Category: When All The Flowers Are Dying

Autobiographical and other notes, including recollections and observations by Danny Howell (the author of this blog).

When All The Flowers Are Dying – Introduction

Frederic Weatherley, in 1910, wrote the lyrics for the song Danny Boy (set to the melody of The Londonderry Air in 1913):

Oh, Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling
From glen to glen, and down the mountain side.
The summer’s gone, and all the roses falling,
It’s you, it’s you must go and I must bide.
But come ye back when summer’s in the meadow,
Or when the valley’s hushed and white with snow,
It’s I’ll be there in sunshine or in shadow,—
Oh, Danny boy, Oh Danny boy, I love you so!

But when ye come, and all the flowers are dying,
If I am dead, as dead I well may be,
Ye’ll come and find the place where I am lying,
And kneel and say an Avé there for me.
And I shall hear, though soft you tread above me,
And all my grave will warmer, sweeter be,
For you will bend and tell me that you love me,
And I shall sleep in peace until you come to me!

Danny Howell writes:

One of the lines includes the lyrics “But when ye come, and all the flowers are dying,” and I have adapted the line as the collective title for my autobiographical notes: When All The Flowers Are Dying.

Whether my autobiographical notes are of any significance or not, I have included them in my blog, mainly for my own amusement but maybe they will be of interest to others too?

I have arranged these anecdotes in chronological order, most recent first, earliest last.

A Family Of Weasels In Beehives Wood

1960s

Danny Howell, writing in June 2024, remembered:

There was, and still is a strip of woodland running alongside the northern edge of Top Park at Bishopstrow. During the 1960s, myself and my childhood friends referred to this strip of woodland as “Beehives Wood”. That wasn’t an official name or recorded name; it was just the name us boys called it. We gave it that name because on the north side of that woodland, between the wood and the private road that connects Big Gates, north of Home Farm, with Cox’s Drove, near Bishopstrow Farm, placed on an area with a stone surface, were a long line of beehives, kept by some bee-farmer whose name is now forgotten. The beehives must have been there with the permission of Bert Legg (who farmed Home Farm). In the 1990s I asked Bert who the beehives and bees belonged to but Bert couldn’t remember. It had completely escaped his memory.

Today there is a narrow roadway through that woodland connecting the private road with the back entrance to Bishopstrow House hotel. It’s near where the Legg family of Home Farm continue to have the dung heap for the farm. The narrow road has a gate. The hotel in recent years has used that back entrance for deliveries, out of sight of hotel guests.

Prior to the road being made through there, there was a fairly large hole or dip in the woodland there, maybe about 10 feet deep, and it was filled with several old tree stumps and the a lopped bough or two. If you were making your way along and through Beehives Wood, east to west or vice versa, you had to skirt round those stumps in the dip, keeping close to the fence. The fence there comprises the old-fashioned railings from Temple’s time. Like I say, it was necessary to skirt round the stumps, rather than try and climb over them, which would have been hard work. There were gaps between the stumps and boughs and you could never be sure your if one of your feet or legs would go down into a gap. If that happened you might hurt yourself. Those stumps were obviously pushed out and the dip filled, and a couple of yards of the railings removed, when the hotel wanted to create the back way into its grounds.

What I do remember about those stumps in that dip was that I saw, on several occasions, during the mid-1960s, a family of weasels there. From a distance, from the private road, you could see them scurrying about. If you approached slowly and quietly you could get a better look. You could see at least four or five weasels sat there or playing about. Of course, if you made a noise or they saw you, they would soon disappear under the stumps or rush off into the undergrowth nearby. They were a delightful sight and I’ve never forgotten seeing them.

Motor Vehicle Registration Spotting

1964

Danny Howell writes:

When we were young boys, my friends and I had to make our own fun. We had Dinky and other toys and traditional games like snakes and ladders but we didn’t have computers. Many of our amusements took place outdoors. When I was aged about eight (so I’m referring now to 1964 or thereabouts), one of our favourite pastimes, something we did very often, was to spot car number plates. To do this, we needed a pen or a pencil and some paper, preferably a notebook of some sort. We didn’t always have shop-bought notebooks. My dad worked at the REME and he would bring home, for me, notebooks supplied to REME staff by the Ministry Of Defence. Those particular notebooks often had hardback covers, which made them ideal for the purpose of writing down the car registration numbers I spotted.

