure she’d be happy. I was at Stratford On Avon, at the racecourse. This is after I came out of the military police, when I was in the Pioneers. We were still making prisoner of war camps. We had 14 days embarkation coming off before going to Germany. I had already made arrangements to get married. I was going to get married in the August but this was May. I went to see Molly and her mother. I said ‘What are you going to do?’ Molly said ‘I’m going to get married in white whatever happens.’ I said ‘Okay we’ll get married.’ I spent the first week looking round for a parson to marry us. I walked miles.
“We got married at Blackhall Methodist Chapel on 12th May 1945. Up there, when you got married, you had to throw coppers at the children in the crowd outside the church and they would pick them up. I spent the morning going round the shops trying to get a lot of copper money with her brothers Wallace and Lewis. I changed some silver to get some coppers. If you didn’t throw money when you came out of church everyone would shout ‘Shabby wedding, shabby wedding.’ So to avoid that you collected as many coppers as you could. That’s what you had to do. Whether they still do it up there today or not I don’t know.
“The night before the wedding I stayed at the home of one of Molly’s sisters. Molly was at home with her parents. My brother Leonard was my best man. He came up with my mum and dad. I met every train in the morning to see if they’d be on it. About two hours later my family arrived. We had bridesmaids but no professional photographer. Molly’s uncle took the photographs. I got married in the same blue suit that I used to wear to the dances at the Raymond Hall in Heytesbury. We had a reception at Molly’s home. It was no bother because the neighbours were good. They were sociable and they helped out with the food. We had a nice wedding cake but it was nothing special. We didn’t have a honeymoon. We came to my mother and father’s in Bishopstrow. My parents had met Molly before the wedding because we had made one or two trips home. Mother, not having a daughter, took to Molly immediately. In fact my mother and Molly were together more than me and her. They were quite happy. Same as I got on with Molly’s parents alright.
“We had a week in Bishopstrow and then I had to go to Germany. Molly went back to work up north. I got back to camp and went to Germany. We flew over in Halifax bombers. Five bombers together. They were going over empty and bringing back injured soldiers. We went to Brussels and went the rest of the way by road transport to Hamburg. Going by bomber was quite an experience. There were about 12 of us and we all had to get up between the wings to take off. They said ‘When you see the tail gunner go back you can get in the body of the plane,’ so that’s what we did. We flew through a violent storm but we didn’t know what was happening. We were playing cards. The crew sent a pencil message back to us to say that owing to the weather the plane would have to turn back and land where we had come from. After we landed the crew said ‘What did you think of that trip?’ We said ‘Alright.’ We didn’t know anything about the problems they had encountered. The crew said ‘We were doing it in our trousers up in the cockpit. We were flying blind.’ We were oblivious to all that. We had to wait for the all clear to take off again. The weather improved. When we went the second time we flew so low we could see the cattle in the fields below running out of the way. We landed at Brussels. The first bloke to get off was our sergeant-major. He was as sick as anything. Flying didn’t bother me. I was alright. I had been in a plane before. I went up in a troop carrier when I was in camp with the Territorials.
“When we got to Hamburg we had to guard the military transport. Our transport had to have places to park at night and everything that was there had to be booked in and out. There were big heavy lorries full of ammunition and food. The Germans were trying to pinch the stuff.
“We lived from day to day. We took everything for granted and nothing worried us. We travelled by tram in Hamburg. The city had all been bombed and it was smelling of death. After a while I was put in charge of a group of five German prisoners doing cleaning and polishing in a hospital. On one occasion I had to take a gang to a mortuary. A chap had died. He was on a slab following a postmortem. My gang had to put him in a coffin ready for his funeral.
“By the time I got to Hamburg the War had finished. V.E. Day had come and gone. V.E. Day was a few days before I got married. The European war was finished but the Japanese war was still on. I hadn’t been married too long before I was demobbed. I came back from Germany and I was demobbed at Bulford.”
“During the War dad did fire-watching in the village with Tom Hiscock. Nothing much happened. There was a lot of activity in Warminster though. There were a lot of Americans in Warminster during the War but I was away so I don’t know much about that. It was said that when one of the first Americans pulled up in a posh car in Warminster he shouted to one of the locals ‘Hey there, what village is this? I’m trying to get to Warminster.’ It’s not recorded what the local replied!”
“There were a large number of Americans staying around Bishopstrow. They had hutted camps near Southleigh Woods and at Boreham. The Yanks livened up the local dances but, of course, I wasn’t here to see it. I was away abroad. After the Second World War I noticed a great change in and around the parish. Things were never going to be the same again. During the War years lots of local couples had married but there were no houses available for them. They had to settle somewhere so they began by squatting in the old huts vacated by the Americans. These couples took over the huts at Bishopstrow and Boreham, even though it was freezing cold in the winter and there was no electricity. They had to get their water from standpipes. They shared. They had to rough it but they were only too pleased to have somewhere to live.”
“There was a great housing shortage. After a while the Council accepted responsibility for the huts at Boreham Camp, they put one or two modern conveniences in, and started charging the people rent. The Council realised they had to do something but a few years went by before they started a housing programme. Boreham Field was built [in 1951] and people moved out of the huts into there. The huts were then demolished. Queensway was built soon afterwards. Later on the Dene was built [1957], where part of Boreham Camp had been. The couples had children and the population grew. The Avenue School soon became overcrowded, so Kingdown School was built [in 1960], and later, the rest of Boreham Farm was done away with and St. George’s School was built [in 1969].”
