PIG, PUBS, and PEOPLE : CHAPTER 7
CHILDHOOD IN EAST HADDON
Memories of childhood – endless summers and snowy winters, and a sense of freedom more often denied to today’s children. For most people, childhood memories are happy – the bad things tend to be forgotten, or at least they’re not as important as the good. The inhabitants of East Haddon are no exception to this. Whatever their problems in adult life, they almost all look back on their youth as being a time of fun, excitement and laughter.
Freedom to Roam
Daphne Walding is among many who look back on childhood as a time of freedom: “We used to take a picnic, a bottle of squash and some food. We were never bored.” She remembers picking white violets for her mother on Mothering Sunday in “White Violet Wood”. She says that her children, born in the 1960s, also had a fair amount of freedom compared with those today: “They used to refer to Rowell Leys as ‘Colditz’ and had great adventures there”.
Barbara Pearson remembers playing with her friends Janet Threadgold and Diana Craddock, and Jean Stapley, who was an evacuee, during the war. She recalls running over the fields, where they were allowed to roam all day, and playing “kick the can” near the house where she now lives in Holdenby Road.
Marion Allen (née Smith) describes this game, played with an old treacle tin: “Someone used to place it in the middle of the road and they used to kick it as far as they could and everyone else used to run and hide. Then you had to get back to the can before the person had found you. All age groups used to play together.”
Debbie Williams also recalls the amount of freedom she had as a child to roam over the fields, leaving home after breakfast and not returning till tea time. She and Rosemary Davies used to play in fields owned by Frederick Smith Senior, and in a hovel on his land. She remembers making a swing out of binding twine hung from the rafters, with slabs of hay for the seats. The next day they bumped into Mr Smith, and he asked them if they had been responsible for making a mess of his barn. She denied it, and has felt guilty ever since! Sheila Pennefather née Blacklee also remembers the amount of freedom children had. She has particularly fond memories of Tire Hill “where we climbed the highest tree in the spinney and stayed there for hours in a sort of tree house”. Jill Teasdale remembers being “free to play outside and even to go to the Playing Field with friends, and it always felt safe.”
Ernest Poole used to roam the fields with his friend Terry Godding, who lived at Mill House near the Why Not pub:
I always used to end up in the pond, and he used to be as clean as anything. We’d collect newts and tadpoles. We used to spend our days in the fields, birds’-nesting and collecting tadpoles in jars. We’d get out tadpoles from the ponds behind what is now Mrs Shine’s house... I remember seeing crested newts in those days, which are rare now. We also used to find big spotted lizards in the rotted tree trunks in the field at the end of the terrace.
Debbie Williams also collected tadpoles from the ponds, and once she saw an adder in the field behind Clifden Terrace “which frightened us to death”. She and Sheila Blacklee caught Eric Andrews “stealing” birds’ eggs and tried to stop him. She remembers picking wildflowers and blackberrying in Spencer’s field, and her mother taking her to the Bluebell Wood (East Haddon Covert).
We had to get permission from Mrs Maxwell as there was a sign on the gate which said ‘Trespassers will be Prosecuted’. We used to walk along the cart track by the A428 to get there. I remember it was a magical place with a carpet of bluebells, some rhododendron bushes and a dark, secret area amongst the fir trees.
Phyllis Hobson recollects gathering mushrooms in the fields around the village.
Fun and Games
Ernest Poole remembers playing cricket at “The Oval” at the bottom of Vicarage Lane with Freddie Hylands and Mark Talbot: “We used Mark’s cricket bat and bald tennis balls. If the ball went past the Davies’s we had scored a 4 and if it went into the Ratledge’s garden it was a 6 and out, game over.” Jean Holt remembers playing hopscotch on the “little hill”, a rise in the Holdenby Road not far from where her house is today. Debbie Williams and other children used to play in Vicarage Lane, where there were rarely any cars. They also played hopscotch in the middle of the lane.
David Muddiman describes sledging in the winter on Tire Hill: “Once it was very icy and we were going down the big field at tremendous speed, so fast that we went through the gate at the bottom and across the main road!” He remembers Nick Talbot demonstrating how to wax the sledge’s runners to make them go even faster. According to Sheila Pennefather, “it did seem to snow every winter and tobogganing was a favourite on Tire Hill... We also skated regularly on Billy Jones’s pond, the round one.” Debbie recalls sledging down Tire Hill. Victor Thorman and Duncan Peel had been on her sledge, a big one bought by her mother that eight children could get on, including herself and her brothers. According to Marion Allen, “dozens” of children used to go sledging on the hill, and the wooden sledges that they used were often made by Maurice Ward, the blacksmith.
One of Marion Allen’s first memories is of the opening of the Playing Field. She says she didn’t have a father at the time – because he used to come home from work, have something to eat and then go straight out again to help get the Playing Field ready. He used to spend most weekends there too. She remembers that when it was finished, all the children of men who had helped with it were allowed to go on the seesaw and swings first. Unfortunately, the children didn’t always treat the equipment with great respect: “Mrs Dickens used to watch us from her window when we were up the Playing Field – we used to have about six people on a swing at a time, and she would report us. We had dozens on the seesaw at one time. It was amazing how long it lasted!” She remembers playing a prank, tying the front door knob of Walcott House to the front door knob of The Old Bakery and ringing the bells and running away.