I lived at the eastern end of The Dene, Warminster. I would walk down to the opposite end of the Dene, to its entrance at the junction with Woodcock Road. On the corner, outside No.17 The Dene, was a little patch of grass, same as today. On that green was a grey post, about four inches across and maybe four feet high. It was really the cylindrical case over something to do with phone cables. A replacement cylinder stands there now (2011) and next to it now is a dark green-coloured metal cabinet, now housing a bigger and much more complicated array of cables and things to do with the telephone system. The post, which I have just referred to, made a bit of a perch for me to sit on. It wasn’t very comfortable, because the top wasn’t really wide enough to sit on and it was a bit pointed, so after a short while I would get off it and just sit on the grass, using the post instead as a back rest.

From there I would wait for cars, vans, lorries and buses to come along Woodcock Road. There was nothing like as many vehicles as there are today. In the notebook I would write down the registration number of every vehicle I saw. Sometimes I did this on my own. Sometimes one of my friends would sit with me and do the same thing. We always like to get the numbers of Wiltshire vehicles – their registration numbers included the letters AM, MR, MW, HR, and WV. We spent many happy hours in the simple task of writing down vehicle registrations. I still have some of the old notebooks with the lists of registrations I recorded.

There was a haulage firm called Uphill and it was nothing unusual to see one of their lorries coming along Woodcock Road. If they were en route to Salisbury they would come along Copheap Lane and down Woodcock Road to bypass the town centre. Remember, there was no Warminster Bypass in those days. I remember those Uphill lorries particularly, because we boys had a favourite phrase, of our own making, which we used to shout out aloud whenever we saw one of them. We used to shout: “There’s one of Uphill’s going down hill!” That was just something we used to shout, by way of habit.

Something we were always thrilled to see coming along Woodcock Road, or any other road for that matter, were the gigantic recovery lorries the REME sent out to collect broken-down army tanks. That was of particular interest to me, because I knew that my dad, who worked on the Main Gate at the REME Workshops, often had to make the phone calls that sent those recovery lorries out. Those lorries would have been Scammells or Antars. One of the drivers was Busty Matthews, who lived on the front of Boreham Fields, nearly opposite the junction with Battlesbury Road (the southern end of Battlesbury Road was renamed Rose Avenue a few years ago). We boys would wave at Busty, who was high up in the cab, and he would always wave back at us, or better still, as we boys thought, he would sound the horn of the lorry. If we saw a lorry going out on a recovery, we would always, if we could, wait around as long as possible, hoping to see the lorry come back with the tank on the back. To see one of those lorries hauling a Centurion or other tank back to the REME Workshops was a big thrill for us boys.

A Recollection Of Visiting Three Horseshoes Yard, Warminster

Danny Howell writes:

My mother’s youngest sister, Pat (Patricia Norah Ball) married James Boyle in 1958. Pat was brought up in the Church of England faith but Jimmy was Irish, so they were married at St. George’s Catholic Church, Boreham Road, Warminster.

I don’t know if it was their first home but soon after marrying, Pat and Jimmy were living at Three Horseshoes Yard, Warminster. There were about ten houses there and Pat and Jimmy lived at number nine. They wouldn’t have owned it; they would have been renting from someone. They were living there in the early 1960s for sure, certainly 1960 to 1961.

I can remember my mother (Gwen Howell) going to Three Horseshoes Yard to visit Pat. My mother would take me along too. I was only about five years old but I can remember it, albeit vaguely. I do know that mother and I would go down the Avenue and turn left through a gap in the wall. There was a path which connected the Avenue with the back of the Three Horseshoes pub in the Market Place. I have a feeling the path wasn’t surfaced, it was just a dirt surface that made its way through a neglected area from the Avenue end to where the houses of Three Horseshoes Yard were.

The houses looked old and somehow I recall they were a bit run-down. They had seen better days. What I do vividly remember is that one of the houses had a first floor that came out over the path. If you wanted to continue along the path to the pub end you had to walk under the top part of that house. That’s always stuck in my mind. I suppose that property had what was known as “a flying freehold.”

My aunt Pat and uncle Jimmy eventually moved out of the house at Three Horseshoes Yard, I guess it wasn’t suitable bearing in mind they were starting a family. They later lived at Boreham Road, near the entrance to Chancery Lane, prior to moving to Bristol.

By 1970, the houses at Three Horseshoes Yard were either derelict or demolished and I remember seeing that area having the appearance of an overgrown wasteland – clumps of brambles and tall weeds and the odd pile of rubble here and there. I was fourteen years old then. Three years later they built the Three Horseshoes Mall at the southern end and, of course, the northern end became a car park – all very different to what it was when I was a young boy.