“I returned to civvy street in the summer of 1945 and Molly and I set up our first home at Bishopstrow. To begin with Molly and I lived in a bedsit at Bishopstrow Rectory. There was nowhere else to live. As I just said, some people were living in the ex-Army Nissen huts at Boreham Camp. People were squatting in them. There were no empty huts. There was nothing there for us, so we asked around for an empty house. I knew the housemaid at Bishopstrow Rectory. Her name was Winnie Bartlett and she was a friend of mine. She said ‘Come and live at the Rectory.’ So we did. The rector wasn’t married and he was living on his own. That was the Reverend Earl. He didn’t object. He was quite happy. We had to pay a little bit of rent and we had to share the kitchen. We used to spend the evenings in the kitchen with Winnie, sat around talking.”
“We weren’t at the Rectory long. We were there less than 12 months. We moved to 8 Bishopstrow Road. That was the house where Valerie Mitchell lives now. We paid eight shillings a week rent. Mr. Warwick (Valerie’s father) owned it. He owned the rank of cottages there. He lived in the one at the opposite end (No.5), next to the house called Riverside. A retired lady called Mrs. West lived at Riverside. I’ve got a feeling she was a vicar’s widow but I’m not sure about that. She kept herself to herself and she had two daughters.”
“There are four cottages in the row between Riverside and Bishopstrow. We lived in the one nearest Bishopstrow. George Mead and the Pearces lived next door to us at No.7. George worked at a factory in Warminster. Ethel Collinson lived at No.6. She was a Clifford. That was George Clifford’s wife but they parted. She married again. She became Mrs. Collinson. Mr. Collinson worked at a tannery at Westbury. He used to lose his temper sometimes. He and his wife Ethel would fall out and he’d smash everything off the table and turn the place upside down. He’d get in a paddy. He’d get on his bike and go off to his parents at Dilton Marsh or somewhere over that way. After a week or two he’d come back and you’d see him and Ethel going down the garden path, arm in arm, as if nothing had happened. That happened two or three times.”
“There was one tap, out the back, for all four cottages to share. I got Fred Hiscock, who was a plumber for Stiles Bros., in Warminster, to put some water in for me. There were bucket toilets down the bottom of the garden. One dark night I could hear June Mead, the daughter of our next door neighbour, saying ‘Mum, mum, can I have some paper please?’ That’s how it was.”
“We were at 8 Bishopstrow Road for seven years. We wanted to get out of there. There was only a bucket toilet and no proper washing place inside, only what I had built myself with a few bricks I’d managed to get hold of. The sink was only an empty basin stuck on top of a few bricks. I made a soakaway into the garden and that was all we had. Molly’s mum and dad came down from County Durham and stayed with us for a holiday at 8 Bishopstrow Road. They couldn’t believe the conditions we had to put up with. They had a proper toilet up north where they lived. You can imagine what Molly’s father thought about the way we were living. He played ructions. He wrote several letters to the local Council. It was that bad.”
“We put our name down on the Council’s housing list. We had heard a new estate was going to be built on Bazley’s fields. We had to wait for the houses to be built but eventually we were glad to get one of the new houses at Boreham Field. We moved to 143 Boreham Field in 1953. No.143 had three bedrooms, which was just right for us because we had two daughters, Ann and Brenda. They both live at Ferris Mead now. Ann is now Mrs. Gray and Brenda is now Mrs. Arscott. Ann has got four children and Brenda has got two, so I’ve got six grandchildren.”
“My wife was a home help in those days. Mrs. Raymond was in charge and Molly worked at different places in Warminster. A couple called Mr. and Mrs. Tracey lived next door to us at No.142. Edgar Tracey was an ex-service man. Molly used to help Mrs. Tracey with keeping her house clean. Molly used to say to me how she would like to have that house to live in. I said ‘Well, if it becomes vacant we’ll try and get it.’ When Mrs. Tracey died we put in for No.142 and we got it.”
“We moved next door to here, about 1974. This is No.142. This is a two-bedroom house. No.143 was three bedrooms with a separate sitting room and dining room. It’s all in one here. Anything that my missus wanted I went along with her. I couldn’t care less. As long as she was happy. That’s how I was. I kept her happy. That’s what you call love. You have to be prepared, when you’re married, to give and take. I was always willing to give Molly whatever she wanted. That’s how I was. If you love someone you do your best for them.”
“When the Second World War ended I returned to Warminster after being demobbed and I went back to my old job on the railway at Warminster Station. The law ensured you could go back to your old occupation. Things had changed though. Mr. Durbin, who lived near Imber Railway Bridge, had gone. There was a new Stationmaster. The new one was Mr. Lane. He was a quiet spoken man who got on with his work. He didn’t have much to say. I had to do shunting. That was a job I didn’t like. I was scared stiff. Mr. Lane said ‘That’s the job you have to do.’ So I had to do it. It was dangerous, especially when it was dark at night and raining.”
“I worked on the railway, off and on as a supernumerary, until I got a job as a porter on the platform at Warminster Station. There were two eight-hour shifts. The first started at half past six in the morning and finished at half past two in the afternoon. The other shift started at half past two and finished at half past ten at night. There were two porters on each shift. There was also the stationmaster, a ticket clerk, and a parcel porter. There were three signalmen who had to cover day and night.”
“There was a lamp-man who used to travel along the line, seeing to the signals and the lamps for the points. They were lit by oil. There was an oil tank at the Station and a shed where he used to fill the lamps up. He came from Heytesbury. Sometimes a signal lamp would blow out in a gale on a dark night. A driver would stop at the signal box and say where a lamp was out. The next thing I knew I had to go out and light it. I’d take an oilcan and some matches with me. If I was lucky a light engine would be coming through and I could get a lift on that. Then I’d have to walk back to the Station in the dark and wet. I had to do that quite a few times.”