Marion used to go on scrumping expeditions particularly in the Cooper’s orchards, where she was chased by Jock Cooper. She says they had to eat the apples there and then, because they were too heavy to carry – but that Roger Wightman used to get caught when he used to try and run with them in his jumper. We’d scrump all over the village – Mrs Talbot’s, Paul Capell’s land and through Duffus gates opposite Vicarage lane.” Ernest Poole also went scrumping twice, and was caught both times. The first time it was from an orchard in Vicarage Lane, where the council houses now stand; his mother caught him with a pocket full of gooseberries
And I am sure she was angrier because they weren’t ripe more than the actual scrumping... The second time I was in bed and there was a knock on the door and I was terrified because it was Mr Blacklee, and he knew I’d been picking his damsons. It wasn’t what he said, it was what my
Mother said: “Leave it with me.”
When Sallie Jones moved to the village in the 1970s she didn’t feel there was much entertainment for the children, other than the usual football and similar sporting activities and the youth club. But over the years, she regards the situation as having improved enormously, particularly with the refurbishment of the Playing Field, the Pavilion and the Village Hall. Her children attended the village school, as do her grandchildren today.
Life with the Thormans
Debbie Williams has fond memories of the Vicarage when Mr Thorman was the vicar. She says all the children loved going there, because the family were so unconventional. They used to have bible classes on a Sunday afternoon in the kitchen. She remembers the French students that came to stay with the Thormans, and that the boys were particularly good-looking. She once spent “hours” peeling potatoes in the scullery just to have the chance to talk to a handsome boy called Jean-Michel. According to Ernest Poole, the Thormans “kept us all entertained”. “They had a pony and a horse down in the paddock... They used to escape regularly during the night and we’d hear them galloping up the lane and a few moments later one of the daughters, Gloria, would be heard shouting after them!” Ernest was taken on his first holiday by the vicar and his family. He went to stay in a caravan with them on two occasions, in Wales and in Somerset. He remembers getting burnt red, unlike Victor Thorman who was “golden brown”. He also remembers the Thorman’s French students, and that one of them, a girl called Françoise, went with them to Wales. Marion Allen remembers Mr Thorman as “wonderful” when she had her appendix out: he came to see her in hospital every day and brought her sweets – “he loved children”. Daphne Walding had elocution lessons with Mrs Thorman: “It was funny, because as we came out we’d revert to our normal way of speaking!” She had piano lessons with Mrs Brown, the church organist, and had to practise at home when she wanted to be out with her friends – “I absolutely hated it”.
Debbie remembers Mr Thorman’s “fire and brimstone sermons”, and sitting at the back of the church with his daughter Flavia, who would swing her watch in front of her like a pendulum if she thought he was going on too long. Ken Craddock sang in the church choir as a boy, first under the Rev. Pitter and then Canon Keysell, the hunting parson. He also attended Sunday School, and after being there for so many years, received a Bible as a prize, presented by Mrs Guthrie, Margaret Wrathall’s grandmother. Margaret remembers being bored in Matins, and going to church with the other girls from the Hall school, all wearing their hats. Marion Allen recalls that Mr Thorman could be very strict with members of the choir. (Choir picture) One Sunday she was ill, and couldn’t go to church. The following day, the vicar came to see her at home because he didn’t believe she was ill.
The present Sunday School dates back to December 1986, when it was formed by the church in order to reach the children of East Haddon with the Gospel message and encourage them in the Christian faith. Margaret Divall has been organising the Sunday School from the beginning, and “is very happy to be still very much involved”. She describes it as “a very happy time to be spent with the children and helpers – hard work too, but worth every effort, and each child comes to know how much God loves each one of us”. She also takes part in he associated Family Service at the church. The Sunday School meets in the school building. In the year 2000, there were 38 children attending, with five volunteer teachers present each week out of a rota of 13, with seven “reserves”. Some of the children were asked what they liked about Sunday School: a number highlighted the games and quizzes, while others evidently enjoyed the singing and learning about Jesus.
The Girl Guides
The Girl Guides were originally formed in 1912 by Miss Snelson and Mrs Dickens. In 1920, after the troop had been disbanded during the war it was restarted by the two Miss Guthries (later Mrs Martin and Mrs Scott-Robson) and “Kitten” Horne from Priestwell House. It was restarted after the Second World War, by June Cooper, Jock Cooper’s sister, and was later taken over by Mrs Spencer, who had been involved with the movement since she was 18 years old. Marion Allen recalls being in the Girl Guides under Mrs Spencer, with Sheila Pennefather and Debbie Williams.
On the Farm
When does childhood end and being an adult begin? For many, this would be on leaving school – but in the earlier part of the twentieth century, some, like Joe Cadd, finished their education at the age of just 12. He left school during the First World War to work on a farm, ploughing in the fields with a plough pulled by shire horses. Before he left school at 14, Jim Hobson worked as a paper-boy delivering papers from Mrs Roberts’ Post Office shop for 1/6d a week, including the Football Echo on Saturday nights.
Maurice Fletcher remembers a man who lived opposite him in Butcher’s Lane having a cow, which he brought up to the village twice a day to be milked. “I remember the old butter churn in there and I remember going in there and he put me on the back of the old cow and I sat there and ate my bread and cheese!”. Ken Craddock remembers Mrs Chapman delivering milk when he was very young, carrying it around in two buckets, and later Mrs Dickens taking over the round with her milk churn on wheels. David Muddiman spent most of his childhood in the Hall kitchen gardens, where his father was a gardener. He says that the school always had plenty of leftovers, so his family kept pigs:
There was a story about pigs. You were only supposed to have one pig after the war. We had two because we had such a regular supply of food from the Hall School. I always remember my father saying, “You’ll have to take so and so (one of the pigs) for a walk because the policeman’s coming round to inspect our pig”. Fortunately, the pigs were tame. The policeman knew all along that there were two because he always got some of the pork!