“Looking back, apart from when I was a shunter, I enjoyed my time working on the railway both before and after the Second World War. At one period I worked on the permanent way. That was a slog but I just turned up each day and got on with what I had to do. I didn’t mind turning my hand to different things. I used to volunteer for various duties and I did a lot of things I didn’t have to do. It was a hive of activity at the Station, a far cry from what it’s like today. The staff has been reduced to about one person, there isn’t even a stationmaster now, and it’s just sprinter trains and the occasional goods train passing through these days. The ticket office is only open part-time at the moment. I’ve got so many memories of what used to go on at the Station when I worked there before and after I did my military service.”
“The Station was painted every four or five years. We were at the end of the line as far as the Southern Region was concerned. Same as the gas lamps, they were not attended to as often as they should be, because the maintenance people had to come up from Exeter. Maybe they’d get as far as Salisbury and there wouldn’t be time to come on to Warminster. So I used to look after the gas lamps at Warminster Station as a bit of a hobby. I’d get some steps. I knew how the lamps worked. I kept the gas lamps going. They were easy to maintain. I did it as something to do, to fill in the time between the trains. Same as I used to clean the windows. The porters didn’t like me doing it. They didn’t want to do it. They’d say ‘You don’t want to be doing that.’ I also used to maintain the four-wheel trolleys when the brakes wanted attending to. When the handles went up the brakes went on. They were heavy trolleys but I knew how to fix them. There were rambler roses growing along the wooden fence by the platform and I used to try and keep the weeds down. To my knowledge no-one ever came to inspect the Station.”
“There was a halt at Dilton Marsh but that came under the authority of Warminster. The porters from Warminster had to go by train to Dilton Marsh, with their buckets and brushes, and clean the Station there, now and again. They’d also go there to put up timetables and posters advertising trips. They’d catch the next train back to Warminster.”
“Bill Sloper, the taxi man, used to wait outside Warminster Station. He was quite a character. One day I slipped off the lorry, off the running board, and sprained my ankle. I carried on working. I was determined to keep going. My foot swelled up and I couldn’t ride my bike home. Bill tied my bike on the side of his taxi and took me home free of charge. That was the sort of chap he was. He was very kind.”
“I remember when Bill took some servants out to Southey’s at Eastleigh Court, Bishopstrow. They were in the car arguing over who was going to pay the fare. Old Bill stopped by the Post Office, on the corner of Station Road, and said ‘Get out, I’ve had enough of you lot.’ He made them get out. He was happy-go-lucky but he wouldn’t stand no nonsense. He was the only taxi man at the Station and he had his own parking place marked off outside. God help anyone who parked on there. He soon told them off.”
“We had several coal fires to look after at the Station. There was a fire in the Stationmaster’s Office, the parcel office, the lost property office, the signal box, the goods shed, and the waiting rooms. A truck load of coal came every winter and was put in the shed by the signal box. Very often we would run out of coal before the winter was over. We then had to go with buckets to the sidings and pick up bits of waste coal that had been dropped there.”
“Besides seeing to the fires and all the other little jobs we had to see to the trains coming in and out. The first train to Bristol was the 8.12 in the morning. That was from Salisbury to Bristol. Then a motor train came up from Westbury, crossed over, and went away at nine o’clock. Then we had the 10.20. That came from Salisbury. Then the 11.50 to Cardiff, followed by the 1.20 to Bristol. The next train was the 2.25 to Cardiff from Brighton. After that we had the ten to five train which would take goods out of Warminster towards Bristol and that direction. We loaded stuff on trolleys during the afternoon, ready for that 4.50 train. The parcel clerk saw to the paperwork. The last train going Bristol way was at ten past eight in the evening. At Christmas we would have about eight trolleys of parcels to go out on the 8.10 train at night.”
“Coming the other way, from Westbury and Bristol, was the 7.25. That was the first one in the morning. The 7.25 from Bristol and Bath was the one that mostly brought all the goods to Warminster from that direction. That was things like fish and stuff for the shops. We would fill four or five trolleys with goods off that. Newspapers used to come in by rail first thing in the morning too. The other trains were mainly passenger ones. The nine o’clock motor train crossed over and was followed by the 12 o’clock train. The next one was the 3.30 to Brighton from South Wales. Then there was one at six o’clock, another one at seven, and the last one was at 10.25 at night.”
“On Saturdays there was a late train for the troops and anyone who wanted to go to the theatres in Bath and Bristol. It would come in about 11.25 at night. There’d be only the two of us at the bottom of the steps to take the tickets. About 200 soldiers would get off the train. They’d come running at you. Some would give you money because they didn’t have a ticket. That was the honest ones. Some would give you any old ticket. We didn’t have time to check them. We just let them through. If we questioned anyone there would be an argument and they might get nasty. Their pals would back them up. So it was best just to let them go. We didn’t have time to get involved. Some of them would be a bit merry after a night out but we had no trouble with them. They were fairly good. If we collected any money we had to add it up in the morning.”
“On a Sunday there would be an extra train come through, from Wales on an excursion to Bournemouth. It didn’t stop. It went straight through. On Saturdays there were many excursions come through during the summer. That was extra trains. They were duplicated because there were so many people who wanted to go on the trips.”