Margaret Wrathall has vivid memories of watching the Craddock’s pigs being killed: “it was horrible”. Debbie Williams’ family also kept a pig: “I remember our pig being killed when I was very small and Mum trying to distract me but I can still hear the squeals. I had all my dollies and bears laid out on a leather armchair – all bandaged up – and I was playing hospitals and trying not to think about the pig”.
Miscellaneous Childhood Memories
A few other recollections of childhood life: Debbie Williams recalls
the Loveridges, the gypsies, and their lovely painted wooden caravan trundling slowly through the village. We wound all run outside to watch them pass. Cinderella Loveridge used to come to the door selling wooden clothes pegs. She looked like a typical gypsy with dark, leathery skin and black hair.
Margaret Allen used to watch Alfie Barford the postman on his bike, waiting for him to fall off it – “he used to wobble all over the place”. She remembers being frightened of Rowley Adams, the head gardener at the Hall, because he seemed so stern. Daphne Walding has pleasant memories of Gertie Hadley’s 21st birthday party “when I was about 6 or 7 and they gave me a glass of sherry and I felt a bit drunk!” She recalls carol singing as a child, and being “Miss 1949”. She was privileged in being allowed to watch Children’s Hour on Miss Jarman’s television, one of the first in the village.
And finally, Jean Holt has a somewhat strange story to recount: every Christmas her mother to make her hem a towel with linen purchased from the Co-op by the yard. She doesn’t remember why, just that her mother made her do it!
Paul Capell’s Childhood Memories
Unfortunately for Paul, when he was a boy in the 1930s, his family were really “hard up”: his father was only working every other fortnight for a shoe factory in Long Buckby, because of the Depression.
We kept pigs and we couldn’t afford the straw for the bedding. Up at the Folly near Mill House there used to be the village tip... and we used to go up there and cut the bracken round there for the pigs’ bedding and dry it... We used to eat sheep’s heads and lamb’s tails. They were lovely, especially the lamb’s tails... You’d get a pint of boiling and a pint of cold water to scald them and pull the wool out. We used to eat them fried, but you could have them in a pie. We used to stew the sheep’s head until all the meat dropped off and we had an allotment down Conduit and used the veg for “hurdle punter stew”.
Paul was three years old when he saw his first pig killed, and saw many more during his childhood:
We used to singe the pig and there used to be some open drains in these yards and we’d open them up there on a scratch and then hang them up over the yard to stiffen them up and then cut them up in the kitchen and salt them in the pantry. I used to help mother make faggots and brawn and can still do it.
Paul says one thing he misses is the wildflowers that used to fill the hedgerows, and from which they made wine. One field by the Brington Road was full of primroses and cowslips. There were mushrooms “everywhere” and he remembers going to the Washbrook with his aunt and getting “masses” of watercress.
He remembers the bucket lavatory in the garden with two holes and a box for the boys. Sometimes during cold winters they would have to go through a snowdrift in the back yard to get to the lavatory.
We boys all had to muck in, emptying the lavatories, cleaning the pigs out, and the water we washed in was out of the water barrel outside. We had a gas cooker, we had a range, a copper, and a hip bath which didn’t take quite so much water and you could get one out and one in! We never thought anything about it! The lavatories were emptied in the garden and dug in. Maurice Ward and Rosie lived at No 5 Clifden Terrace and everyone used to say “Cor! Doesn’t Billy Jones’s barn stink!” I didn’t know this for a long time but Maurice used to have a lagoon there where he poured all the buckets of effluent and he’d get a big ladle and go up and down his Brussels sprouts. We had some cockerels and one day mother and I chased this cockerel down there and Joan says, “If it goes down there it won’t get out”. This old cockerel was stuck in the middle of it and we got a sack and we got him out and we got some water out of the water barrel and we sluiced him all down and he made a big fat bird, but we gave him away!
Paul used to do a lot of work for Frederick Smith Senior and his son –
a real farmer... I used to cut kale for him on a Saturday morning... I used to work for Freddie’s brother down at South Lodge in Holdenby. I used to go down on my bike in the school holidays. It was British Summer Time then and we could work till late. We used to get fourpence for mowing corn hay and tying it up into sheaves. When we cut with a binder every kid in the school would be out there with a big stick looking for a rabbit.
He remembers Jack Cave driving a steamroller through the village, clipping the granite kerbstone and chopping the water pipe.
Jack fetched Maurice Ward. The JCB hadn’t been invented – it was a pick and shovel job and the more they dug, the faster the water ran... They stopped the flow by knocking a piece of wood into the pipe. The next problem was how to repair it. I don’t remember how they resolved it. My vocabulary was greatly enhanced that day!
He also remembers the village fire engine, which was manually operated and pulled by a horse. He also remembers playing on two field guns from the First World War in front of the Village Institute.
Anne Leatherland’s Childhood Memories
Anne Leatherhead (née Jones) lived at Steepleton Lodge, then simply known as Steepleton Farm, until she was eighteen. She has fond memories of childhood:
...Steepleton was isolated, beautiful and safe. I spent my childhood in the fields and woods, as free as a bird, with my best friend Neville Pittam of Leighton Lodge, Long Buckby, and we spent hours ferreting rabbits, climbing trees, picking nuts and blackberries.
My mother and father farmed Steepleton and Sheltons Farm (where Bill and I now live). They had breeding sheep, cattle, corn and horses. Carthorses to do the farm work eventually we had a Fordson tractor. I was never a good rider but I had a Welsh cob called Taffy with a short tail. I spent hours looking after Taffy, I even once went to the Pony Club and the other children laughed at me on their smart ponies!