“Mr. Ingram was a workmate of mine. He had been at the Station longer than me. He was senior to me. We were on the same shift. He liked his beer. He used to go down the town at night and have a drink. He’d come back in time to take the tickets from the people getting off the last train. One or two times he wasn’t there when the train came in. So I took the tickets and saw to the train. The next thing I knew he’d turn up and start choking me off. He’d say ‘You’re making a fool of me. There I am asking the people down the road for their tickets and they’re saying they’ve already given them up. You ought to leave the job alone.’ He had tried to get tickets off people as he met them coming down Station Road. He was cantankerous like that. The following night when the train came in, he wasn’t there again and I didn’t take the tickets. When he turned up he choked me off for not taking the tickets. There was no pleasing him. He was an awkward blighter to get on with. That’s how he was. He lived up Ferris Mead way somewhere.”
“If we were lucky we would get a few tips from people getting off the trains but not much. You kept your tips to yourself. You didn’t share them with the others. I met loads of people. I met people years afterwards who said ‘We’ve seen you before somewhere?’ I’d say ‘I worked at the Station.’ They’d say ‘Oh yes, that’s where we’ve seen you.’ Lots of people travelled on the railway in those days and there were hundreds of kiddies going to school by train. The school children went off to Trowbridge High School in the morning on the 8.12 train. They’d wait on the platform and they had to behave themselves. They weren’t too bad.”
“As well as the passenger trains there were a lot of goods trains. There used to be one from Aberdare come through pretty regular. It was loaded with anthracite and was going to Southampton Docks for export overseas. Of course it would come back through empty. Scrap iron used to come through, going to South Wales, to the furnaces there. Sometimes the strawberry special from Romsey would come through. And trains loaded up with cauliflowers and other vegetables going to Bristol. Sugar beet was a regular load.”
“We had a lot to contend with. You tried to keep yourself tidy but a lot of the work was dusty. If a train was coming someone would shout ‘Running in’ and we’d jump off the rails and clamber up over the platform. We didn’t go over the bridge to cross the lines, like the passengers had to. The footbridge had a top to it. You could walk undercover. They took the top off [in December 1951]. It hasn’t got a top now.”
“We got the occasional derailment. I was working on the permanent way when we had a bad one. We were sat in a guard’s van eating some bread and cheese. We were stopped in the siding by the Station. The signalman wanted to put a train where we were, unbeknown to us. We didn’t know what was happening. The engine was at the other end. There was a flagman in the Station to tell the driver to go in a siding towards Portway. He told the driver all the points and signals were set. The driver eased the train back but he gathered speed. There were some buffers by the bridge to the goods yard. Ted Pearce, one of the gangers, said to me ‘Ere, is that hand-point over?’ Another ganger from Heytesbury said ‘No, it’s not.’ The train was going too fast for anyone to jump out and alter the hand point. The signalman had forgot. The train hit the buffers and the truck next to us went up through our guard van. We nearly went down on to the roadway below. It stopped just in time but it derailed all the lot. That was about 22 trucks. Mr. Smart, the scrap merchant, came out of his place next to the Station and took a photograph. Luckily no one was injured or killed.”
“I can remember the time when they found someone dead on the line, not far from the Station. I was the last person to see that chap alive. He had been down in the town during the evening and he came to the Station to catch the 10.25, the last train at night. I didn’t take much notice of him. The next day we heard what had happened to him. He must have wandered off up the line and got hit by a train. It killed him. That’s the only time we had to deal with a death at the Station but we used to have our fair share of accidents and calamities.”
“On one occasion we had a chap come in on a train late at night. That was the 10.25. The chap’s name was White and he lived out Deverill. He wore breeches and leggings. It was dark and it was pouring with rain. I had a lamp in my hand. The platform sloped down at the end. He wanted to get off the train by this slope. I told him to go back along the corridor on the train and get out where it was level. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I’m getting out here, I’m alright.’ He wouldn’t listen to me. He got out, fell down, and broke his leg. We had to get a stretcher from the signal box and we had to call an ambulance to take him off to hospital. He later claimed compensation off the railway but it was his own fault.”
“There was a guard named Bush who worked on the railway. He lived at Portway and he used to have to pick up a train at Westbury. He used to catch the 8.12 train from Warminster to Westbury. On one occasion it was inches deep in snow. It was very cold and a woman collapsed on the platform at Warminster. Being a guard that was his job to see to her but he never done a darned thing about it. He had nothing else to do. He was only waiting for the 8.12 train. That’s true. We had to cope with that ourselves.”
“On another occasion there was a woman came by train from Cardiff. She had recently had an operation for appendicitis and the wound had broken open during the journey. Somebody leaned out of the window and asked if anybody knew first aid. Ted Pearce, one of the gang of platelayers, was nearby. He said ‘Yes, I do.’ They said ‘Can you see to this lady?’ He did. They got her off the train and the train went on. Ted took her into the waiting room and got the wound sorted. She didn’t take any notice of the fact a man was attending to her. Ted did what had to be done and soon afterwards the woman left Warminster on another train. Later, Ted had a very nice letter from her thanking him very much for what he had done.”
“Ted Pearce was a good chap. He had a watch chain made out of silver links. He had been given a link for each first aid exam he passed. Ted taught me quite a lot about first aid. The St. John Ambulance Association used to have first aid lectures at the Station. Dr. Hodges used to come and teach us. I enjoyed it. I was given a certificate in 1939 for attending the first aid course. I’ve still got it. I thought it was worth keeping.”