Steepleton was so cosy and warm, we had an old black kitchen range, which shone and had to be black-leaded every day. All the cooking was done on this range; we had a very big black kettle called Big Ben, which was always on the boil. This was very useful when the tin tub came out in front of the kitchen fire at bathtime! We were very lucky because we had a cold tap in the kitchen sink. There was a sitting room with an open fire and one other room downstairs. Upstairs there were three rooms and a BIG attic which was great to play in and to keep cooking apples. At the back, running the length of the house was a dairy and washhouse. There was no electricity so we used lamps and candles. There was no indoor toilet just a little shed at the top of the garden – typical of those days.
At this time we had two farm workers, Wilf and Frank Watts who lived in East Haddon, known affectionately as Tig and Duke. They were so lovely and more like part of the family than employees. Tig actually taught me to walk!
Other memories include the smell of newly cut hay, misty mornings, icicles hanging from the cowshed roof, making dens in the snowdrifts, going to bed early to listen to The Archers and feeding cade lambs with my mother. Christmas was always very happy with simple gifts such as marbles and a book. In 1947 the road was completely blocked by snow and I was unable to go to school for six weeks. I attended the High School in Northampton and not the village school, so I missed out on knowing the village children which I would have liked. Summers seemed longer with many days spent in the hay field...
The Village School (Picture - about 1940)
East Haddon Church of England School was funded in 1790 on the present site, and the original classroom, though much altered, is still in use. For many years, there existed a School House, where all but one of the school’s headteachers lived. It was demolished in 1970. The school is one of the main centres of village life, and many people still living in the village received their education there. Joe Cadd had perhaps the earliest memories of the school, having attended in the early years of the twentieth century. (Picture - about 1922) His teacher was a Mr Thompson, and Joe used to dig his garden. George Page was born in Holdenby and originally attended the school there, but from the age of 11 transferred to East Haddon. He actually met his wife Joan there. Joan, who lived at Althorp, where her father worked on the railway, used to walk to the school every day until at the age of 12 she was given a bicycle. Her earliest memories of east Haddon are of the headmaster, Mr Neale, and Mrs Painter, the infant teacher. She also remembers being with some of the other pupils: Phyllis Hobson, Jean Holt, Dorothy Davies and Gertie Hadley. Jill Teasdale, George and Joan Page’s daughter, also attended East Haddon school, as her children do today. She remembers her first teacher, Mrs Irons, who still lives in the village. Maurice Fletcher’s memories of his first day at the school are not so good: “Len Seymour and Joe Ashby met me at the school gate and took me by the hand and led me into school. I remember being frightened to death!” When Ernest Poole was at the school, the headmistress was Miss Ratcliffe, who was very strict, and the children used to take their troubles to the nurse, who had a kinder nature. David Muddiman (Picture) also remembers Miss Ratcliffe, and her successor, Mr Reynolds: “Mr Reynolds was very enthusiastic about sport and that’s where I learned to play cricket.” Daphne Walding was the first of three generations of her family to attend the school. She remembers that Barbara Pearson, Ernest Poole and Marion Allen (née Smith) were some of the other children there at the same time. According to Jim Hobson, Mr Neale was also a strict headteacher and prepared to use the cane. “I was nearly given the cane once – he sent me to the cupboard to fetch it for him, but when I got there the cupboard was locked, so I got off lightly on that occasion. I can’t remember what it was that I had done wrong at that time, but I had seen him break canes on boy’s hands before.” Jean Holt was a little late starting school, because of a bout of scarlet fever, but she recovered from the illness and on her first day “she chattered all the day”, she remembers her mother saying. The school was often closed over the years during outbreaks of disease, many of which are not such a problem today. It is recorded that in 1900 there were outbreaks of scarlet fever and diphtheria, in 1902 German measles, in 1906 measles, in 1907 mumps and scarlet fever – and there were many more similar incidents of serious bouts of illness which meant that all the children stayed at home, rather than congregating together and risking spreading infection. Jean Holt recalls that there were about 70 pupils in all when she was there – very similar to the numbers today – split between three teachers and three rooms. Some were “unruly boys” from Ravensthorpe, sent to East Haddon because the teacher there couldn’t cope with them – so perhaps it was a good thing that Mr Neale was so strict! Jean remembers school trips to the seaside at Skegness, and to the theatre in Stratford and cinema in Long Buckby. She used to sit next to Fred Moore.
I remember going to school at 4. I was there for ten years and they were happy years. The headmaster was Mr Neale (Picture) but the other teacher was Mrs Painter, the butcher’s wife. She taught in the back room. When you got up to the middle room, the teacher was Miss Masters from Flore. Mr Neale taught the older ones in the big front room. I used to sit next to Jean Holt... Mr Neale always made a boy sit next to a girl. Dick Craddock has always been one of my friends going right back to my school days. In those days you had to play cricket, football, athletics etc. We used to play football in Freddie Smith’s top field which was called “Forty”. Cricket was played down behind the Hall where there is a thatched pavilion... We used to play lots of games. One I remember is when you sharpened both ends of a piece of wood and then hit it with a stick and try to catch it in mid-air. We used to spend lots of time sitting on the church wall, but if Mr Neale got to hear about it we were in trouble at school the next day... We used to go down to the Hall on May Day. Mr Neale had an old open car and the May Queen would sit in there and we all had to walk behind the car from one end of the village to the other... We always had lemonade and cake down at the Hall.