“As I say, Ted was one of the gang of platelayers. They had an office near the Station and they used to go off working along the line each day. The platelayers had to go a mile and a half east, as far as Bishopstrow Bridge [Cox’s Drove], and west as far as Upton Scudamore. The rail had to be seen to. It had to be highered or lowered. That was quite a job. They had a special implement for lifting the rail, to get the sleepers underneath. The rails had to be straightened every so often with a crowbar and the weeds had to be kept down. There were platelayers’ cabins at regular intervals beside the line. There was one by the bridge next to Temple’s Plantation [Primrose Wood]. One of the gang would do the cooking and see to the fire in the cabin. If one of the gangers had brought some bacon with him to work he’d give it to the cook to fry. That was ready when he broke off for his meal.”
“The railway banks were kept scythed. I couldn’t use a scythe, so I had to use a reap-hook where the others couldn’t get to with their scythes. Sometimes the banks would catch fire in the summer. A spark from a passing engine would ignite the dry grass. Someone would phone up and say there was a fire. If I was on duty I had to go out and try and put the fire out. I was a porter but I had to go and do that. Rodney Kitley, who now lives down at South Street, at Warminster Common, worked at the Station when he was a boy. He was interested in the railway. He almost lived on the Station. He was an errand boy for all of us. He’d come out with me to put any fires out. We didn’t bother calling the Fire Brigade. It was only grass fires and we could put them out ourselves.”
“So you see, I used to do all sorts of jobs during my time working for the railway before and after the War. To start with I earned about 30 bob a week, which wasn’t much but at least I had a job. Station staff had a fortnight a year off. You had to take it in turn with the other staff whether you took your holiday early or later in the year. You had to put your name down when you wanted it. The staff at the Station used to get two free passes each, every year. I took the family to the Isle of Man and Jersey for a holiday. Jersey was very nice. You could also get privilege tickets which allowed you to travel half-fare. We could get them any time but I never used to bother because it meant I would have to take time off work and I couldn’t afford that.”
“I resigned from the railway eventually because I could see everything was getting run- down. They weren’t getting the passengers, and freight was beginning to go by lorries. I went to the Avenue School to work as a caretaker. Tom Sweeney had been the caretaker at the Avenue School but when Kingdown School opened [1960] he had gone there. I became the caretaker at the Avenue School in his place. Molly became a cleaner at the Avenue School, helping me. Another cleaner, a woman who lived at Beechgrove, helped us. I worked at the Avenue School for 13 years. I left there because I fell out with the headmaster Mr. Drayton. He upset my wife. He ran his fingers along the top of a door and complained about some dust. Molly resigned there and then. She said to me ‘If I was you I’d do the same.’ I didn’t give my notice in straight away. I waited until I had found another job. I went up the REME and got a job. Then I gave my notice in at the Avenue School.”
“I worked on the yard gang at the REME, doing all sorts of jobs. We used to load guns on to the railway and we cleaned and swept different rooms. We used to empty the rubbish once a week. There were about half a dozen of us. Len Ingram, who lived at the Dene, was in charge. It was a nice job. Eventually I took Smudger Smith’s job when he retired. He was a fire patrolman. That’s how I became a fire patrolman. I retired at 65. I would have liked to have gone on for a bit longer but they had stopped that. Had I been 65 the year before I could have carried on working until I was 70. If I had done that I would have got a full pension. I was unlucky.”
“I wear glasses. I’ve had eye trouble all my life. I’ve got a lazy eye. It’s inherited. My mother and brother had it and I was born with it as well. In those days they couldn’t do much about it apart from covering over your good eye to make you try and use the lazy one as much as possible. I must have got my first pair of glasses through the school. They were steel framed ones. As far as I know they were free and my mother, bless her, didn’t have to pay. Having a lazy eye didn’t effect me, not even when I was in the Army. I am also left-handed and that didn’t matter in the Army neither. I fired my gun left-handed.”
“I’ve had bladder trouble. It started about ten years ago. The doctor made a wrong diagnosis. He thought I had warts in my bladder. There’s a medical name for it. Every three months you go in to hospital, they scrape the bladder, they burn the inside of it, and then you come home. Three months later they have you back again and repeat the procedure. The doctors treated me for the wrong thing for two years. It wasn’t warts. It turned out to be a tumour and it was bleeding. I told them I was bleeding. They said I would have to wait to get it seen to. They told me it wasn’t an emergency. Apparently your waterworks have to stop completely before it’s considered an emergency.”
“On New Year’s Eve 1989 I couldn’t pee at all. I went to bed but I woke up at three o’clock in the morning. I was in a lot of pain. I had got clogged up with clots of blood. I didn’t want to upset anyone at that time of the morning, so I put up with it, and phoned for an ambulance at 9 o’clock in the morning. They took me to Warminster Hospital. They couldn’t deal with it there, so I had to go on to the R.U.H. in Bath. I had to stay there five weeks. I got to know everyone on the ward and all the doctors. They were very good. They gave me 23 packs of blood. I also had to have radio-therapy to stop the problem. I’ve never been the same since. The x-rays played havoc with the lower part of my body and I’ve got to be careful if I go out for a walk. I’ve got to make sure I’m okay before I go out.”
“My wife Molly was ill during the last few years of her life. I first noticed things weren’t right with her when we went out for walks. She used to scuff. I used to say ‘Pick your feet up.’ She used to say ‘I am walking properly.’ I didn’t realise at first that she was ill but it gradually got worse and worse. She collapsed in town once or twice. I wasn’t with her but the chap that used to be in charge of Payne’s, the newsagents in the Market Place, he saw to things and got her to the hospital.”
“Another time Molly collapsed upstairs at home. She had the flu. I was getting the breakfast one morning and I heard a bang. I thought it was next door but I thought I had better look upstairs to see that Molly was okay and there she was laying across the top of the stairs. She’d fallen. She was lucky she hadn’t fell down the stairs. She was laying still with her eyes open. I didn’t know if she was dead or not. I hammered on the next door neighbour’s wall. She came and shouted through the letterbox ‘Are you alright? What’s happened?’ I said ‘Get the ambulance!’ Molly was taken to hospital but she got over it.”
“It could have been worse. It was all part of life. We all have our troubles. It happened three or four times but we coped. I’m cool, calm and collected. A lot of people lose their heads and go daft. People used to say to my dad ‘Why are you looking so hail and hearty?’ He used to say ‘I’m cool, calm and collected.’ My mother used to do all the worrying. Dad never worried. That’s how he always was and I’m just the same. I had to look after Molly for a long time. I took on the cooking and the housework and everything. I didn’t grumble. I carried on just like we used to together. That’s what love and marriage are all about.”
“I looked after Molly at home but she gradually got worse and worse. In the end I couldn’t cope with it. She couldn’t get to the toilet and I couldn’t get her there myself. I had to ring up my daughters but they couldn’t do anything. It came to the point where Molly had to be admitted to Ward Two at Warminster Hospital. There wasn’t a choice. Push came to shove. I couldn’t cope and Molly had Alzheimer’s. When her mind started going it broke my heart. It was terrible. She knew who I was more or less to the end but it was heart-breaking. After 18 months or more in Ward Two, Molly died at Warminster Hospital on Friday 10th January 1997. She was 80. Her funeral was held at St Aldhelm’s, Bishopstrow, on the following Friday.”
“My brother Len and my wife died quite close. It was a heart-breaking time. My brother was ill for a long period with lung cancer. He had been smoking all the time. He didn’t care less. He said ‘If smoking kills me it does, it’s the only enjoyment I’ve got. I don’t go to bingo and I don’t spend money. I stay at home quietly and it’s the only enjoyment I’ve got.’ That was his actual words. They did x-rays. They told him he had cancer. He almost willed himself to death. He didn’t cry, he wasn’t upset. He took it in his stride and waited for it. He went in Warminster Hospital and that’s where he died. We tried to entice him back home, we wanted him to die at home, but he wouldn’t go back. He died a bachelor. Len had never got married. He didn’t like women much. He couldn’t get on with them and he didn’t like working with them. He had his dog and he had his cats. He liked cats and he liked to be beside an open fire. He also liked his fags and that was all he wanted. That was his life.”
“Len died on 31st December 1996. He’s buried at Bishopstrow Churchyard. The inscription on his gravestone says he was a lifelong resident of Bishopstrow. He had continued to live in mum and dad’s old cottage. It had originally belonged to Neville Marriage. When Marriage died [in 1949] it changed ownership. When my mother died [in 1963], Len automatically took over the tenancy but all the time he was there the new owners were trying to get him out. They wanted him out so that they could do it up and sell it to get some money. The new owners kept wanting to put the rent up. Leonard wrote to the Council and they made sure the owners didn’t put the rent up any more than they should. That old cottage had brick floors and all the damp used to come up through. It wasn’t worth a high rent.”
“My life has changed completely since Molly’s death. I’m lost on my own. I want someone but she’s not here. We used to sit side by side holding hands. Molly used to like reading. She enjoyed Catherine Cookson’s books. We used to go up to the Tuesday Club at Beckford and Molly enjoyed dancing with the Warminster and Frome Old Time and Modern Sequence Clubs. We used to go on coach trips with the Civil Service Retirement Fellowship. I can’t do those things with her anymore because she’s gone but I do try to keep busy. I’ve got a lot of books but I don’t sit round reading. I’ve got my greenhouse. I do the garden and I go for walks. I keep walking as much as I can, to keep things moving, but I get tired with going to the same old places. I do cooking. I make cakes because I like homemade cake. It’s expensive to buy cakes. I get my own dinner and tea. I sit here on my own and watch television but it’s not the same. People don’t realise what it’s like to be on your own until they experience it. I don’t see anyone to talk to. It’s a hell of a life isn’t it?”
“I think the world today is terrible and it’s getting worse. What will it be like in ten years time? I don’t know. I hope I won’t be alive then. It’s the way people live today. They couldn’t care less. It’s the way the children are brought up today. They’ve got no parental control. Kiddies can do just as they like. Look at these drugs. Look at these bombs. You’ll never stop the drugs now and you’re never stop the bombing. They’ll never solve the Irish problem. That’s been going on since ever I can remember. Ian Paisley was on television the other night. You’ll never change him. All the years we’ve known him and he’s still the same. He’s a Protestant and a Loyalist. He’s a vicar or he’s supposed to be but what is religion in Ireland? It’s Roman Catholics against Protestants. It’s Protestants against Roman Catholics. I don’t understand the Irish. They’ll have a funeral, go to church, and then they’re all in the pub drinking away. That’s the way it’s always been. These politicians are wasting their time. They try hard and they get so near to settlements but look at the murders that have happened since that peace agreement. It’s not men doing it now, it’s young lads today, and they’ve still got their guns. Nothing has been handed in and they never will hand them in. You’ll never get peace in Northern Ireland. There’s never peace throughout the world.”
“We’ve got a Labour government now. I think the Labour people are doing very well. They’re doing things the right way but some people don’t agree with what’s being done. The Conservatives started off the Millennium Dome and the new Labour Government have got to finish it. It’s a waste of money. They’re building it and we don’t know a darn thing about it. And when it’s built it won’t benefit us. It’s like building a castle. What bloody good is it going to be to us?”