Fred Moore
(Picture - music lesson at the school)
The present headteacher is Stephen Lord, who was appointed in 1982. He feels that schoolteachers are not held in the same esteem today as they used to be, and that government directives allow them less independence in deciding teaching policy within individual schools. Stephen was once presented with a kitten at a morning assembly as a birthday present – he dislikes cats! Fortunately for him, it turned out to be a joke, and the kitten was later returned to its owner! The school remains an integral part of village life, and, being a Church school, it has strong links with the vicar and St Mary’s church. The aim of the school is to provide a Christian environment that is stable, caring, supportive and stimulating and in which children are given the opportunity to develop their spiritual, social and moral integrity. There is a very active “Friends of the School” organisation, responsible for a number of fund-raising events throughout the year. The money is used for buying much needed equipment for the school. Parents are kept informed about school events (including those organised by the Friends) through a regular newsletter. They are encouraged to attend Open Assemblies three to four times a term; each class of children takes turns to present the assembly, which always includes Bible readings and hymns. Parents are also invited to a number of concerts throughout the school year, with the Christmas Concert being the largest production.
Paul Capell went to Daventry Grammar School after passing his 11-plus at East Haddon school. He used to cycle over there most days, although there was a bus service operated by United Counties. When he left school in 1947 “people weren’t so interested in qualifications – they were more interested in where you lived and who your parents were”.
Youth Clubs
Pal Capell used to go to the Youth Club with Maurice Fletcher and Ted Bascott, two of his friends from school:
Grown-ups were always anti-youth, even in my day! We had sixpenny dances. It was all live music. Fred York used to come up from Long Buckby. We used to call his band “The Roosters”; Fred was known as “Freddie Midnight” because of the late hours he kept. On fete and open days the band would march up from Long Buckby and give a recital outside the Hall gates. It was quite loud! Any loud arguments after the pubs closed were known as “giving it Buckby band”.
Victor Thorman’s father, the vicar at East Haddon in the 1950s, ran a church-oriented Youth Club: “My father wasn’t interested in which church you went to as long as you ‘went to visit God’. There was a Catholic boy in the village who used to say he had been to Mass when he hadn’t, but father checked with the priest and then banned him from Youth Club until he attended Mass.” Jill Teasdale remembers getting a Youth Club organised in the village in the 1970s: “We were keen to have a Youth Club as teenagers, so we approached Mr Bruce Smith... [He] was a schoolteacher who was also involved in different school groups and organisations, and thanks to him we got our Youth Club started in the Village Hall.”
The Hall School
As many remember, the Hall was once a girl’s boarding school: a former pupil, Susie Fletcher, is now known as Susannah York, the actress. It had earlier been the family home of Margaret Wrathall, née Scott-Robson, but the family moved out during the war to make way for the evacuation hospital from Plaistow in east London. Margaret’s parents opened the school in 1945, and she was educated there after first being taught by a governess, Jonny. This early education was apparently not very successful, because Jonny concentrated on her older sister, so she was fortunate to be able to go to the Hall school when it opened. The school originally had seven pupils, but the second term this number increased to 28 and then to 56.
It may have been a private school, but it certainly played a part in village life. June and Peter Wilkinson describe the school as being the “dominant influence in the village”: a fete was held in the grounds every summer, and a number of other activities took place that involved the school. As Debbie Williams recalls, villagers were invited to performances by the girls, often of Shakespeare plays in which Susie Fletcher had a major role. “In winter a stage was erected in the front hall, which blocked the front door so we would go up some wooden steps and through one of the windows in the side. In the summer the plays were held on the back steps of the house”. Debbie’s mother, Elsa Talbot, used to do some dress-making for Susie and the girls and some of the others used to visit her for fittings and to see her bulldog. David Muddiman recalls going to the cinema with Susie Fletcher – “but I think there were about 20 others there!”
Margaret Wrathall’s parents had hired a Mrs Lewis as the school’s headmistress, and she used to allow village children to use the pool in the grounds. Many children learnt to swim in the pool, but as Debbie Williams remembers, it lacked a filter system and “by the end of the summer the water was turning a suspicious green colour”. One summer, a boy spoilt things for everyone else by throwing broken glass into the pool, and the children weren’t allowed to use it again. (The pool has now been turned into an ornamental pond).
The girl’s parents used to visit their children on occasions, and some used to stay overnight at the Red Lion. Connie Tenniswood, who took over the Red Lion in 1965 with her husband, remembers that they could accommodate three couples at a time, “but no more. Bed and Breakfast was about £2.00 a night!”
Margaret Wrathall learnt to ride at the Hall’s riding school, one of the few in the country at the time. It was initially run by Margaret’s father, but soon a Mr Goff from Weedon Cavalry Barracks took over. According to Margaret, he was a “brilliant instructor and many people appreciated his talent”. He moved to East Haddon with his family, and was a familiar sight in the village.
When then school closed in 1967, June and Peter Wilkinson wondered how the village would cope without it, because it had been the centre of so many activities, including the annual fete. However, they feel now, looking back, that it was probably an advantage as it meant that the village had to do more for itself rather than relying on the school to do everything. According to Jack Halliwell, the last pupil there from East Haddon was Mandy Wykes, the granddaughter of Maurice Ward, the blacksmith. Winn and Jack Cadman’s daughter Margaret also attended the school
So much for the villager’s memories of the Hall school – what about the pupils views of East Haddon and its residents? Susannah York certainly enjoyed her time there:
East Haddon Hall – happy days! Yes, they were. Except at the beginning. I’d been quietly removed from my previous school for swimming nude at midnight and, ironically, for bare-back riding on a neighbouring farmer’s pony, also at midnight – O say ironically, because between schools during a summer holiday I spent sliding about on a wild Irish three-year-old my mother was breaking in, I lost my nerve. So when I fetched up at the Hall the following September I was horrified to find that almost everyone rode. A lot of girls had their own horses or ponies, showed, hunted, evented, seemed to be daughters of jockeys or trainers or MFHs. I would definitely be considered soppy; and so I was, reading poetry in the apple trees when the rides went out.
Time passed, I settled in, and come spring sometimes trotted out with classmates and big jovial no-nonsense Mr Goff. But not before that autumn evening when, far out of bounds and lost among stark trees and rolling fields under a sky full of crows, I came upon a lichened headstone poking up through the hedgerow: “Here lies the remains of Annie Pritchard” with dates I no longer remember. I ran – ran and ran, found the village, raced through the dear school gates (and hadn’t they become so!) – but who was poor cut-up Annie? Why was she buried in a field? Murdered? A witch? Or had she just liked vistas and crows? I never found out, never dared ask, and couldn’t have found the sad, monument again if I’d tried – and I didn’t. I suppose it’s still there.
That first term I got bitten on a burgeoning breast by somebody’s horse I was nervously grooming. Whisked off for an anti-tetanus, I became a brief hero of sorts, for the school doctor was the object of crushes. (“Gosh, how brave, you showed him, Susie? You had to take off your bra...?!”)
Caroline Lewis became my great friend. She was remarkably naughty for a headmistress’s daughter – for anyone’s probably – and got into at least as much trouble as the worst of us. Mrs Lewis herself was pretty atypical, I suspect. There was no lack of authority of course, despite her small stature dressed in unvarying browns: when she scolded, or you were branded “frivolous”, you shrivelled. But she was undeniably fair, and she had an irrepressible sense of humour, brown eyes twinkling as she tossed her head. She wrote a very funny play The Knave of Hearts in which I was Jack, and Caroline was the princess. When we took O-levels and The Merchant of Venice was chosen for the summer production, I was mortified to be passed over for Shylock or Portia, and given the soppy Bassanio (“Concentrate on your exams, Susannah!”).
The last summer term though, A-levels regardless, came my more-than-compensation: Puck in the open air! I remember Dawn as a spitfire Hermia, Gay a languid Helena, sultry Ann Hood’s Lysander, and Caroline majestic as Oberon in black tights and tinsel crown – and oh, the euphoria of leaping, in my red and green tunic and acorn hat, over the stone steps of the terrace, our “stage” at the back of the Hall! Of cartwheeling and somersaulting on the grass below while the sun sank and the stars popped out and generous villagers and proud parents clapped. Of carolling out, any old how I suppose (what did I, what did any of us, know about diction?), those wonderful words: “If we spirits have offended –“ I remember Brig – Brigadier Scott-Robson, a remote figure but always present at such events – being very kind about my somersaults and loud voice; and drunk on the doing, I was high as a kite for hours, for days after.
Besides writing and directing us rather wonderfully, Mrs L was a witty and passionate teacher. She tutored Caroline, Helena Schilizzi and me for A-level English: Hamlet (later to stand me in great stead when I played Ophelia, and Gertrude for the RSC) and the Romantic poets. She taught you to think, to dig, to analyse, to wring out sense, love language, be spare. She taught discipline in work – again to pay dividends later.
In the Hall gardens Rowley Adams [the head gardener] mowed, dug, trimmed, pruned, small and apple-cheeked, with Harry Hadley his nearly-clone: familiar sights with their rosy smiles, and their pony-and-cart for leaves.
In the village church choir, two teenage blonde boys were eagerly looked forward to every Sunday, flirted with over the Rev. Thorman’s vague head, and jealously claimed by each of us in turn, but never spoken to, I think.
One summer my mother stuck a pin in the map to whisk Caroline and me to Ibiza, and Mrs Talbot who taught us sewing made rather peculiar, very dashing we thought, romper-suits based on my Bassanio pantaloons: bright pink for Caroline, bright blue for me. In fact they were to make us, when we scrumped for figs on the island, shine too horribly bright for concealment – still, we dashed.
And in our classroom there was dear Madame A., fussy and kind, excitable and bright-eyed, who bustled, and who was to settle in the village after years of running French verbs through our heads. There was Willygogs – Miss Williams, bold and black-haired, irascible and sarcastic, but splendidly teaching history: Griggy who taught art – shy as a rabbit, but bold, too, in her subject and in her intuitions. And there was Miss Ellis with her strong, dimpled chin and hair astray; small, myopic, gentle, vainly being firm, and popular with us all. Trying hard – and more out of affection for her than for any talent I possessed – I won the geography prize one year; and through Madame A’s good graces Le Grand Meaulnes, in French! A great test of her faith. But I read it, still have it, as well as the small silver cup for verse-speaking – but oh, never won the Acting Cup which I wanted more than anything in the world.
It was a happy school, a happy place to be: there was competitiveness, there were jealousies, there were broken and mended friendship, there were midnight feasts, pillow fights, apple-pie beds, boarding school things and by torch under the sheets we grumbled about supper or bossy Francis, and homesick, we read sentimental magazines, finished homework, wrote execrable poetry (me), swapped confidences into the night – and, turn-about, during A-levels, with Caroline, Helena, et al I’d swot through the night in the bath, wrapped in an eiderdown.
There was never a lack of discipline. Yet when we compared notes with other, less fortunate boarders, friends at different schools, I think we knew ourselves to be astonishingly free, astonishingly un-institutionalised at the Hall.
Perhaps it had to do with the presence of horses in the stables to be tended at odd hours, their snickers and whinnies punctuating lessons: those lovely grounds with their cedars and beeches, their roses, the pool – with the green fields stretching all about and the small, safe, yellow-stoned village tucked around us. Or perhaps...
When my daughter was born I went to show her off to Mrs L, happily retired in Tunbridge Wells. “A lot of love, Susie,” she counselled, “and a little healthy neglect!”
It seems to me now, that a good deal of that marvellous philosophy went into her running of the school.
Susannah York (Susie Fletcher)
Victor Thorman: Recollections of a Vicar’s Son
The Thorman family are well remembered by many people in East Haddon as somewhat eccentric but nevertheless as very likeable people. Victor spent his formative years in the village, and seems to have enjoyed them immensely.