“Margaret Thatcher didn’t help people like me. She was more for the la-de-da’s, you know, herself and her own class. I pity her husband Dennis. The Blair family are more down to earth. Thatcher was all for the yuppies. It made me sick. Same as Ted Heath took us into the Common Market. France will never get on with us. They’ll never agree with us. They didn’t before the War and they won’t now. They let us down during the War. The Belgians were the same. Before the Common Market we were okay. We had no complaints. We had food and we had everything we wanted. We had an Empire once and we could get food from Australia and New Zealand. We’d be better off without the Common Market. I’m sure if we were not in the Common Market our food would be much cheaper. They are at loggerheads against us now. They think we’ve had our day. They want to dominate us. They want us to be Europeans. I’m an Englishman. I always have been and I always will be. I’m English, well, I’m more than that, I’m Wiltshire and proud of it. No one can take that away from me. These people abroad, the Germans and the French want to keep us down. They do keep us down.”
“Look at this money business. They want us to have the same currency. I didn’t agree with the decimal stuff. Things don’t go up a penny at a time. It goes up in leaps and bounds. They haven’t got a thought for the unemployed or the old people. All they want is higher wages. And where do they go from there? Bigger houses, better holidays, bigger cars, better this and better that. They’re no better off in the end. You go in a shop and ask how much something is. They scan a bar code to find out. Everything is done by computers now. All this technology has done a lot of people out of work. These factories making cars are doing it with machinery now. They can make everything with computer controlled machinery now.”
“The world has changed dramatically in my lifetime. Everything has changed. Nothing is the way it used to be. Even religion has gone down hill. It’s not improving. It’s a new world. People don’t want to go to church now. They are more interested in watching television now. People worship cars now. You hear what these gay vicars are up to now but that was going on years ago just the same. Vicars were sleeping with other vicars years ago. It’s been going on for a long time. It’s life. It’s just that we’re more likely to hear about it now through newspapers and television.”
“Television is a load of rubbish. It’s very childish. People chucking gunge over themselves on Saturday evenings. That’s very childish. I like to see theatre and plays but it has to be sensible. It’s terrible language and sex now. Whenever you see a couple in a play, within five minutes they’ve got all their clothes off and they’re in bed. There’s no need for that on television. We’re worse than animals. That doesn’t interest me at all. Perhaps it’s what young people want to see. The younger generation probably find it acceptable.”
“Even little children seem to know all about sex today. I didn’t know nothing about sex when I was a little boy. Mother never told us anything and the school never told us. There was no such thing as sex education in schools. We learned when we were growing up from one another. We watched the animals, like dogs and cats, and the bull with the cows on the farm. That’s how we found out about it. Today you can go in a newsagent’s and the top shelf is full of girlie mags. Not in my day. There was nothing like that. Still, we couldn’t have bought anything like that even if they had existed. We couldn’t even afford comics.”
“I don’t think there’s much hope for young people today. There’s drugs and smoking and alcohol. People are bringing in lorry loads of beer from France and you won’t stop it. The whole world has taken a turn for the worse. Nothing matters anymore. People’s morals have changed. Standards have dropped. Today the blokes walk around with long hair and no bloody hats on. That’s something I don’t like, chaps with no hats on. If you went to a football match years and years ago everybody had their hats on. I expect young people will think I’m stupid talking like this but it’s their attitude that is stupid.”
“Bishopstrow isn’t the same any more. It used to be closely knit. There was lots of activity going on, with the big houses, the farms and the mill. That meant lots of horses and carts, and later on steam engines. The off-licence in the village did a good trade. Children would take a bottle there to get it filled with beer for father. They would seal the cork in the bottle with sealing wax, so that the children couldn’t take a swig on the way home. There aren’t many children in the village today. You don’t hear the sound of children in Bishopstrow like you used to, except for only recently, at the little nursery school. The way people live has changed. People come to Bishopstrow to live, they go out to work, and most of them don’t know their neighbours. Most of them don’t have anything to do with the parish. They’ve got a church down the lane and they don’t go to that. The poor old church is forgotten but they think, somehow, that the old building will always be there when they need it, regardless of where the money comes from to keep it going. Religion is not taught much in some schools today. No wonder very few people really bother about going to church these days. They either can’t be bothered or are more interested in other attractions, television, or motor cars.”
“I got myself a Lambretta scooter when I was working at the Avenue School, about 1956. I bought it from Dale’s, at Silver Street. Then I got a more powerful one, a 175 cc, and then I got a car, a Morris 1000. I went up to Wall’s Garage at East Street. I was going to get a 1100. They didn’t have any in at the time. They said ‘We’ve got a Morris 1,000 coming in soon.’ In the meantime I heard whose car that was. It belonged to the park keeper in Warminster. He was going to trade it in at Wall’s. I went to see him. We made a deal. I could get it cheaper direct from him, because the garage would put another £50 or more, maybe £100, on. I gave him about £300 for it. I had that car for years. Molly and I went all over the place in it. We went up to Durham in it to see Molly’s people. I had to take a driving test. I took it in Trowbridge. I failed the first time because of one way streets. I didn’t know nothing about them. I passed my test at the second attempt. I’ve still got a car now. I’ve got a Maestro. I only drive locally. I go to Salisbury sometimes but I prefer to go on the bus because it’s safer. Mind, I don’t really want to go Salisbury or Bath these days. I don’t want to wander around those places, well, not on my own. That’s no fun. I prefer to stay local.”
“People come and go in Bishopstrow now. Today it’s mainly offices, like at Barrow House and Eastleigh Court, and privately owned houses. People drive cars to work elsewhere and when they come home from work they spend their time cleaning the car, watching television, and taking holidays away. There’s not much life in the village these days, which is a pity. Thank goodness there are one or two villagers trying to keep things going. I hope they can keep things up and maybe some of the younger folk will be able to continue. The future looks grim at the moment.”
“I’ve got no regrets about my life. It would have been nice to have had more money. I might have enjoyed myself a bit more. I’ve always been hard up. I’m still hard up. I had to take things in my stride and get on with it. Everybody did the same. We all had to go to work. If I had earned more money I would have had a happier life and been able to buy things I really wanted. I’ve had to go without all my life but I never complained. People are too quick to complain today. People always want more money now. They want higher wages. What do they do with it when they get higher wages? They get a bigger house, have more holidays, go further afield and get a bigger car. They’re no better off in the end and they still want more money. You can be rich and still be unhappy. You can be poor but happy. That’s a real old saying but it’s true. Money isn’t everything but it helps. The love of money is the root of all evil.”
“Money has ruined sport. Footballers are paid huge amounts but they are not worth it. The prize money for the snooker players is just as silly. The winner of a snooker tournament can get £220,000. That’s too much. What will he do with it? He’ll spend the money in next to no time. He’ll have a holiday and a big car like a Rolls Royce. His car will be no better than my little car or yours. They should put a stop to these big pay outs. If these sponsors want to donate ridiculous amounts they should give most of that money to charity and give a little bit in prize money. The winners would still be happy with a bit of it.”
“It’s like people can’t get enough. It’s all for greed. Look at all this gambling. People are gambling mad. If you want to back a horse you need to do some research. My brother-in-law in Sedgefield, where the racecourse is, told me about a horse once, a horse called Red Carnation. He told me it was sure to win. This was when I was working at Warminster Railway Station. A couple of us there backed it and we never won a halfpenny. It’s a mug’s game. The only winners are the bookies. They’re well off. You’ve only got to see the cars they drive about in and you know who makes the money. We’re the losers.”
“People are just as crazy when it comes to these lotteries. People are spending money trying to become a millionaire. You know nobody in Warminster who has won a million but most of Warminster is trying to win it. I haven’t had one go at it yet and I’m not going to. It’s bloody daft. It’s like you trying to find a sixpence on Salisbury Plain. It’s the same thing. It’s just as remote. Like I say I’ve never had a go on that National Lottery and I don’t intend to. I think the money should go to charity and not so much to the winners. Those people who win that big money go wrong with it. They’re millionaires but they’re no better off. They blow the lot and go to pieces. They end up more miserable than they were before.”
“The money should go to hospitals and things like that. Let’s get the wards in order. Let’s get them opened up again. A fraction of it would feed the starving Sudanese. The people running these lotteries are looking after themselves. They’re doing very well. Look at the money they get. They’re laughing. They even pay themselves to print the tickets. Talk about feathering your nest. Nobody speaks out about these things. Not even the Prime Minister. He doesn’t even say a boo. Everything just goes on and nobody cares. Millions of pounds are wasted on lotteries and gambling. Same as these scratch cards people are buying every week. Very little of the takings from those goes to charities. I think it’s all wrong. It should go to hospitals and things like the Beckford Centre or Ward Two at Warminster Hospital but it doesn’t.”
“Old age pensioners have a better deal than years ago but we’re let down with hospitals and nurses. There’s a shortage of nurses and the wards are being closed because they say there’s no money. They used to run the hospitals with no bother at all. The old folk have to suffer now. If they close Ward Two at Warminster Hospital what will happen to me? I will have to go by car all the way to Bath or Chippenham or somewhere. If everybody has to do that there’ll be more traffic on the roads and so on. Supposing you haven’t got a car? The politicians don’t seem to have thought about these things.”
“I’ve got a nice home and I’m happy. It’s nice and comfortable here. I’ve done it up. I decorated it top to bottom, to my liking. I did it all myself. I took my time and did it nicely. Upstairs is just the same. I chose what I wanted and did it myself, bit by bit. I’ve got central heating, all thermostatically controlled. We used to have a coal fire but I wouldn’t want to go back to that. I’ve collected some brass and I clean it every so often. I’ve got enough brass. I don’t want any more. Young people don’t seem to bother with things like that today. They have plain homes. The modern homes are rather bare. I hate to think what some people’s houses are like. They’ve probably got livestock and vermin running around inside.”
“They are going to do these houses up. The houses at Boreham Field are being re-built to overcome concrete cancer. They’ve started doing the houses now. I have a walk around the estate and see how they’re getting on with the work. They shall be starting on my house in a year or two’s time. We’re going to have a new bathroom suite and shower, all modern, and a new kitchen. I shall get a new front door and they are going to put a door out of my living room into the garden. It’s what they call a patio door. It will be nice and I’m looking forward to it all.”
“I expect a lot of people could tell you a few tales. I wonder how many memories the young folk of today will have if they are lucky enough to reach their seventies? Will they have as many as us old ‘uns? Things alter and improve all the time in one way and another. These days we have never had it so good. We live in a land of plenty. People have big cars, they own their houses, they holiday abroad, they eat good meals and have the benefit of hospitals and surgeons. We have a lot to be thankful for.”
“What of the future for the world? Man has already walked on the moon and is trying to reach other planets. Why? I don’t know. We have had two world wars. I well remember the last one. Will there be another? It’s all for greed, to get more. We have never had it so good compared with the past but people are never satisfied. People are always wanting more.”