We arrived in East Haddon in a snowstorm in March 1952 and we left in July 1962, after father had died that March. Zillia was at London University studying medicine, Gloria was 16, Flavia was 12 and I was 8 when we came. My brother Malcolm was killed in 1951. He was at Cambridge also studying medicine and was killed on his motorbike returning from visiting Pam, his wife, after the birth of their second child. Rozalia died in the 1930s in Long Buckby when my father was parson there. She came after Robert and Mercia.
We arrived at East Haddon on a very snowy day. For some reason we came up the Holdenby Road. The Vicarage was very cold and smelled of cats. He didn’t like it at all – the house seemed very spooky. However, it soon became very exciting.
Pam came and lived in [Jasmine Cottage] with her two babies, Malcolm and Cuthbert.
The only time I ever heard my father swear was when he was chopping down a tree in the garden. He had learnt logging when he was a missionary in Canada and he used a 7-lb axe. He made all his own handles for his tools. In the frost he hit a piece of ice which bounced back and went through his gumboot, his sock and his long johns and opened him up to the shinbone. His words were something like: “Oh, dear, good gracious BLOODY HELL, BUGGER!!!” The only other time I remember him being really upset was when the goat ate his dahlias. The day he died he was sawing down a tree and he died later that day – he was nearly 75 years old and he died in March 1962.
Both of my parents had an absolute belief in God and they had been missionaries together in Canada. My mother had grown up in a relatively small village and she had been a governess and a teacher and she had a commitment to the community and they loved young people. My father always said he would give his time to help others but they in turn must give some time to God.
The choir and Bible class were both very successful. There was also a Youth Club which my father ran. My father wasn’t interested in which church you went to as long as you “went to visit God”. There was a Catholic boy in the village who used to say he had been to Mass when he hadn’t but father checked with the priest and then banned him from Youth Club until he attended Mass. He also used to preach at the chapel occasionally. There were always lots of young people around. It was my parent’s favourite parish, which is the reason why they are buried in Holdenby Churchyard.
I remember Eric Andrew who was very mischievous and his mother used to send him to the Vicarage because she couldn’t cope with him. He used to work very hard for my mother and father and they were very fond of him. He was killed on his motorcycle when he was very young. I remember the group of boys, Duncan Peel, Roger Wightman, Nick Talbot and myself all used to spend a great deal of time combing our hair.
It was a challenge to us boys to meet the girls from East Haddon Hall School. Some of them were in the choir and notes used to be passed in hymn books. It was pretty innocent stuff – a bit of kissing and cuddling – but the penalties were quite serious for the girls. Mrs Lewis was responsible for these girls, who were extremely wild. We were geniuses at getting into the school grounds. One of my favourite ways in was up the church path and across the remains of the mud wall into the “jungle”. We could lose ourselves completely in that jungle. The other meeting place was in the trees down the back between the Coopers and the school. Roger Wightman, Duncan Peel, Freddie Highlands for a bit and Nick Talbot. I remember one lovely experience – one of the girls was titled “Lady” and it was May when the girls had just returned to school and Duncan, Roger, Nick and I met these girls and were chatting to them and we said: “Who do you think’s going to win the Cup Final?”, and this particular “ladyship” said: What horses are running? I’ll tell you”. We just could not stop laughing and because of all the noise we were making we didn’t hear one of the teachers walking down the outside of the wood looking for us. We did our usual “drop” into the long grass and the girls ran for cover and panicked and ran up to the school and consequently were all caught.
We had code words for the girls and one of them was “the Old Curiosity Shop”. We used to go for midnight swims in the pool with the girls and one night all the lights came on and Fritz the butler appeared. He could run like hell. We actually used to use the hut to change in and the great challenge was for Fritz to “run us” and he’d come belting out in his pyjamas in the dark but we could get away because there were so many places to hide. My last trip down there was with Roger Wightman and we arranged to meet the girls at the bottom of the wood at 2.00 in the morning. Roger came round and I slipped out of the window and we walked down the Ravensthorpe Road and we were half over one of the gates and a car came past and we panicked. Roger jumped off the gate and I tried to dive over it. There were three strands of barbed wire on the top which caught me in the corner of my eye and opened me up to the corner of my mouth. Any way, we met the girls and kissed and cuddled in the bales in a barn until the light came up – this was July – so I had some explaining to do at breakfast! It was all great fun and exciting. Once in bravado we walked straight out of the main school gates into Mr Burton, the policeman, and he gave us a real talking to. He said he knew exactly what we were up to and if we had to do it we were to come out the same way we went in! He was pretty stern with us and we had a great deal of respect for him.
Flavia was at school there for a while, so some of the girls used to come round to our house. Susannah York was one of these. Sometimes some of the girls would spend the half-terms with us if their parents were abroad.
Roger, Nick and I played a lot of rugby together – we played at Long Buckby and we had a lot of fun. We were incredibly privileged children – there was no fear of molestation and we used to roam for miles over the fields. The farmers let us get away with it. I remember lovely times birds-nesting: we’d only take one egg out of a nest and we used to do it with great skill. We used to blow the eggs and it was disgusting when the eggs were addled and at some time or other every one of us fell out of a tree and we had some really bad falls. We used to go down into a plantation at the bottom of the Park and the bush was incredibly difficult to get through but we used to manage to beat paths through somehow.
There were some very hard winters and we sledged constantly on Tire Hill on wooden sledges. Mr Blackett made some of them in those days and my father made some with lovely steel runners. We used to sledge from early in the morning until late in the evening with bicycle lamps. When it was late it was freezing hard and we had a terrific run with jumps on it and we used to sledge at great speed down to the pond at the bottom where the cows had churned the mud up. If you came off there when it was frozen hard you really got hurt. The great thing was to sledge right onto the pond which was thick ice and put your feet out and spin round on the ice. We used to pile onto those sledges – we even built a ramp in Freddie Smith’s field with Father and watered it so that it froze hard. We used to love sledging and there was even the odd time when the snow was so bad our school bus didn’t make it into the village and so we could sledge all day. We knew all the places to go.
We wandered round for hours and hours in the summer, walking miles over the fields. There was a sheep midden and it was a place of great delight to us because there was a headless tailor’s dummy of a nude woman in there. Someone had written on it “I love you Wilf”. We never knew who Wilf was. This place (Rowell Leys) was occasionally inhabited by tramps. I can honestly say I was never bored in East Haddon.
I was actually architect of the “worst crime” committed in East Haddon. When we were about 16 we graduated from “little demons” and “penny and tuppenny bangers” to crow-scarers. I managed to get ropes of crow-scarers from a shop in Daventry, which we used to take off the rope and put a sparkler in the end and break the end off, and this thing was literally like a little grenade. Our great fun was to target the two people who would react best of all in the village. We used to fire a rocket at the front door of one of our victims but the greatest stunt we ever pulled was to put a crow-scarer half in the letter box and light it. The result was the worst thing I ever imagined. The thing went off with a deafening crash and the owner’s dog was lying in the hall and it nearly had a heart attack. I ran and hid behind one of the big tombstones in the churchyard in the wet grass and the owner of the dog came looking for me for two hours. By this time it was gone 9.00pm and I was late out and I eventually worked my way through the “jungle” and got to Duffus gates and eased them open and sneaked out. As I crossed the road a car came up and I think I must have run down the road to the Vicarage at an unbelievable speed.
I remember the Howard-Evans’s at Priestwell House. The old lady was lovely. She was an Irish aristocrat and she had three daughters, Sheila, Irene and Jackie. Jackie kept horses down on the Holdenby Road and had a funny little car. Gloria was very friendly with Jackie and she used to hunt side-saddle and wear a veil. They all had battered old cars. I used to go to tea there. I also remember Priestwell when the Muddimans lived in the flat. I was very fond of Christine Muddiman and I think I still owe her 1/6d because she got me some carbide. The carbide got me into quite severe trouble. We used it for gassing the water voles in the Washbrook. We were horrible kids – we’d gas the voles out and then send a Jack Russell terrier after them. Once when we were bored with this there was a great old tree down there and I got my arm up inside with the carbide which had got wet with the water and all the watervoles scattered. The gas was coming out of the tree from every angle. We lit it and the tree burst into flames and then we tried to put it out without success, so we fled from there up into the Playing Field where they were playing cricket so we could be identified as having been present. We could see the smoke rising from the tree down by the Washbrook from the Playing Field. Somebody later said that it had been struck by lightning...
I remember the Talbots flooding their lawn and making an ice rink. I remember sliding round on it. Mrs Wightman made a great impression me and I spent a great deal of time with her. Billy Jones used to ride a little BSA Bantam motorbike and lived at the Plough. Mrs Jones used to serve us under-age beer. My father used to sit at the back of the bar with Mrs Jones and gamble with mythical money. They used to play crib. We boys used to go and play skittles there and Father would come out and join us sometimes. My father never drank himself, though my mother used to offer everyone sherry. I spent lots of times in the Red Lion and I quickly learnt a great capacity for drinking a pint very quickly and we used to take bets with the locals and I once deposited the contents of a pint I drank straight back on the carpet in the Red Lion. After we had played rugby at Long Buckby we used to come back and have a few pints at the Red Lion.
My father was a very tall man and he made all his own rake handles etc and he made them long. He walked out of the shed one day and he trod on a rake and the handle came up and hit him straight under the eye and blacked his eye. He saw his neighbour who said, “How did you get that black eye?” and Father said, “I trod on a rake” and the neighbour said that couldn’t be true because a rake wasn’t long enough so Mrs Thorman must have done it! So Father marched home to get the rake to prove to him that it was long enough to hit him in the eye!
Once when we came down to our caravan in Watchett, Mrs Wightman and the children came with us. Mrs Wightman had an artificial leg. The caravans were getting very old by then and needed constant repairs. Mrs Wightman wanted to help so she climbed the ladder and was busy bitumasting the top of one of the caravans and when she finished she started to descend the ladder which is not so easy with an artificial leg. She asked mother to help her by moving her leg down a step to help her get down the ladder. Mother got hold of it and lost her balance and fell backwards with Mrs Wightman’s leg in her hands. Mrs Wightman was then stuck with one leg on the ladder. I came running and found mother in hysterics lying on the ground with Mrs Wightman’s leg. Father came along next and bodily carried Mrs Wightman down. Everyone was hysterical with laughing and I was very embarrassed seeing this artificial leg on the ground with all its leather straps.
I had a very strict upbringing. I had to work very hard and I had to attend all the church services, so I used to love going to the Wightmans or the Talbots for a breather. My mother believed that every spare minute you had you should be doing some work which usually meant gardening. I remember going to church four times every Sunday. We used to burn our fingers on the heating pipes in East Haddon church. We used to put a wodge of modelling wax on the pipes and we formed these wonderful stalactites dripping down.
Stan Smith was very loyal to my parents and to the church. He wasn’t actually a lay reader, but he helped father a great deal with the services and he was also churchwarden for some time. Mrs Dickens made life very difficult for Father, but when he died she couldn’t stop praising him. She always came to church and wouldn’t look at Father when he preached and she fell out with mother. Mr Goff was father’s last churchwarden...